# On Behavioral Realism



## Reynard (Mar 23, 2020)

A friend and I were talking about how to run a successful game focused on treasure hunting in 5e and it led to a discussion on how players rarely seem to do things that real people do. The example that came up was the classic Inn situation: the PCs have been in the wild and the dungeon for a week or two and they finally come back to civilization, but when presented with prices for a room, a bath and a meal they decide to camp outside and eat rations to save money. Now, I was a US Army infantry soldier (during peace time; never deployed; I don't want to misrepresent) and after a week in the swamps of Georgia on a training exercise I would have given my whole paycheck for a bath, a beer and something out of an oven to eat.

This led to a more broad discussion of behavioral realism in RPGs, primarily about how players tend to operate largely in the game space when it comes to the very basic, human needs and desires and behaviors that rule our day to day lives. Even players that are very good role players from a funny voices and defined personality standpoint generally, in my experience, don't do tired, sick, afraid, horny, fed up, etc... well.

How do you try and encourage players to play like "real" people, who just want a bath after a sewer expedition or are willing to throw away half their earnings to impress the bartender? How do you convince players that emulating reality in this way not only enhances the game but makes it more fun for them? Or do you? Do you care if players engage in behavioral realism? Or maybe you don't experience the problem and you play with people, or are such a person, that inherently does these things.

Thanks.


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## Eyes of Nine (Mar 23, 2020)

Take out tactical considerations, and maybe, _maaaaybe_, players will play with more realism. But hey, I'm not sure my players want realism. And I'm not sure if they really did play "real", it would be more fun. I mean tbh, if I was to see a real beholder, I'd a) sh*t my trousers, then b) run like f*ck and hope I wasn't the slowest person in the group... A more common situation - when players look like they are outnumbered and will get captured, instead they try to fight their way out. They would rather end up with a TPK than get captured...


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## Reynard (Mar 23, 2020)

Eyes of Nine said:


> Take out tactical considerations, and maybe, _maaaaybe_, players will play with more realism. But hey, I'm not sure my players want realism. And I'm not sure if they really did play "real", it would be more fun. I mean tbh, if I was to see a real beholder, I'd a) sh*t my trousers, then b) run like f*ck and hope I wasn't the slowest person in the group... A more common situation - when players look like they are outnumbered and will get captured, instead they try to fight their way out. They would rather end up with a TPK than get captured...



I'm not talking about them playing normal people. The assumption is they are still badasses doing dumb stuff. But I've known a few spec ops soldiers (my brother included) some of whom did merc work later, and while they engage in a lot of behavior that aligns with "adventuring" they still come home and have kids, buy Subarus, and go out to the bar before heading back into the poop. I feel like most RPG players, even those that are really into their character's backstory and/or romantic options, treat their character like a game piece when it comes to most visceral human behaviors.


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## DammitVictor (Mar 23, 2020)

Take a page out of _Barbarians of Lemuria_: only award XP for treasure that PCs _waste_.


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## MGibster (Mar 23, 2020)

Reynard said:


> Now, I was a US Army infantry soldier (during peace time; never deployed; I don't want to misrepresent) and after a week in the swamps of Georgia on a training exercise I would have given my whole paycheck for a bath, a beer and something out of an oven to eat.




I've never been in the military but that's pretty much how my adventuring PCs act.  I figure they're young, physically fit, and putting their lives on the line on a regular basis so when they return to town they're going to live like rock stars.  In many RPGs, there's an incentive to scrimp and save as much as possible because they can use gold to purchase weapons, armor, spells, or other supplies that improve their changes of survival.  



> How do you try and encourage players to play like "real" people, who just want a bath after a sewer expedition or are willing to throw away half their earnings to impress the bartender? How do you convince players that emulating reality in this way not only enhances the game but makes it more fun for them? Or do you? Do you care if players engage in behavioral realism? Or maybe you don't experience the problem and you play with people, or are such a person, that inherently does these things.




You're asking a lot of questions here:  The degree to which I care if player characters act like real people (however we define real) is dependent on the type of game I'm playing.  In something fantastical, like D&D, I don't particularly care but in Call of Cthulhu I think it's kind of important.  

But in general, I think the best way to convince players to emulate reality is to provide them with some sort of reward.  If the rules don't provide a reward for behaving in a realistic manner then the GM should provide some sort of tangible benefit to doing so.  This might be something concrete like an item, it could be new role playing opportunities, or perhaps something else.


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## Celebrim (Mar 23, 2020)

In my game, to sleep you have to make a Con check with a DC set by your situation.  Failure means you got a bad night sleep and are fatigued the next day.   So 'camping out' has a real cost to it, and a good bed is worthwhile.   

Likewise, you must make monthly Fort saves to avoid contracting disease (and more frequent checks if exposed). The DC depends on how well you've been living. Roughing it, eating bad food, or buying cheap rooms carries a cost.

In most cases, the PC's are interacting with a society that expects cleanliness.  If they aren't cleaned up, then I'll apply penalties in social situations.  If they don't dress well, then they get social penalties in situations where they are interacting with people of rank (and likewise forgo the bonuses they might otherwise have owing to their own rank).


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## The Crimson Binome (Mar 23, 2020)

Reynard said:


> How do you try and encourage players to play like "real" people, who just want a bath after a sewer expedition or are willing to throw away half their earnings to impress the bartender? How do you convince players that emulating reality in this way not only enhances the game but makes it more fun for them?



The characters live in a very different world from us. In real life, there is some sort of meaningful benefit to taking a bath every now and then. It might be hard to quantify, but it makes you feel better. There's a good reason for you to act in this way.

In the game world, that benefit doesn't exist. It isn't the case that the players are imagining it poorly, or acting out-of-character. It's just a different world, that works in different ways. In the game world, a bath doesn't make you feel better. And given that, the players are acting in a way that makes sense for their world.

If you want the players to act in a way that aligns with your vision of how the real world works, the most logical course of action would be to introduce some sort of penalty that's associated with actions you view as un-realistic, or a bonus associated with realistic actions. At a point during the 5E playtest, they suggested that you might need a comfortable environment (such as a tavern) in order to gain the benefits of a long rest; something like that should be sufficient for most purposes.


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## dragoner (Mar 23, 2020)

Huh, the players in one game I'm running, just stayed at the best resort in town, gambled at the casino, went to the beach, bought nice cigars; the whole deal.


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## Reynard (Mar 23, 2020)

Thanks everyone for your replies so far. it is interesting that many suggestions so far endorse punitive methods to encourage such behavior. I usually try and stay away for stick-based motivation in gaming simply because it makes things less fun for everyone, including me as GM who has to play the heavy.

@dragoner What genre is your game, out of curiosity? What you briefly described makes me think it is a modern game, which in my experience lends itself better to players acting like real people because they are closer to it.


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## Asisreo (Mar 23, 2020)

A common reward for roleplaying realistically would be to give inspiration. Inspiration is a delight of a reward, given that they are inclined to use inspiration which my players never remember.


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## MGibster (Mar 23, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> The characters live in a very different world from us. In real life, there is some sort of meaningful benefit to taking a bath every now and then. It might be hard to quantify, but it makes you feel better. There's a good reason for you to act in this way.




I gotta think basic hygiene is just one of the many things that isn't specifically covered in most game books for two reasons:  Hygiene just isn't where the story is focused and because of the limitations imposed by time and the print medium you can't have rules for every conceivable situation.  Not even GURPS can do that.  (That's right, GURPS!  I'm calling you out.)  It's just assumed that characters take care of their equipment, go to the bathroom, and groom themselves and this isn't something we need detailed in the rules.


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## Sadras (Mar 23, 2020)

Reynard said:


> Thanks everyone for your replies so far. it is interesting that many suggestions so far endorse punitive methods to encourage such behavior. I usually try and stay away for stick-based motivation in gaming simply because it makes things less fun for everyone, including me as GM who has to play the heavy.




A carrot-idea you can maybe expand on or maybe give you inspiration for something else

*Lifestyle Expenses (Page 157 PHB)*
Modest 1 GP = +2 temp hit points
Comfortable 2 GP = +4 temp hit points
Wealthy 4 GP = +5 temp hit points, and an additional +5 temp hit points after your 1st short rest
Aristocrat 10 GP = +5 temp hit points, and an additional +5 temp hit point after each short rest of the day


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## Alzrius (Mar 23, 2020)

I just figure that anyone who wants to be an adventurer has to be some level of insane, kind of like how we think of a lot of modern superheroes. Or Patrick Bateman.

"Do you like kender? A lot of people don't, but I feel like most people simply read about the exploits of Tasslehoff Burrfoot and maybe a heard a third-hand story or two and made up their minds. But while the initial portrayals lent themselves to stereotypes, there was a lot of nuance involved in regards to their inability to fully be in control of themselves, with their inherent kleptomania, wanderlust, and inability to feel fear. It was almost as though they relied on the party dynamic to provide the discipline that they themselves were incapable of generating, forming an underlying linchpin that allows the party to congeal in a way it never would have otherwise. Oh, Regdar? TRY GETTING A RESERVATION IN WATERDEEP NOW YOU STUPID BASTARD!!!"


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## Maxperson (Mar 23, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> The characters live in a very different world from us. In real life, there is some sort of meaningful benefit to taking a bath every now and then. It might be hard to quantify, but it makes you feel better. There's a good reason for you to act in this way.
> 
> In the game world, that benefit doesn't exist. It isn't the case that the players are imagining it poorly, or acting out-of-character. It's just a different world, that works in different ways. In the game world, a bath doesn't make you feel better. And given that, the players are acting in a way that makes sense for their world.




Perhaps you in  your game this is true, but it's not true in the game as written.  While there is nothing that says that they do stink, there is also nothing that says that PCs will not stink if they don't take baths.  There's nothing that says that they don't go to the bathroom daily.  And so on.  

The game leaves this out, probably because many people don't enjoy roleplaying these sorts of mundane details and just assumes that they happen off screen.  Regardless, it's up to the DM and players to have these sorts of things played out or not.  

If you choose to have the world be strange and weird, removing them as some sort of physical difference from ours, that's fine.  That's your creation, though, not the game.  Other DMs can choose to do things differently than you do.


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## Maxperson (Mar 23, 2020)

I've found that XP awards for this sort of roleplaying are the best way to get players to do these things.  Give out small awards for little things like spending money at the inn and such.  medium awards for things that make sense for that PC and have a significant effect on the game, like running from the dragon on sight instead of attacking it or waiting for the fear roll.  And substantial awards for roleplaying their character, even to the detriment of themselves and the party.  For example, if the barbarian has a backstory that he back talks against authority figures and has done so consistently throughout his career, it would make sense for him to back talk to the king during a delicate negotiation.  I see a lot of players suddenly switch PC personalities when the roleplay could get them arrested or worse.

You have to have players that want to play that way, though.  I have one group that I play with that really enjoys this sort of play.  We also understand that no matter what happens in game, even PvP, we're all friends out of game and don't take anything personally.  Other groups that I've played in couldn't handle that sort of game.  Their fun would be ruined by someone else getting their character into trouble or worse by bad talking to the king.  I'd talk to your players about this and get their take.


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## atanakar (Mar 23, 2020)

That is part of Downtime activities. Each group have their own way of dealing with that. There are prices for these items/services in the PHB, so they are definitely part of the game.

I'm against rewards/punishments systems for «encourage» such behaviour. Players will just abuse it and start to wash every time they can in rivers and pools during adventurers, to gain easy HPs or remove lighter conditions.

It is true that after a week of Canadian Reserve service I would have given anything for a shower. But personal hygiene were not the same in other eras of human history.


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## Maxperson (Mar 23, 2020)

atanakar said:


> I'm against rewards/punishments systems for «encourage» such behaviour. Players will just abuse it and start to wash every time they can in rivers and pools during adventurers, to gain easy HPs or remove lighter conditions.




It's not abuse if that's what the DM and group want.  Different strokes for different folks.


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## atanakar (Mar 23, 2020)

Maxperson said:


> It's not abuse if that's what the DM and group want.  Different strokes for different folks.




Different strokes of different soaps!


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## R_J_K75 (Mar 23, 2020)

I ran a game where I tried to insert/encourage more realism and the response from one of my players was, "If I wanted to take a bath or go shopping, Id go home and take a bath or go shopping".  Even though these scenarios can lead to good roleplaying, adventure hooks and possibly even adventures, they just wanted get to meat and potatoes of adventuring.  I prefer more realism myself but I think you need to strike a balance with the players, perhaps on an individual level.  If one player prefers, it indulge them without taking too much time, then move on.  For the most part I'm assuming that when in town they are practicing a modicum of hygiene and etiquette and staying in relatively clean inns.  I think in the end most people play RPGs for escapism, to do things they normally wouldn't or couldn't do and to leave the mundane things of the world behind for awhile.


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## Umbran (Mar 23, 2020)

Reynard said:


> Even players that are very good role players from a funny voices and defined personality standpoint generally, in my experience, don't do tired, sick, afraid, horny, fed up, etc... well.




The real question to ask is, what about playing tired, sick, afraid, horny, fed up, etc... will be fun for them?  The players are each at the table for their own reasons - does such play serve those reasons?

For example, if you are playing a game in the style of Fritz Lieber, where Fafhrd and Grey Mouser often came upon their adventures through their mundane actions, then they have a reason to play in this manner.  If, however, it is just an add on that doesn't impact the adventuring... why would you expect them to bother?


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## Sadras (Mar 23, 2020)

To be honest I'd create a few more Conditions to deal with such matters as they are quite easy to incorporate into the game: Dishevelled, Filthy, Ragged, Unwashed


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## Morrus (Mar 23, 2020)

Reynard said:


> How do you try and encourage players to play like "real" people, who just want a bath after a sewer expedition or are willing to throw away half their earnings to impress the bartender? How do you convince players that emulating reality in this way not only enhances the game but makes it more fun for them? Or do you? Do you care if players engage in behavioral realism? Or maybe you don't experience the problem and you play with people, or are such a person, that inherently does these things.
> Thanks.



I mean, I guess it's up to them what they find fun? I'm not sure mandatory fun by roleplaying a bath is my cup of tea.


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## Doug McCrae (Mar 23, 2020)

MGibster said:


> In something fantastical, like D&D, I don't particularly care but in Call of Cthulhu I think it's kind of important.



The highest levels of behavioural realism I've experienced were in rpgs where the players played themselves (albeit with superhuman powers) in a contemporary setting. In Villains & Vigilantes we were far more reluctant to kill. In Paul Mackintosh's Dream Game campaign, we avoided breaking the law (even when the GM expected us to.)

Contrast with rpgs such as Vampire where killing and lawbreaking are common in my experience, despite the supposed restriction of the Masquerade.


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## Reynard (Mar 23, 2020)

Morrus said:


> I mean, I guess it's up to them what they find fun? I'm not sure mandatory fun by roleplaying a bath is my cup of tea.



I don't want folks to overly focus on the bath thing. That was just an example. More broadly what I am talking about is players having their characters behave in ways that are recognizably realistic, with the caveat that those characters are also the sort to get some thrill out of doing whatever terribly dangerous thing the game is about. I agree with the poster upthread that said one would have to be more than a little crazy to be a D&D style adventurer, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't spend frivolously, form relationships or build a life.

I am also not saying this stuff needs to eat a bunch of play time, just that it would be fun if it were present and apparent enough that sometimes decisions made in play were based on them.

Of course, people play RPGs for different reasons and for a lot of folks it is escapism. They don't want to worry about their character's toilet habits any more than such things are prevalent in the popular fiction RPGs often emulate. (As an aside, I always find it interesting when writers go into length about food and eating yet never once talk about other less savory aspects of living.)


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## Guest 6801328 (Mar 23, 2020)

Reynard said:


> A friend and I were talking about how to run a successful game focused on treasure hunting in 5e and it led to a discussion on how players rarely seem to do things that real people do. The example that came up was the classic Inn situation: the PCs have been in the wild and the dungeon for a week or two and they finally come back to civilization, but when presented with prices for a room, a bath and a meal they decide to camp outside and eat rations to save money. Now, I was a US Army infantry soldier (during peace time; never deployed; I don't want to misrepresent) and after a week in the swamps of Georgia on a training exercise I would have given my whole paycheck for a bath, a beer and something out of an oven to eat.
> 
> This led to a more broad discussion of behavioral realism in RPGs, primarily about how players tend to operate largely in the game space when it comes to the very basic, human needs and desires and behaviors that rule our day to day lives. Even players that are very good role players from a funny voices and defined personality standpoint generally, in my experience, don't do tired, sick, afraid, horny, fed up, etc... well.
> 
> ...



 It sounds to me, at least with this particular example, you are projecting your own experience and assuming it applies to everybody.

There's a long and gloried history in climbing culture (mountains and rocks, not social climbing) that you live on the cheap.  I know wealthy climbers who will stay in the nicest hotels when they go heli-skiing, but when they go climbing will break laws to find a free place to sleep in the dirt, where they'll eat beans from a can warmed over a whisperlite.  (Note: this tradition may have changed as climbing, and particular sport-climbing, has gone mainstream.)

So who's to say what is "realistic" behavior? 

There's a certain poster who once used the phrase "what a wood elf would do", and has made numerous other similar comments.  That's a little bit like saying, "What a Floridian would do."  Sure, maybe in situation X people from Florida are more likely than people from Colorado to have reaction Y, but to expect...to even be _insistent_...that all Floridians will do Y is...is...nuts?

Heroes are outliers.  Oddballs.  Definitely not average.  

Let them do what their players want them to do.

The alternative is policing the thoughts of your players.  ("No, I don't think you're doing that for story reasons, you are doing it for a metagame reason!") 

No thank you.


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## Celebrim (Mar 23, 2020)

Morrus said:


> I mean, I guess it's up to them what they find fun? I'm not sure mandatory fun by roleplaying a bath is my cup of tea.




I don't think the point is to actually roleplay out a bath.

I think the point is that there ought to be consequences when players state that they don't engage in basic hygiene and eschew basic comforts.


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## Sadras (Mar 23, 2020)

Elfcrusher said:


> Heroes are outliers.  Oddballs.  Definitely not average.




And yet they too can stink.



> Let them do what their players want them to do.




He is. He is just asking for ways, should he want to, to incentivise a less _gamist _approach. I'm using that term loosely. So what are the benefits of washing, splurging at a tavern, eating well, socialising with ones preferred gender, maintaining your equipment, updating your maps, acquisition of clothing, resting your horse, good grooming, paying for massages, sharing a decent drink...

Xanathars addresses some of these concerns, others not.

EDIT: Besides some of these might be great ways to introduce interesting NPCs or storylines.



> The alternative is policing the thoughts of your players.  ("No, I don't think you're doing that for story reasons, you are doing it for a metagame reason!")
> 
> No thank you.




Plenty games have additional conditions that do not exist within D&D. I believe Torchbearer has the _Hungry_ condition. There is no great harm to the game by introducing a _Dishevelled_ condition. I feel describing that as policing is somewhat hyperbolic.


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## Celebrim (Mar 23, 2020)

Sadras said:


> He is. He is just asking for ways, should he want to, to incentivise a less _gamist _approach. I'm using that term loosely. So what are the benefits of washing, splurging at a tavern, eating well, socialising with ones preferred gender, maintaining your equipment, updating your maps, acquisition of clothing, resting your horse, good grooming, paying for massages, sharing a good drink...




