Are most modern RPG players not interested in dungeons anymore?
I noticed from my own players that they care more about intrigue and drama between characters than dungeon delving. Is that also the case at your table?
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Are most modern RPG players not interested in dungeons anymore?
game of thrones and walking dead are just melrose place and 90210 with a pastiche of zombies and dragons in the background.
peoples expectations duly subverted, they now crave drama instead of action.
if they wanted a dungeon crawl theyd just raid with their WoW guild.
Yes, objectively. It isn't even a question.
Modern adventures do not really do dungeons anymore, and when they do it's more set dressing for a linear narrative adventure locale than it is the traditional exploration-based multilevel dungeon. And the rules themselves are no longer concerned with all the things that were necessary to make dungeons function (encumbrance, time, genuine danger, turn tracking, random encounters, reward systems which encourage acquisition of wealth, rarity of magic items etc etc).
A good 20+ years of that and the general playerbase have stopped caring themselves. It's no longer the generation of who grew up on sword and sorcery, history, and wargaming and naturally got into D&D. It's no longer the diluted second generation of people who grew up on D&D and its staples rather than the things that inspired it. It's the third generation of people who have grown up on modern fantasy television and movies, who are more interested in emulating those experiences, and less interested (or even knowledgeable) in the origins of the game or the traditions/tropes that emerged from them.
>Modern adventures do not really do dungeons anymore, and when they do it's more set dressing for a linear narrative adventure locale than it is the traditional exploration-based multilevel dungeon. And the rules themselves are no longer concerned with all the things that were necessary to make dungeons function (encumbrance, time, genuine danger, turn tracking, random encounters, reward systems which encourage acquisition of wealth, rarity of magic items etc etc).
This, and unironically blame the influx of normies who just simply aren't capable of thinking of these aspects joining the hobby. If you want proof of that, read any modern "narrative-based" experience and you'll get the full frontal mask-off picture of how they think of the hobby.
I just got done reading through Kids on Bikes to see if I wanted to use it for a little one-shot for my group. After reading through the 5th almost-page-long example block and the 3rd paragraph telling me not to be a bigot, I started crunching some numbers in that book. If you took out ALL of the tone policing and backseat GMing the book does and added it up, of the rules section alone, it totals ~43.3% of the book. The game is almost more concerned with telling me how to babysit emotionally fragile and stunted people than it is with actually playing a game of any sort.
And that's with me leaving in anything that could be a rule if I squinted at it long enough. I then tried removing EVERY non-mechanical rule in the game and just typed out the stuff you would actually need to play the game. It boiled down to 1 page in word, or 2 posts on Ganker.
That's not even talking about the fact that I took out 90% of the GM's rules section, which were mostly concerned about X-card variations as opposed to actually giving you info on how to run things.
None of these people are interested in running games. They want to write TV shows and charge you $25 for the privilege.
dungeons will never be interesting and there is nothing you can do about it
>Two of the biggest video game franchises in the last 10 years of video gaming have been dungeon crawlers (Souls games and Zelda).
Cope more.
The most successful versions of those games are open world with a strong story driven goal in mind.
>with a strong story driven goal in mind.
Strong doubt on that. I beat Eldin Ring and still have no idea what the frick the story is, just like every other Souls game. Story in Souls games are a meme. Zelda's story wasn't that strong in my opinion. It was good, but not a necessity at all to engage with the game. In either BotW or TotK.
>I beat Eldin Ring and still have no idea what the frick the story is
A family of demigods tore themselves apart in a civil war for a source of divine power and the world is in decay with no proper heir, various demi-gods are trying to use you to win that war of succession by gaining access to it. The basic gist of the plot isn't hard to grasp or explain even if the finer details are typical muddled souls stuff.
Yeah but it takes effort to drive that out. You're otherwise just a nowhere man with a nowhere plan. The game just points you at big things and funnels you in certain directions, and you just kill things. There's not a single story-driven element about that.
most irrelevant franchises*
>If you took out ALL of the tone policing and backseat GMing the book does and added it up, of the rules section alone, it totals ~43.3% of the book.
A sad indictment of the state of the hobby.
At the same time, I fricking hate "systems" that give you a bunch of mechanics and tables and don't tell you how to actually play the fricking game.
There's really not a point to using TTRPG to do straight dungeon crawls unrelated to a broader goal and story when videogames are quite good at simulating that now.
I've enjoyed some straight dungeon crawl games, and I enjoy a good dungeon crawl to break up a longer TTRPG campaign, but if I'm going to wrangle four or five people to meet up weekly I'd rather have drama and intrigue, something videogames are bad at doing.
>There's really not a point to using TTRPG to do straight dungeon crawls unrelated to a broader goal
No version of the game did this though? Even 1974 "Little Brown Books" had wilderness and sea travel and inclinations toward amassing regional influence and power, and even using the other wargames to resolve regional conflicts. AD&D and Basic only cemented that further as the inherent goal of the game. It's always been in service of a greater goal.
>if I'm going to wrangle four or five people to meet up weekly I'd rather have drama and intrigue, something videogames are bad at doing.
There's this weird modern assumption that old school fantasy didn't have drama or intrigue, which is absurd. These were the guys coming off the likes of Howard and Anderson and Vance and Moorwiener. Of course they wanted drama and intrigue. But they created a game to generate those things through emergent longterm play and player agency rather than being dictated by the DM.
Have you read the stories of players in Arneson's original Blackmoor and Gygax and Kuntz' original Greyhawk games? They're brimming with drama and intrigue, not just between the challenges set up by the DM and the players, but between the PCs themselves and their often conflicting goals.
>There's this weird modern assumption that old school fantasy didn't have drama or intrigue, which is absurd. These were the guys coming off the likes of Howard and Anderson and Vance and Moorwiener. Of course they wanted drama and intrigue. But they created a game to generate those things through emergent longterm play and player agency rather than being dictated by the DM.
This. Great stories in TTRPGs came from playing an RPG, and natural storylines would arise out of them that would be interesting. Modern gaming is about creating faux drama through storytelling tropes and clichés. There's a reason that people don't typically tell narrative gameplay stories in greentext threads. They always tend to be game threads, because the fact that there are hard rules of the game outside of player control that give it a greater weight. That's also why when people point at a story and say "the DM faked it", it takes a lot of power away from that story.
>drama and intrigue
>dungeon
Pick one and only one. And if you're going to do a counterclaim, you better show me a dungeon that has intrigue built into it, or you're a goddamn lying moron.
>when videogames are quite good at simulating that now.
they aren't outside of a two or three of "imsim" games
>video games are bad at drama and intrigue
Yes but they're better at it than your community improv sessions.
games are bad at drama and intrigue
>Yes but they're better at it than your community improv sessions.
They're not, specifically because they don't contain that "community improv".
There's never been community improv that has been good. Not once.
People do that stuff because it's fun, anon. Whether it's good from the perspective of an audience that watches it rather than taking part in it isn't really relevant.
>People do that stuff because it's fun, anon.
Sure, but you could also do something that is fun and good at the same time. Why half-ass it?
>Bad community improv is still more flexible and reactive than the best written videogame.
That's not necessarily a good or desirable quality. CAN the community improv react to King Trodan's march on the Roman Empire by pulling out a banana and calling it a Sonic Screwdriver? They sure could, couldn't they?
>They sure could, couldn't they?
I suppose they could but that doesn't seem very useful or helpful in that situation. You're holding a banana and mumbling gibberish, your allies assume you've cracked under the pressure, and Trodan is still coming. I hope another player has a better plan
I love that your response to the demonstration of reactiveness of improv was to actuall reduce the reactiveness of improv, instead of, you know, improving. Which literally just proved my point that it wasn't a desirable quality.
You seem to have invented your own weird definition of "improv", declared other people are defending it, and then declared yourself to have defeated "improv" when nobody agrees with your definition in the first place.
>You seem to have invented your own weird definition of "improv"
By definition improv theatre means you always say "yes and" to any statement made on the stage. In improv theatre, the banana thing would have to work, and it would be up to the other actors to figure out how and why.
>declaring other people are defending it
you people clearly defend this style of play here
and here
. Not liking improv games makes you an "autistic noegames," according to you
>declare yourself to have defeated improv
the guy defending improv turned on the "yes and" rule the moment he was presented with a counter example (the banana thing). That sounds like defeat to me.
You're doing a shell game where you call derisively call "modern" RPGs improv sessions, then falling back on the precise technical rules of theater improv when people defend "modern" RPGs.
sorry you died on an indefensable hill, anon.
I'm glad you're having fun tilting at windmills
So, you're essentially arguing that it's actually inaccurate to call modern roleplaying "improv", and that
is a moron for talking about "community improv" in the first place? Okay, I guess I can agree with that.
Reactiveness doesn't mean every course of action succeeding, anon.
>character does something pointless and insane
>allies lose faith in him
There was an action and reaction, how is that not reactive?
>Sure, but you could also do something that is fun and good at the same time. Why half-ass it?
Well, I definitely try to go for good improv rather than bad improv, but only people around to judge whether I succeed are the other people in my group, and since they're all in on the whole improv thing and having fun with it, they're not really impartial judges. Good improv or bad improv, it still fun, though, and there's no replacement that's fun in the exact same way.
But at the end of the day, it's really just collectively player ideas, which will sort of bleed together into nothing particularly incredible or amazing. It will improve your acting skills, sure. Maybe your creative writing. But nothing amazing will ever come out of it, and you're leaving other portions of your skillset to rot, like pre-planning, exploration, management (if you play a game that has stuff like hirelings), negotiation, etc.
In other words, I think what you get out of the pure fun aspect of drama does not anywhere equal the total number of other critical thinking skills that you develop when you also include a heavier amount of rules to be dedicated too. Especially when you're GMing, cause narrative GMing is overglorified babysitting with extra work involved.
>If the community wants the political intrigue game to have wacky hijinks and goofy shenanigans, then it's a good thing.
Not really. They're letting skills they could develop as people rot. If they want to just goof around, they could probably just do it in the park without the whole game aspect included. It's a waste of time for them to involve dice in my opinion if that's what they want to do.
All at once:
>100-1 is still significantly bigger than 2
On a sliding scale, reactiveness does include answers that are outside the course of reason and going along with it. If you respond to the banana scene by going "that's crazy, I ignore it", then that's not real reactiveness. When you realize that, you realize that you've set a limit on the reactions that are "allowed" or would generate unique or different responses.
When you boil that down, you're probably going to get maybe 1-3 options that are appropriate. If a video game can capture that, then that game has fully reacted to that particular scene.
>is that not reactive?
Because if that describes the reaction they would have to 99 different choices/outcomes, then what they did was pointless
>you're leaving other portions of your skillset to rot, like pre-planning, exploration, management (if you play a game that has stuff like hirelings), negotiation, etc.
Have you considered that some people don't need to do these things in an RPG to develop skills? You should be planning, managing, and negotiating regularly if you work a decent job. Why would I do these things, come home, and then do it in a game?
>Have you considered that some people don't need to do these things in an RPG to develop skills? You should be planning, managing, and negotiating regularly if you work a decent job. Why would I do these things, come home, and then do it in a game?
