u/Beks_Omega

What is the worst superlative?

Oh my gosh! I can't believe there's another person here that knows this book :D I love it so much. It's relaxing + beautiful + makes me think. The perfect combination! How did you find it?

Also wrt the game: I know that solo is a very personal experience, and adapting things is half the fun. So if you make any changes for your game be sure to ping me so I can try them out!

I recommend checking out Wushu, which is a game about cinematic fast-pased action. And Wanderhome, which is a game about pastoral fantasy that uses the Belonging Outside Belonging system.

These are very different games. But they both give players mechanical advantages for doing things in the story. Basically, they give players an *extrinsic* reason to roleplay, which I think is the key.

Wushu gives you more dice depending on the amount of "details" you provide in your description. So basically, you are "paying" players to talk, which makes it really easy to get over shyness!

And Wanderhome gives people tokens for describing their character performing certain actions. So basically, you are "paying" players to hit certain story beats. It also provides a bunch of prompts for these beats, which makes it easy to get the story unstuck.

My recommendation: If you want your players to talk, encorporate backstory, make big story moves, etc, give them a bonus for doing so.

Best of luck with your game!

Oh yeah! Obviously I don't think it's morally bad or that it's not the "right" way to play. I was just commenting that maybe the right way to look at this is that isn't a problem with the system or the GM, it's just a mismatch of the two.

GM want to tell a cool story, and D&D wants to do.... not sure, but something else probably!

Sorry, could have definitely phrased my prev comment better hehe. Thank you for your thoughts :D

Love how you bring agency vs risk into the discussion. Such a good way of framing it! Thank you for your thoughts :D

Hahaha that's amazing. Oh my gosh the beautiful drama! Thank you dice gods. I love it, thank you for sharing :D

Thanks for bringing in your perspective on this! So cool to hear someone say "The idea that a player is guaranteed to .... be the star of some overall story arc is completely foreign to me" I've definitely come into the hobby from online actual-plays, so I love hearing the other things people came into RPGs for / want from them.

And I also really appreciate your comment about fudging random encounters. Fudging that almost doesn't seem like fudging to me. Like, I could have decided this encounter before we started playing, or I can decide it right now. Either way, as the GM I have the authority to decide. But on the other hand, if you roll something and ignore it, that is by definition fudging! so interesting :D

Thank you again for your thoughts!

Thanks for bringing up the complexity of this issue! I agree that before taking any drastic measures, you should definitely playtest with different GMs. As a lot of people have mentioned, in many cases it's just a choice of style. Some people want to ensure those epic moments, and other people love that feeling of risk.

I always appreciate when people come in with the reminder that doing stuff is hard and complex =) Thank you for your thoughts!

Yesss love this taxonomy (and basically any taxonomies).

It makes it clear that if a GM is doing a high-degree, bad-faith fudge, then it's obviously not a problem with the system, but a problem with the individual GM.

On the other hand, if they're doing something in good faith, it could be something rough in the system, or it could just be their particular style. Fudging doesn't necessarily mean your system is 100% bad, it just means there might be something you should pay attention to.

Thank you so much for your thoughts!

Thanks for bringing the game vs story discussion into this! It seems like this is definitely more of a problem for people who run more narrative-focused tables.

Maybe that supports the idea that if you want a narrative focused game... maybe don't pick D&D hehe.

So cool hearing about your different experience/relationship with the dice. Thank you again!

Thank you for sharing your perspective! So interesting to hear someone flip from fudge to non-fudge. So cool to hear that (at least in some cases) rolling with the punches actually leads to bigger moments, not smaller ones.

Do you remember any specific examples of where a moment felt bigger because of the dice? I love me those juicy stories.

Interesting! I had totally forgotten about that section from 5e (I've been watching a lot of interviews lately, but not playing). So interesting that this might just be an infection from a single person!

I think this kind of gets at the question of planning vs improv, and foreshadowing and payoff. If I had said that you were quickly picking the lock to a keep that had guards constantly patroling, then they're less quantum and the summoning probably makes more sense.

But yeah the example could have been better hehe.

Yeah I feel ya that sometimes it's better for the GM, players, and narrative to fudge a roll.

But if this is happening often, doesn't the question become: "why are we using dice at all?" If we only go along with the dice when they support what we're already thinking, maybe you should be using a diceless system like Belonging Beyond Belonging instead.

Do you feel where I'm coming from?

Great thoughts here! I think this is a great extension of the comment someone else made "bad GM not bad game". The problem isn't that D&D (or other games) don't have a good way of dealing with failure. The problem is that people are trying to tell "falling forward" stories in a system that wasn't built to do that. Therefore, they change the system (rule of cool) to do what they want it to do.

Love this so much! Thank you for your thoughts :D

Yes! Love bringing the discussion of GM's role/responsibilities into this. I think it is crazy how D&D puts so much responsibility on the DM. You've gotta do all this prep, and create all these NPCs, and be the physics engine, and help people who don't know the rules, etc etc.

It feels a bit sad to me. Like hey, isn't the DM a player here too? Why is playing so much harder for them haha.

I think your system should make the game fun for the GM too, and maybe one simple way to do that is making sure your system handles failure gracefully, so your GM doesn't have to deal with that extra cognitive load.

Thank you so much for your thoughts!

Dude that is such a good point about systems which require GM's to pre-plan challenges, vs those that don't. It feels like it's kind of built into the idea of "dungeoning". First you do X, then you do Y, then you do Z, and if anything happens that makes that not possible, as a GM idk what to do.

A planning oriented system vs an improv oriented system is a really great dicotomy which I hadn't thought about before. Thank you so much for sharing this! This is going to change how I think about things =)

Very good point about the lack of guidance! And I think that is compounded by the fact that we don't have a lot of references in media for what happens if things go bad. We're so used to stories ending with the protagonists winning, that it can be really scary for a GM if that's not what's happening.

There's a wider question as well of what's the point of tactical combat if the assumption is that the enemies are supposed to lose anyway?

I guess the answer is it's supposed to make the PCs look cool :P (even if they're not actually cool?)

Thank you for your thoughts!

I love your comment about needing a flawless system and a flawless GM. I think you're right that there are always going to be times where the GM feels it would be better for the story if the dice went a different way. But I think if that's happening too often, that's a good signal that your mechanics aren't supporting the story you want them to tell.

Thank you so much for your thoughts!

Yeah there's definitely a love of "rollin' those little polyhedrons" even when you're really shooting yourself in the foot narratively haha.

It's gotta be really tricky working on a system that has so much meta/culture built up around it.

Thank you for your thoughts man!

Yes I love that system! I feel like those simple prompts are so helpful as a GM! It helps kick you out of that "ahhh I don't know what to do" mode. You go man!

Yeah I see what you're saying, real-time adjustment is definitely necessary, because sometimes as a GM you just mess up haha. And I'm not saying GMs are bad for doing it. I'm saying, maybe the RPG is bad for making the GM feel they have to do it.

But I definitely feel you wrt combat, and especially with regard to low level players. In that scenario, fudging dice definitely feels less about fear of failure/the unknown, and more about showing new players how fun the game can be. Just like purposefully losing to someone in chess when you're teaching them how to play.

Yeah I feel ya, but isn't it kind of the job of the design to present interesting options?

Going back to the picking-a-lock example: obviously failing to pick a lock can be super interesting, because that puts you in danger. You've lost time, you've been exposed, you come up against the limits of your own abilities, etc.

But D&D in particular doesn't present it this way. It presents it as "you get in, or nothing happens".

You feel me? If the game says "this is rollable" maybe it should also say "here are the interesting things that happen if you succeed or if you fail".