I bought Pendragon and the Great Pendragon Campaign in hardback from Drivethrough during the GM's day sale, and won thing I really like is that living well (or not) has a massive impact on your character (and even helps you 'level up).


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## macd21 (Mar 23, 2020)

WFRP 4 kind of accounts for this through a pretty simple mechanic. After an adventure, you get to spend any treasure you may have accumulated (on equipment or what have you). Anything left over is gone by the time you start the next adventure. It’s assumed you spend it on booze, gambling, women, a slightly enhanced standard of living for a few weeks etc.

And then you’re basically left with your character’s status level (from which you might be able to get some coin from gainful employment, so you don’t start the next adventure penniless). So a status zero pauper will be dirty, smelly and dressed in rags, while the Noble will be clean, perfumed and well dressed (and probably have a few gold crowns in his coin purse).


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## Sadras (Mar 23, 2020)

Celebrim said:


> I bought Pendragon and the Great Pendragon Campaign in hardback from Drivethrough during the GM's day sale, and won thing I really like is that living well (or not) has a massive impact on your character (and even helps you 'level up).




Thanks, now I'm curious. I have bought an old Pendragon edition, do not remember which one but I just haven't made the necessary time to check it out. Plenty of time to do so under a quarantine.


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## dragoner (Mar 23, 2020)

Reynard said:


> @dragoner What genre is your game, out of curiosity? What you briefly described makes me think it is a modern game, which in my experience lends itself better to players acting like real people because they are closer to it.




It is modern SF, year 2211, using a hacked Classic Traveller: Fusion Rockets and no easy Anti-Gravity. They are on a planet Pryp'yat orbiting Delta Trianguli, and they have used the resort as home base for a variety of adventures: going to the black market, navigating a corrupt bureaucracy, and pulling off the great monorail job. Against a background of revolution, sort of like Batista's Cuba.

The players did sign on for what I called a little harder sci-fi, that might have something to do with it over the bog standard space fantasy. In any of these games, there is the challenge of realistic behavior, fantasy it is probably easier to camp out. In the game I'm running, the player's have been more violent than one would consider reasonable, which is also sadly normal for RPG's. I know someone who was running games at GenCon, and they presented a choice where one had to choose to kill innocents or suffer significant penalties, and people almost always chose to kill the innocents.

I will sometimes throw in "downer" descriptions, such as when looting corpses, have the player's find a photograph of the trooper's wife holding a baby, with "Come home soon Johnny" written on the back, as a reminder of what they are doing and who they are. Takes the sting off a TPK though.


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## steenan (Mar 23, 2020)

I think there are three factors to take into account here.

The first is what the players seek in the game, what they find interesting. Forcing them to spend time and focus on things they have no interest in is a bad idea. If they want exploration and adventure, or if they want monster slaying, don't waste their time with an inn, unless there's an adventure or a monster there. In my Exalted campaign there were many scenes at baths not because anybody wanted to focus on bathing itself, but because it was a perfect background for various social interactions.

The second factor is the existence (or not) of disincentives. In general, if something that's purely color competes for time or resources with the central gameplay, the color loses. If a PC has a choice between spending money for a room or bath and spending it on weapons, spells or other items that their life depends on, it's easy to see what they will choose. In games where money is abstract and players may pay for things without reducing their long-term resources, or games where money can't buy mechanical bonuses, no such conflict exists and players are much more willing to have their PCs spend money on luxuries.

The third factor is the existence of mechanical incentives for spending resources on non-essentials. While lack of mechanical disincentives and incentives leaves it as color and roleplaying opportunity, existence of both incentives and disincentives creates a tactical choice. Such incentives may be recovering stress only when well fed and sleeping in comfort; getting XP for money "wasted" (spent on drinks, gambling, girls/boys, charity etc.) instead of earned; getting a social modifier based on the standard of living and similar things.


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## Umbran (Mar 23, 2020)

Also, general point - if you are going through the bean-counting of making them pay for every night and every meal, that's a disincentive, cognitively speaking.  If you use an "upkeep" style of managing living expenses, they may view it differently.


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## uzirath (Mar 23, 2020)

Umbran said:


> Also, general point - if you are going through the bean-counting of making them pay for every night and every meal, that's a disincentive, cognitively speaking.  If you use an "upkeep" style of managing living expenses, they may view it differently.




This. In my GURPS games, there is a standard cost of living when PCs aren't in the wilderness. This covers room and board commensurate with their social status. Wealthier, higher-status PCs spend more on clothing and the accoutrements of their position. They can choose to avoid the fee by camping in the wilderness, but this will deny (or penalize) access to services and useful NPCs. You can't waltz into a high-end enchanter's shop covered in dungeon grime; at the very least, you're not going to get the best prices. Depending on the types of PCs, the majority of the group might set up camp in the woods while the "face" PC goes into town to handle business. This seems reasonable, especially when the group is largely comprised of characters who would have trouble in town anyway (unusual races, lower social class, etc.).

I used a similar system way back in my AD&D days, too, with no complaints from players. In my experience, most players have been eager to live the high life in town if they could afford it. I just try to make it more fun than sleeping in their sweaty armor. (Despite being fairly thrifty in real life, I love playing big spenders who regularly waste all their money on fine clothes and expensive wine!)


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## Asisreo (Mar 24, 2020)

R_J_K75 said:


> I ran a game where I tried to insert/encourage more realism and the response from one of my players was, "If I wanted to take a bath or go shopping, Id go home and take a bath or go shopping".



There's 2 interesting things with that logic. 
1. Sure, taking a bath by yourself in an average private modern bath is mundane but it can be fun roleplaying a public bath scene, especially since most baths of the era would either be public or belong to nobility.  if your party members are not a common race, or even just a minority in the settlement, you can briefly describe how the other visitors are clearly staring and some are whispering amongst themselves. 

2. Most of these mundane things should probably be skipped, yes, but just asking for a little more detail in life can have different effects. Imagine they decided to take a bath because you pointed out that it's been a while and they end up in the same bathhouse as the secret BBEG who *they* know is evil but they haven't convinced everyone else they're evil.


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## R_J_K75 (Mar 24, 2020)

Asisreo said:


> There's 2 interesting things with that logic.
> 1. Sure, taking a bath by yourself in an average private modern bath is mundane but it can be fun roleplaying a public bath scene, especially since most baths of the era would either be public or belong to nobility.  if your party members are not a common race, or even just a minority in the settlement, you can briefly describe how the other visitors are clearly staring and some are whispering amongst themselves.
> 
> 2. Most of these mundane things should probably be skipped, yes, but just asking for a little more detail in life can have different effects. Imagine they decided to take a bath because you pointed out that it's been a while and they end up in the same bathhouse as the secret BBEG who *they* know is evil but they haven't convinced everyone else they're evil.




I agree with a lot of what you said and it might have been a missed opportunities, but it was a once a week game at a game store for 2-3 hours.  The sessions had to be pretty straight forward to get anything accomplished and there was a bit of player turnover. We were playing in Waterdeep at the time and correct me if Im wrong but I believe that the city has running water.  Id Imagine they do have public bath houses but in all honesty I never even thought of that.  I always pictured that 9 out of 10 settlements just used a river, lake or some other means other than a bath house, and that they didn't have a bath tub or running water.  I always depicted things as the lower rungs of society were pretty dirty folk, while the working class probably bathed on a semi-regular basis and only wealthy merchants and nobles would be clean all the time. Adventurers bathed after coming back from their last trek but not everyday unless their players explicitly said they were, or they were playing some fancy milk drinking Paladin.  Guess it comes down to the groups play style.


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## Guest 6801328 (Mar 24, 2020)

Sadras said:


> And yet they too can stink.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




The important question, though, is why. 

If the reason is that it bugs the DM that the players won't behave "realistically" then that's a bad reason (imo, of course.). Imposing an aesthetic preference on players is (almost?) always a bad idea.

But if the reason is to support an interesting and engaging game mechanic, then sure.  But from the tone of the thread it sounds like the DM wants one thing and the players want another.

And, as @Umbran points out, tracking copper and silver pieces can be the opposite of fun.


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## Celebrim (Mar 24, 2020)

Morrus said:


> I mean, I guess it's up to them what they find fun? I'm not sure mandatory fun by roleplaying a bath is my cup of tea.




This comment is still bugging me, because aren't you the publisher of N.E.W.?

One of my favorite mechanics in N.E.W. is the statistics for ships includes a factor for crew comfort, which IIRC caps the effective skill of the crew. This actually gives an incentive to spend space and mass on 'useless' things like living quarters and other crew amenities that otherwise would unrealistically be devoted entirely to more pew pew.

Which means you actually published an RPG with one of the strongest mechanics for mandatory roleplaying a bath on the market. Your game actually makes ships more combat effective if they have a bathroom.

Which in my opinion is great!


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## Umbran (Mar 24, 2020)

Celebrim said:


> Which means you actually published an RPG with one of the strongest mechanics for mandatory roleplaying a bath on the market.




I mean, doe sthe game actually mandate _role playing_ the bath?  Or do you simply get the stats if the bath is present, and we just assume the bath takes place?  I'm going to guess the latter...


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## Reynard (Mar 24, 2020)

Elfcrusher said:


> The important question, though, is why.
> 
> If the reason is that it bugs the DM that the players won't behave "realistically" then that's a bad reason (imo, of course.). Imposing an aesthetic preference on players is (almost?) always a bad idea.
> 
> ...




Broadly speaking, I am wondering about encouraging realism in player behavior, particularly in games like D&D that have few mechanical incentives to do anything but hoard weapons and armor.


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## Celebrim (Mar 24, 2020)

Umbran said:


> I mean, doe sthe game actually mandate _role playing_ the bath?  Or do you simply get the stats if the bath is present, and we just assume the bath takes place?  I'm going to guess the latter...




Presumably roleplaying out the bath is optional, but the emphasis of the original poster was less on forcing the mandatory roleplaying of a bath as dealing with the problem of a group deliberately and pointedly roleplaying out not taking the bath (for whatever reason).   Which to me matches the impulse in the N.E.W. ship creation rules of punishing you for designing a ship without any amenities, or the rules in Pendragon which cripple a knight that lives an impoverished lifestyle while rewarding one which spends in excess of their base maintenance rate.


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## R_J_K75 (Mar 24, 2020)

Reynard said:


> Broadly speaking, I am wondering about encouraging realism in player behavior, particularly in games like D&D that have few mechanical incentives to do anything but hoard weapons and armor.




Generally this is something I hand wave 99% of the time in most D&D games unless it serves a specific purpose.  If I were running a game with no specific plot or goal and gave the players free reign then I could see the game going in a more mundane day to day direction.


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## Reynard (Mar 24, 2020)

R_J_K75 said:


> Generally this is something I hand wave 99% of the time in most D&D games unless it serves a specific purpose.  If I were running a game with no specific plot or goal and gave the players free reign then I could see the game going in a more mundane day to day direction.



Again, folks are focusing too heavily on the "bath" as an example. What I am talking about is acting in ways that resemble people rather than stock characters. Making decisions based on need and desire and personality and physical and mental (dis)comfort, not just what is most tactically superior, mechanically satisfying or even narratively appropriate.


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## R_J_K75 (Mar 24, 2020)

Reynard said:


> Again, folks are focusing too heavily on the "bath" as an example. What I am talking about is acting in ways that resemble people rather than stock characters. Making decisions based on need and desire and personality and physical and mental (dis)comfort, not just what is most tactically superior, mechanically satisfying or even narratively appropriate.




When I said I handwave this I was speaking generally for this sort of thing because depending on their level, wealth and status somethings are just assumed and covered by the monthly living cost and the quality of living they wish to have.  We agree on this from the start.  My players will let me know that they want to spend enough to maintain a certain life style when it comes into play.  Generally it doesnt come into play and we dont worry about it.  Therefore most our games are concerned with the mechanical rewards and aspects.


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## macd21 (Mar 24, 2020)

Reynard said:


> Again, folks are focusing too heavily on the "bath" as an example. What I am talking about is acting in ways that resemble people rather than stock characters. Making decisions based on need and desire and personality and physical and mental (dis)comfort, not just what is most tactically superior, mechanically satisfying or even narratively appropriate.




I think the problem is that things like taking a bath or other ‘realistic’ behavioural activities just don’t interest most people. And encouraging your players to be more ‘realistic’ is (usually) a bad idea. Your players are making the most tactically superior, mechanically satisfying or narratively appropriate decisions - why is that a problem?  Forcing them to take account of things that hold no interest to them (like bathing) is just going to annoy them.


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## pemerton (Mar 24, 2020)

Sadras said:


> He is just asking for ways, should he want to, to incentivise a less _gamist _approach. I'm using that term loosely. So what are the benefits of washing, splurging at a tavern, eating well, socialising with ones preferred gender, maintaining your equipment, updating your maps, acquisition of clothing, resting your horse, good grooming, paying for massages, sharing a decent drink...
> 
> Xanathars addresses some of these concerns, others not.
> 
> ...



But I'm not sure that introducing a new condition, and more generally establishing _benefits _for washing, eating well, etc, will make the game less _gamist_. It just seems to be establishing new avenues for tactical play.



Reynard said:


> A friend and I were talking about how to run a successful game focused on treasure hunting in 5e and it led to a discussion on how players rarely seem to do things that real people do.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ...



I'm not sure, but you seem to be talking mostly about fairly traditional D&D play, with two features (which other posters have also noted):

(1) Treasure is essentially a PC build resource, and so there is no incentive to spend it on things that don't contribute to PC build;​​(2) The fiction of bathing, eating etc plays little or not role in actual game play, It's merely distracting colour.​
I mostly play games where at least one of (1) and (2) does not hold. I think (2) is especially important. Just to give one example, from an old Rolemaster campaign: when one of the PCs had spent all his money on the magic-enhancing drug to which he'd become addicted, and hence couldn't afford to maintain the lease on his personal villa, it had a big impact as his aspirations for social climbing collapsed, he lost his base of operations, and ended up a degraded pauper dependant on the charity of (and highly subject to manipulation by) a fellow PC.

That was a game in which housing and social position mattered because they were (among other things) central to the actual play of the game.

EDIT:


Reynard said:


> folks are focusing too heavily on the "bath" as an example. What I am talking about is acting in ways that resemble people rather than stock characters. Making decisions based on need and desire and personality and physical and mental (dis)comfort, not just what is most tactically superior, mechanically satisfying or even narratively appropriate.



In my Prince Valiant game the three PCs have all married (remarried in one case - that PC started the game as a widower; one of the othe PCs is his son). There was at one point a rivalry between two of the - some of which was played out in mechanical terms -, but it was ended when one found himself married to the daughter of the Duke of York somewhat against his own better judgement. That same character has also come very close to having an affair.

In this game it's also the case that time - week, seasons - often passes simply by narration. The PCs wear fine clothes on appropriate occasions. Etc. I think it has much of what you're looking for.

Compared to traditional D&D, the system has social resolution mechanics, factors emotion and relationsihps into resolution when appropriate, and makes the knightly life (as seen through the lens of Arthurian romance) central to play. There is very little wargame feel to the mechanics or the fiction.


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## Asisreo (Mar 24, 2020)

What's interesting is while D&D splits its game into three pillars: Combat, Exploration, and Social; there is a subset to each that many put into a whole basket instead of subdividing as they are. Namely Social, which is basically roleplay. But Roleplay has two parts and players tend to have different opinions about each. 

The first part is Story. This is the one where players desire cohesion, a narrative, and something with a beginning and end. When players opt to skip mundane stuff, they're opting to advance a story because they imagine that's more fun than getting immersed. 

The second part, immersion, is when a player desires to live a second life. They don't want to play D&D, they want to live it. Therefore, mundane stuff is welcome to them. They want to describe their baths and how they eat and experience a world that reacts to those small details. 

In the case that players don't want to engage with that, fine. Let them not be engaged. That's how they have fun. However, it would be unfortunate if the DM never gave the players a chance to try the more immersive side. That's why I ask about the finer details, even if they didn't have anything special prepared for the scenario.


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## Celebrim (Mar 24, 2020)

macd21 said:


> I think the problem is that things like taking a bath or other ‘realistic’ behavioural activities just don’t interest most people.  And encouraging your players to be more ‘realistic’ is (usually) a bad idea. Your players are making the most tactically superior, mechanically satisfying or narratively appropriate decisions - why is that a problem?




Because generally a group has more than one aesthetic of play, and if that is the case (as it obviously is) catering to only one of them is a recipe for boredom and disinterest from one or more players (particularly the GM).

This goes doubly true for actions which not only ignore an aesthetic of play, they actively interfere with the enjoyment of other participants (again including the GM). It's not impossible to have a situation where the same choices can be tactically superior, mechanically satisfying and narratively appropriate at the same time. Those aesthetics of play do not have to be mutually exclusive.

Where problems tend to happen is if the mechanics are pointing in directions contrary to what is narratively appropriate. If the PC is really a filthy beast and the player is choosing to play that way for a combination of reasons, that's perfectly fine and bothers basically no one (unless it is spotlight stealing, which is a whole other issue). But what you tend to find is players that are metagaming, playing their characters in a way that maximizes benefit mechanically (in this case, saving maintenance costs so as to purchase better gear), because they believe such actions carry no consequences.

For example, systems rarely have the granularity to care much about things that are inconvenient - like be miserable but not being actually injured. So players tend to insist their characters heroically and stalwartly persist through any hardship because the game says in essence that their is no consequence to doing so. And to a certain extent for a heroic game that's fine. But there comes a point were skipping meals, marching through the night, and being cold and damp ought to start mattering and does matter even in heroic fiction. If you don't have rules for 'comfort' then a lot of stories can't be told, and players will tend to produce transcripts of play that are silly and not compelling.

Which is why relatively simple rules that say, "If you don't pay attention to comfort, eventually your security will degrade.", actually add a lot to gameplay.


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## pemerton (Mar 24, 2020)

dragoner said:


> It is modern SF, year 2211, using a hacked Classic Traveller: Fusion Rockets and no easy Anti-Gravity.



I hope you don't mind too much if I connect your post to my own analysis above.

Clasic Traveller is another system where my (1) and (2) don't both hold: money isn't just a PC build resource - it can be, but can be hard to apply to those ends (eg if you've already got some good basic gear, 100 credits isn't taking you much closer to battle dress; and that's before we get to Law Levels); and the fiction of actual life - eg your example of hanging out in a casino - can be pretty central to play.

Or to put it another way: while PCs in Classic Traveller may sometimes be ruthless mercenaries (which your post brings out), the game nevertheless establishes a recognisably real paradigm of human life, _within the fiction of the game _rather than simply as some colour or window-dressing that doesn't actually bear upon what is central to play.


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## pemerton (Mar 24, 2020)

Celebrim said:


> systems rarely have the granularity to care much about things that are inconvenient - like be miserable but not being actually injured.



Does _systems _here mean D&D?

It's not hard to find systems that factor in emotional struggles or turmoil in various ways. I already mentioned Prince Valiant upthread - it's from the late 80s.

Even contemporary versions of D&D have _psychic damage _and associated conditions.



Celebrim said:


> Which is why relatively simple rules that say, "If you don't pay attention to comfort, eventually your security will degrade.", actually add a lot to gameplay.



If the goal is to move away from a focus on the tactical and "gamist", I'm not sure that bringing more spheres of activity under the tactical and gamist umbrella is the way to go.