Why play a game at all if all you want to do is just improv? Why are you letting game rules get in the way of doing what you want?
>Why play a game at all if all you want to do is just improv? Why are you letting game rules get in the way of doing what you want?
Because rules provide structure and direction. It's like picking your canvas and your paints.
Now, what does the existence of rules have to do with skills like management, negotiation, and planning? I can just schedule a time with my friends to go to bars if that's why I play RPGs.
>what does the existence of rules have to do with skills like management, negotiation, and planning?
Why did you leave out the bit about the games with hirelings? They literally have rules like morale and hiring procedures for getting them to come along with you.
>They literally have rules like morale and hiring procedures for getting them to come along with you
And why does that matter? If I wanted to deal with morale and payment procedures, I could just go on a date with a woman.
I've had very memorable games with a lot of what you call "community improv". Same games have generally had combat, exploration and other such things, because in actual campaigns improv and gameplay aren't mutually exclusive, but some of the most memorable moments have been in-character discussions with no dice rolls involved.
>On a sliding scale, reactiveness does include answers that are outside the course of reason and going along with it. If you respond to the banana scene by going "that's crazy, I ignore it", then that's not real reactiveness. When you realize that, you realize that you've set a limit on the reactions that are "allowed" or would generate unique or different responses.
Dumb actions leading to dumb outcomes definitely is real reactiveness, and trying to argue otherwise is silly.
>I've had very memorable games with a lot of what you call "community improv".
>Same games have generally had combat, exploration and other such things, because in actual campaigns improv and gameplay aren't mutually exclusive, but some of the most memorable moments have been in-character discussions with no dice rolls involved.
I genuinely think that's fine. I even agree that they aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. My issue is with narrative games specifically, which discourage the exploration, combat, etc. They even go out of their way to backseat GM you to try and tell you what kind of person you can be in the bigger rulebooks.
>Dumb actions leading to dumb outcomes definitely is real reactiveness, and trying to argue otherwise is silly.
I direct you and
you to
. Or restated, "Choosing to ignore it is not reacting to it, it's just ignoring it."
>Hurr but ignoring IS a reaction!
Not really. Pouring water into water is not a chemical reaction, is it? "But the water splashed, so it reacted!" isn't an answer to that.
How is a player doing something moronic, and the NPCs now treating them as moronic, "ignoring it"?
How is it not? You ignore morons and their moronic actions and just do what you want. The player literally could have said "I do nothing" and the situation wouldn't have changed.
>A insane course of action not working as intended is not ignoring anything.
But that's literally the opposite side of the scale of reactiveness and improv. The player CANNOT do anything they want, because the world will not react to it. Like I said before, dropping water into water is not a chemical reaction because water splashed/moved.
>And why does that matter? If I wanted to deal with morale and payment procedures, I could just go on a date with a woman.
That was pretty weak if it was a joke, and pretty bad faith if that was an argument.
>But that's literally the opposite side of the scale of reactiveness and improv. The player CANNOT do anything they want, because the world will not react to it. Like I said before, dropping water into water is not a chemical reaction because water splashed/moved.
Getting thrown into an asylum due to acting like a madman, for instance, is the world reacting to player's actions. You seem to be arguing that only success counts as the world reacting.
>Getting thrown into an asylum due to acting like a madman, for instance, is the world reacting to player's actions.
You're missing the forest for the trees. You're still just limiting the actions the players can take by just decreeing any subset of actions outside of the acceptable ones are "madman" territory and then choosing to have characters ignore them, or treat them under "madman" status. You still aren't really reacting to them outside of a predisposed sense of "realism". Again, that's not reaction.
https://www.britannica.com/science/chemical-reaction
If you're just going to continue to argue in bad faith (and then just pull a "NO U!" when called out on it), I'm not intending on responding to you. Sorry.
>Posting the dictionary definition of a chemical reaction
>Can't respond to the argument
H2+ 2 OH => 2 H20
Just admit when you're out of your league
The reactants are H2O and the products are H2O. Since the reactants and products are the same, it's not a chemical reaction.
So you're illiterate. Got it.
Concession accepted.
>I call the king a homosexual and tell me to hand over his crown
>okay his guards arrest you
>WTF THATS NOT REACTION
It's not. A proper improv reaction would be more along the lines of
>The king calls you a cuck, and says you can only take his crown if you can beat him in arm wrestling.
The reason yours isn't a real reaction is because that would be the response to 99% of any situation you could devise. He's not really responding to you beyond to your existence or engaging with you. Literally the opposite of improv. Better gameplay? Yes. But that's my entire argument to begin with.
>But that's my entire argument to begin with.
I don't know what you think you're arguing or who you think you're arguing with if you agree with everyone already, other than being hung up on the word improv, which you introduced in the first place. Everyone else here clearly means improvising, as in the players decided to enslave the goblins instead of killing them so now they're running a gold mine, and the GM needs to improvise where the game is headed because of that. Nobody here is doing free form 2 minute sketch comedy without rules where every participant can warp reality at will.
I missed you in the reply, you can also respond to this:
Is that hypothetical video game the most reactive game in the world?
Negative consequences aren't limiting player actions. Guaranteed positive outcomes are, if anything, more restrictive, or at least less reactive. Meaningful choices require different outcomes for different actions, and every plan working would mean no plan mattering. The claim that something bad happening when players do something dumb is such a weird take that I have a hard time believing you genuinely think that. It just isn't true unless we completely redefine what the word "reaction" means.
You're confusing two matters on the issue.
1. The entire arugment of "this is more reactive" is based around generating reactions that are unique.
2. That my initial example of the banana scenario was in any way supporting that I think people should play that way.
I was merely demonstrating a point that reactiveness is actually NOT a desirable trait. You're basically agreeing with my philosophy, but not with the outcome that reactions are actually not necessarily desirable.
Or let me put it this way: A video game comes out. Advertises that it has the most reactive system EVER devised by mankind ever. 1,000 total outcomes and reactions you could make! Game is SO responsive! And then you actually play the game, and you get to a section that has the 1,000 outcomes it purported. You're trying to stop the same King Trodan from murdering you in his conquest of the world. But then:
>1 choice is to draw your sword and fight him to the death
>999 of the choices are you trying to talk, plead, do wacky shit,, etc. All of which, King Trodan just sillently stares at you for a second then stabs you to death with a sword. Every single time.
The way you're arguing, this video game WOULD be the most reactive game in the world, would it not? He's treating you like a pussy/coward/madman and "reacting" appropriately, is he not?
There are more scenarios in videogames, and in RPGs, than a hostile enemy king who imminently wants to kill you in a void.
In an TTRPG you could conceivably defeat Trodan, negotiate a peace, fail to stop him, switch sides and join him, or just take a boat and leave the whole mess behind. You can't have that freedom in a videogame except at the very end where you're picking which color of mass effect explosion you're getting, because everything that comes after that is an entirely new game. That's the strength of TTRPG.
>There are more scenarios in videogames, and in RPGs, than a hostile enemy king who imminently wants to kill you in a void.
You're dodging the question. It doesn't matter how it got to there, that's the scenario you are presented with. IS that a reactive scenario?
>if a projectile is speeding towards your character the game isn't actually reactive and you don't have choices because reading poetry has the same outcome as just standing there
Is this entire meltdown of yours because people said improv and reaction instead of emergent and agency despite wanting the exact same thing?
>1. The entire arugment of "this is more reactive" is based around generating reactions that are unique.
It's based on players having more freedom to choose their actions and the world being better able to react to those actions. Which RPGs are compared to video games, which is the comparison that started this discussion. Of course TTRPGs are also better able to generate unique reactions, but some actions leading to similar outcomes isn't really relevant here.
>2. That my initial example of the banana scenario was in any way supporting that I think people should play that way.
Literally nobody thinks that the banana scenario was supposed to to support that way of playing. It just that it was a terrible hypothetical scenario that failed to make any kind of point, as the PC who acts like that being no viewed as a madman is a completely valid reaction for that action.
>The way you're arguing, this video game WOULD be the most reactive game in the world, would it not? He's treating you like a pussy/coward/madman and "reacting" appropriately, is he not?
Not this is veering either into blatant trolling territory or complete lack of reading comprehension territory. Why do you think railroading is reactiveness, and where do you see anyone arguing for that? I mean, it's possible to come up with an arbitrary number of actions that'd provoke king Trodan to an extent where he stabs you, but only offering such actions as alternatives to fighting him is...not even remotely what anyone ITT has suggested.
>but some actions leading to similar outcomes isn't really relevant here.
It's literally almost the entire point of the discussion I've brought up to this point. You're agreeing with me on every single point with the exception of a reaction because you're conflating "realistic"=A reaction, even though that goes against narrative and improv dogma which is what I'm arguing against.
>Literally nobody thinks that the banana scenario was supposed to to support that way of playing.
>Not this is veering either into blatant trolling territory or complete lack of reading comprehension territory.
It's neither. Exhibit A:
>but only offering such actions as alternatives to fighting him is...not even remotely what anyone ITT has suggested.
You're literally advocating for that with the "madman" rationale you're using. Your entire response to this chain of argument has been "Well it IS a reaction because it's realistic." If all 999 of those choices results in a realistic reaction, then that is exactly what you are advocating for as a reaction. The players HAVE the choice to do whatever they want with all 1,000 reactions, but they just generate the same response in 99.9% of scenarios. But they're "realistic" so that's a reaction, right?
You're still dodging the question. Is that video game still a reactive video game. Yes/No?
>It's literally almost the entire point of the discussion I've brought up to this point.
Well, it's no one else's point, and it's not relevant to anything anyone else has said ITT.
>you're conflating "realistic"=A reaction
Now, and why the frick would you even think that?
>You're literally advocating for that with the "madman" rationale you're using.
How do you figure that? A specific action leading to a negative outcome is not even remotely the same as sdvocating that all actions should lead to that same outcome. I don't know why you're repeating the idea mentioned by no one but you that realism=reaction. The actual argument is that negative reactions are reactins just as much as positive ones. Players being able to do what thet choose and the world, you know, reacting to those actions is what the world being reactive means. Your video game scenario is where player choices are strictly constrained so that they lead to two specific outcomes, which is just not at all sinilarto the freedo of TTRPGs.
You keep introducing phrases like reactive or improv as descriptors for X style of gameplay, then acting really clever when you say those descriptors actually have a definition that doesn't match X style of gameplay, and therefore the people who play X style of gameplay are playing wrong and have lost some argument about nothing.
The argument was a reaction to someone simply stating that TTRPGs are more reactive, and me just simply stating "That's not necessarily desirable."
Then you would agree that the video game example here:
is a very reactive video game, correct?
>someone simply stating that TTRPGs are more reactive
Actually it was "flexible and reactive." If you're going to be a pendant and try to very precisely misinterpret words you need to at least be accurate in your quoting if you want people to find you convincing.
You literally didn't change anything and were petty in the attempt, which made you look bad. Congrats. You played yourself.
>is a very reactive video game, correct?