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## pemerton (Mar 24, 2020)

Asisreo said:


> The second part, immersion, is when a player desires to live a second life. They don't want to play D&D, they want to live it. Therefore, mundane stuff is welcome to them. They want to describe their baths and how they eat and experience a world that reacts to those small details.
> 
> In the case that players don't want to engage with that, fine. Let them not be engaged. That's how they have fun. However, it would be unfortunate if the DM never gave the players a chance to try the more immersive side. That's why I ask about the finer details, even if they didn't have anything special prepared for the scenario.



I don't think @Reynard is asking for advice on _how to increase immersion by increasing narrations of bathtime_. Apart from anything else, you can immerse just as easily in the look and smell and sound of the dragon you're slaying, so bathing has nothing special to offer on this front.

Reynard seems to be asking how to make the fiction of the PCs' lives more closely resemble real human lives. I think the answer is therefore to look at how your game generates fiction and what sorts of fiction matter to it. And this doesn't have to be done in the abstract. There are actually many, many easily-available RPGs that have solved the problem Reynard describes.


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## John Dallman (Mar 24, 2020)

Reynard said:


> A friend and I were talking about how to run a successful game focused on treasure hunting in 5e ...



I think you're starting off on the wrong foot with your game theme. If the core activity is abstract and unrealistic, you're requiring the players to shift the way they play to consider more personal details. 


Reynard said:


> How do you try and encourage players to play like "real" people, who just want a bath after a sewer expedition or are willing to throw away half their earnings to impress the bartender?



The way you do that, IME, is to have the filth from the sewer be part of the characters' experience. I recall an AD&D1e setting where the DM didn't _harp_ on the characters being dirty, tired and hungry, but he did keep you aware of it. So when we reached a town that was well set up to offer luxury to PCs, they took it up enthusiastically.

It may have helped that the prices, while high in terms of the mundane economy, weren't large chunks of the characters' resources. It wasn't a matter of spending all the money that we'd normally expect to spend on replenishing healing potions; we might have nibbled into that a bit, but we weren't making future adventuring appreciably more dangerous for ourselves.

"Throwing away half your earnings to impress the barman" or gambling with _lots_ of money is more challenging. I've never felt the slightest urge to do such things personally, and most of my characters are fairly cautious people who've come by money through dangerous work, and don't want to lose it all.


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## Sadras (Mar 24, 2020)

pemerton said:


> But I'm not sure that introducing a new condition, and more generally establishing _benefits _for washing, eating well, etc, will make the game less _gamist_. It just seems to be establishing new avenues for tactical play.




You may be right. Now I'm curious if I am approaching this incorrectly, how does one make an RPG less gamist?


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## Reynard (Mar 24, 2020)

John Dallman said:


> I think you're starting off on the wrong foot with your game theme. If the core activity is abstract and unrealistic, you're requiring the players to shift the way they play to consider more personal details.




Doing dangerous, thrilling work for money (and the potential for loads of it) is not abstract or unrealistic. People do it every day in the real world. There are still adventurers and thrill seekers out there, not to mention straight up mercenaries and actual, for real treasure hunters.The nature of it in a typical D&D campaign is different -- holes full of monsters rather than trying to steal antiquities from civil war ravaged nations, but it's not like, say, superheroing where there is no legitimate modern equivalent a player can hang their roleplay hat on.



> The way you do that, IME, is to have the filth from the sewer be part of the characters' experience. I recall an AD&D1e setting where the DM didn't _harp_ on the characters being dirty, tired and hungry, but he did keep you aware of it. So when we reached a town that was well set up to offer luxury to PCs, they took it up enthusiastically.
> 
> It may have helped that the prices, while high in terms of the mundane economy, weren't large chunks of the characters' resources. It wasn't a matter of spending all the money that we'd normally expect to spend on replenishing healing potions; we might have nibbled into that a bit, but we weren't making future adventuring appreciably more dangerous for ourselves.
> 
> "Throwing away half your earnings to impress the barman" or gambling with _lots_ of money is more challenging. I've never felt the slightest urge to do such things personally, and most of my characters are fairly cautious people who've come by money through dangerous work, and don't want to lose it all.



Most of the people I have known in real life that make their living as thrillseekers of one sort or another were not planning long term with their pay.


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## Reynard (Mar 24, 2020)

pemerton said:


> Reynard seems to be asking how to make the fiction of the PCs' lives more closely resemble real human lives. I think the answer is therefore to look at how your game generates fiction and what sorts of fiction matter to it. And this doesn't have to be done in the abstract. There are actually many, many easily-available RPGs that have solved the problem Reynard describes.




Just to be clear, I am not hoping for a game to be focused on these things, just that they exist in play, giving the fantasy that is the heroes' lives a more grounded feel even while they are raiding tombs full of screeching spirits in search of magic boots and whatnot. I like the quiet moments between battles where the human comes out, and I like heroes that display complex humanity. I like when mundane needs end up driving fantastic moments -- think of the brownies in Willow "We stole the baby while you were taking a peepee!"

The purpose of the thread was to get ideas on how to encourage that thing in players that tend to take a more practical approach to their roleplaying.


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## BrokenTwin (Mar 24, 2020)

Ryuutama would be a good example for how to add mechanical incentives to taking care of your character's comfort levels. Simply put, you make a 'condition' check once a day that's modified by the available creature comforts. Indulging in luxuries makes it easier to pass the check, and scoring high enough on the check actually gives your character a bonus for the day.
Granted, I think it would be easier to just use a system with these concepts build in and balanced around rather than trying to shoehorn them into a completely different system, but hey, if you're attached to whatever system you're currently using, then do what you can.


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## Campbell (Mar 24, 2020)

Reynard said:


> Just to be clear, I am not hoping for a game to be focused on these things, just that they exist in play, giving the fantasy that is the heroes' lives a more grounded feel even while they are raiding tombs full of screeching spirits in search of magic boots and whatnot. I like the quiet moments between battles where the human comes out, and I like heroes that display complex humanity. I like when mundane needs end up driving fantastic moments -- think of the brownies in Willow "We stole the baby while you were taking a peepee!"
> 
> The purpose of the thread was to get ideas on how to encourage that thing in players that tend to take a more practical approach to their roleplaying.




I think the most basic thing is just making fictional positioning matter more. Someone who lives in squalor, subsists off of the wilds near town, leaves their weapons and armor in disrepair, and always seems beaten down by life is unlikely to be well regarded as an upstanding part of society. Have the people in their lives, even if just a local barmaid express concern for them. Maybe some NPCs will refuse to speak to them until they bathe.

Do not do this to punish them. Make it have an impact. Make it a choice.


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## pemerton (Mar 24, 2020)

Sadras said:


> You may be right. Now I'm curious if I am approaching this incorrectly, how does one make an RPG less gamist?



Well that's a big question! But you won't be shocked by my thoughts on it - reduce the emphasis on win/loss conditions; increase the emphasis on (i) the fiction of the situation, and (ii) consequences/"fail forward" so that the outcome of those situations is mostly encountered in the form of _more fiction_ rather than winning or losing.

So in the example I posted upthread of the drug-addicted PC who lost his house and status as a result, of course the _PC _was losing and suffering but for the player the gameplay was going on, he still had actions to declare for his PC that mattered to the shared fiction, etc. So to use a really crude comparison, it wasn't at all like being dropped to zero hp in the typical D&D combat.


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## pemerton (Mar 24, 2020)

Reynard said:


> Just to be clear, I am not hoping for a game to be focused on these things, just that they exist in play, giving the fantasy that is the heroes' lives a more grounded feel even while they are raiding tombs full of screeching spirits in search of magic boots and whatnot. I like the quiet moments between battles where the human comes out, and I like heroes that display complex humanity. I like when mundane needs end up driving fantastic moments -- think of the brownies in Willow "We stole the baby while you were taking a peepee!"
> 
> The purpose of the thread was to get ideas on how to encourage that thing in players that tend to take a more practical approach to their roleplaying.



Yes. I understand all this. And as I said, there are RPGs that have solved this problem - Classic Traveller and RuneQuest would be two of the classics. Probably anything PbtA, Burning Wheel, and Cortex+ are just some of the modern games that manage this.

So I think that rather than approaching the question purely abstractly, or from unexamined D&D premises, it's better to ask what those games have actually done to deal with the issue.

EDIT: And to reiterate what @Campbell has said, paying attention to the fiction is part of it. I would say not _just _fictional positioning (though that's important) but also consequences and orientation of play. If all the actual fiction of play unfolds as if the real, mundane world doesn't exist and doesn't matter - if "life" is just colour and backdrop - then it's no surprise that players don't engage with it.


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## GrahamWills (Mar 24, 2020)

Reynard said:


> A friend and I were talking about how to run a successful game focused on treasure hunting in 5e and it led to a discussion on how players rarely seem to do things that real people do. The example that came up was the classic Inn situation: the PCs have been in the wild and the dungeon for a week or two and they finally come back to civilization, but when presented with prices for a room, a bath and a meal they decide to camp outside and eat rations to save money.
> 
> ...  Even players that are very good role players from a funny voices and defined personality standpoint generally, in my experience, don't do tired, sick, afraid, horny, fed up, etc... well.
> 
> ... How do you try and encourage players to play like "real" people, who just want a bath after a sewer expedition or are willing to throw away half their earnings to impress the bartender?




Interesting. This is quite different from my experiences with a number of groups. It may be that your group has a strongly gamist slant — they get their fun from working with the rules and optimizing the in-game success of their characters. My group has a lot of theater people and we have the opposite problem; players get annoyed by rules that don’t let them develop the narrative they are looking for.

funny you should mention baths, because they have been quite prominent in our campaigns. I’ve seen a high-level wizard so happy to have a bath he sent his familiar on the next adventure (scrying and casting through him for about a session) so he could have another one. My secret agents were seriously ticked when they had to live undercover in a hotel so cheap it didn’t have baths. I’ve also run some anime style games and hot baths are a trope there.

If your group gets its fun by playing the rules, I’d suggest not fighting it. Add some rules that give bonuses for ‘realistic’ behavior — social check modifiers; protection against disease, etc. but in general, if that’s the game your players like, roll with it. A game doesn’t have to be realistic to be the best possible game for any given group!


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## Fenris-77 (Mar 25, 2020)

I feel like this is more of a D&D problem than an an RPG problem more generally. Let's use D&D as the stand in for games of it's type, just to be clear. The game provides you a very granular spending resource in GP, and a bunch of ways to spend it. Some of those ways, like new gear, have obvious beneficial in-game consequences, while others, like our fabled exemplar hot bath, do not. Players who inhabit the squalid huts on the very end of the gamist spectrum only want to spend in-game resources on things with tangible in-game benefits. Despite my light mockery, that's fine if that's their table, whatever. I find it unappealing and unfulfilling, but whatevs. 

As has been mentioned upstream, some games dodge this issue in a bunch of ways. Keeping our focus on D&D for a moment though, I think it's a function of the table and the players, not so much the game. I'd bet those same players would roll their eyes if their DM tried to deny them service at the fancy armorer because they looked like a bunch of dirty ragamuffins. I would probably address this general idea as part of session zero. If the table wants to hand wave it that's fine, but if they want to play it to the moist, soapy, hilt that's cool to.


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## uzirath (Mar 25, 2020)

Campbell said:


> I think the most basic thing is just making fictional positioning matter more. Someone who lives in squalor, subsists off of the wilds near town, leaves their weapons and armor in disrepair, and always seems beaten down by life is unlikely to be well regarded as an upstanding part of society. Have the people in their lives, even if just a local barmaid express concern for them. Maybe some NPCs will refuse to speak to them until they bathe.
> 
> Do not do this to punish them. Make it have an impact. Make it a choice.




I agree with this. You can even develop a standard D&D adventure where this will come into play. I've run plenty of adventures that featured a fair amount of social intrigue. You can include gentle hints that markers of status will matter. Staying at a fine inn will improve their standing. Spending money on "frivolous" things will buy access or favors. In addition to the practical benefits, if you make it fun (allowing the spotlight to shine on characters in unusual ways), the players may discover that they love it.

And maybe not. As many have said, it may just be that your players don't care about this aspect of the game; they may even actively prefer to imagine themselves as flea-bitten rogues on the edges of society.


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## pemerton (Mar 25, 2020)

Fenris-77 said:


> I feel like this is more of a D&D problem than an an RPG problem more generally. Let's use D&D as the stand in for games of it's type, just to be clear.



Yes. I agree with this.



Fenris-77 said:


> The game provides you a very granular spending resource in GP, and a bunch of ways to spend it. Some of those ways, like new gear, have obvious beneficial in-game consequences, while others, like our fabled exemplar hot bath, do not.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Keeping our focus on D&D for a moment though, I think it's a function of the table and the players, not so much the game. I'd bet those same players would roll their eyes if their DM tried to deny them service at the fancy armorer because they looked like a bunch of dirty ragamuffins. I would probably address this general idea as part of session zero. If the table wants to hand wave it that's fine, but if they want to play it to the moist, soapy, hilt that's cool to.



Just focusing on this, there are a bunch of ways to respond to it.

One is to more-or-less assume that the PCs bathe, polish their armour, etc - as a GM, just narrate all that stuff, or narrate other stuff in ways that take it for granted (eg "OK, so you're washed and dressed and ready for the Duke's ball.") Either ignore gp costs for this stuff, _or _set things up so the PCs are hosted by someone (a local personage of some sort) who meets the costs, or whatever. In 4e this is easy enough because these basic costs don't scale much where as treasure values scale rapidly. So at a certain point "Knock of 10 gp for the day's upkeep" might be slightly annoying record-keeping but doesn't actually matter to the players' positions.

Prince Valiant makes this even easier, because it only includes a money sub-game as a tip of the hat to RPGer expectations. There are no rules for acquiring more money, nor for spending it. (In our game we use the Pendragon price lists when necessary.)

Another way is to make repairing gear, keeping clean etc itself something that matters in play. Burning Wheel does this; so can Rolemaster and probably RQ. But on this approach it's not just a matter of GM "gotcha"-ing but of mechanics and frameworks to support it. (Eg in the BW game where I'm a player, I had to use a Duel of Wits to persuade my irritated wizard sidekick to repair my dinted armour. That wasn't a distraction from play; that _was_ play.)

For me, at least, the idea of introducing baths and polishing rags and the like _purely as immersion-inducing colour_ seems like the least appealing option. Because it does't matter to play _and_ isn't very interesting in itself.



uzirath said:


> they may even actively prefer to imagine themselves as flea-bitten rogues on the edges of society.



Which is also great. And can itself be part of play - both fiction and system - if we want it to.

But if the players want their PCs to be normal people, and don't want to dilute their valuable treasure (= victory points in much D&D play), then just going with assumptions and narrations seems like the easiest approach.


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## Maxperson (Mar 25, 2020)

Umbran said:


> I mean, doe sthe game actually mandate _role playing_ the bath?  Or do you simply get the stats if the bath is present, and we just assume the bath takes place?  I'm going to guess the latter...



Sure, but I don't think roleplaying the bath is what the OP was after.  I think he was more looking for...

Player: "Okay.  We're finally back in civilization after 6 weeks in the wilds.  The first thing I do is go find the inn and get cleaned up.  Then I eat a good, inn cooked meal.  When I'm done, I'll go look for the Duke to let him know what we found."  

Then the player can roleplay with the Duke and/or his minions.  I don't think the OP was looking for a detailed play by play of the bath scene.


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## Umbran (Mar 25, 2020)

Maxperson said:


> Sure, but I don't think roleplaying the bath is what the OP was after.




You guys should note what I was responding to:



Celebrim said:


> Which means you actually published an RPG with one of the strongest mechanics for *mandatory roleplaying a bath* on the market.




(Bolding mine)

So, really, don't look at me. You trying to tell me this isn't what the OP was talking about.  Heck, _Celebrim_ trying to tell me that.  Well, I wasn't the one who brought it up.  Sheesh.


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## dragoner (Mar 25, 2020)

pemerton said:


> I hope you don't mind too much if I connect your post to my own analysis above.
> 
> Clasic Traveller is another system where my (1) and (2) don't both hold: money isn't just a PC build resource - it can be, but can be hard to apply to those ends (eg if you've already got some good basic gear, 100 credits isn't taking you much closer to battle dress; and that's before we get to Law Levels); and the fiction of actual life - eg your example of hanging out in a casino - can be pretty central to play.
> 
> Or to put it another way: while PCs in Classic Traveller may sometimes be ruthless mercenaries (which your post brings out), the game nevertheless establishes a recognisably real paradigm of human life, _within the fiction of the game _rather than simply as some colour or window-dressing that doesn't actually bear upon what is central to play.




I think the difference lies between realistic and mundane behavior; what I want is for things to be realistic, yet not descend into the mundane, which becomes boring. I mean, I work with spreadsheets all day, if I have to open one at the game table, I'm not happy.

Credits are credits, we don't track them down to the single credit too much, credits are a vehicle for the story, similar to the space ship is a conveyance; so they make a decent amount, and spend a lot as well, but the name of the game isn't counting credits. I would let them buy Battle Dress if they had the credits, skill, and were willing to go on the adventure to get it. Combat Armor is a better deal, however. I'm not against them having good armor as it's good insurance of dying off hand, which even with good armor, two characters have died, and two others have come within a hair's breadth of dying.

I always try to have a wheel within a wheel going on, using the available random resources of the game, combined with improvisation. The casino was a way to use their gambling skills to pick up some money, and also meet new NPC's, such as a ruthless reporter I modeled after Holly Evans from Press on Masterpiece. Plus the luxury is nice to dream a bit about, and allows for the players to do some exposition about their characters.

An example of random rolls and improvisation; the players attacked a space liner, and I rolled the liner had a cargo of gold, I quickly made up a story of the Lacertaen Iridium, a lost cache from a rebel government, that the corrupt Navy Intelligence operatives (Like Fat Leonard) were trying to smuggle out. After boarding the liner and defeating the navy troops, they found that their ship had taken hundreds of millions of credits worth of damage (repair cost rolls), this lead to a wild chase of them limping their damaged ship from system to system, trying to keep the Iridium secret, until they met a Wintermute type AI that was running a bank from a neutral starport, where they were able fence it for 10% of it's value, getting their ship fixed, and a few million extra credits. This has lead to many other adventure hooks, with them filling in the spaces, and it all comes together.


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## John Dallman (Mar 25, 2020)

Reynard said:


> Most of the people I have known in real life that make their living as thrillseekers of one sort or another were not planning long term with their pay.



I believe you. However, there are other reasons _in games_ for doing dangerous and exciting things. In modern games, it's often been "we're the only people who defend against this invasive horror" (or weirdness). In fantasy games that have societies adapted to the way that danger builds skill faster than safe study, it can be a reasonable phase of a career.


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## Reynard (Mar 25, 2020)

John Dallman said:


> I believe you. However, there are other reasons _in games_ for doing dangerous and exciting things. In modern games, it's often been "we're the only people who defend against this invasive horror" (or weirdness). In fantasy games that have societies adapted to the way that danger builds skill faster than safe study, it can be a reasonable phase of a career.



Yeah, there are some very strange impacts on culture and society if we decide to take the rules of the game as the physics of the world. It's not bad, necessarily, but it creates a world that resembles our own less and less. Imagine what a society would look like if it were true that the more peril you put yourself in, the more superhuman you became and more quickly?