No, because a videogame about defending Rome from Trodan couldn't react to me deciding to never face Trodan so I could go become a pirate and open a pirate bar on a far off coast in the first place.
You dodged the question. You're trying to insert new things into the scenario instead of reacting to the scenario as presented.
No one but you ever agreed to the scenario as presented. You may as well have said TTRPG players have no agency or choices because a player doesn't have much to do on his turn during a 1000 foot fall into a volcano.
>I-i-i-i don't have to answer that question, cause I didn't consent to being asked a question that would make my argument look bad!
Weird flex but okay.
>But your banana scenario was completely insane
Yeah that was literally the entire point. Narrative rules with "Yes, and..." mentality, as stated by the above anon who pointed out improv rules, means that the game now has to adjust to that addition. And yes, I have played games that have gone that ridiculous and were encouraged to keep going with it.
>reactions to such behavior somehow don't count as real reactions.
But they're not. That's where the video game analogy comes in. They are "reactions" in the purest sense of the word. But by every utilitarian definition, it's not.
>Where did I do that
>this discussion isn't really about narrative games but about the focus of a campaign
We're not having the same discussion. Here, once more for you, is my entire thesis:
>>Bad community improv is still more flexible and reactive than the best written videogame.
>That's not necessarily a good or desirable quality. CAN the community improv react to King Trodan's march on the Roman Empire by pulling out a banana and calling it a Sonic Screwdriver? They sure could, couldn't they?
That's it. That's the joke.
>I suggested reaction to the banana scenario that's not just nothing happening
Your reaction was equivalent to the player doing/saying nothing. A non-reaction. King Trodan carried out his initial goal. The players actions had no effect on the world.
>Why do you think an example of a hypothetical[...]
It's a hypothetical designed to tease out your stance.
Quite frankly, I think you're being debate brained here. We're going in circles a bit. I'm going to wait a full hour before I respond to you again, cause like I said, I think we agree on a huge portion of things, but you're getting a little needlessly contrarian here. I'll be back when you've cooled down a bit and we can continue.
>We're not having the same discussion.
Then you're not having the same discussion as anyone else in this thread. Which would mean that you're not having a discussion, you're just going on a weird rant that doesn't address or interact with anyone else's arguments.
>Quite frankly, I think you're being debate brained here. We're going in circles a bit. I'm going to wait a full hour before I respond to you again, cause like I said, I think we agree on a huge portion of things, but you're getting a little needlessly contrarian here. I'll be back when you've cooled down a bit and we can continue.
By all means, stop responding altogether. You've responded to me only nominally so far, either ignoring or misunderstanding any actual arguments made. If you want to keep this up after you've had your break, don't bother replying to anyone, just have your odd little monologue on as its own thing.
You're the only one here who needs to cool down, dumbass Black person
>being asked a question that would make my argument look bad!
Not really. I made a statement about TTRPGs having a quality, not about your white room moment in time specifically constructed to lack that quality.
How do you measure reactiveness?
Unique reactions vs depth of said reactions while telling roughly the same timeline of events. I think Fallout 1 is a great example of reactive video games. I also specify that it has to be the same timeline of events because I think if you make choice A at the start of the game, and option 1 sends you on an "evil" path and 2 sends you on a "good" path, I don't find that any different from just having two segregated stories altogether and then just asking you "What story do you want to hear today?"
How do you measure reaction depth?
Impact and presence on the story. Example: If I play an anime game, and it gives me two options, one where I answer seriously, and one where I answer in a goofy tone (like hurr I wanna sniff my animu waifu's panties), but then the game just gives me a line of dialog reacting to that then continues with the story as normally, then I don't really consider that a reaction. If anything, it was a writing tool the game used to move the conversation forward and would have been better served to simply have the main character speak instead of giving me a choice.
A good example of a Japanese game doing the opposite would be SMT Devil Survivor. You get goofy choices like that, but it affects character reactions to you, which can ultimately result in certain characters dying offscreen, or allying against you, and picks which ending you get and with whom.
The hypothetical, as all hypothetical, was designed to tease out a stance on the subject. The discussion was whether or not a realistic reaction to a PC's action having a negative consequence to the PC should be considered are reaction or not. The fact you dodged the question multiple times with "Well I could have done something BEFORE the hypothetical" means that you fear the hypothetical. So I have my answer. I have "reacted" to you.
So how is it measured?
>Impact and presence on the story.
The more it impacts, the deeper it is.
Are you familiar with the word "measure"?
Are you just going to gloss over the fact that you are intentionally ignoring half of my above answer:
>Unique reactions vs depth of said reactions
>Unique reactions
To try this really dumb and shitty "gotcha" question? Thereby very clearly arguing in bad faith?
>Y-y-you dodged!
Measurement by it's percentage of relationship to the character/plotlines it interacts with and it's measurement on the actions of the plot. The deeper something has an impact on the plot, the higher that percentage will be.
When you measure something, you use some method calibrated to a system of units to arrive at a figure. Any two people measuring the same thing should arrive at the same result. Describe your methods.
It's possible for a hypothetical to be badly designed. Hypotheticals are not unimpeachable. If I had all my players start meeting in a tavern, and said there were no doors out of that tavern and they couldn't do anything that wouldn't really tease out anyone's opinions on anything relevant to the real world, I'd just be an annoying GM.
>It's possible for a hypothetical to be badly designed.
That's only if you are trying to dodge the hypothetical instead of having a genuine conversation. Trolly problems aren't bad tools for figuring out people's stances, the problem is that people try to roleplay them instead of just answering the question.
I literally just gave you a method. Are you that moronic H20 guy from earlier in the thread? You're arguing in very similar bad faith. If you respond in a similar fashion, I'll ignore you like I did above.
You haven't described a method. All you've said is, "if the impact is greater, the measurement will be greater". Yeah, no shit. If it gets hotter, the reading on the thermometer goes up. What is the exact method you use to measure the amount of impact, and in what units do you report your result?
>Percentage
Yup. You're definitely the H20 guy. Okay. I'm ignoring you again. Here's your last (You) for this thread of conversation.
You're not ignoring anything and you're not going anywhere. Your IP is unmasked. Answer me or I'll firebomb your house.
>Trolly problems aren't bad tools for figuring out people's stances
Stances on what though? If you presented someone with a trolley problem because they said they exercise is good for your health their answer about that wouldn't prove or disprove anything they said. Similarly, "Trodan is going to kill you with his sword no matter what you do, you exist in this moment in time with nothing before or after" is not representative of how a TTRPG or how they play
>Stances on what though?
Whatever the question is at its core asking. Trolly problems typically ask "What do you value more" or "What is your moral stance on acting on a situation to cause death vs. allowing death to happen?" It helps yourself determine what kind of person you are.
>Similarly, "Trodan is going to kill you with his sword no matter what you do, you exist in this moment in time with nothing before or after" is not representative of how a TTRPG or how they play
It's not supposed to do that. It's supposed to ask the question "If a character not-reacting to the player's actions outside of maybe having an opinion is a valid reaction, then 998 more scenarios with the same outcome should also be a valid reaction, because he might be realistically reacting the same in all of those outcomes."
>It's not supposed to do that. It's supposed to ask the question "If a character not-reacting to the player's actions outside of maybe having an opinion is a valid reaction, then 998 more scenarios with the same outcome should also be a valid reaction, because he might be realistically reacting the same in all of those outcomes."
But anon, my brother in Christ, no one has actually suggested that a character not reacting to a player's action is a reaction, you know no one has suggested this because it's been explained to you several times, an the very premise behind the question your scenario is meant to ask is flawed.
>It's not supposed to do that
Which is why the hypothetical falls apart. You could have infinite potential inputs of random words in a post that illicit a reaction of "this is gibberish" but that doesn't prove that word choice is meaningless or restrictive to expressing yourself.
Elicit. Not illicit.
He is reacting to you in each situation - if you had not been present, he would not have taken the action. "Most reactive" isn't a phrase that means anything, because there is no objective metric for measuring reactiveness. I'm not convinced that "reactiveness" means anything either.
I mean, if you legit feel that way, then I guess you agree with the other anon that started this chain that video games are not more or less reactive than a tabletop game.
>and it's not relevant to anything anyone else has said ITT.
The entire argument is about reactiveness relative between video games and TTRPGs. My entire point was in reply to an anon talking about narrative style games being more reactive, and I simply stated that it was not necessarily a desirable outcome because banana scenario. It's not my fault that 5 people who don't understand GMing jumped on me by being wrong.
>Now, and why the frick would you even think that?
Because he didn't react. He just did his plan anyways. But you excused that as a reaction because it was "realistic" that he would "react" in a way that ignored the player input. The opposite end of the spectrum of narrative-simulationist gameplay scale.
>How do you figure that?[...]
GMing principals. Barriers=Restricting actions, even if done with a sense of realism. I think this is fine to run in a game, which is where we agree, but narrative games encourage the opposite with things like "Yes, and..." philosophy. Again, it's a sliding scale. There are also things like "No, but..." philosophy, which is sliding away from the narrative end, but still firmly over there, as opposed to the realistic reaction in the banana scenario, which was simply "No." By saying that, you're doing the opposite of narrative and/or reactions.
>The actual argument is that negative reactions are reactins just as much as positive ones.
Then you would concede that the video game idea I had above would be 100% reactive, correct?
>Your video game scenario is where player choices are strictly constrained
That's the entire point of the video game argument. The negative 999 reactions should also be considered viable reactions, correct?
>My entire point was in reply to an anon talking about narrative style games being more reactive, and I simply stated that it was not necessarily a desirable outcome because banana scenario.
But your banana scenario was completely insane, not because of the ridiculousness of anyone acting like that, but because of your baseless claim that the suggested reactions to such behavior somehow don't count as real reactions. That's the issue, anon, and the reason why that scenario failed to make or prov any kind of a point.
>But you excused that as a reaction because it was "realistic" that he would "react" in a way that ignored the player input.
Where did I do that Point me to the post you misunderstood and I'll explain to you what it actually says.
>but narrative games encourage the opposite with things like "Yes, and..." philosophy
What game do you have in mind, specifically? I mean, this discussion isn't really about narrative games but about the focus of a campaign, but if you want to discuss narrative games for some reason, they're still games with mechanics and restrictions.
>s opposed to the realistic reaction in the banana scenario, which was simply "No."
No, and what the frick? I suggested reaction to the banana scenario that's not just nothing happening, which is what just saying "no" would be.
>>The actual argument is that negative reactions are reactins just as much as positive ones.
>Then you would concede that the video game idea I had above would be 100% reactive, correct?
>>Your video game scenario is where player choices are strictly constrained
>That's the entire point of the video game argument. The negative 999 reactions should also be considered viable reactions, correct?
They may be viable reactions, sure. Why do you think an example of a hypothetical video game where player actions are so strictly constrained is relevant to this discussion about TTRPGs, though?
>and the situation wouldn't have changed.
The war council is no longer taking the player seriously and won't trust them, how is the situation not changed?
>dropping water into water is not a chemical reaction because water splashed/moved.
Actually, chemical reactions occur when you add water to water because the molecules will often break into H2 and OH molecules, which then recombine into water.