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## Asisreo (Mar 25, 2020)

Reynard said:


> Yeah, there are some very strange impacts on culture and society if we decide to take the rules of the game as the physics of the world. It's not bad, necessarily, but it creates a world that resembles our own less and less. Imagine what a society would look like if it were true that the more peril you put yourself in, the more superhuman you became and more quickly?



We'd just be saiyans.


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## doctorbadwolf (Mar 25, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> The characters live in a very different world from us. In real life, there is some sort of meaningful benefit to taking a bath every now and then. It might be hard to quantify, but it makes you feel better. There's a good reason for you to act in this way.
> 
> In the game world, that benefit doesn't exist. It isn't the case that the players are imagining it poorly, or acting out-of-character. It's just a different world, that works in different ways. In the game world, a bath doesn't make you feel better. And given that, the players are acting in a way that makes sense for their world.
> 
> If you want the players to act in a way that aligns with your vision of how the real world works, the most logical course of action would be to introduce some sort of penalty that's associated with actions you view as un-realistic, or a bonus associated with realistic actions. At a point during the 5E playtest, they suggested that you might need a comfortable environment (such as a tavern) in order to gain the benefits of a long rest; something like that should be sufficient for most purposes.



Probably unnecessarily punitive, but certainly there could be benefits to resting in comfort, and there should* be consequences socially for smelling like two weeks in “the poop”, as they put it.

As for a bath having no benefit in the game world, it’s really easy IME to convince players that there is. I just describe conditions that make them want to take a bath. Their muscles ache, they’re covered in a layer of grime and sweat, they can smell themselves, etc. Then, the innkeeper just assumes they’ll want a bath, and tells them where the baths are. 

*assuming one shares the OPs goals and desires


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## doctorbadwolf (Mar 25, 2020)

Reynard said:


> Yeah, there are some very strange impacts on culture and society if we decide to take the rules of the game as the physics of the world. It's not bad, necessarily, but it creates a world that resembles our own less and less. Imagine what a society would look like if it were true that the more peril you put yourself in, the more superhuman you became and more quickly?



I always assume this was only true for the PCs, who are more discovering their power than magically gaining power by fighting bodaks.


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## Reynard (Mar 25, 2020)

doctorbadwolf said:


> I always assume this was only true for the PCs, who are more discovering their power than magically gaining power by fighting bodaks.



I like it when the PCs are exemplary for what they do different than (most of) the rest of the world rather than just because they happen to be PCs.


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## doctorbadwolf (Mar 25, 2020)

Reynard said:


> I like it when the PCs are exemplary for what they do different than (most of) the rest of the world rather than just because they happen to be PCs.




okay. What’s that got to do with what I said, though? The two don’t (necessarily) conflict.


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## Reynard (Mar 25, 2020)

doctorbadwolf said:


> okay. What’s that got to do with what I said, though? The two don’t (necessarily) conflict.



You said "I always assume this is only true of the PCs" which I interpreted as meaning that only PCs level up, and as such what I was saying is that the PCs are not inherently different than the NPCs from an in world perspective. What makes them different isn't that they gain XP and level up and gain powers. What makes them different is that they are willing to go into holes looking for treasure.


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## doctorbadwolf (Mar 25, 2020)

Reynard said:


> You said "I always assume this is only true of the PCs" which I interpreted as meaning that only PCs level up, and as such what I was saying is that the PCs are not inherently different than the NPCs from an in world perspective. What makes them different isn't that they gain XP and level up and gain powers. What makes them different is that they are willing to go into holes looking for treasure.



The mechanics don’t reflect the “physics”. The PCs are tangibly more powerful than most people, at level 1. Whether that is reflected in the fiction is up to the group. 
NPCs don’t level up unless the DM decides they do because the NPCs aren’t PCs. That’s it.
Unless the DM decides otherwise, the town guards don’t level up when they defend their town from a monster that’s worth plenty of xp to level up a party of 1st level PCs, because the guards aren’t PCs.


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## Reynard (Mar 25, 2020)

doctorbadwolf said:


> The mechanics don’t reflect the “physics”. The PCs are tangibly more powerful than most people, at level 1. Whether that is reflected in the fiction is up to the group.
> NPCs don’t level up unless the DM decides they do because the NPCs aren’t PCs. That’s it.
> Unless the DM decides otherwise, the town guards don’t level up when they defend their town from a monster that’s worth plenty of xp to level up a party of 1st level PCs, because the guards aren’t PCs.



That's a perfectly valid way to view the world and the relationship between it and the player characters. However, i don't particularly like that view. It makes the PCs special just for being PCs. There's no reason a town guard couldn't gain a level after helping defend from the orc attack. After all, that's a perfectly valid player character backstory.

This is actually related to the overall idea of behavioral realism: plot armor, special status and relative power level are all things that contribute to players not taking their characters' place in the world seriously or realistically. As such they don't worry about mundane stuff like being tired, hungry or dirty.

I'm not saying PCs aren't special. They are the protagonists, so the things that happen in the game necessarily center on them. But they aren't, in my view, categorically different than the other characters and creatures that inhabit the world. They are different by deed.


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## doctorbadwolf (Mar 25, 2020)

Reynard said:


> That's a perfectly valid way to view the world and the relationship between it and the player characters. However, i don't particularly like that view. It makes the PCs special just for being PCs. There's no reason a town guard couldn't gain a level after helping defend from the orc attack. After all, that's a perfectly valid player character backstory.
> 
> This is actually related to the overall idea of behavioral realism: plot armor, special status and relative power level are all things that contribute to players not taking their characters' place in the world seriously or realistically. As such they don't worry about mundane stuff like being tired, hungry or dirty.
> 
> I'm not saying PCs aren't special. They are the protagonists, so the things that happen in the game necessarily center on them. But they aren't, in my view, categorically different than the other characters and creatures that inhabit the world. They are different by deed.



Sure, and their deeds define them as PCs, which use different rules in the D&D game.


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## Reynard (Mar 25, 2020)

doctorbadwolf said:


> Sure, and their deeds define them as PCs, which use different rules in the D&D game.



I don't follow your logic, insofar as it seems like you are making an authoritative statement to the effect. I could be misinterpreting you, of course. It is easy to ascribe tone to text, and if so I apologize. But if you are saying that the GAME says PCs and NPCs are categorically different in the fiction, I would say you are wrong. They use different rules (in this edition) because it makes the GM's life easier, but it doesn't mean in the fiction they are different kinds of entities.


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## doctorbadwolf (Mar 25, 2020)

Reynard said:


> I don't follow your logic, insofar as it seems like you are making an authoritative statement to the effect. I could be misinterpreting you, of course. It is easy to ascribe tone to text, and if so I apologize. But if you are saying that the GAME says PCs and NPCs are categorically different in the fiction, I would say you are wrong. They use different rules (in this edition) because it makes the GM's life easier, but it doesn't mean in the fiction they are different kinds of entities.



I didn’t say they’re categorically different in the fiction. I said they use different rules.


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## Reynard (Mar 25, 2020)

doctorbadwolf said:


> I didn’t say they’re categorically different in the fiction. I said they use different rules.



I obviously misinterpreted your initial comments. My apologies.


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## doctorbadwolf (Mar 25, 2020)

Reynard said:


> I obviously misinterpreted your initial comments. My apologies.



I wasn’t clear. My bad.


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## dragoner (Mar 26, 2020)

Part of my feeling of the PC's wanting to sleep outside, is that they have presented a perfect opportunity to mess with them, like:
PC's: "We're going to camp outside in the woods."
Me: "Really?" Menacing chuckle, looks in book, rolls some dice, "Wow!" Evil laugh. "So who is taking first watch?" Grin.

Usually they will pack up and head to an Inn or somewhere.


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## Guest 6801328 (Mar 26, 2020)

Reynard said:


> I like it when the PCs are exemplary for what they do different than (most of) the rest of the world rather than just because they happen to be PCs.




Ok, but do your _players_ like it?  (I'm guessing not, or you wouldn't have started this thread.)  Again, it sounds like you want to impose an aesthetic.

There are lots of people who don't take baths, and/or who sleep outside of town in the woods.  Sure, most of them are homeless.  But there are some wealthy eccentrics who do really weird things.  

It seems like your "Behavioral Realism" is close to synonymous with "normal" behavior.  I, for one, don't want my players (or my characters) to be bound by what is statistically most likely.


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## Reynard (Mar 26, 2020)

Elfcrusher said:


> Ok, but do your _players_ like it?  (I'm guessing not, or you wouldn't have started this thread.)  Again, it sounds like you want to impose an aesthetic.
> 
> There are lots of people who don't take baths, and/or who sleep outside of town in the woods.  Sure, most of them are homeless.  But there are some wealthy eccentrics who do really weird things.
> 
> It seems like your "Behavioral Realism" is close to synonymous with "normal" behavior.  I, for one, don't want my players (or my characters) to be bound by what is statistically most likely.



I am not trying to impose anything. I am trying to encourage a thing. There's a world of difference. I don't think my players have a "don't tread on me" attitude so much as they just don't really think about it. They aren't intentionally playing Howard Hughs level eccentrics, they are just pinching pennies for better gear.

Ultimately, I think that it's not up to me. I can describe the world as a place where you really, really want to take a bath after climbing out of the dungeon, but I can't make them do it.


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## lowkey13 (Mar 26, 2020)

*Deleted by user*


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## Reynard (Mar 26, 2020)

lowkey13 said:


> Spoken like a parent.
> 
> "Don't you know that other kids are starving? WHY CAN'T YOU EAT YOUR VEGETABLES?"



I do have 2 kids, and they don't take baths either.


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## Longspeak (Mar 26, 2020)

I have not really encountered this problem. 

Now... most of the time, players don't want to RP this. They want to say "I get a room, a bath, a meal, and some sleep. What's next?" And that's valid. Some don't even want to have to say it. It falls under the category of "uhh.... duh!" for them. Of course they get a room, wash up, eat and sleep. Why did we have to waste time discussing it?"

I've had players who want to explain or narrate details. "I get a room in the finest in, have a hot bath in water scented with lavender, eat a delicious meal of succulent roast pig with potatoes and fresh greens, then take the serving wench to bed with me if she be willing. What's next?" Or Cheaper versions. "I get the cheapest room I can find, and eat my own rations..."

I've had players who want to RP some of the minutia. "I want to haggle with the innkeep over the price. May I?" "I'd like to see a menu for dinner, please?"

And there have been times when I wanted to introduce something during this down time. "Your baths are uninterrupted, but as you're enjoying your supper...."

But for the most part, these are background details the players IME don't generally want to waste a lot of time on. When they DO, it's as framing for something else they want to play. "As we're sitting down to supper, I have a question I want to ask Rolf about his actions in that last combat..."

As GM, part of my job is to let the players have the scenes they want between the scenes I create. So I always let them, though there's a balance. You can't let one player frame a dozen scenes while the rest twiddle thumbs.

In my current D&D and Numenera, last time I narrated reaching town, first thing half the players did was ask about places to bathe, or soft beds. One asked for any food that "wasn't burned over an open flame."


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## LordEntrails (Mar 26, 2020)

I've started giving out stronghold benefits (Dragon Heist) such as when the party takes a long rest in their nice comfy beds in the tavern they own (Trollskull Tavern) they get 2 temp hit points. Really doesn't affect the combats, but they love it.

One could do something similar by increasing healing rates, granting advantage on the next saving throw, temp HPs, etc. Or, one could go the other way and every long rest not taken in a comfortable environment (warm safe bed) reduces their hit point maximum or the amount of healing they receive from long rests. (i.e. after 5 days in the wild, you gain all but 5 hit points from a long rest, you have to use healing dice or magic to get those back).

Depends upon the game you are playing


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## Shiroiken (Mar 26, 2020)

It really depends on your players. My group very much roleplays in a realistic manner (other than suicidal tendencies to adventure). A PC noble will buy the nicest room in the inn, another might buy rounds of drinks for people in the tavern, while another might try to seduce someone with gifts. Admittedly 5E D&D helps with this, since money has little use outside of buying better armor (and potions of healing if permitted by the DM). Other RPGs (such as L5R) don't focus on money, allowing more freedom for characters to act as they feel they should.


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## MGibster (Mar 27, 2020)

A few years back I was participating in a one shot GURPS Fantasy game as a player and the adventure depended on all the PCs being in the same inn for the night.  We had pre-made characters and one of the players picked the ranger and insisted that he would sleep in the woods outside the gated city while we slept in the inn.  After a few minutes of other characters trying to coax him into staying at an inn the GM just skipped it and let us go get him when we found out adventure was afoot.  What I learned from this GM is that sometimes it's better to just let the player dig their heels in even if it's silly and find a way to work around it.


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## pemerton (Mar 27, 2020)

MGibster said:


> A few years back I was participating in a one shot GURPS Fantasy game as a player and the adventure depended on all the PCs being in the same inn for the night.  We had pre-made characters and one of the players picked the ranger and insisted that he would sleep in the woods outside the gated city while we slept in the inn.  After a few minutes of other characters trying to coax him into staying at an inn the GM just skipped it and let us go get him when we found out adventure was afoot.  What I learned from this GM is that sometimes it's better to just let the player dig their heels in even if it's silly and find a way to work around it.



It sounds like your GM resolved this issue. To me it looks like an error of assumed technique - that is, the adventure author seems to have framed _where do you sleep?_ as if that was a question for the players to answer - and then hoped that they give the "right" answer - whereas what was need was a hard frame along the lines of _OK, so as you are asleep at such-and-such an inn_. There's nothing to be gained by framing something as a matter for player decision-making when, in fact, it's not.


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## MGibster (Mar 27, 2020)

pemerton said:


> It sounds like your GM resolved this issue. To me it looks like an error of assumed technique - that is, the adventure author seems to have framed _where do you sleep?_ as if that was a question for the players to answer - and then hoped that they give the "right" answer - whereas what was need was a hard frame along the lines of _OK, so as you are asleep at such-and-such an inn_. There's nothing to be gained by framing something as a matter for player decision-making when, in fact, it's not.




I don't think it was an error by the author.  The GM described us all coming back from an adventure and looking forward to some rest describing the inn we had selected to stay in.  That's when Mr. Ranger made it clear in no uncertain terms that he was sleeping out in the woods.  It was a game night filled with player characters going off on odd tangents like that.  Most of which was not the least bit entertaining in my opinion.


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## FrogReaver (Mar 27, 2020)

Reynard said:


> Broadly speaking, I am wondering about encouraging realism in player behavior, particularly in games like D&D that have few mechanical incentives to do anything but hoard weapons and armor.




What is realistic?


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## bloodtide (Mar 27, 2020)

It's almost impossible for most players, most people even, to imagine life as anything except modern 20/21 st century life.  Life was very different before 1900(or really 1950), but most people have no idea what it was like at all.  And life in say 1300 of D&D times, is even more so beyond that.  

Take the Inn Example.  To a modern person, once they ''rough it" for a week in the wild they do just love ''getting back to normal" of civilization: running clean water, made food and drink, a soft bed, fun and games.  Though this is from a modern person who has all that in normal life.  The average adventurer type most likely grew up on a farm...in 1300-1500.  So no running water, no electricity, no phone, no lights, no motorcars.  They eat and drank things that were not exactly ''supermarket clean'.  Most everything was room temperature (no refrigeration).   They had to hunt and trap and kill and prepare all most all their own food.  They did not bathe much...maybe once a month.  They made a lot of their own stuff.  Made things were crude too, but that was the best they could do without machines and modern materals.  

So the typical rough adventurer would not much stay at an Inn.....that is a place for ''soft" people.  To use the modern equivalent: it's like having a servant feed you with a utensil and you'd stand still as they would wash, clean and dress you.    Few modern people would like that...


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## BrassDragon (Mar 27, 2020)

Health and hygiene issues aside, normal human beings wouldn't be able to cope with the amount of death, danger and violence a typical adventuring party deals with on the regular... that stuff leads to long-term behavioral effects that we're only beginning to understand in the real world. Even games that are supposedly 'gritty' have superhuman thresholds before players experience mechanical consequences or are required to roleplay the trauma  (e.g. seeing a Deep One decreases your sanity score but getting shoved by a robber going for your purse wouldn't even register in a typical game but might require counseling for a real person.)

Is it fun to explore these themes as an arc or two? Sure. Is it fun to factor these things into every choice players make at any moment? Not my cup of tea.

The most precious commodity for all my roleplaying groups is time. It's hard enough to get everyone together and commit to several hours of uninterrupted fun. I don't want to waste too much time on stuff that doesn't enhance the core fantasy.

Figuring out precisely how the vampire prince of New York pays his taxes, whether your half-orc gets hypothermia when emerging from the underground lake or if the smuggler's hair is sufficiently clean to pass as an Imperial officer... all these details are time sinks for very slight returns with the added risk of undermining our shared expectations of the game.


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## Reynard (Mar 27, 2020)

bloodtide said:


> It's almost impossible for most players, most people even, to imagine life as anything except modern 20/21 st century life. Life was very different before 1900(or really 1950), but most people have no idea what it was like at all. And life in say 1300 of D&D times, is even more so beyond that.
> 
> Take the Inn Example. To a modern person, once they ''rough it" for a week in the wild they do just love ''getting back to normal" of civilization: running clean water, made food and drink, a soft bed, fun and games. Though this is from a modern person who has all that in normal life. The average adventurer type most likely grew up on a farm...in 1300-1500. So no running water, no electricity, no phone, no lights, no motorcars. They eat and drank things that were not exactly ''supermarket clean'. Most everything was room temperature (no refrigeration). They had to hunt and trap and kill and prepare all most all their own food. They did not bathe much...maybe once a month. They made a lot of their own stuff. Made things were crude too, but that was the best they could do without machines and modern materals.
> 
> So the typical rough adventurer would not much stay at an Inn.....that is a place for ''soft" people. To use the modern equivalent: it's like having a servant feed you with a utensil and you'd stand still as they would wash, clean and dress you. Few modern people would like that...



The intent isn't to enforce medieval realism, it's to encourage behavior that shows the adventurers are actual real people underneath all that spikey armor. I don't care if they act like people from 1300, I would just like if they acted a little more like real people.


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## Ovinomancer (Mar 27, 2020)

Reynard said:


> The intent isn't to enforce medieval realism, it's to encourage behavior that shows the adventurers are actual real people underneath all that spikey armor. I don't care if they act like people from 1300, I would just like if they acted a little more like real people.



It's entirely arguable that they are.  People in real life react to incentives.  It appears that your players are reacting to the incentives in your game: avoiding unecessary costs so they can prioritize thise things that actually relate to survival and goal realization.  If you want them to act as you want them to, no amount of generalized aesthetic desire will do so if the incentives you have in place support acting differently.  In other words, this is partly your fault for not establishing an incentive structure that encourages desired behavior.  Continuing to wistfully wish it would be different while not changing the incentives is a waste of time: it won't magically change on its own.

Whether or not you should is a different, and subjective, discussion.


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## MGibster (Mar 27, 2020)

Ovinomancer said:


> Continuing to wistfully wish it would be different while not changing the incentives is a waste of time: it won't magically change on its own.




He's asked for advice and has been pretty receptive to it.  I don't think Reynard is just wistfully wishing things were different.  