It's the reason that adding water to acid is dangerous, because those combinations can release enough energy that the acid will splash out.
>pretty bad faith if that was an argument.
You've been arguing in bad faith this entire time
If the player had taken no action, you think the other characters would still think they're moronic? Why?
>you think the other characters would still think they're moronic?
Do you really think someone threatening to murder you and you just standing there while it happened wouldn't have everyone posting "what a moron" in the liveleak comments section?
Indeed, people would react to the action the character took. Glad you agree with me.
>I direct you and
It wasn't ignored, the world reacted to it. you to
. Or restated, "Choosing to ignore it is not reacting to it, it's just ignoring it."
Who's ignoring what? A insane course of action not working as intended is not ignoring anything.
>that's crazy, I ignore it
It wasn't ignored, the world reacted to it.
Nothing amazing has ever come out of a dungeon crawl, and you're not improving skills by playing make believe.
>When you realize that, you realize that you've set a limit on the reactions that are "allowed" or would generate unique or different responses.
Are you the guy who spergs out in GURPS threads because the GM is artificially gimping you by not allowing plasma rifles in a TL3 game
>nothing amazing
My players still talk about my games 10 years later.
>skills that you develop
It’s a game. Not a fricking self-improvement seminar.
>That's not necessarily a good or desirable quality. CAN the community improv react to King Trodan's march on the Roman Empire by pulling out a banana and calling it a Sonic Screwdriver? They sure could, couldn't they?
If the community wants the political intrigue game to have wacky hijinks and goofy shenanigans, then it's a good thing. If not, that's a boundary they have to set at the beginning (which is why narrativist systems still have rules).
>reactiveness of improv was to actuall reduce the reactiveness of improv, instead of, you know, improving.
100-1 is still significantly bigger than 2
No, it is completely relevant. You WILL stop playing incorrectly, or I will kill you.
>specifically because they don't contain that "community improv".
>wow! Garry the Blueberry Tiefling cucked the Troll Queen!
>How scandalous!! NO video game could have THIS level of writing!
>t. autistic nogames
why are you playing an rpg about adventuring when you aren't using it for that purpose?
to have fun with my friends, anon
Why not play a system that is actually tbhgned for your playstyle?
the system is designed for me to have fun with my friends. i'm having fun with my friends. why does that upset you so much?
Because he doesn't need shit non-games like
to roleplay with his friends.
There are more ways to adventure than pure dungeon crawls or hex crawls. Gygax was putting out modules with plots 40 years ago.
Bad community improv is still more flexible and reactive than the best written videogame.
>Bad community improv is still more flexible and reactive than the best written videogame
by definition it isn't
You're being mindlessly contrarian. There are a hard coded list of dialogue options in a videogame, and other than unintended interactions with the game systems, there are a hard coded number of actions you can take.
Yes they are. There are a ton of fun dungeon crawling games on your phone. Hell Minecraft can be observed as one mega classic TTRPG.
>There are a ton of fun dungeon crawling games on your phone
yes, and none of them are as good as a proper ttrpg dungeon crawl
Yes but they scratch the itch enough for most people and are low effort see
Have you played Path of Exile, Minecraft, Terraria or Barony? They really do scratch 90% of the itch for significantly less effort and you can start them up at any time with anyone whenever the mood strikes.
>Path of Exile, Minecraft, Terraria or Barony
lmao
I'm being serious. These games ate your player base up. The same guys who would do dungeon crawl are just playing videogames. There's a finite amount of players out there and most would rather go for quicker dopamine fixes.
>I'm being serious
nah it's alright, ya got me. That was really funny.
You can cope all you want, but TTRPGs aren't going back to a dungeon crawl focus ever again. For the majority of players interested in dungeon crawls, they are just as easily satisfied with the selection of videogames at their disposal AND/OR satisfied with none dungeon crawl focused games that have a much wider pool of players and GMs.
> community improv sessions.
I'm sure that if I tried to record my games people wouldn't find it entertaining, but I'm not running stuff for randoms I'm running it specifically for 6 friends who I know very well. No amount of quality writing for a large-scale product can beat the sheer knowledge and experience I have with my friends about what exactly they like/find entertaining/engaging.
This. It's always weird to see people talk derisively about improv or amateur acting in the context of RPGs. I'm sure a lot of the people who deride that kind of roleplaying do play games, but my first impression when I hear such criticism is always of someone who views RPGs as something to spectate rather than take part in.
Agreed, I think its a lot of people who play through those 'find a group online' services and so end up experiencing ttrpgs solely through a group who does not know each other doing their stand up comedy routine over voice chat.
I just find improv to be boring for the same reason I find nerds trying to talk over movies and imitate MST3K boring.
1. They're usually not good at it. Not so beyond the normal jokes they would tell or make just sitting around goofing off.
2. The jokes/scenarios they usually derive are ones I already thought of 20 seconds ago and discarded for not being fun.
I dunno. Maybe it's just an advanced form of autism for me.
I feel like improv is the wrong term for this sorta thing.
Like, when you hang out with your friends and chat shit and make jokes that hardly can be described as improv - and I'm not sure adding the structure of an RPG would change that.
You are in a literal sense performing improv, but in the contenct of an RPG game with friends I think it doesn't properly apply.
>imsim
Ask me how I know you're trans.
Normies absolutely do want these things, they just want them in video games where these things take 30 minutes instead of months of real time.
>where these things take 30 minutes instead of months of real time.
I already said as much:
>You're right, though, darn kids didn't ruin the hobby. TSR did by pandering exclusively to the kind of people who heard secondhand the crazy or compelling stories of years of table play and wanted to recreate that organic drama on demand. And doing so irrevocably changed the culture around the game.
You mean like B4 The Lost City or I6 Ravenloft? Two classic AD&D adventures and just two of dozens that explicitly don't take place in the strange modern misconceived dungeon that's just endless halls of repeating stone wall textures like some 90s blobber?
I swear, the more newer gamers talk about the reasons they don't like dungeons, the more they reveal how little they've played any of them and how little imagination they have in creating their own.
what is a blobber?
I think Might And Magic, with the swarms of onscreen enemies. And even then MM dungeons could have some good Placefulness about them.
>what is a blobber?
A computer game rpg where your entire party moves as a "blob" around boring mazes and fights an excessive amount of random enemies in battles that have no terrain or tactics besides choosing different spells.
>I swear, the more newer gamers talk about the reasons they don't like dungeons, the more they reveal how little they've played any of them and how little imagination they have in creating their own.
You can't blame them when the supposed torchbearers of the old ways, the "OSR" crowd insists that the real world old school way to play is to simulate a roguelike with pen and paper.
Your game is boring and lame and no one enjoys your company
This is true
There was always a population of theater kids in the 2000s and a little into the 2010s that I and other groups would ghost because they didnt want to dungeon delve or actually adventure and instead wanted to just sit in town all day talking to npcs. They were more interested in being actors on a stage rather than what me and my friends wanted which was dungeon delving, killing shit, and loot.
But this new generation after 2015 or so want to emulate tv shows, movies, and ecelebs rather than what was the original draw of the game. But disengenuous homosexuals on this board will say the original draws are people who should just stick to video games as if these ttrpgs shouldnt even have rules for play in the first place
>There was always a population of theater kids in the 2000s and a little into the 2010
Yeah, and those people had WoD. But now D&D is the one and only game as far as most people in the hobby are concerned.
Exploring a dungeon for the sake of exploring a dungeon is moronic.
Where exactly did I say that?
>And if you're going to do a counterclaim
T1 Village of Hommlet
D1-2 Descent into the Depths of the Earth
D3 Vault of the Drow
I1 Dwellers of the Forbidden City
B6 The Lost City
N1 Against the Cult of the Reptile God
That's definitely more than you'll ever bother to read, but great examples of intrigue and drama in the dungeon setting.
>The dungeon I'm making is more for a 11th+ level in B/X terms
Why are you making an 11th level type dungeon for players in a system that isn't B/X? These games start at 1 for more than just numerical order, its also so you can appropriately learn how to make dungeons of that scale with challenges meant for such powerful characters.
I think y’all’s dungeons just suck. It’s not hard to make interesting dungeons or tie them into narratives, so your inability to do either is more of a reflection on you than those darn kids what be ruining the hobby.
>tie them into narratives
You think they suck because you're coming from an entirely different philosophy of play. Old school dungeons are a staple in a larger milieu of play where the "narrative" is what the players decide to go explore, what they find, who lives, who dies, and how they all develop over years of play (and even more years of in-game time).
You're coming from play where the "narrative" is something prescribed by the DM that the players are there to play out, and where everything is there to be in service of that prewritten story, rather than one procedurally built through actual play.
You're right, though, darn kids didn't ruin the hobby. TSR did by pandering exclusively to the kind of people who heard secondhand the crazy or compelling stories of years of table play and wanted to recreate that organic drama on demand. And doing so irrevocably changed the culture around the game.
lmao milieu. stopped reading there. your opinion is irrelevant and you'll be dead in about a decade.
Big wordy hurt brainy? Click button boop-sound make brain go happy.
I've been in a weekly game for six months and we haven't had a dungeon crawl once, I kind of miss them.
Have you considered running a system that has dungeon procedures?
Video games can handle my dungeon crawling needs but intrigue and drama are more fun in TTRPGs than vidya. I am still currently in an OSE game with a focus on dungeon crawling and wilderness travel, but it's not my preference for tabletop campaigns.
I think the traditional idea of a dungeon is just sort of boring, when its the same stone walls and stuff over and over. But then, if you mix in other aspects alongside narrative meaning it gets interesting. Like say, delving the ruins of an underground city or a villain's sprawling mansion with defined areas and sections.
Because I don't want to face the same combat encounters over and over. If I want grindy treasure hunt I will just play solo or a computer game.
>Because I don't want to face the same combat encounters over and over.
sounds like you have a bad DM
More like a bad design for roleplay. Dungeom Crawling is boring board game setup.
>More like a bad design for roleplay
Again, this is the fault of your DM.
The "management" and "planning" parts of RPGs are usually so reliant on variables that rely on GM input (like travel time, or how much gold you get paid for something, or how many enemies you're fighting) that the planning ends up just as arbitrary and essentially freeform as court intrigue roleplay.
You've just simply never read the DM, outdoor travel, or pretty much any section of a rules-focused book, have you?
In my table us players love dungeons and the DM really doesn't. Like sure, he runs them if we say we're looking for a dungeon, but NPCs will talk shit about how the prince crawls through old graves if we dungeon too hard. Kinda sad. Also there's no dragons.
What do graves have to do with dungeons? Your DM moronic or something?
>Are most modern RPG players not interested in dungeons anymore?
I was never really interested in them in the first place. Though, to clarify, what I mean is I was never really interested in stuff like Tomb of Horrors or Castle Greyhawk or the like, dungeons that seem to exist just to be dungeons into which you can dungeon delve for dungeon treasures and meet dungeon creatures that seem to have somehow ecologically adapted to dungeon environments (like the gelatinous cube - a creature that seems to have a native environment of *graph paper*).