The fact of the matter is that some players view their characters much as one might a chess piece.  In real life, most people who have spent weeks adventuring, risking their lives, eating iron rations, and returning with a hoard of treasure aren't going to pass up a chance to sleep under a roof, do a little drinking, and fill their bellies with a decent food.  But the player isn't the one sleeping in the woods, standing watch, and eating those godawful iron rations day-after-day; the game pawn is the one suffering.   Which is a legitimate way to go about your role playing business even if it's not one that I personally prefer myself.  

On the other hand, I have learned that throughout recorded history we can find plenty of examples of people who don't do the normal thing.  Enough to where I feel comfortable with a PC who is so bizarre as to prefer the woods and iron rations to an inn serving rabbit stew.  Especially as how this kind of behavior will not typically have an adverse impact on the game.  We just don't focus on those kinds of things in most fantasy adventure games.


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## bloodtide (Mar 27, 2020)

Reynard said:


> The intent isn't to enforce medieval realism, it's to encourage behavior that shows the adventurers are actual real people underneath all that spikey armor. I don't care if they act like people from 1300, I would just like if they acted a little more like real people.




It's a bit odd to say the least that you'd want modern realism in a medieval setting.  

It seems the complant is that the players are not acting in exactly the ways you want them to act so you can feel the fictional characters are real people.  You might say ''all people" do whatever it is you say they ''must" do....but you'd be wrong.  People are people.  People do lots of...well, stuff.  Watch the news and go meet some people: you will find everyone does not think like you.

You force the players to do things...but it's a bit pointless, and will only last as long as you force it too.  Have the king say he won't meet with the smelly, dirty characters and just the player will just say "whatever my character cleans up...so, ok, now we go to the king".  If having the players do that for a second counts, then you have a 'win'.


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## Ovinomancer (Mar 27, 2020)

MGibster said:


> He's asked for advice and has been pretty receptive to it.  I don't think Reynard is just wistfully wishing things were different.
> 
> The fact of the matter is that some players view their characters much as one might a chess piece.  In real life, most people who have spent weeks adventuring, risking their lives, eating iron rations, and returning with a hoard of treasure aren't going to pass up a chance to sleep under a roof, do a little drinking, and fill their bellies with a decent food.  But the player isn't the one sleeping in the woods, standing watch, and eating those godawful iron rations day-after-day; the game pawn is the one suffering.   Which is a legitimate way to go about your role playing business even if it's not one that I personally prefer myself.
> 
> On the other hand, I have learned that throughout recorded history we can find plenty of examples of people who don't do the normal thing.  Enough to where I feel comfortable with a PC who is so bizarre as to prefer the woods and iron rations to an inn serving rabbit stew.  Especially as how this kind of behavior will not typically have an adverse impact on the game.  We just don't focus on those kinds of things in most fantasy adventure games.



What incentives are in place?  There's an incentive for modern people to bathe -- social ostracism being a real thing most eould like to avoid.  Saying it's just a "some players" thing is passing the buck and ignoring that without incentive all you're doing is hoping people play the way you'd like.  That there's zero benefit to the players, and often a cost, for doing so gets elided.  I mean, you could get lucky and have players that find enjoyment in such play and so incentivize themselves, but, again, that relying on wistful wishing rather than a good look at whether you're actually playing the game you want.


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## Reynard (Mar 27, 2020)

bloodtide said:


> It's a bit odd to say the least that you'd want modern realism in a medieval setting.
> 
> It seems the complant is that the players are not acting in exactly the ways you want them to act so you can feel the fictional characters are real people. You might say ''all people" do whatever it is you say they ''must" do....but you'd be wrong. People are people. People do lots of...well, stuff. Watch the news and go meet some people: you will find everyone does not think like you.
> 
> You force the players to do things...but it's a bit pointless, and will only last as long as you force it too. Have the king say he won't meet with the smelly, dirty characters and just the player will just say "whatever my character cleans up...so, ok, now we go to the king". If having the players do that for a second counts, then you have a 'win'.



I don't feel like this is an accurate representation of the situation or my motivation or desires as I have presented them. I can only assume I have not been clear in that case. At the risk of sounding like a broken record:

I am asking for is some thoughts on what kinds of tools a GM can employ to encourage players viewing and then presenting their characters in a more viscerally realistic fashion. Some folks have been very helpful, and I have enjoyed most of the discussion. The question of whether mechanical incentives are more worthwhile than in-fiction ones is an interesting one with no clearly superior answer.


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## Reynard (Mar 27, 2020)

Ovinomancer said:


> What incentives are in place? There's an incentive for modern people to bathe -- social ostracism being a real thing most eould like to avoid. Saying it's just a "some players" thing is passing the buck and ignoring that without incentive all you're doing is hoping people play the way you'd like. That there's zero benefit to the players, and often a cost, for doing so gets elided. I mean, you could get lucky and have players that find enjoyment in such play and so incentivize themselves, but, again, that relying on wistful wishing rather than a good look at whether you're actually playing the game you want.



I don't think just the sphere of social ostracism is the only, or even primary, reason most people maintain some level of hygiene. Especially in the modern first world where for most people the cost of cleanliness is negligible people do it because it is healthy and comfortable. 

Of course, individual definitions of "clean" vary and there can be some social pressure to conform to a certain cultural standard, but I don't think people in general would be filthy if it weren't for social pressure.


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## Maxperson (Mar 27, 2020)

Ovinomancer said:


> It's entirely arguable that they are.  People in real life react to incentives.  It appears that your players are reacting to the incentives in your game: avoiding unecessary costs so they can prioritize thise things that actually relate to survival and goal realization.  If you want them to act as you want them to, no amount of generalized aesthetic desire will do so if the incentives you have in place support acting differently.  In other words, this is partly your fault for not establishing an incentive structure that encourages desired behavior.  Continuing to wistfully wish it would be different while not changing the incentives is a waste of time: it won't magically change on its own.



I'm just wondering what the purpose of this post was.  He's clearly talking about  having PCs acting like real people, not having his players acting like real people.


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## Maxperson (Mar 27, 2020)

bloodtide said:


> It's a bit odd to say the least that you'd want modern realism in a medieval setting.



D&D isn't set in a medieval setting unless you make your own setting as such.  It's vaguely, kinda, sorta medieval in a modern setting kinda way.


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## MGibster (Mar 27, 2020)

Maxperson said:


> D&D isn't set in a medieval setting unless you make your own setting as such.  It's vaguely, kinda, sorta medieval in a modern setting kinda way.




Yeah, D&D is an odd duck.  Most of the settings are quasi European feudal societies but with a strong streak of western liberalism and individualism thrown into the mix.


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## John Dallman (Mar 27, 2020)

Reynard said:


> Yeah, there are some very strange impacts on culture and society if we decide to take the rules of the game as the physics of the world. It's not bad, necessarily, but it creates a world that resembles our own less and less.



I don't see that as a problem, but an opportunity. I came to gaming from SF fandom (written SF, not film/TV), so thinking about weird societies is fun. Most of the people I've gamed with down the years have had similar backgrounds, so it seems normal to me.


Reynard said:


> Imagine what a society would look like if it were true that the more peril you put yourself in, the more superhuman you became and more quickly?



The cumulative risk of getting killed counts against that. I've played a lot of characters over the last 40 years, and most of them have retired, with varying degrees of commitment to staying that way. There are some with reasons for keeping on adventuring, but most have settled down, or died. I have seen characters decide after a first expedition that adventuring is too dangerous for them, and that's a decision one has to live by.


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## Ovinomancer (Mar 28, 2020)

Maxperson said:


> I'm just wondering what the purpose of this post was.  He's clearly talking about  having PCs acting like real people, not having his players acting like real people.



Players are real people.  They react to incentives like real people (because, well, they are real people).  When they make choices for their PCs, incentives matter.  If you do not incentivize, or worse disincentivize, a course of action, the real people players will not chose to direct their PCs towards those actions.  I thought this pretty straightforward, but if I was unclear, thanks for the opportunity to explain.


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## Ovinomancer (Mar 28, 2020)

Reynard said:


> I don't think just the sphere of social ostracism is the only, or even primary, reason most people maintain some level of hygiene. Especially in the modern first world where for most people the cost of cleanliness is negligible people do it because it is healthy and comfortable.
> 
> Of course, individual definitions of "clean" vary and there can be some social pressure to conform to a certain cultural standard, but I don't think people in general would be filthy if it weren't for social pressure.




People don't wash their hands after using the bathroom terribly often, despite it being a negligible cost in time and effort and it being a healthy and comfortable action.  This is because they can do so without being noticed and so avoid the social opprobrium such boorish behavior asks for.  If they do not shower with regularity, then this becomes apparent and cannot be hidden and they will receive social opprobrium.  People act towards incentives.  Things being easy, or low in cost, are not incentives by themselves and do not drive behavior.  Low cost can make it easier to incentivize behavior, but it's not an incentive on it's own.  Cost never is.


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## Maxperson (Mar 28, 2020)

Ovinomancer said:


> Players are real people.  They react to incentives like real people (because, well, they are real people).  When they make choices for their PCs, incentives matter.  If you do not incentivize, or worse disincentivize, a course of action, the real people players will not chose to direct their PCs towards those actions.  I thought this pretty straightforward, but if I was unclear, thanks for the opportunity to explain.



Unless you talk to them and let them know what direction you would like the game to go, and they agree to do it that way.  People aren't dogs. You don't have to give them treats to get them to do something.


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## Ovinomancer (Mar 28, 2020)

Reynard said:


> I don't feel like this is an accurate representation of the situation or my motivation or desires as I have presented them. I can only assume I have not been clear in that case. At the risk of sounding like a broken record:
> 
> I am asking for is some thoughts on what kinds of tools a GM can employ to encourage players viewing and then presenting their characters in a more viscerally realistic fashion. Some folks have been very helpful, and I have enjoyed most of the discussion. The question of whether mechanical incentives are more worthwhile than in-fiction ones is an interesting one with no clearly superior answer.



I think you've arrived at looking for a solution before you've identified the problem.  The problem isn't 'my players aren't playing their PCs as if they are "real" people' where "real" means acting in specific ways that you think they should.  It's actually "what is my game's incentive structure, and how does that encourage play?"

I think, if you'll look, that you may be running a game with a reasonable amount of difficulty and with relatively low resource flow to the PCs.  This means they don't get treasure as often as they want to be confident in their ability to overcome presented challenges, and so they are acting in ways to minimize outflow of treasure because that's the game -- get enough treasure to get the gear to be able to overcome the challenges.  I futher think that you, based on some statement earlier in the thread, have many ways you attempt to separate PCs from treasure through costs for things, like baths and inns.  So, again, you're disincentivizing this behavior.  This reinforces and you end up with PCs that camp in the woods outside of town because they want to minimize their interaction with the treasure suck of the town outside of the gear merchants and possibly the occasional quest giver.

If you modify your incentive structure such that the cost of gearing after a certain tier is social approval of the town, then you make being clean and engaging socially with the townsfolk (and patronizing their businesses) a step in the path to getting more gear.  You might also need to slightly bump up treasure accumulation or reduce costs for inns and baths and clothing.

I'm running a Sigil game right now, and I built in downtime activities to increase favor with the various factions.  And I have lifestyle expenses.  These two things both gate what gear levels you can buy in Sigil -- a city where everything is for sale at some price.  If you want more than uncommon goods, you need a patron (a faction or other organization) and must maintain a minimum lifestyle.  No purveyor of rare goods in Sigil will deal with a nobody or a street rat -- no matter how connected they appear.  For that matter, you can't progress in your patron favor if you're a filthy street rat -- they have standards (although, for some, those standards are... odd).  So, I've created an incentive structure where players are heavily incentivized to engage in the social aspects of the city -- to see and be seen -- because this directly affect their ability to acquire gear they want to go do the things they want to do on adventures.

What are you doing in your game to make taking a bath something the players care about?  If you don't get the players interested, the PCs will continue to avoid baths (using baths generically, as it was a topic).


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## Ovinomancer (Mar 28, 2020)

Maxperson said:


> Unless you talk to them and let them know what direction you would like the game to go, and they agree to do it that way.  People aren't dogs. You don't have to give them treats to get them to do something.



Right, if you talk to them and they want to do it, they are self-incentivizing, and your job is super easy.  We aren't talking about times where the players already want to do it, but the times where the structure of the game either doesn't incentivize play that they players might engage or disincentivizes play they would but now the cost is too high.

And, sure, people aren't dogs.  Thank you for the strawman that you've so deftly gnawed and destuffed in a furious shaking.  Now that's done, I'm sure we can agree that people tend to like treats and also tend to dislike rolled up newspapers to the nose.  Granted, treats are usually more complex for people than a Milkbone, and you really shouldn't be hitting your players with rolled up newspaper, no matter how fun it is to do so.


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## Reynard (Mar 28, 2020)

Ovinomancer said:


> I think you've arrived at looking for a solution before you've identified the problem. The problem isn't 'my players aren't playing their PCs as if they are "real" people' where "real" means acting in specific ways that you think they should. It's actually "what is my game's incentive structure, and how does that encourage play?"
> 
> I think, if you'll look, that you may be running a game with a reasonable amount of difficulty and with relatively low resource flow to the PCs. This means they don't get treasure as often as they want to be confident in their ability to overcome presented challenges, and so they are acting in ways to minimize outflow of treasure because that's the game -- get enough treasure to get the gear to be able to overcome the challenges. I futher think that you, based on some statement earlier in the thread, have many ways you attempt to separate PCs from treasure through costs for things, like baths and inns. So, again, you're disincentivizing this behavior. This reinforces and you end up with PCs that camp in the woods outside of town because they want to minimize their interaction with the treasure suck of the town outside of the gear merchants and possibly the occasional quest giver.
> 
> ...



You are completely missing, or avoiding, the point as it relates to what my goal is in my game or with this thread.


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## Ovinomancer (Mar 28, 2020)

Reynard said:


> You are completely missing, or avoiding, the point as it relates to what my goal is in my game or with this thread.



I do not think I am.  You want the players to have their PCs engage in more 'normal' actions, one of which is sleeping in inns when available rather than saving cash by sleeping in the wilderness.  "Baths" is a general euphemism I was using to shorthand this, not a literal one.  

If you're having this problem, it's because your incentive structure is not working the way you expect it to.  Looking for more tools before fully understanding how your current structure works is more likely to push the behavior into different areas or cause animosity with the players as they feel 'forced' to do things they don't want to do and they double down on the refusing to go to inns (or whatever) and make the issue more of a sticking point.

I don't say this in a vacuum -- I've had this exact problem and tried all kinds of ways to fix it that backfired before I realized, quite some time later, that it was my fault for having the incentives in my game not align with the game I wanted.  Can you articulate the incentive structure in your game?  It's not easy to do, and requires an honest and sometimes unflattering look at how we actually play versus how we think we're playing versus how we want to play.


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## Guest 6801328 (Mar 28, 2020)

Ovinomancer said:


> I think you've arrived at looking for a solution before you've identified the problem.  The problem isn't 'my players aren't playing their PCs as if they are "real" people' where "real" means acting in specific ways that you think they should.  It's actually "what is my game's incentive structure, and how does that encourage play?"
> 
> I think, if you'll look, that you may be running a game with a reasonable amount of difficulty and with relatively low resource flow to the PCs.  This means they don't get treasure as often as they want to be confident in their ability to overcome presented challenges, and so they are acting in ways to minimize outflow of treasure because that's the game -- get enough treasure to get the gear to be able to overcome the challenges.  I futher think that you, based on some statement earlier in the thread, have many ways you attempt to separate PCs from treasure through costs for things, like baths and inns.  So, again, you're disincentivizing this behavior.  This reinforces and you end up with PCs that camp in the woods outside of town because they want to minimize their interaction with the treasure suck of the town outside of the gear merchants and possibly the occasional quest giver.
> 
> ...




Good post.

@Reynard: So here's an experiment: tell your players that their fame as adventurers is spreading, and that innkeepers start offering them free room & board.  

Now do they stay in inns and take baths?  

Maybe that will solve your problem.

(Unless, of course, it's important to you for some reason that they are willing to spend their gold to do this.)


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## Reynard (Mar 28, 2020)

Ovinomancer said:


> I do not think I am. You want the players to have their PCs engage in more 'normal' actions, one of which is sleeping in inns when available rather than saving cash by sleeping in the wilderness. "Baths" is a general euphemism I was using to shorthand this, not a literal one.
> 
> If you're having this problem, it's because your incentive structure is not working the way you expect it to. Looking for more tools before fully understanding how your current structure works is more likely to push the behavior into different areas or cause animosity with the players as they feel 'forced' to do things they don't want to do and they double down on the refusing to go to inns (or whatever) and make the issue more of a sticking point.
> 
> I don't say this in a vacuum -- I've had this exact problem and tried all kinds of ways to fix it that backfired before I realized, quite some time later, that it was my fault for having the incentives in my game not align with the game I wanted. Can you articulate the incentive structure in your game? It's not easy to do, and requires an honest and sometimes unflattering look at how we actually play versus how we think we're playing versus how we want to play.



So here's a question: is it the GM's duty to provide incentives (whether they are mechanical or narrative)? Or can a GM say "I want a grounded world with grounded characters, despite all the dragons and whatnot."?

I'm not saying I did that. Clearly I did not in the incident that inspired the post. But going forward, is there a requirement on the GM to incentivize players to engage the game that way beyond simply asking them to do so?


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## pemerton (Mar 28, 2020)

Reynard said:


> So here's a question: is it *the GM's duty* to provide incentives (whether they are mechanical or narrative)? Or can a GM say "I want a grounded world with grounded characters, despite all the dragons and whatnot."?
> 
> I'm not saying I did that. Clearly I did not in the incident that inspired the post. But going forward, is there *a requirement on the GM* to incentivize players to engage the game that way beyond simply asking them to do so?



I've highlighted a couple of key phrases in your post.

I think the notion of _duty _is not apposite in this context. No one is talking about a GM's _obligations_. The discussion is about various techniques that a GM might use to shift the gameplay in some direction or other. It's about instrumental rationality.

I think @Ovinomancer's posts are relevant to you but I don't think they provide the only angle into this issue. An alternative to thinking about _incentives_ - at least in some narrow sense of that word - is to think about _what actually matters in your game? _What is the game about? What sort of fiction is it concerned with?

To give a really crude example, which is not meant to be an attempt to characterise any actual posters game: if _friends and family_ only ever figure in the fiction of a game as either (i) "quest-givers" or (ii) hostages or similar objects of NPCs' threats, then it makes sense to me that players will not play their PCs as real people with real emotional connections and relationships, because that clearly does no work in the fiction of the game. After all, the GM will always conjure up other quest-givers if needed. And there will always be other objects of NPCs' threats.

In the OP you referred to a game "focused on treasure hunting". The Indiana Jones films are focused on treasure hunting. But Indiana Jones acts like a real person, because real person stuff - like friendships, old allies and enemies, familiarity with places and getting on well with the people who live in them, etc - are all prominent parts of the fiction.

What is your game about? What do you _want it to be about_? If those are different things, how might you move it from A to B?


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## FrogReaver (Mar 28, 2020)

Reynard said:


> So here's a question: is it the GM's duty to provide incentives (whether they are mechanical or narrative)? Or can a GM say "I want a grounded world with grounded characters, despite all the dragons and whatnot."?
> 
> I'm not saying I did that. Clearly I did not in the incident that inspired the post. But going forward, is there a requirement on the GM to incentivize players to engage the game that way beyond simply asking them to do so?