I like forgotten ruins or evil castles or the like, but I don't like them when they seem to exist purely for the sake of adventurers coming across them and dungeon delving into them.
People arguing against Morale rules but then saying their games have a reactive, living world are beyond moronic.
>unlike those dusty old dungeon crawls, my games are so lifelike that living, sentient creatures always fight to the death under all circumstances!
Morale checks are probably the best thing you could cop from those darn grognards and their graph paper.
those dusty old dungeon crawls, my games are so lifelike that living, sentient creatures always fight to the death under all circumstances!
Who are you quoting?
See
and
wanting the npcs in your HIGHLY REACTIVE game of DRAMA and INTRIGUE to behave like mindless robots is bizarre.
none of the posts you quoted said anything about people behaving like mindless robots. are you having a stroke?
Not having morale checks either means NPCs are bots who always fight to the death or the outcome of any violent encounter is up to GM fiat
Every violent encounter starting and ending is up to GM fiat. The entire world is GM fiat.
b8
Then give the enemies a set number of casualties they will suffer before retreating
Or is all GMing fiat now
>Then give the enemies a set number of casualties they will suffer before retreating
That's part of a morale check, yes, but you still need to account for combatants who act irrationally in a fight, as well as ones who are cowards and will run at the first sign of trouble. All this can be solved with a simple dice roll.
I don't need some homosexual table for that, they suffer x number of losses and run
>table
Clearly you don't understand what's being discussed here because you don't need a table for morale checks. Anyway, if you just have the NPCs retreat or surrender after a set number of losses, then every fight with that enemy type will play out the exact same way every time. There will be no brave NPCs, or cowardly NPCs. Everyone will be exactly the same.
This aversion to morale checks is just contrarianism, but thankfully you don't run games.
>then every fight with that enemy type will play out the exact same way every time.
No they won't, I'll change the number for the next fight.
It'll still end in the same result, because according to your rule, they will ALWAYS retreat after a number of losses (it doesn't matter how many). You haven't thought this through, have you?
I will change the rule for some fights so they will fight to the death. Or maybe only isolated enemies will run.
seems like a lot of needless accounting that could be solved with a simple die roll, but I imagine it isn't that much of a problem for you since you don't run games, so more power to you.
>he thinks writing a sentence down on a slip of paper is a Herculean task
I'll also make noise with my dice to make my clueless players think the decisions are random
>my clueless players
what players?
you don't run games, and this slip of paper doesn't exist.
You're simply mad somebody said something good about old game design.
It has admittedly been a while but I definitely make up most of my shit on the fly, I don't need no homosexual rolls because the players won't know the difference. Prove me wrong.
I also decide whether my players land their attacks or not, though I let them roll for it to make them think they have some control over the result. Not a single non-player character in my games has an Armor Class or defense score of any kind. The hit lands or misses when I want it to.
I also don't roll when an NPC attacks a player character. I just decide whether the attack lands or not, whichever makes the most sense.
The players don't no the difference.
Valid approach but I do let rolled combat results stand
Whether they'd notice the GM bullshitting those depends heavily on the system
>Not a single non-player character in my games has an Armor Class or defense score of any kind. The hit lands or misses when I want it to.
>I also don't roll when an NPC attacks a player character. I just decide whether the attack lands or not, whichever makes the most sense.
>The players don't no the difference.
>player rolls a total 18 one turn and hits
>rolls a 21 next turn and doesn't
>'Uh DM, what the frick?'
Describe your response.
Who's arguing against morale rules?
Not having morale checks doesn't mean creatures always fight to the death, I have them attempt to flee or surrender when it would make sense for them to realize they have virtually no chance to win.
>I have them attempt to flee or surrender when it would make sense for them to realize they have virtually no chance to win.
so you make the outcome of fights depend entirely on GM fiat. Remember, people in a fight don't always back down when they probably should. You need some sentient living creatures who will fight to the death out of honor/rage/despair alongside cowards who retreat at the first sign of trouble and reasonable fighters who retreat when shit hits the fan.
A dice roll will handle this better than you ever will, and reduce the railroading which always occurs when a DM plans out the results of player action beforehand.
>A dice roll will handle this better than you ever will
The target of the die roll was already GM fiat
>The target of the die roll was already GM fiat
The target number is in the monster/npc statblock, so no, it isn't up to the GM unless he houserules it
In a white room scenario yes, but in a real game you will have factors like if the enemies are in the presence of a leader, or defending their home turf, or defending their families, or if the players have spent the previous session sowing rumors of vampire attacks to make the enemies fearful, or if the enemies are drunk, or if the players spent time researching the invaders religion and dressed up as something mythological, or on and on. There is eventually GM fiat, especially if you aren't following a module and create your own stat blocks, which you should eventually be doing.
>There is eventually GM fiat
The rules will typically account for that by saying "You can add +1-2 or -1-2 on the modifiers depending on these example situations. You should never apply more than that though." That's not really GM Fiat in my opinion. Just rules adjudication.
>There is eventually GM fiat so stats and rules don't matter
I agree, and we should get rid of attack rolls too, as the same kind of GM fiat effects those as well
Yes you should. Rolling dice is unnecessary for GMs and always has been. 99% of mechanics in a TTRPG are absolutely worthless for the GM, they are rules for how the PLAYERS interact with the game not the GM. The only games with interesting GM mechanics have them doing shit BETWEEN sessions.
Rolling dice is necessary for GMs and always will be.
Rolling a dice is NEVER necessary for a GM. Every single roll can be handed off to players. Roll to dodge, roll to sus out intentions, etc. There is NEVER a need for a GM to roll. Give me a single roll the GM needs to make and I'll turn it into an equivalent player roll instantly. Contests don't add anything to the game that setting a DC doesn't already accomplish.
Player 9d6 versus monster 8d6. Each even result is a success, and each 6 is two successes. Convert the monster's roll into a DC with the same probability of each level of narrative control, referring to the table provided.
You just get the probability curve of the players roll and the probability curve of the monsters roll and add the results of each point together. It's just dumb busy work you're trying to trick people into doing, not an impossible task.
So what's the DC?
Okay set a number of successes needed for the player if they get X over or X under determines their level of success/failure. Alternatively, use a better system that allows you to ALSO effect the probability of success for each dice (like the dice pooled storyteller system) giving you even greater granularity over things.
You realize probability and statistics is a solved mathematical field correct? You also realize that most distributions can be transformed to other distributions fairly trivially correct?
Convoluted dice setups occur from idiots in the TTRPG space not understanding basic statistics or math. It's why most videogame follow percentiles as well since they actually have people with some math background working them.
Bullshit is not an answer, no matter how high you stack it. What's the DC?
What's the DC?
Do your own homework
Nah. You said that you can convert every roll into a DC, so do it or admit that you lied.
What's the DC?
What's the DC?
What's the DC?
>so you make the outcome of fights depend entirely on GM fiat
Uhh if I determine outside the game rules that these bandits losing 30% of fighting strength means the rest flee, is it fiat
I don't want to play video games (I think they're unhealthy and antisocial, as well as inferior forms of mental stimulation) so I can only get my loot and scoot fix playing TTRPGs.
Videogames can be great and I've consumed enough books, movies and graphic novels / comics to have a hard time calling any of them the "intellectual" one or better than others. There's obviously an average above or below for each, and vidya is closer to the bottom of the barrel. But the interactivity of the medium is unique to deliver and convey themes both for the narrative, themes and mechanics of the game.
I'd recommend to check some videogames out, but it is indeed hard to find the things that jam with you below the colossal sea of shit of gacha, predatory games and AAA safe and boring practises.
Start with those that are already half board games that don't threat the player like a moron. Cultist simulator or Underrail are games I loved despite disliking a lot of what modern vidya is like.
"Why do people prefer having interesting experiences to spreadsheet simulators?"
What counts as "spreadsheet" tends to be very subjective and what makes the experience interesting.
Weight is the ultimate example. Most people would agree that keeping track of item weight is annoying for TTRPG due how much it's constantly going up and down. It's literal spreadsheet simulator. Yet, without it, you would never run into situations like having your pockets full of loot but being unable to cross a chasm with it, or a party members gets knocked out and someone has to carry the on the shoulder, but not with that many weight, etc.
What are you talking about? OSR games are popular for a reason.
Personally though, dungeons just don't fit very many flavors of games unless THEY'RE very intentionally built around the world. Most people developing concepts of a game world exclude Dungeons until the end when in reality they need to be the forefront of designing a world (if you want to include them).
This is something videogames actually get right, dark souls, legend of zelda, minecraft, etc. All have very well designed worlds that are built around the dungeons. Another good case of world design around dungeons is in fantasy manga. Made in Abyss, Dungeon Menshi, and Magi the Magical Labyrinth all have worlds very well designed around the dungeon and players in settings like that would naturally be drawn and excited to explore those dungeons.
It really is all a framing problem. Modern TTRPG fantasy settings are literal hot dogshit that don't plan around their core story or gameplay loop, so players and GMs aren't drawn to dungeons.
boardgames took over the dungeon crawl market, so much the now the dungeon crawls are turning into booklets filled with preconstructed scenarios with accompaning map tile layouts ment to be played procedurally, (now with an app!) that turns into a campaign story.
boardgames are turning into roleplaying one shot dungeon crawls.
while trad rpgs continue wallow in their mental masturbation.
Recently I finished a 3 seasion campaign. GM said that he was getting the hang of it and found a "very easy way" to make dungeons.
He had used a map generator to make the dungeon (a gnoll cave), it was all a set of interconected mostly empty rooms, with no sense or reason beyond the gnolls barracks.
There was also like 1 encounter every 5 rooms at best.
Dungeon design is my favourite part of GMing. Is when I get to make a big, controlled space full of life:roaming bands and bosses, secret passages, other adventuring parties, magic items and cool fights with enviromental hazards and lair actions.
They're where TTRPG shine the most, where you can easily condense a bit of everything into a space that can keep an interesting pacing from start to finish.
But no, make another 20 square rooms joined together by a corridor. The pinacle of board games.
Dungeons are hard to make.
You have to decide, would there be a certain verisimilitude or if it would be a festival. In the first case it's hard as frick to keep both logic and interesting looping. In the second case your festivities must be interesting to players, they should encounter something new and fresh more often. Either way, creating a good dungeon is hard. You could use AD&D 1e DMG or ready made dungeons or online generators. It's fine but in reality most GMs want to be able to create stuff themselves, without relying on others. I could outline a story, a school kid can do this. But there is no easy guide for dungeons. And it's a ton of prep woek.
Next we have a we're not playing a fricking old school D&D problem. See, people playing a game that doesn't run dungeon crawling that good is a very common thing. Some don't like old school D&D, mechanically it's on a bland side. Definitely not as bland as the rules lite pile of trash, but can be insufficient for some people. Some people don't like class and level systems all together. And what's more of a common case, some people are in the middle of their long campaign and do not feel like it's a good idea to change systems rn.
Finally, we have a milieu problem. The problem of every fricking moron in OSR community using that world just to be a TTRPG hipster. Ehm, not that, I meant that people play whatever they were inspired by. Anons above explained it better, but the fact is that going to loot a dangerous place to become rich is not inspiring for most players. But I presume that wasn't as inspiring for older players either, that just was a great starting point for your adventure. Modern players are coming from the world full of saving the world and making a difference with everybody clapping stories. Or anime shounen, isekai and harem stories.