I'm still stuck at the first thought - what's unreasonable/unrealistic about having adventures be penny pinchers who would rather camp outside than sleep in the Inn?

Seems like a perfectly legit story to me.

I think too often we let our views of what is typically normal sway our opinions on what we call realistic.  There's plenty of realistic things some people do that aren't typical of the vast majority of the population.


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## macd21 (Mar 28, 2020)

Reynard said:


> So here's a question: is it the GM's duty to provide incentives (whether they are mechanical or narrative)? Or can a GM say "I want a grounded world with grounded characters, despite all the dragons and whatnot."?
> 
> I'm not saying I did that. Clearly I did not in the incident that inspired the post. But going forward, is there a requirement on the GM to incentivize players to engage the game that way beyond simply asking them to do so?




‘Requirement’ and ‘duty’ probably aren’t the right words. The GM doesn’t have to do it. But it would be advisable for him to do so, if that’s the outcome he wants.

If this type of play isn’t something the players have been doing on their own (sans incentives), then it’s probably something they’re not particularly interested in. Simply insisting that they do it anyway is probably just going to annoy them.


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## Ovinomancer (Mar 28, 2020)

Reynard said:


> So here's a question: is it the GM's duty to provide incentives (whether they are mechanical or narrative)? Or can a GM say "I want a grounded world with grounded characters, despite all the dragons and whatnot."?
> 
> I'm not saying I did that. Clearly I did not in the incident that inspired the post. But going forward, is there a requirement on the GM to incentivize players to engage the game that way beyond simply asking them to do so?



If you want a behavior, yes, you have to incentivize it.  If you're lucky, your players will prioritize that themselves, and self-incentivize, and you don't have to worry about it.  If not, well, you have to build in incentives or disincentives.  The game you play also has a set of built in incentives that you should be aware of, as going against these incentives will be unrewarding.

What I strongly recommend to you is to look at how your current game has structured the incentives for play.  It appears, given what you've posted, that your players are acting very rationally in their choices because there's no benefit to go to the inn or have a bath or be otherwise 'normal' outside of a vague aesthetic.  There are disincentives for doing so, though, in that these things cost coin that they feel they need to save towards better gear.  There's strong incentive to get better gear.  You put these things together and it's entirely rational to avoid expenses that have no benefit in game and only a slight benefit in aesthetics, especially if the cost avoidance increases the rate at which you can acquire actual benefit in terms of kewl lewt.

If you use a new tool to address this without addressing the underlying incentive structure might work, you might stumble onto a new layer of incentives that causes players to engage in the fiction in a more aesthetically pleasing way, but you might also pick a way that further disrupts that aesthetic.  If you're picking things blind to the existing structure, odds are better on the latter than the accidentally fortunate former.


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## FrogReaver (Mar 28, 2020)

Ovinomancer said:


> If you want a behavior, yes, you have to incentivize it.  If you're lucky, your players will prioritize that themselves, and self-incentivize, and you don't have to worry about it.  If not, well, you have to build in incentives or disincentives.  The game you play also has a set of built in incentives that you should be aware of, as going against these incentives will be unrewarding.
> 
> What I strongly recommend to you is to look at how your current game has structured the incentives for play.  It appears, given what you've posted, that your players are acting very rationally in their choices because there's no benefit to go to the inn or have a bath or be otherwise 'normal' outside of a vague aesthetic.  There are disincentives for doing so, though, in that these things cost coin that they feel they need to save towards better gear.  There's strong incentive to get better gear.  You put these things together and it's entirely rational to avoid expenses that have no benefit in game and only a slight benefit in aesthetics, especially if the cost avoidance increases the rate at which you can acquire actual benefit in terms of kewl lewt.
> 
> If you use a new tool to address this without addressing the underlying incentive structure might work, you might stumble onto a new layer of incentives that causes players to engage in the fiction in a more aesthetically pleasing way, but you might also pick a way that further disrupts that aesthetic.  If you're picking things blind to the existing structure, odds are better on the latter than the accidentally fortunate former.




Fully agree.  Just wanted to add that sometimes that incentive/disincentive can be social pressure to have the player have the character act more "typical" even without an underlying game mechanic


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## hawkeyefan (Mar 28, 2020)

FrogReaver said:


> I'm still stuck at the first thought - what's unreasonable/unrealistic about having adventures be penny pinchers who would rather camp outside than sleep in the Inn?
> 
> Seems like a perfectly legit story to me.
> 
> I think too often we let our views of what is typically normal sway our opinions on what we call realistic.  There's plenty of realistic things some people do that aren't typical of the vast majority of the population.




I think that it may be a perfectly fine story. But I think it’s downplaying how enticing it would be....after weeks in the wild and sleeping in awful conditions and eating rations and being subject to the elements....to have a home cooked meal a hot bath and to sleep in an actual bed. 

If the goal of the game is to somehow produce that desire.....to make the draw of it in the fiction to be as strong as it would be in real life....then yeah, it is probably something that should have some kind of mechanical incentive. 

The particulars of that seem to be what is in question. Those will vary by preference, but I think that @Reynard needs to look at it and talk to the players and figure out something. 

It could be as simple as abstracting that side of things in terms of money. Let all their GP and treasure found go toward funding new gear and so on. But just say that an abstracted portion goes toward lifestyle. 

You could go a little further with that and say that different levels of lifestyle require a % of the treasure. You could also even then incentivize further by having levels of lifestyle grant increasing benefits of some sort. These can be temp HP after resting well or advantage on CHA checks after bathing or whatever. 

I wouldn’t penalize them for the way they’re playing so far, though. Better to incentivize the desired behavior.


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## FrogReaver (Mar 28, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> I think that it may be a perfectly fine story. But I think it’s downplaying how enticing it would be....after weeks in the wild and sleeping in awful conditions and eating rations and being subject to the elements....to have a home cooked meal a hot bath and to sleep in an actual bed.




For a typical person it's very enticing.  For a realistic person I don't think that's necessarily the case.  Typical does not = realistic.  That's the fallacy here.


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## bloodtide (Mar 28, 2020)

Reynard said:


> So here's a question: is it the GM's duty to provide incentives (whether they are mechanical or narrative)? Or can a GM say "I want a grounded world with grounded characters, despite all the dragons and whatnot."?




Well, you can't say you want a ''type X" world and game play without giving the players a detailed description of what you want.  Really, this should be a very specific written document of whatever you want the players to do in the game.  

But that is if you really, really, really want to derail the game with some DM demand.  Like ''ok, when your character is dirty I want you to stop the game and loudly declare how your character cleans themselves up."  Some players will be fine with it, they will just say a ''whatever DM" and maybe remember to do it sometimes.  Other players won't like being forced to do something just to make the DM happy.  

And if it's a fluff thing like washing, you will just slow the game down.  Some players will stop and say things to make you happy.  Some will forget, and then they will back track and say they did it when you remind them.  And some will only do it when you force them to: "fine whatever DM, my character takes a bath..ok.  So can we go meet the baron now and go on the adventure?"

Really, the answer is to find players that think the same way you do.


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## Fenris-77 (Mar 28, 2020)

FrogReaver said:


> For a typical person it's very enticing.  For a realistic person I don't think that's necessarily the case.  Typical does not = realistic.  That's the fallacy here.



Also, to be fair, in the original example the PCs weren't camping outside because the players were roleplaying penny-pinchers, the PCs were camped outside because the fictional results of doing otherwise failed, for that group, to outweigh specific considerations about the purchase of new gear. This is a part of the granular GP system that I don't like, but mostly it isn't this kind of problem for most groups either.


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## hawkeyefan (Mar 28, 2020)

FrogReaver said:


> For a typical person it's very enticing.  For a realistic person I don't think that's necessarily the case.  Typical does not = realistic.  That's the fallacy here.




I agree with you that we could consider adventurers to be far from typical, and as such perhaps common comforts may not be a primary concern. 

Except that it’s the stated goal that the GM is going for.


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## FrogReaver (Mar 28, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> I agree with you that we could consider adventurers to be far from typical, and as such perhaps common comforts may not be a primary concern.
> 
> Except that it’s the stated goal that the GM is going for.




All I'm saying is he may want to reevaluate his criteria for realistic play.


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## FrogReaver (Mar 28, 2020)

Fenris-77 said:


> Also, to be fair, in the original example the PCs weren't camping outside because the players were roleplaying penny-pinchers, the PCs were camped outside because the fictional results of doing otherwise failed, for that group, to outweigh specific considerations about the purchase of new gear. This is a part of the granular GP system that I don't like, but mostly it isn't this kind of problem for most groups either.




IMO - if they are camped outside not spending any coin on the inn and/or other amenities then i'd say that constitutes roleplaying a penny-pincher whether you intended to be or not.


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## Fenris-77 (Mar 28, 2020)

FrogReaver said:


> IMO - if they are camped outside not spending any coin on the inn and/or other amenities then i'd say that constitutes roleplaying a penny-pincher whether you intended to be or not.



Interesting, I'd probably argue the opposite. The reason I'd argue the contra is because in the case at hand I would assume (I know, I know) that the players we're not going to roleplay anything else involved in sleeping rough to save some cash. They do it to preserve an in-game resource with no expectation that there might be other consequences, which, for me anyway, isn't really a roleplaying decision. I don't say that with malice or judgement, the decision is neither good or bad, just not, IMO, particularly one informed by roleplaying considerations.


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## FrogReaver (Mar 28, 2020)

Fenris-77 said:


> Interesting, I'd probably argue the opposite. The reason I'd argue the contra is because in the case at hand I would assume (I know, I know) that the players we're not going to roleplay anything else involved in sleeping rough to save some cash. They do it to preserve an in-game resource with no expectation that there might be other consequences, which, for me anyway, isn't really a roleplaying decision. I don't say that with malice or judgement, the decision is neither good or bad, just not, IMO, particularly one informed by roleplaying considerations.




That to me sounds more like a description of bad (aka inconsistent) roleplaying rather than not roleplaying at all.

IMO.  The player is roleplaying no matter what's informing the players decisions for their character.  Speaking of informing decisions for a character - if you change it to a mechanical incentive so the player starts doing what you want is that really a decision informed by roleplaying?  I would say it is - but would you?


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## hawkeyefan (Mar 28, 2020)

FrogReaver said:


> All I'm saying is he may want to reevaluate his criteria for realistic play.




Maybe. So could the players. I think that ultimately, getting everyone on the same page would probably solve most of the problem. 

I don’t think they’re sleeping outside the town in order to play outdoorsmen. They’re doing it specifically to save money because that has mechanical weight in the game. It can buy them new gear and supplies and so on. Anything that is spent on something that is not mechanically meaningful in the game is seen as a waste. This is because it would be a luxury that the players don’t actually experience. 

As I mentioned earlier, abstracting all this would likely solve the problem. Just determining that money spent on room and board doesn’t get deducted from actual treasure earned. Then see if the players continually have their characters sleep outside towns. 

It’s not the players’ desire to roleplay that’s the issue. It’s the in game resource that they’re trying to preserve. That choice needs to have some consequence, I think, or cost. Even if it’s as simple as not receiving a benefit that you would receive for staying in town.


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## Fenris-77 (Mar 28, 2020)

FrogReaver said:


> That to me sounds more like a description of bad (aka inconsistent) roleplaying rather than not roleplaying at all.
> 
> IMO.  The player is roleplaying no matter what's informing the players decisions for their character.  Speaking of informing decisions for a character - if you change it to a mechanical incentive so the player starts doing what you want is that really a decision informed by roleplaying?  I would say it is - but would you?



I agree that it looks like bad roleplaying, I guess we're just drawing the line about why in different places. Making decisions like the one were talking about here, based on mechanics once removed from the fiction, is usually 'bad' if what you actually want is fictional engagement. In this case the players weren't really making decisions for their characters at all. If anything I'd say they were making decisions for their character sheets. There's enough ways that doesn't meet my general expectations about avatar engagement with the diagetic frame that I'm happy to at least joke about it not being roleplaying. Keep in mind, I did drop a caveat about my personal aesthetic distaste not equaling a value judgement. 

There's no serious argument to be had here about the deeper nature of what a TTRPG is, or what it means to roleplay. We have other threads for that.


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## bloodtide (Mar 29, 2020)

This has been a problem from the first days of gaming: everyone plays a diffrent game.  And this is the worst of all: The DM and players are playing different games.

Most players play D&D specifically for the combat action adventure game.  At lot of DM though want some sort of reality simulation.  As you can see the two don't really meet up.


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## Fenris-77 (Mar 29, 2020)

I think it may be a bit strong to say that what people are looking for is a 'reality simulation'. It might be fairer to say that some (perhaps even many) DMs hope for some (any) engagement in the fiction outside of combat, whatever that looks like. Could be social interaction, could be exploration, could be stronger inter-PC interactions, whatever. D&D is actually kinda boring when it's all handwaving in between combat encounters. IMO anyway, YMMV.


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## dragoner (Mar 29, 2020)

Things like burning infants to death, after accusing them of witchcraft, makes the never having bathed thing, not as big a deal. Medieval Europeans could be considered some of humanity at its lowest point, it's weird how they got to that point from the classical era. There is a documentary on violence, and how we are becoming less violent as time goes on, which makes for a weird juxtaposition for modern or sci-fi games, because some of the PC's are extremely bloody, having killed a lot of people. How to deal with that?


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## MGibster (Mar 29, 2020)

dragoner said:


> Things like burning infants to death, after accusing them of witchcraft, makes the never having bathed thing, not as big a deal. Medieval Europeans could be considered some of humanity at its lowest point, it's weird how they got to that point from the classical era. There is a documentary on violence, and how we are becoming less violent as time goes on, which makes for a weird juxtaposition for modern or sci-fi games, because some of the PC's are extremely bloody, having killed a lot of people. How to deal with that?




I hate do sound pedantic, but medieval Europeans didn't burn witches.  The era of witch burning was during the early modern period from approximately 1450-1750.


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## dragoner (Mar 29, 2020)

MGibster said:


> I hate do sound pedantic, but medieval Europeans didn't burn witches.  The era of witch burning was during the early modern period from approximately 1450-1750.




Yes, they did. The height of recorded activity, is precisely because the printing press had arrived after the 1400's, to allow records. They also did much worse, attacking Jewish people, and those they found apostate.


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## Fenris-77 (Mar 29, 2020)

The classical period was full to bursting with such higher brow pursuits as mass slavery, huge social divides, and bloodsports of every imaginable kind. It's not quite the enormous 'fall' to the middle ages that a lot of people seem to think it is.

I think we'd need a more granular definition of 'medieval European' too, because most them did indeed not burn witches. Burning at the stake was a particular peccadillo of the church for the most part.


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## dragoner (Mar 29, 2020)

Right, because stoning them would have been better. Joan of Arc was burned for wearing men's clothing, and cats were killed in massive numbers due to superstitious ignorance right before the plague wiped out a third of everyone. Never-mind to loping off of people's privates as trophies ... what an era of glory.

All of the evils mentioned from the classical era last past the medieval era as well, and with the additional burning of all books, intentional illiteracy. Crucifixions where they found that they had to drive spikes through peoples wrists, because they would rip from someone's hand. A boon was where women and children could help hang the husband by putting the weight upon the rope ...


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## Fenris-77 (Mar 29, 2020)

I'm struggling to decide what your point is here. Care to enlighten me? I have a toddler shouting in my ear about cornflakes, so it really might be me and not you...


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## dragoner (Mar 29, 2020)

on ignore you go ...


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## Fenris-77 (Mar 29, 2020)

Oookay champ, you pound that ignore button, that's what its for. I was specifically not trolling though, just curious what the end game was for your litany of woes. A cursory familiarity with classical and medieval history gives you that list and worse. So now we have a list, cool! Then what? That's the part I wanted to hear you out on.


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## Celebrim (Mar 29, 2020)

dragoner said:


> Yes, they did. The height of recorded activity, is precisely because the printing press had arrived after the 1400's, to allow records.




Well, actually, yes... but, no.

The printing press did play a big role in the witch panic, but not in the keeping of records. Records weren't kept by printed books, but by hand. And that was true up to very recently. Printing allows for distributing books, which you don't really need to do for "records".

The truth is in the middle ages they didn't really burn witches, and the Catholic Church had issued decrees banning the practice of killing witches early on in the middle ages. There also just weren't many people in the middle ages that believed in witches.

The role the printing press had in the witch panic is it allowed self-described 'experts' to print books decrying witches and describing witches, and then to widely disseminate those books.   It's books that caused the panic and caused people to begin to imagine that they were surrounded by witches making pacts with the devil.  And it's worth noting that where those books made inroads was mostly in the North of Europe, which at the time was no longer dominated by a single religious institution.

Incidentally, the medievals were also cleaner than the Europeans of the early modern period. Europeans didn't stop taking baths until after the Black Death closed all the public baths.

And Joan of Arc wasn't burned for wearing women's clothing either. That was the official excuse. She was actually burned because she'd embarrassed a lot of people in a position of power, and they need some official excuse to murder her. Similar thinking went into book burning. In most cases, they didn't burn all the books. They kept copies of the books in, as it were, 'the restricted section of the library'. The authorities in power weren't afraid of books. They were afraid of not being able to control public opinion.

And in general, I rather think your simple line downward from the classical era to the medieval one is a... overly simplistic one.  For just one example, you ought to read some about the practice of exposing female infants to the elements to die, a practice that was rather successfully squashed by those same medievals you abhor.


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## Reynard (Mar 29, 2020)

Thread drift is one of my favorite inevitable phenomena.


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## dragoner (Mar 29, 2020)

Celebrim said:


> Well, actually, yes...




Right. Rather than foolishly trying to defend them, before admitting what happened, you need to read more of the history as you fail to understand.

The truth is that awful people would probably do awful things, realistically. Modern and future people, would be considered worse for doing similar.


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## Reynard (Mar 29, 2020)

dragoner said:


> Right. Rather than foolishly trying to defend them, before admitting what happened, you need to read more of the history as you fail to understand.
> 
> The truth is that awful people would probably do awful things, realistically. Modern and future people, would be considered worse for doing similar.



Out of curiosity, what is your goal and intent with bringing this up. How does it relate the to the subject at hand, and how can it help encourage realism in play?


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## dragoner (Mar 29, 2020)

dragoner said:


> Things like burning infants to death, after accusing them of witchcraft, makes the never having bathed thing, not as big a deal. Medieval Europeans could be considered some of humanity at its lowest point, it's weird how they got to that point from the classical era. There is a documentary on violence, and how we are becoming less violent as time goes on, which makes for a weird juxtaposition for modern or sci-fi games, because some of the PC's are extremely bloody, having killed a lot of people. How to deal with that?




^^^ This.

Thinking about different situations, and realistic behavior. If people want to fall over themselves defending abhorrent behavior, that's on them.


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## macd21 (Mar 29, 2020)

dragoner said:


> ^^^ This.
> 
> Thinking about different situations, and realistic behavior. If people want to fall over themselves defending abhorrent behavior, that's on them.




This what? Nobody’s defending abhorrent behaviour, just people pointing out some commonly held assumptions about historical periods that are wrong.


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## dragoner (Mar 29, 2020)

macd21 said:


> This what? Nobody’s defending abhorrent behaviour, just people pointing out some commonly held assumptions about historical periods that are wrong.




Since their "well acthully's" circle back with poor logic, more like how uneducated they are on the time period.


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## Reynard (Mar 29, 2020)

dragoner said:


> ^^^ This.
> 
> Thinking about different situations, and realistic behavior. If people want to fall over themselves defending abhorrent behavior, that's on them.



Nobody is doing that as far as I can tell. I don't think you are approaching the discussion in a productive way, to be honest. Nothing in the discussion prior to this exchange focused on realism=abhorrent behavior, certainly not my OP. In fact, in this thread I distinctly mentioned not being interested in realistic portrayals of medieval psychology but just generally realistic human behavior.


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## Eric V (Mar 30, 2020)

To try to get back to the original topic, in my 13th Age game I have what could be "RP Contests" and whomever gets voted to have been most entertaining/world-building/authentic to their character gets to re-roll one of their Icon Relationship Dice.  So, in your situation, I guess I might ask each player to narrate what they are doing and why in town, and whomever provides the best story get to re-roll the die.

This way, someone who is just penny-pinching to upgrade magic items is likely to not win the contest...but it's not impossible.

It's an incentive, and it's gamist, but it also brings out peoples' best roleplaying/narrative chops. So far, it's worked well. My players have populated the Dragon Empire with a lot of NPCs and adventure ideas using this method.

Just my 2 cp.


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## Celebrim (Mar 30, 2020)

dragoner said:


> Right. Rather than foolishly trying to defend them, before admitting what happened, you need to read more of the history as you fail to understand.




My history book reading pile is not small, and I took Medieval History under Richard Gerberding. For the sake of the OP, I'm just not going to engage further, but you don't know as much about the topic as you are pretending.


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## Fenris-77 (Mar 30, 2020)

Celebrim said:


> My history book reading pile is not small, and I took Medieval History under Richard Gerberding. For the sake of the OP, I'm just not going to engage further, but you don't know as much about the topic as you are pretending.



I'm with you. I have a BA in Medieval Studies and a Masters in Medieval English Lit. I'm pretty ok with my grounding in the period. But yes, back to the OP!


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## BrokenTwin (Mar 30, 2020)

Specifically towards the OP... I'm not overly sure how you could mechanically incentivise or encourage the behaviour in 5e without some fairly extensive houserules. I find the gold economy in 5eto be weird. There's so little to actually spend your coin on that mechanically benefits the PC, yet players hoard so much of it "just in case".

I remember seeing a few ideas in regards to OSR games about having treasure acquired only count towards experience points if it was spent friviously (carousing, fine goods, donations). Which, personally, gives the players a nice meaningful choice on how to spend their treasure. But I'm not sure how easily it would translate into 5E. Useless if you do milestone leveling.

I also find games without granular coin tracking to be a lot better about that kind of thing. In a game where taking a bath doesn't cost you a potential mechanical resource, it's a lot easier to do things just bcause they make sense for the character as a person.


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## MGibster (Mar 30, 2020)

In 5E if you're paying for lifestyle all that stuff including meals, a place to stay, baths, etc., etc. is accounted for.  And like BrokenTwin points out, what else do you have to spend gold on?


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## Reynard (Mar 30, 2020)

I think we have beaten the inn/bath thing to death, so let's talk about some of the other "realistic behaviors" that get short shrift in RPGs.

Characters rarely, IME, get married and have kids, or buy a house, or join a club (I'm thinking things like the VFW). In real life, even people with dangerous careers that take them away from home do these things. Pirates very often had families they came back to, and they are about the closest analog of the D&D adventurer you can describe.


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## Celebrim (Mar 30, 2020)

Reynard said:


> Characters rarely, IME, get married and have kids, or buy a house, or join a club (I'm thinking things like the VFW).




In my experience this is generally a function of how short of a span of time is covered by the careers of the PC's. Often a whole level 1-20 campaign which takes 5 or 10 years to play in real life, only covers six months or a single year in the life of the player characters. As such, there isn't a lot of time or reason to get settled down. There is an evil bad guy to stop and a world to save.

Another issue is that these events are not usually a form of group play. Even if you do have a PC interested in Romance and Marriage, this is melodrama which isn't really suited to a large group. It's not usually a problem that the group works on together as equal partners. So even if it happens, it's not really a focus of play.

You see a lot of focus on these sorts of things in say a MUSH environment or a LARP environment, where groups can break into smaller elements to pursue individual concerns, and then join back together to pursue larger group plots.


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## macd21 (Mar 30, 2020)

Reynard said:


> I think we have beaten the inn/bath thing to death, so let's talk about some of the other "realistic behaviors" that get short shrift in RPGs.
> 
> Characters rarely, IME, get married and have kids, or buy a house, or join a club (I'm thinking things like the VFW). In real life, even people with dangerous careers that take them away from home do these things. Pirates very often had families they came back to, and they are about the closest analog of the D&D adventurer you can describe.




I think that kind of thing is on the GM. If you want them to get married, you need to introduce a love interest. There has to be a club for them to join. They need to feel invested in the community to want to settle there.


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## Reynard (Mar 30, 2020)

macd21 said:


> I think that kind of thing is on the GM. If you want them to get married, you need to introduce a love interest. There has to be a club for them to join. They need to feel invested in the community to want to settle there.



I think it's definitely collaborative. Of course, this thread is about how to encourage such behavior so what concrete steps would you take to promote connection.


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## Eric V (Mar 30, 2020)

Reynard said:


> I think it's definitely collaborative. Of course, this thread is about how to encourage such behavior so what concrete steps would you take to promote connection.



Adventures in Middle Earth has the (most excellent) Mirkwood campaign, which takes place over 30 years(!)  Since adventures are basically once per year, the Fellowship Phase (extended Downtime) becomes more important, and includes things you are mentioning here.  The author suggests in the book that new characters could be the sons and daughters of the older characters as they age out of their adventuring primes.  New political leaders become old, and are replaced, some NPCs die of old age...it makes the passing of years front and centre.

By setting the pace this way and really demonstrating the passage of time, it encourages the players to think of their PCs in a different light.


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## pemerton (Mar 30, 2020)

Fenris-77 said:


> I think it may be a bit strong to say that what people are looking for is a 'reality simulation'. It might be fairer to say that some (perhaps even many) DMs hope for some (any) engagement in the fiction outside of combat, whatever that looks like. Could be social interaction, could be exploration, could be stronger inter-PC interactions, whatever. D&D is actually kinda boring when it's all handwaving in between combat encounters. IMO anyway, YMMV.



I think, though, that D&D - at least in its default presentation - is a bit weak on tools to make social interactions or certain sorts of exploration integral to play. D&D 4e is something of an exception, because it has a generic non-combat resolution framework (ie skill challenges).



Reynard said:


> Characters rarely, IME, get married and have kids, or buy a house, or join a club (I'm thinking things like the VFW). In real life, even people with dangerous careers that take them away from home do these things. Pirates very often had families they came back to, and they are about the closest analog of the D&D adventurer you can describe.



Are you talking about characters in D&D games, or in fantasy adventure RPGs in general?

I agree with you about D&D. But I don't find what you say to be true of fantasy adventure RPGing in general. In my Rolemaster games PCs have had rmonatic interests, real estate interests, and memberships of social groups. In my Prince Valiant game romance and marriage have been recurring themes, and all three of the PC knights are now married. Two of them also started a military religious order, the Order of St Sigobert, which is travelling east from Britan to the Holy Land recruiting as it goes.

What distinguishes those other systems from D&D is that they have the mechanical resources to support the fiction when it strays from combat or physical adventuring into social and emotional affairs. If I wanted more of this sort of thing in a D&D game, I'd consider looking hard at what might be done to beef up social resolution.


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## Reynard (Mar 30, 2020)

pemerton said:


> What distinguishes those other systems from D&D is that they have the mechanical resources to support the fiction when it strays from combat or physical adventuring into social and emotional affairs. If I wanted more of this sort of thing in a D&D game, I'd consider looking hard at what might be done to beef up social resolution.




What do those games you mentioned do to support such play?


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## John Dallman (Mar 30, 2020)

Eric V said:


> Adventures in Middle Earth has the (most excellent) Mirkwood campaign, which takes place over 30 years(!)  Since adventures are basically once per year, the Fellowship Phase (extended Downtime) becomes more important, and includes things you are mentioning here.



Timescales definitely affect this. In _Pendragon_, adventures are usually one a game year, and getting married and having a family are important things for PCs to do.

I've played a couple of characters (one GURPS, one TORG) who had wives and families before they took up "adventuring." Neither was doing it for thrills or getting rich quick (though they wouldn't object to that); both had primary reasons of honour or duty.


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## macd21 (Mar 30, 2020)

Reynard said:


> I think it's definitely collaborative. Of course, this thread is about how to encourage such behavior so what concrete steps would you take to promote connection.




The simplest first step is to talk to your players and let them know what kind of game you have in mind.

But beyond that, if you want them to connect, you need to give them something to connect to. Perhaps an NPC who shows a romantic/sexual interest in a PC. A place they could call home. Contacts they keep coming back to, who eventually become friends. And I find that once you start doing that, the players will begin contributing more on their own.


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## MGibster (Mar 31, 2020)

Having players engaged in the setting is something I would love but I'm not sure how interested a lot of my players are in that kind of thing.   For a lot of players, the game is an escapist fantasy and they don't want to consider the consequences of their actions or find their characters beholden to local custom and authorities. 
Most players I know would rather have their character killed than forced to do something they don't necessarily want to do.  And you know what?  When I play D&D I'm kind of the same way.  

D&D is not a game that demands a player to follow customs, respect authority figures, or care about building long lasting relationships with NPCs.  Can you do it?  Certainly, and I'm sure many of you have.  I just don't think it's the right game for that kind of thing.  But if you want it to be that kind of game you've got to talk to your players about it.  And give them tangible benefits for playing that kind of game.  The DM's Guide has some good advice for rewards outside of experience points or treasure.  Access to information or new skills isn't a bad place to start.


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## Derren (Mar 31, 2020)

D&D is in its core a murderhobo simulator with a group of guys going out, slaughtering hordes of "ok to kill" creatures and take their stuff. That you do not get realistic behaviour from the PCs should be obvious.

So when you want a different kind of behaviour you either need to change the system completely or bend it a lot and do away with the usual core D&D gameplay.


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## Reynard (Mar 31, 2020)

Derren said:


> D&D is in its core a murderhobo simulator with a group of guys going out, slaughtering hordes of "ok to kill" creatures and take their stuff. That you do not get realistic behaviour from the PCs should be obvious.
> 
> So when you want a different kind of behaviour you either need to change the system completely or bend it a lot and do away with the usual core D&D gameplay.



Almost everything in the above is categorically inaccurate.


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## Maxperson (Mar 31, 2020)

Derren said:


> D&D is in its core a murderhobo simulator with a group of guys going out, slaughtering hordes of "ok to kill" creatures and take their stuff. That you do not get realistic behaviour from the PCs should be obvious.




One does not equal the other.  You can have murder hobos that still act in a realistic manner.


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## doctorbadwolf (Mar 31, 2020)

Fenris-77 said:


> I think it may be a bit strong to say that what people are looking for is a 'reality simulation'. It might be fairer to say that some (perhaps even many) DMs hope for some (any) engagement in the fiction outside of combat, whatever that looks like. Could be social interaction, could be exploration, could be stronger inter-PC interactions, whatever. D&D is actually kinda boring when it's all handwaving in between combat encounters. IMO anyway, YMMV.


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## Derren (Mar 31, 2020)

Reynard said:


> Almost everything in the above is categorically inaccurate.



If you need to pretend that D&D is something more than it is, fine. Buts thats how situations like what the OP describes happen.
The D&D rules is centred around combat, the goal is to amass loot and become powerful in the process. Just open the books and adventure and look how much of the content is about this. It is no surprise that you end up with edgy PCs which behave very unnaturally or PCs which concentrate on the one thing D&D is about, namely combat, and forsake everything else.

So unless you have players who feel the same need as you to pretend D&D is something different then you are stuck with changing the game. Either literally by changing to a different system or changing much of D&D itself so that the core of the game is not dungeon crawling, defeating mosters, etc.
Just be aware that its a lot of work to change a system away from its core goal.


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## pemerton (Mar 31, 2020)

Reynard said:


> What do those games you mentioned do to support such play?



They don't treat _treasure/income _as a component of PC build. They have social resolution mechanics. They allow time to pass (though in different ways - in RM, because healing, studying rituals, etc takes time; in Prince Valiant because all passage of time and recovery and so on is purely GM fiat, and so it is easy to narrate "seasons pass").

Another feature that I think is important is that they downplay the idea of "the adventure" and "the quest giver". Without wanting to be too pejorative about D&D - which is an unhelpful turn that this thread is taking - I think it's fair to say that they depend a bit less than D&D often does on "unreal" contrivances to make the action work. The sorts of contrivances I'm referring to are the dungeon, wacky traps, sequences of monsters, etc that tend to characterise a lot of D&D play. I think this sort of stuff crowds out "realistic" fiction.

In 5e play the idea of 6 o 8 encounters per "adventuring day" is one part of cross-class balance. I think that can be one source of pressure towards the contrivances I've just tried to describe. So that's one are you might look at - eg will changing recovery periods allow play to take on a more "realistic" rhythm. (I don't know the answer, but am just trying to think some things through.)

In my Prince Valiant game, when two PCs were rivals for the hand of the one maiden, we were able to resolve their courtship in various ways because the game has a uniform resolution system for all sorts of conflict - I can't remember all the details now, but I do remember at one point the two PCs were deciding who would be the one to be sponsored by Violette at the joust (or something like that) and resolving it via opposed Fellowship checks. This is an example of what I mean when I say that the "realistic" action isn't something that sits outside of, or alongside, the real action of the game but rather is itself part of the action.

I don't have a clear idea of how one would drift 5e D&D in this sort of direciton - I don't know the system well enough. I haven't tried this sort of drift in 4e D&D - our 4e game (with many of the same players as these other games I've described) didn't have a lot of this sort of grounded realism in it: it was more about charismatic leadership and cosmological conflicts than friends and family and interpersonal relationships.

But I would look at how one frames the action, how one treats treasure and other rewards, what one puts at stake in the fiction, how one handles pacing - these are some of the things that seem relevant to me.


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## Maxperson (Mar 31, 2020)

Derren said:


> If you need to pretend that D&D is something more than it is, fine. Buts thats how situations like what the OP describes happen.




There is no pretense.  D&D is not a tactical board game.  It's a ROLEPLAYING game, which entails more than just combat.



> The D&D rules is centred around combat, the goal is to amass loot and become powerful in the process. Just open the books and adventure and look how much of the content is about this. It is no surprise that you end up with edgy PCs which behave very unnaturally or PCs which concentrate on the one thing D&D is about, namely combat, and forsake everything else.




This is simply not relevant to the fact that D&D is a roleplaying game that entails more than combat and exploration.  The social pillar is one of the big three pillars.  It's not all combat and exploration.



> So unless you have players who feel the same need as you to pretend D&D is something different then you are stuck with changing the game. Either literally by changing to a different system or changing much of D&D itself so that the core of the game is not dungeon crawling, defeating mosters, etc.
> Just be aware that its a lot of work to change a system away from its core goal.



Or maybe he just wants the players to play D&D as it is.  A game with combat, exploration AND social.


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## bloodtide (Mar 31, 2020)

D&D is a combat adventure game, and always has been: it is a ''role playing game" in name only.  Just look at the proof, at least 75% of the crunch mechanics of the game are about combat.  Sure there is a whole crunchy mechanical paragraph about how you can talk to an NPC, and then 500 pages on ways to kill NPCs.   The Players Handbook has a whole chapter on Combat, but no equal chapter on non-combat.

Though THIS IS the strgenth of D&D and what has made it popular for decades.  You can play the game as just pure mindless crunch mechanical combat....OR you can do more: YOU can add in role playing.  A lot of people do add role playing to the game, but note the game still has no 500 pages on crunchy mechanical non combat support.  

The problem is when the players view don't mix with the DMs view.  As often happens, like with the OP: The players just want to do combat adventure....the DM wants some type of light reality simulation, where players go out of the way to ''role play" things like washing hands, cooking food or other mundane things.  

So on one had you have the players, ready to go on a combat adventure.....and you have the DM saying ''guy how about your characters go take a bath".


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## doctorbadwolf (Mar 31, 2020)

Reynard said:


> Almost everything in the above is categorically inaccurate.



I'm genuinely puzzled by the people who really strongly need to pretend DnD needs special homebrew rules to do roleplaying well. 

Two knights want to determine who is sponsored by their paramour at a joust? Okay, opposed Charisma (Persuasion) checks. 5e has rules for that.

Or, if you're playing a specialized enough game, you add a few skills into the campaign to cover specialized social stuff, but you don't _need_ to do that.


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## Derren (Mar 31, 2020)

doctorbadwolf said:


> I'm genuinely puzzled by the people who really strongly need to pretend DnD needs special homebrew rules to do roleplaying well.
> 
> Two knights want to determine who is sponsored by their paramour at a joust? Okay, opposed Charisma (Persuasion) checks. 5e has rules for that.
> 
> Or, if you're playing a specialized enough game, you add a few skills into the campaign to cover specialized social stuff, but you don't _need_ to do that.



I'm genuinely puzzled by the people who feel the need to pretend that D&D is not 95% about combat and that this is how D&D is meant to be played. It even has a recommended number of combats per day.

Just because you can do charisma checks doesn't negate that the 200+ pages of combat rules or how all the classes are centred around combat power.


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## Reynard (Mar 31, 2020)

Derren said:


> I'm genuinely puzzled by the people who feel the need to pretend that D&D is not 95% about combat and that this is how D&D is meant to be played. It even has a recommended number of combats per day.
> 
> Just because you can do charisma checks doesn't negate that the 200+ pages of combat rules or how all the classes are centred around combat power.



40 years of D&D doing a bunch of things in addition to combat, from exploration to grand storytelling, and you are going to ignore all that? I mean, your claim is easily demonstrably false from the very first publication of the game that was not just adding wizards and orcs to the Chainmail Rules.

No one is suggesting that D&D does not include or even embrace combat, but you are arguing as if people are saying that and countering with it is "only" about combat. I'm sorry if you have ever only played in terrible games with DMs that turned everything into a grind a slog. If you would like, I imagine we can find an online game you can join and experience D&D as it was meant to be played.


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## John Dallman (Mar 31, 2020)

Derren said:


> I'm genuinely puzzled by the people who feel the need to pretend that D&D is not 95% about combat and that this is how D&D is meant to be played. It even has a recommended number of combats per day.



Rules ideas like that are significant reasons why I continue to play and run AD&D1e as 90-ish% of my D&D.


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## pemerton (Mar 31, 2020)

doctorbadwolf said:


> Two knights want to determine who is sponsored by their paramour at a joust? Okay, opposed Charisma (Persuasion) checks. 5e has rules for that.



I think rolling opposed CHA checks runs the risk of not being that engaging. Many systems that have engaging social conflict resolution mechanics find ways to make it more engaging - a bit like many RPGs combat systems.

I'm saying this from three perspectives: (i) "top down" theory; (ii) my own actual play experience; and (iii) the fact that I think my Prince Valian experience is probably fairly typical for that system - given the contents of the published material - whereas I don't think I've ever seen D&D actual play reports about jousts, romantic rivalry, founding military orders, etc.