TL;DR here is no stimulus to run dungeon crawls, the process of creating a dungeon is hard and slow and there is a great chance of people using wrong kind of system.
>I could outline a story, a school kid can do this. But there is no easy guide for dungeons
You've got it exactly backwards. There are entire books about dungeon creation, and dozens of pages devoted to it at the inception of the hobby in every early edition. Basic D&D especially gave an incredibly straightforward procedure for creating a dungeon from conception to stocking and running, that is still the standard for creating them years later. A school kid not only could do it, he did do it, thousands of them, it was the most popular edition of the game until 5E. The issue is modern people have the misconception that there's anything hard or mysterious about it anymore, when the reality is they're ignorant and lazy and disinterested in trying it.
Meanwhile many TTRPG people seem to style themselves as natural storytellers or writers, when in reality they have an extremely limited grasp of the fundamentals of storytelling and the basic tenets of plotting. And their touchpoints for how stories ought to be constructed aren't literature or the thousands of books and dissertations on how stories propagate or persist, what common motifs are shared across every human culture, it's movies and TV shows they like and (more often than not) lazily emulate.
And the irony of all this is that story heavy tabletop gaming tends in reality to be more difficult and cumbersome than a dungeon crawl, because there are many more factors you're assumed to be keeping track of, coordinating the stories of 4-6 people's unique characters, their backstories, and whatever larger amateur creative writing course tier "main story" you've concocted.
Meanwhile a dungeon essentially runs itself once you've made it, the procedure is there in front of you for most everything that can come up.
If I would've never struggled with creating a dungeon properly, I'd agree with you. But I've spent too much time already on creating and stocking a dungeon for my current game and there is so much to do yet. I admit, I use a dungeon with a system that runs old school D&D dungeon crawls badly and creating monsters is a pain in the ass, but that's what I've wanted for the second half of my campaign and I'm willing to see it through. I have factions, I have at least an idea on usual denizens, I have a partial map and the some key rooms I want to have there. I do not have interesting tricks and puzzles, only a bare idea here and there. I definitely know how much treasure would be there, though not decided on gold, gems and magic items ratio.
Making it is a slog. I could've ran a linear adventure for my players and had a good chance on making it interesting for them, because I know their tastes and know the system. Making an interesting dungeon though? I don't know yet. I know that a) it's too much work, and b) some players don't like old school resource and danger management.
This isn't to make fun of you, but I definitely feel like it's you and your mindset. I can make and stock a dungeon floor in a night with the old B/X procedure. And even that, done correctly, is probably more than I need for one session's play. That's a big part of old school dungeon design: it is not oriented around a complete design from the start. It works best and flows easiest if you spend energy only on what people could see by next session, everything else isn't worth fleshing out.
And that's if you're going with a big, multilevel dungeon. Check out T1 Village of Hommlet when you get a second, look over the maps of the Moathouse.
It's two floors, one surface level, one subterranean, and a collective like 35 rooms total. It's got multiple layers of inhabitants, a lot of which the party can bargain with. And it's got good spots for embellishment if you don't think that's enough. That shit alone is multiple ventures to and back from time to explore all it has to offer.
With a system like B/X, too, stocking is a breeze. You can literally leave the contents of the rooms up to procedure entirely and then make sense of it as you please. Otherwise you can choose dungeon level appropriate monsters by hand.
I would genuinely crack open B/X or OSE or whatever the new clone is and give it a try sometime just following the standard procedure. It's easy enough for a child (by design). Whatever you're doing sounds like more effort than a dungeon is worth.
Forgot to post the map
But osrg told me that real old school dungeons should be 20-30 rooms per level and there should be at least 3 levels in my starting dungeon.
That dungeon looks very small, wouldn't that be called a "lair" instead?
>osrg
There's your problem there. The Moathouse is THE AD&D dungeon. Not a labyrinth like anything you'll see in GDQ for higher level folks, a dungeon typical of what a first level party ought to face.
Similarly the AD&D DMG sample dungeon is only 38ish rooms. This "it's gotta be 30 rooms per floor, and 3 floors deep to start" is pure hipster revisionism.
I've read some of Gygax' adventures. T1 has an advantage of having a vidya, though with D&D 3e rules. While we're here, highly recommend with mods, they integrated more feats and item creation feats could change a game completely.
The dungeon in your pic is much smaller and for a starting group. The dungeon I'm making is more for a 11th+ level in B/X terms, 1 floor, 40 or so rooms, takes place in planes. I have some monsters from the book for it, but there are some I need to make from scratch or find the right one to "reskin". Of course, I cannot use B/X bestiary, since the whole point of adding a plane is to have a highly unusual place. I cannot limit myself just to 10 rooms, since it's not basic levels anymore, there is a chance that they find a way to breeze through fast and not have to decide whether to pull through or escape earlier.
Maybe I'm the only one that struggles with creating a dungeon and the old school bunch found some kind of magical "complete a mostly custom dungeon in an evening"-type of tit in their infancy.
Dungeon crawling died because no one has time for that shit anymore. Have you read the old dungeon modules? Or any of the modules from early TTRPGs? They're filled with so much mundane and useless bullshit that could only come out of the brains of bored youth stuck in the miserable Midwest with nothing to do for hours on end.
That is why dungeon crawls died. That is why dungeons became linear. We don't live in shitty flyover states with nothing to do for 16 hours on a weekend while our parents are drinking themselves into stupors. You want to know what really killed the dungeon? Computers.
I do wonder to what extent the change in typical session length warped campaigns/modules.
I hear that people would play 8+ hour sessions and can hardly imagine it. I got three hours a session in me before I need to go to sleep because I have work in the morning.
It 100% was affected by game time and not being stuck doing nothing. There's a reason VtM changed the game in the 90s. It's not due to storygays like /tg/ will have you believe, it was because college students at large universities did not have the TIME for these dungeon crawling stories and wanted something else that they could relate to. That is why theater of the mind took off, that's why story games took off.
It was kids who played D&D as teens, but didn't have time for it in college but still wanted to scratch the itch. These dungeon crawls and traditional play mechanisms just took TOO long so you started getting people trying to figure out how to boil things down.
It's also why the modern GM advice is around only planning out a session at a time and ignoring these big time sinks of design like dungeons.
Nah, it was the influx of women who were interested in storylines, you astroturfing queer.
Literally it wasn't. Games have shrunken from 8 hour sessions to 3 hour games. That affects the Games more than anything. Story games can accommodate that. Dungeon crawling can't.
0D&D was largely played on college campuses, you revisionist homosexual.
In the fricking 70s. When the nerds literally had nothing to do. I don't think you quite understand how different the 90s and 70s were for college campuses.
The world changed dude. Time changed.
>I don't think you quite understand how different the 90s and 70s
Nta, but your cluelessness is truly ironic
No games
The only games are story games, so if you're not playing them, you're nogames
>You can't have a dungeon crawler over in 3 hours
What can I say... play stupid games, win stupid prizes
>B-but muh verisimilitude
Verisimilitude to what? Spending more than 5 seconds on your action due to shit-tier mechanics?
Yeah you can't play a dungeon crawler over 3 hours. At least not one that is interesting and memorable. Especially when you meet up for games once a week and often have to cancel due to schedule conflicts. Dungeon crawling is shit at being flexible to how people actually play these games and how they are prioritized. It's why no one plays them.
It has nothing to do with players NOT being interested. I can get my players interested in a dungeon crawler game and they can have fun with it, but the SECOND we have an interrupted session or break away the game falls apart. They also forget most of the sessions because 3 hours does not get you super far in any dungeon.
>if my character jumps off a cliff they die so D&D doesn't have any more freedom than a videogame where you have 2 choices of dialogue to pick 2 predefined endings
Honestly, it's just funnier to me to have the characters doing other things.
As a GM I have my players fight in wars when armies are clashing, track down enemies across the wilderness, visit a noble party, fight against commies in a house burning down, try to catch a group of mimics that is running away on a city build on the back of a massive turtle, face down against a two headed dragon on an abandoned colosseun and etc. The response from my players have always been stellar.
As a player, everytime the GM pulled a dungeon crawn it became a bit of a slog. Not saying it can't be fun, but it feels a bit like padding, and doesn't help that my group is always stopping to recover their attributes or are too damn affraid to take initiative on them.
This is just making me realize that I should go back GMing, because I need to free my group of playing dungeon crawls over and over.
Videogames feature dungeons a lot, so you don't really need to scratch that itch with pen and paper. Also, in my opinion,the appeal of pen and paper is that you can do whatever you can think off on dungeons are usually pretty restrictive.
>Blatant and obvious bait
>Nearly 150 replies in less than 200 minutes
That's just /tg/ being /tg/, nothing to lose your hope over, or if it is, you should've lost that hope years ago.
Yeah, the fact that in TTRPGs you can insert new things into the scenario instead of sticking to the script and expect the world to keep up is, in fact, a big and central part of this argument.
Look at the poster count. It's mostly just one OSR autist seething about a narrative approach to games.
>muh OSR
no one brought up OSR except you, Black person
Ive seen literally every thread on this board be called a bait thread. How come you queers never make good threads then?
>claim that videogames are better at simulating dungeon crawls, and TTRPGs are better at simulating drama and intrigue
>oh yeah, well what if I lock my players into the kind of life or death combat struggle you said was better for videogames? is it better at intrigue in this scenario with no intrigue???
>>oh yeah, well what if I lock my players into the kind of life or death combat struggle you said was better for videogames?
you are playing a life or death combat struggle game in the first place. Again, why not play something narrativist?
>TTRPGs are better at simulating drama and intrigue
>Drama and intrigue
>"Uh, my purple hair tiefling who is also neurotypical and Bi-Questioning wants to go into this shop now."
>"Sure, you enter into the shop run by a dragonborn and githyanki gay couple. All of a sudden white-cis heteronormative men walk in."
>"Ugh, I like, kill them?"
>"The perfect response to THEM. You are awarded 1 level. The gay couple clap for you."
You can really tell when someone is here from Ganker and has never played any tabletop.
yep. virtually all of the people peddling this "RPGs were entirely simulationists before le trannies came along" shite have never played a game in their lives, save for video games.
Well? Is it or not?
this thread is an excellent example of why it's a good thing dungeron crawling died. Dungeoncrawl homosexuals are gigantic spastics who you shouldn't let into your games.
The people who just want to kill monsters for new and better pants can just play diablo or skyrim or any other number of mindless "kill everything in the dungeon and move onto the next dungeon" games. So the dnd version has lost any point it may have at some point had.
The trolley problem tells you nothing about morality.
It tells you about THAT person's morality if they answer authentically.
>No one has actually suggested that a character not reacting to a player's action is a reaction
>There was an action and reaction, how is that not reactive?
Gaslighting isn't really a good technique in a thread where you can scroll up.
>Which is why the hypothetical falls apart.
If it fell apart, people could just answer it trivially and prove the point. Instead, no one has been able to answer it because they know an answer would look bad on their part. Unfortunately, the only way people can attach the hypothetical is either by gaslighting it or inserting new arguments into it. So I can't say that it failed as a hypothetical. It just pointed out a lot of people who aren't authentic or genuine about their points.
>Then you're not having the same discussion as anyone else in this thread.
The entire discussion is my discussion. I started it when I said that narrative and reactive qualities are not necessarily desirable in a TTRPG and gave an intentionally ludicrous example to demonstrate this. If you're having your own discussion, that is entirely on you, not me.
The rest is ad-hominem and only proving my point you got debate brained in this.
>>No one has actually suggested that a character not reacting to a player's action is a reaction
>
>allies lose faith in him
There was an action and reaction, how is that not reactive?
was an action and reaction, how is that not reactive?
>Gaslighting isn't really a good technique in a thread where you can scroll up.
There's a consequence that wouldn't have happened if the character hadn't taken that particular action right there in the form of his allies losing faith in him. Did you intend to point me to some other post, as that one doesn't seem to support your claim?
My argument, and the discussion we're having at this point, is whether or not that is a reaction or is not a reaction. Thank you for joining us in the modern era.
Okay, so why did you talk about
a character not-reacting to the player's actions
there and then used a case of characters very clearly reacting to player's actions as an example of such a non-reaction? Please try to make some kind of a reasonable, sensible argument for reactions not actually being reactions.
>a character not-reacting to the player's actions
>here and then used a case of characters very clearly reacting to player's actions as an example of such a non-reaction?
>Please try to make some kind of a reasonable, sensible argument for reactions not actually being reactions.
I'm trying, but you keep dodging. Answer the video game question. Do you believe that a video game with 1,000 unique choices to a situation, where 999 result in the same outcome, indicates reactions because the character is reacting to what you did? Yes or no?
Sure, assuming that it makes sense for all those 999 choices to lead to king Pointless Hypothetical getting violent. If there's no logical causal link between action and reaction, then it's not the game world reacting to player's actions, it's exceptionally clumsy railroading. However, your scenario it also indicates an extremely constrained set of choices. While the choices may be numerous, if 999 of them are specifically designed to be ones that'd piss the king off, then the vast majority of the actions a player could take in a similar scenario in a TTRPG are unavailable. This is important, because comparison of video games and TTRPGs was the original point. When anon said that TTRPGs are more flexible and reactive than vidya, he obviously - and I know you know this, because it's too obvious for anyone capable of putting together a coherent sentence to misunderstand - meant the fact that in tabletop players can act with a greater degree of freedom and the world can react to even their most unexpected actions in ways that aren't possible in vidya. Your scenario does absolutely nothing to disprove this position, and it's too far removed from reality to even be genuinely relevant.
Oh, and I'll add this: the pointlessness of that hypothetical, which I have now answered against my better judgement, is the reason no one has bothered seriously engaging with it before now. It's not a difficult hypothetical to answer, it's just that neither the hypothetical nor the answer actually matter much.
>Sure, assuming that it makes sense for all those 999 choices to lead to king Pointless Hypothetical getting violent.
Then as long as the "outcome" makes realistic sense, you believe that any and all "reactions" are uniquely different? Then that would mean you don't really believe that video games are more reactive than TTRPGs.
>Why?
Simple. All you're arguing for in this paragraph and the follow up is that you made more choices earlier on. Nothing about that is inherently TTRPG-centric. You're not really "reacting" moreso than a video game designer might.
>in tabletop players can act with a greater degree of freedom
You've literally just restricted 999 into "non-reaction" status and called it a reaction. You and I probably won't see eye-to-eye on this, but this is what you've defacto done.
>Are you the guy who spergs out in GURPS threads because the GM is artificially gimping you by not allowing plasma rifles in a TL3 game
No, I'd call that based if it wasn't for the fact that you play GURPs.
>Then as long as the "outcome" makes realistic sense, you believe that any and all "reactions" are uniquely different? Then that would mean you don't really believe that video games are more reactive than TTRPGs.
No, and once again, what the frick? Just how did you jump from me saying that that the king getting pissed off for 999 different reasons counts as him reacting to player actions to all those 999 instances of him getting pissed off being uniquely different? Look, anon, no matter what feats of mental gymnastics you perform, this fact remains: in TTRPGs players have more freedom to act and the world has a greater capacity to react to those actions than in vidya. This is the heart of the matter, and both banana shenanigans and 999 different ways to antagonize a king remain completely irrelevant to that point.
>Just how did you jump from me saying that that the king getting pissed off for 999 different reasons counts as him reacting to player actions to all those 999 instances of him getting pissed off being uniquely different?
Because that's how normal people would react to that, anon. If you have 999 choices and all of them result in the same reaction/action/outcome, you effectively had 2 choices. Fight or die. That's where the entire analogy, disagreement, and discussion come from. You simply did not make a choice. "Water splashed, but you did not get a reaction."
If you think that's wrong, answer this: when you play a JRPG like I described in this post:
>Example: If I play an anime game, and it gives me two options, one where I answer seriously, and one where I answer in a goofy tone (like hurr I wanna sniff my animu waifu's panties), but then the game just gives me a line of dialog reacting to that then continues with the story as normally, then I don't really consider that a reaction. If anything, it was a writing tool the game used to move the conversation forward and would have been better served to simply have the main character speak instead of giving me a choice.
Am I wrong about this? Is this actually a reaction? Does that mean that JRPGs make more choices than your typical TTRPG?
>Because that's how normal people would react to that, anon. If you have 999 choices and all of them result in the same reaction/action/outcome, you effectively had 2 choices. Fight or die. That's where the entire analogy, disagreement, and discussion come from. You simply did not make a choice. "Water splashed, but you did not get a reaction."
What are you even trying to argue, at this point? There are multiple ways to piss someone off. Someone getting pissed off by all of those things is, indeed, a reaction. It's not a unique reaction to all of those things, it's the same reaction. Those reactions aren't uniquely different, but they are reactions. Only letting a player choose actions that piss someone off is shitty game design that doesn't leave room for player agency, but that someone getting pissed off is still a reaction. Calling the scenario as a whole reactive would be inaccurate for the simple reason that it doesn't even allow you to take choices that would or could elicit different reactions, however. Is there something about this you find confusing? Do you imagine you've made some kind of a point here?
>Do you imagine you've made some kind of a point here?
The only point of this is that people used the wrong words that did not signal tribal affiliation, so he's made it his mission to antagonize them even though he agrees with them on everything
>I constructed a scenario where you get two choices and two choices only
>this proves RPGs have no choices
Okay?
>Choice has no result
>B-but you still CHOSE it!
Okay??
>any and all "reactions" are uniquely different?
In a TTRPG, that is very likely. The king killing you while saying you're moronic and the king killing you while saying you're based are distinctly different outcomes. "Uniquely different" is a very easy bar to clear.
>"Uniquely different" is a very easy bar to clear.
Only if you're looking to piss off your players/audience. You're clearly splitting hairs at that point and people will simply pick up on it. "Nuh uh, THIS enemy is different! It's red instead of blue" doesn't fly with most people. Why would this?
>What are you even trying to argue, at this point?
A "reaction" in which the character has ignored your characters actions and continued what they are doing is not a real reaction, and therefore can't be used as evidence that the game is more reactive.
>Only letting a player choose actions that piss someone off is shitty game design that doesn't leave room for player agency
You're arguing for the same thing. A player could "choose" to fly, but without any spells or abilities to do so, there is no reaction to their choice. Therefore they don't actually have that choice. That's kind of a cornerstone of what people refer to with reactions.
Why are you so angry?
>The only point of this is that people used the wrong words
No, it's more akin to they don't realize the extent of the words they're using. See what I said above. A "non-choice" is not a real choice, and the game not reacting to your choice is not a reaction either. Choices must have a reaction to be a real choice, and therefore any choice that has the same outcome as a previous choice is not a choice. This isn't hard.
>and therefore can't be used as evidence that the game is more reactive
Several very different choices with very different outcomes have been put forward, but you're very focused on how pulling out a banana and quoting 999 different movies isn't helpful, so there can't really be much choice in RPGs.
That's because you keep having to redefine the discussion away from what I'm saying. I said that "a game being reactive is not necessarily a desirable thing: Banana scenario". The response to that was to ignore it. I said that's a non-reaction. The debate became about whether or not that is true (it is).
You know this and you understand this. This is why you spent so long trying to argue away from the hypothetical I made, because you were trying to substantiate that you COULD make choices in the game in other places, but that's irrelevant if those choices at those points wind up in similar non-reactions. Something to which you would outcry as "railroading" even if those reactions were all in-character and in tone to your actions. You're trying to dismantle the hypothetical, but you can literally just apply that hypothetical to any point of choice making and get the same results. You didn't make a reactive game at that point, did you?
It literally is a reaction. It's not one you like, but it's a reaction. Your hypothetical and attempts are definition are so absurd you're arguing real life has no reactivity either because you can imagine 1-2 useful outcomes in most situations, and 999 slightly different ways of being anti-social and suffering a similar reaction or penalty.
>Choice one: Banana scenario
>Choice two: Do nothing
>Both result in you being stabbed
>You: "These are two different reactions. :)"
Spoiler: They're not.
>Why wouldn't players assassinating king Trodan or figuring out that his wife is a secret Romaboo and using that to persuade her to persuade her husband to not march on Rome not have results?
Because you're not actually reacting and not responding to the question anymore. You're arguing away from the hypothetical by inserting more choices, then inserting the things you're ACTUALLY after into this (the inserting results that come from a game world's reaction to the player's choices). The problem with doing that, as I just said, is you can just simply apply the principals at any level of the equation.
Example:
>Players choose Assassinate Trodan
>Go through the palace dungeon
>Get up to Trodan
>They now have a choice to fight or do 999 things
vs.
>Players choose to fight war
>Go through war scenario
>No get up to the palace dungeon
>Get up to Trodan
>They now have a choice to fight or do 999 things.
SHOULD things be run this way? Obviously not. But there is no inherent property of TTRPGs that make them more or less reactive to the player other than that they are just simply built mid-process. DMs can still be shit eaters that take away your choices or employ quantum ogres thus making the choices meaningless. Likewise, a lack of reaction to you means that it was a non-choice.
>But there is no inherent property of TTRPGs that make them more or less reactive to the player other than that they are just simply built mid-process
That is literally what I said 200 posts ago you stupid homosexual
>There are a hard coded list of dialogue options in a videogame, and other than unintended interactions with the game systems, there are a hard coded number of actions you can take.
>That is literally what I said 200 posts ago you stupid homosexual
Were you simply not one of the anons that I said multiple times to that "we agree on multiple parts of the issue but you're getting hung up on semantics"?
because you are.
>but it is what allows it the POSSIBILITY to be more reactive than a video game.
Yeah. I completely agree with this post.
>
>
But it literally wasn't, and even if it was it wouldn't tell you anything about the results any number of other actions could've had in that situation. (You)
one: Banana scenario
two: Do nothing
>>Both result in you being stabbed
>>You: "These are two different reactions. :)"
>Spoiler: They're not.
Wow, now you're getting stabbed either way? This is new information! It unironically is new information because it wasn't present in the original scenario. What was actually suggested as a reaction to the banana rambler was that his allies would lose faith in him due to such bizarre behavior, which obviously is a reaction. More importantly, though, in a tabletop context there are countless other options besides waving around a banana or doing nothing, and the world is capable of reacting to all those options. That is the point.
>Because you're not actually reacting and not responding to the question anymore. You're arguing away from the hypothetical by inserting more choices, then inserting the things you're ACTUALLY after into this (the inserting results that come from a game world's reaction to the player's choices). The problem with doing that, as I just said, is you can just simply apply the principals at any level of the equation.
See above - the existence of all those choices is a part of the point, and a major part of the reason TTRPGs are more flexible and reactive than video games. A scenario where these options aren't preset is too far removed from the reality of tabletop to be relevant.
As for your "example", players could pretend to ally with Trodan and slit his throat while he sleeps, or poison his drink, or pretend to join him with such a plan but realize that he's not such a bad guy after all and start working for him for real, or pretend to work with both sides of the war with the intention of profiting as much as possible and being in the good graces of whichever side wins, and all these choices would have different consequences. Vidya can have a lot of different choices, as well, but it can never be as flexible and open-ended as RPGs.
>What was actually suggested as a reaction to the banana rambler was that his allies would lose faith in him due to such bizarre behavior, which obviously is a reaction.
Same outcome as do nothing.
>More importantly, though, in a tabletop context there are countless other options besides waving around a banana or doing nothing, and the world is capable of reacting to all those options. That is the point.
Video game analogy comes back to this. The game reacted by having the guy stab him. It therefore "is a reaction" even though any sensible player/audience would call bullshit on that.
>the existence of all those choices is a part of the point
The problem is, like I said, you can just apply this analogy at any choice. If you react to all 999 choices of what to do about Trodan in the same manner you would in his courtroom where he stabs you, then nothing has changed. Your counter example only works when not only do you insert new choices, but you insert NEW REACTIONS counter-intuitive to the analogy. That's why you can't beat it.
>Being built mid-process is an inherent property of RPGs
It's a property of humans playing analog games where they are their own arbiters. But I otherwise agree.
>Is that supposed to change TTRPG's capacity for flexibility far surpassing that of vidya?
Literally yes. Video games are just TTRPG scenarios. The scope of breadth is limited purely to the scenario designer.
>That sounds like your entire point
I've stated what my point is several times. Not my fault you choose to ignore it.
Terrible false equivalency.
All games are designed to increase skills. That's why humans play them and have value in them. Play-fighting, games of intrigue, etc. It's a safe way to develop your tribe.
>analog games where they are their own arbiters
That's what TTRPGs are, so it's an inherent property of TTRPGs
All squares are rectangles, etc. I basically agree. I was just clarifying with that point.
Comment was getting too long so I'll continue it here for a bit.
>But there is no inherent property of TTRPGs that make them more or less reactive to the player other than that they are just simply built mid-process.
Being built mid-process is an inherent property of RPGs, and it's exactly the thing that allows them to be more flexivle and reactive than video games.
>DMs can still be shit eaters that take away your choices or employ quantum ogres thus making the choices meaningless.
Yes, any tools can be used poorly. Is that supposed to change TTRPG's capacity for flexibility far surpassing that of vidya?
>Yeah. I completely agree with this post.
That sounds like your entire point has just been that some GMs are bad, then. If that's the case, why not just say it out loud instead of going on about bananas and video games with 999 ways to piss off a king?
>The response to that was to ignore it
But it literally wasn't, and even if it was it wouldn't tell you anything about the results any number of other actions could've had in that situation.
>A "reaction" in which the character has ignored your characters actions and continued what they are doing is not a real reaction, and therefore can't be used as evidence that the game is more reactive.
If you're still going on about the banana example, people did, in fact, suggest reactions for it. Of course, even if a specific action doesn't change someone else's actions, all that implies is that the specific action in question was ineffectual and unimpactful. Literally none of what you say is an argument against RPGs being more reactive, as in better able to react to player actions, than video games. Like, okay, a man ranting with a banana in hand may not have much of an impact on king Trodan's march on Rome. Players trying to assassinate Trodan or joining forces with him or offering their assistance to the Roman Empire or finding out Trodan's wife's feelings on the matter and using them to influence her to influence Trodan or profiting on the whole matter by selling weapons to both Trodan and the Romans or going to king Siegfried with a plan to let Trodan and the Romans to weaken each other and then striking against them both or any number of other plans the players might come up with, however, would have a whole lot more impact. In a video game there just wouldn't be such a vast array of options in the first place.
This:
also applies to you as well.
If your choices have no results, you did not make choice. Therefore the game is not reactive. Simple as.
Okay? Why wouldn't players assassinating king Trodan or figuring out that his wife is a secret Romaboo and using that to persuade her to persuade her husband to not march on Rome not have results?
>Why wouldn't players assassinating king Trodan or figuring out that his wife is a secret Romaboo and using that to persuade her to persuade her husband to not march on Rome not have results?
Because that ruins his poorly constructed hypothetical
And what that anon is saying is that TTRPGs have more choices, and can give them a bigger variety of results, than video games
>come back
>you're continuing the argument with other people
>you're still leaving out the world flexible while pretending to be precise with words
>you're still doing a false dilemma where there is 1 right choice and 999 identical wrong choices
Don't you have anything better to do than pretend you've never played videogames or never played RPGs? All you have is hypotheticals because if you named a single videogame people could easily propose actions and reactions that are impossible in the game but something that would be possible in TTRPG
No it doesn't.
Your average boomer shooter has more interesting "dungeon" exploration than anything that was ever played with a pen and paper.
Why would people go back?
extremely dull exploration*
Less dull than spending 3 hours in a nondescript maze of identical rooms tapping the floor with a 10 foot pole.
more dull*
This thread proves that old /tg/ isn't all dead, it cracks me up.
How can you even conclude that there are two types of games: extreme simulationism and total nonsense
The fact that in TTRPGs the game can be built mid-process doesn't guarantee that a particular game will be more reactive than a video game, but it is what allows it the POSSIBILITY to be more reactive than a video game.
Because the property of being built-mid process means that the designer has more information about the players' actions than the designer who had to do it in advance.
Or, to put it differently, the mid-process designer has SOME information about what happened between the start of the game, and the current moment, while the video game designer has NONE.
The sequence matters here.
>it took 200 posts of moronic hypotheticals and arguing about water with a third party for you to say I was right about everything but I didn't add a 1000 page disclaimer about how people can play RPGs wrong
If someone says "watermelon is refreshing" do you spend 5 hours doing strange hypotheticals because they failed to note the watermelon wasn't dried out or rotten?
>Play D&D
>Never set foot in a dungeon
Path of Exile does it better tbh. Scratches 90% of the scratch for 10% of the effort and your DM buddy can play with you instead of wasting time prepping.
Sorry.
It is. I'm the only player who enjoys crawling really at my table. Really it's one of the better ways to give a sense of adventure at the table, but it seems only I feel this way among my peers.
I still play D&D with my friends for socializing, the game itself is not fun for me in the current culture.
Kids these days and their damn skateboards and rock n roll music.
Back in my day...
Guys just go to the old folks home and dungeon crawl with like minded people. There are plenty of games both online and offline and if not start one.
I came to old school DnD expecting to play a better version of my favorite genre: immersive sim.
Instead what I got was a worse version of Diablo.
If shopping lasts more than 5 minutes you're legally allowed to kill.your DM
>If 90% of "the itch" is 999 identical skeletons pathing to you while you faceroll on the keyboard then I'm sorry to you.
Yeah, I think some of the people here were raised on action games and think dungeon crawls always played, and are meant to play, like Dablo
>Name one
Barony.
I'm sorry you're so worked up about this but the player pool is gone because of videogames. I understand that YOU get something fundamental from the dungeon crawl experience that can't be replicated in a videogame, but for the majority of players that's just not the case.
Well it's like my grandpa always said. Simple minds are easily entertained.
Yes and the majority of players in dungeon crawls were mindless. They moved on to simpler experiences that were zero effort to set up and now TTRPGs are left with the story shitter kids. Sorry.
Maybe you'll get lucky once LLMs take off more and the mindless story shitters run off to that. Probably the left over story tellers would have a fun time with your dungeon crawl and you guys can kiss.
>story shitter
oh, so you were that indian spammer the whole time
Luckily I surround myself with interesting people and if I get strapped for players I can find someone who's willing to try "the one from stranger things." What tabletop games do you enjoy?
>Barony
a game coping dungeon crawl aesthetics doesn't make it play like a ttrpg dungeon crawl, especially since it lacks an overworld and your characters can never permanently progress.
Yeah, and the majority of players who WOULD play a dungeon crawl do NOT care about that. I don't know why this is so complicated for your autists to understand. YOU are not EVERY player who is interested in dungeon crawling, you're not even the majority (which is why it's largely a dead scene).
The average player out there who would enjoy dungeon crawling and who would play with you is satisfied with games like Minecraft and Barony and since these take effectively zero effort to set up and play with friends, they will always pick it over a TTRPG dungeon crawl experience.
Videogames killed it because it satisfies most players (and even many potential DMs).
Sure you can find them, if you set up all the work they will come, but organically you don't have groups starting dungeon crawl focused ttrpgs anymore. Is this making sense in your tiny brain now?
>Sure you're group can start a dungeon crawl focused ttrpg, but organically you don't have groups starting dungeon crawl focused ttrpgs anymore
do the needful and suck off a tail pipe, please
Sorry you're mad that I'm right. The groups that will organically look to play a TTRPG aren't the dungeon crawling flavor anymore.
The remnants of the scene are just from old grognards introducing their kids or the local gamestores to that style of play. When a group of friends get together to randomly play a TTRPG, they're NEVER running dungeon crawls.
>Sorry you BLOODY BASTERD b***h
don't you have a monkey torture video to film?
I'd like to add to your thesis that in my opinion any good videogame played with friends is more fun than a session of TTRPG that focused solely on a classical dungeon crawl. Hell, it is even better just to play some competative boardgame.
There's no relationship between the overworld and the dungeon in old school dnd, what happens in one doesn't affect what happens in the other.
So having an overworld doesn't matter for those who just want to do dungeons.
Many DMs in old school dungeons even run the towns as simple equipment lists for sale.
And players typically don't permanently progress in most old school type games either, because BX is usually played up to around level 10, and many groups just do adventure one shots anyway.
>I have never actually played old school dnd
we know Rajesh, we know
There is no place for dungeons in my game. When it comes to action it looks more like an action movie or resort to violence. I don't really play D&D-like game. But maybe Forbidden Lands will change it in the future.
This thread made me have the good anger. The kind you can enjoy. Really cements my opinions on OSRgays as autists who cannot understand words.
I'm in a game with lots of dungeon delving
Yes. (and it's a good thing)
Its been like this since Dragonlance.
It sucks but that's okay, don't play games with morons who suck.