When D&D routinely produces the outcomes @Reynard is a bit bothered by, whereas other systems routinely produce the outcomes that he is looking for, it's probably worth looking at what those other systems offer that D&D doesn't.


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## DrunkonDuty (Apr 1, 2020)

One can certainly play any type of game with any type of system. Want to do a Harlequin novel romance with Pathfinder v1? Go for it.

BUT when a game has piles of mechanics for a given facet of RPGing (be it combat, or magical & scholarly learning, or kissing stuff) the players of that game are going to utilise those mechanics. They just will, for a whole bunch of reasons. (We can list out these reasons if we want.) This will give the game it's own... I'm just gonna call it zeitgeist.

You can try to go counter to this zeitgeist; but if you do you will (I suspect in almost all cases) face resistance that will make doing so more work than if you just play the game in the style which the design intends.


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## doctorbadwolf (Apr 1, 2020)

pemerton said:


> I think rolling opposed CHA checks runs the risk of not being that engaging. Many systems that have engaging social conflict resolution mechanics find ways to make it more engaging - a bit like many RPGs combat systems.
> 
> I'm saying this from three perspectives: (i) "top down" theory; (ii) my own actual play experience; and (iii) the fact that I think my Prince Valian experience is probably fairly typical for that system - given the contents of the published material - whereas I don't think I've ever seen D&D actual play reports about jousts, romantic rivalry, founding military orders, etc.
> 
> When D&D routinely produces the outcomes @Reynard is a bit bothered by, whereas other systems routinely produce the outcomes that he is looking for, it's probably worth looking at what those other systems offer that D&D doesn't.




One of those things is to present a game with a specified play focus.

D&D doesnt do that, which is why D&D has a thousand and one 3pp products that do.

Now, I have had all those things happen in my games, and in games I’ve been a player in, without any added rules. OP doesn’t need to learn a new system, they just need to focus on what the sort of game they want, and houserule to taste _if they want to._

How different is an opposed fellowship roll to an opposed Charisma roll? Is it modified by past interactions and some sort of score that represent the relationships involved? There are DMG rules that can be used to do the same thing, or it can be kept even easier and just create a downtime activity for the joust that includes a roll to gain the favor of the crowd, a new paramour, or gain the sponsorship of an existing paramour. The two knights would compete in that one roll, and then go about the joust. The sponsorship would literally be one success or failure in a series of tests to see how well they do in the joust.

That isn’t even new rules, that is just making a new downtime activity, which is about as much “homebrew” as making a unique background.

But knights founding a chivalric order? That is...classic D&D? I mean, I can’t imagine that not happening in a game with the same themes as Prince Valiant.

“You’re all chivalric knights in a world inspired by late medieval French romanticisation of chivalric knights and the kingdoms they fought and died on behalf of. You’re assumed to be good, honorable, and genuine, and things like reputation, (ideally, I know my Arthurian myth too well to expect actually) chaste romance, and defending the weak against the dishonorable strong, are all things that actually matter to any PC in this campaign.”

That’s a perfectly reasonable campaign brief in D&D. Absolutely no rule in 5e D&D actually pushes you toward dungeons, or worrying about treasure, or being homeless. For goodness sakes, your background can be Noble, or Knight, right in the PHB.


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## doctorbadwolf (Apr 1, 2020)

DrunkonDuty said:


> One can certainly play any type of game with any type of system. Want to do a Harlequin novel romance with Pathfinder v1? Go for it.
> 
> BUT when a game has piles of mechanics for a given facet of RPGing (be it combat, or magical & scholarly learning, or kissing stuff) the players of that game are going to utilise those mechanics. They just will, for a whole bunch of reasons. (We can list out these reasons if we want.) This will give the game it's own... I'm just gonna call it zeitgeist.
> 
> You can try to go counter to this zeitgeist; but if you do you will (I suspect in almost all cases) face resistance that will make doing so more work than if you just play the game in the style which the design intends.



Maybe the dozens of people I’ve gained with on a regular basis over the last decade or so are just coincidentally weirdos of the same type, but...nah?

D&D has many combat mechanics. Sure.  Unless you’re looking to play a game that just isn’t going to ever involve fighting, so what?

I’ve played dnd games very much like @pemerton describes his Prince Valiant game, and games very like The Hobbit, and others that centered on solving great mysteries while staying one step ahead of enigmatic enemies, and others centered on exploration of new worlds in a fantasy Star Trek sort of theme, etc.

If someone finds that their D&D  game is always the same murder-hobo dungeon crawler, it’s because that’s how they are running the game.


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## Reynard (Apr 1, 2020)

One thing to consider is that just because combat takes up more page space in the books doesn't mean it's more important in the game. It means that the designers thought it is more difficult to effectively model on the table than other aspects of play.

And if you DO believe page count is indicative of import, then obviously the only thing that matters in D&D is magic.


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## DrunkonDuty (Apr 1, 2020)

Reynard said:


> One thing to consider is that just because combat takes up more page space in the books doesn't mean it's more important in the game. It means that the designers thought it is more difficult to effectively model on the table than other aspects of play.
> 
> And if you DO believe page count is indicative of import, then obviously the only thing that matters in D&D is magic.




Re. designers and what they model and why: although it's impossible to know exactly what an artist had in mind when they created a thing it is possible to take some educated guesses. If a designer thinks that modelling combat is difficult and requires a great deal of detail I would say that's because they're thinking hard about combat and all the minutiae of it. If that same designer then covers all social activity with a single dice roll that is compared to a chart that gives some very broad and poorly defined results then they are not thinking all that hard about the minutiae social activity.

(please for the love of dog don't accuse me of hating combat heavy systems or any such crap. I play HERO, I love overly complicated combat systems.)

Given this I think page count does imply how much import a given aspect of RPG has in a given system. It's not everything in determining how players wind up playing, probably not even a majority of it (I suspect the majority of it will be the table(s) people play with.) But I think when a person reads a rule book they will find their play-style drawn towards that which the rule books draw the most attention to. 

So yes, magic is very important in DnD. No, it's not everything to the game, just as it's not every page in the rule books. But it's a very big part of the game, just as it's a very big part of the rule books. Likewise combat. And social activity... isn't as much.

Can players play against this inferred (see, I'm not even suggesting that it's designer implication) style? Yes, one can certainly do that. I do that all the time. But doing so encounters what I called "resistance" in my previous post. Perhaps inertia would have been a better word. To go against the inertia, one (as a GM or player) has to go to various efforts. Exactly what efforts will depend on the types of inertia being encountered. Maybe you need house rules. More Session 0 discussion. Constant reminders while playing to stick to/avoid a given style of play. Different types of dice. More caffeine. Ear plugs to block out the whining.

So yes, one an play anything one wants with any system one wants (even LARPs!) But different games give more or less weight to different aspects of RPGs.


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## hawkeyefan (Apr 1, 2020)

I think if you want to know what a game is about as presented, you look at what actions are rewarded in play. So for D&D, what is that? What activity is promoted by the rules in the form of XP for the characters?

Generally, killing monsters or NPCs. 

Sure, this can be tweaked or alternate activities can be rewarded or whatever else...yes. But when you do make changes, are they okay on their own? Do you need to change other parts of the system as a result?

So if I want my D&D game to focus on courtly intrigue, and I decide that the PCs will earn XP by furthering their goals through manipulation and spying and deception, but then I have all the activities resolved by individual skill checks....I don’t know if that’s all that compelling. Such a game may be fun to the group if they’re invested in it and if the GM really does a good job with it and narrates well and has interesting scenarios. 

But as far as mechanics go....”I want to trick the count into thinking I’ll support his bid for power....I roll Deception....I got a 17” isn’t all that compelling on its own. 

D&D is malleable, for sure. But there may be other systems that can get the desired effect more easily. Or perhaps a few rules or concepts from those games can be ported to D&D. There are different ways to approach it based on what the GM and players may want.

In the case of the OP, it sounds like they’re not looking for a new system by any means. The GM would just like if the characters behaved like actual people would. 

This doesn’t require a new system. It needs a conversation to get everyone on the same page and then maybe some minor tweaks to get things to work.


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## Lwaxy (Apr 1, 2020)

Luckily,most of my players behave like normal people (of their race) would do. So you may find the goblin and the kobold,and maybe the wood elf, camping outside the city, but the rest would happilypay for an inn.


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## Maxperson (Apr 1, 2020)

Lwaxy said:


> Luckily,most of my players behave like normal people (of their race) would do. So you may find the goblin and the kobold,and maybe the wood elf, camping outside the city, but the rest would happilypay for an inn.



I think if you have a goblin, kobold and wood elf all camping together, they already aren't acting like normal members of their races.


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## Reynard (Apr 1, 2020)

Maxperson said:


> I think if you have a goblin, kobold and wood elf all camping together, they already aren't acting like normal members of their races.



I know you were being cheeky, but those are very different things. Adventurers are already outliers. I wouldn't expect them to generally act like conformists, just like people.


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## Lwaxy (Apr 1, 2020)

Hehe in my world, there is a lot less good vs evil,most people are neutral and this group has a very good reason to be together, that is, preventing an ancient undead evil no one else believes in to return.


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## chaochou (Apr 1, 2020)

Reynard said:


> One thing to consider is that just because combat takes up more page space in the books doesn't mean it's more important in the game.




Presumably you also feel the reverse is true, then?

A game made up of dozens of pages of social rules and a small section on how to adjudicate a dice roll for combat would - in your opinion - be giving both elements of play equal importance.


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## pemerton (Apr 1, 2020)

Reynard said:


> One thing to consider is that just because combat takes up more page space in the books doesn't mean it's more important in the game. It means that the designers thought it is more difficult to effectively model on the table than other aspects of play.



I don't want to spend too much time on this, because it's a bit of a tangent to your OP; but I think anyone who thiks that combat is _more difficult _to effectively model than social interaction and conflict is mistaken. Combat can be modelled by single opposed checks (qv Prince Valiant, Burning Wheel, HeroWars/Quest) or even by free narration (qv Cthulhu Dark).

Maybe a lot of weight is being carried by the word _effectively_? But then we're back to focus and emphasis - if a modelling of combat isn't _effectivei _for a group unless it includes positions that change over the course of resolution (in D&D versions this is a concern that peaks with 4e, but is clearly very present in 5e with all its rules for both chosen and forced movement and positioning) then that tells us something about where the group's interests lie.

If what a group enjoys about the more detailed combat resolution process is the sense of unfolding and compelling _fiction_ that it generates - _We're going to be overrun? No, thank heavens, the mage saved us with that Web spell _- then that might be transferable to other topics of fiction that are compelling in their resolution. If what a group enjoys abuot the more detailed process is its _tactical _or _wargaming _component, then maybe not - it's possible to have tactical social resolution rules for a RPG (eg Duel of Wits, or the action point rules of the original HeroWars) but they may be a bit less :natural" or appealing than tactical combat rules.



doctorbadwolf said:


> How different is an opposed fellowship roll to an opposed Charisma roll? Is it modified by past interactions and some sort of score that represent the relationships involved? There are DMG rules that can be used to do the same thing, or it can be kept even easier and just create a downtime activity for the joust that includes a roll to gain the favor of the crowd, a new paramour, or gain the sponsorship of an existing paramour. The two knights would compete in that one roll, and then go about the joust. The sponsorship would literally be one success or failure in a series of tests to see how well they do in the joust.



Prince Valiant is similar to (and predates) HeroWars/Quest, in that many activities can be resolved via single opposed checks or via a series of checks, based on pacing considerations as much as in-fiction considerations; so the fiction of the situation can evolve through play, which changes the context of each check and the fictional framing and components that feed into it.

Rolemaster is a very different game, but the way its Influence static manoeuvre chart is set up can tend to produce re-rolls with a modification before producing outright success - so likewise in play it can produce the dynamic of a scene that unfolds over time, with new action declarations and associated fiction feeding into each check. (RM doesn't do PC vs PC influence very well, though - the resolution procedure assumes PC vs NPC.)

Someone else woudl have to judge the best way to get 5e to produce this sort of outcome. For PC vs NPC a skill challenge-like framework might work. For PC vs PC social "hit points" might work. But I think it can be worth thinking about how to give the desired fiction "heft" and just plain duration in the resolution process.



doctorbadwolf said:


> But knights founding a chivalric order? That is...classic D&D? I mean, I can’t imagine that not happening in a game with the same themes as Prince Valiant.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Absolutely no rule in 5e D&D actually pushes you toward dungeons, or worrying about treasure, or being homeless. For goodness sakes, your background can be Noble, or Knight, right in the PHB.



I think that a focus on "treasure as PC build" which is an element of 3E and 4e, and perhaps of some 5e play given what has come out in this dicussion, can be something that pushes play away from the direction the OP is interested in.

I think the 6 to 8 encouters per day pushes towards dungeons - or similar situations that contrive a relatively high rate of encounters - which is why upthread I canvassed a change to recovery rates as a possible thing.

I also think the 6 to 8 encounters per day can push towards a high level of GM curation over how the plot of the game unfolds - so as to ensure the reality or at least the threat of that number of encounters - and I think that can push against a certain sort of spontaneity or "levity" in play which (I think) can be more conducive to some of these human-oriented plotlines, which also by their nature probably need to be driven more by the players than the GM.

As far as military orders are concerned, I don't have a good sense of how common that is in D&D but I don't see many posts about it. There tends to be an assumption that a paladin's horse is something of a liability or at best a "ribbon" because horses don't work in dungeons; and there doesn't seem to be a lot of mechanical support for military leadership as a focus of play. (The 4e DMG even pushes against that with its remark that "allies" tend to refer to a small group of 8 or so rather than larger mlitary units; I don't know if the 5e DMG replicates this approach.)

But I think the issue of military leadership and forming warbands whose exploits are a focus of play _withoutt _the game turning from RPG into tabletop wargame is probably another thing that is a bit tangential to the OP.


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## Reynard (Apr 1, 2020)

pemerton said:


> I don't want to spend too much time on this, because it's a bit of a tangent to your OP; but I think anyone who thiks that combat is _more difficult _to effectively model than social interaction and conflict is mistaken. Combat can be modelled by single opposed checks (qv Prince Valiant, Burning Wheel, HeroWars/Quest) or even by free narration (qv Cthulhu Dark).




That would actually be a nice little D&D sidebar: Conflict as an Opposed Check or something, that explicitly lays out that not every fight needs to be a square by square, hit point by hit point slog. I know lots of GMs do this in some form or another, but having the designers tell them it is okay would go a long way to avoiding some of the pitfalls combat encounter design. Not that I think you should only ever engage in full tactical combat when the fight is "important" but sometimes you just want to move on. I could almost see a mechanic like the Journey mechanic from TOR/AiME where it even models a little of the resource expenditure on such a fight.

Of course, I also want a robust social conflict system that is as deep and granular as the combat system. I built one once but my players revolted (the same group by and and large that inspired this thread, now that I think about it).

Anyway, good tangent. probably thread worthy itself.


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## doctorbadwolf (Apr 1, 2020)

pemerton said:


> I don't want to spend too much time on this, because it's a bit of a tangent to your OP; but I think anyone who thiks that combat is _more difficult _to effectively model than social interaction and conflict is mistaken. Combat can be modelled by single opposed checks (qv Prince Valiant, Burning Wheel, HeroWars/Quest) or even by free narration (qv Cthulhu Dark).
> 
> Maybe a lot of weight is being carried by the word _effectively_? But then we're back to focus and emphasis - if a modelling of combat isn't _effectivei _for a group unless it includes positions that change over the course of resolution (in D&D versions this is a concern that peaks with 4e, but is clearly very present in 5e with all its rules for both chosen and forced movement and positioning) then that tells us something about where the group's interests lie.
> 
> ...



Here’s the thing. That social sequence resolution doesn’t sound any different from 4e or 5e D&D. You can use a single check to determine how it goes, or a check per part of the sequence of events, depending as much on pacing concerns as on fictional concerns.

And you can absolutely do several opposed rolls for PC vs PC stuff, or a single opposed check, or even separate, simultaneous checks/challenges against the same DC(s). These all work entirely within the framework of 4e or 5e D&D, with no fuss.

Also, as much as people on forums act like 6-8 encounters is a rule, it isn’t. It isn’t a mechanic of 5e D&D, it’s advice.

As for founding organizations, IME it’s very common, which is why things like Colville’s Strongholds and Followers KS campaign did over 2 million. One weakness of 5e is that it still has very little support for that sort of thing in terms of any official mechanical benefit.

However, hirelings, and the downtime system, actually provide most of what is needed to get more out of that, you just have to build that into a specified system.

My group is actually going to be doing an Age of Chivalry campaign inspired by the same stuff as Blue Rose. I will probably buy the new Blue Rose to mine for setting stuff, because it shares the “social politics” I want for the campaign, as well as the setting aesthetics, but I’ll be running the game in 5e, and just like my capers and my mysteries, it’ll run really well in 5e, I’m sure.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 1, 2020)

Lwaxy said:


> Luckily,most of my players behave like normal people (of their race) would do.




Oh, so they don't go on adventures?  They stay home and farm and raise children and just try to get by?


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## Celebrim (Apr 1, 2020)

DrunkonDuty said:


> So yes, magic is very important in DnD. No, it's not everything to the game, just as it's not every page in the rule books. But it's a very big part of the game, just as it's a very big part of the rule books. Likewise combat. And social activity... isn't as much.




I think that there is a huge hole in this thesis and it has to do with the difference between modelling the physical skills of a player character versus modeling the mental skills of a player character.

If you have a physical skill like "jump" or "run", then a the players physical skill is completely unrelated to that. No matter what the physical capabilities are of a player, in a table top RPG they don't extend into the imagined universe (they could if we were running a combat LARP of some sort). The players ability to run can't influence how the character runs, jumps, or swings a sword.

The same is not true of mental abilities, including social abilities. No matter what the mental capabilities are of the player character, the player's mental abilities always extend into the game universe. A player that lacks good judgment will have a very hard time playing a character that has good judgment. A player that isn't a humerus wit, will have a very hard time playing a character that is one. A player with poor memory and reasoning skills will have a very hard time playing a character with great intelligence. We can sort of help the character along, but it is absolutely important to realize that not only can we not fully bridge this gap through some sort of simulation of mental and social abilities, but we would not want to. If in fact we could fully simulate the mental abilities of the player character, then the game would cease to be a game and become a simulation. The player character would make it's own choices based on dice rolls, and the player would cease to be a player and become an observer of the character only.

So it is absolutely important to understand that there is a difference between the goals we have for the game with respect to physical abilities of the character and mental abilities of the character. For example, for the game Pendragon there is no 'Intelligence' score for a a character at all. It should not be inferred from this that problem solving or making intelligent choices is deprecated as core goal of game play.

Combat abilities and athletic abilities are not easy to model in an imagined game world, but they are easier and less information dense than mental abilities and social abilities. Most RPG systems have some degree of what I call 'cinematic experience' as a core goal of game play. By that I mean that they want the experience of play to tend to produce a transcript in the player's mind which resembles a movie. That is to say, when the players have a fight with a monster, they want the player to imagine the sequence of exciting events that transpired as the players fought the monster. When trying to achieve a cinematic experience in combat, it aids the imagination of the players if various concrete events happen during the fight - someone throws a spear, someone is bitten, somone is hurled to the ground, a healer heals someone, a caster hurls some magic, or whatever. Different systems go into different levels of granularity to help achieve this concretely imaginable result that is the exciting transcript of combat. The idea is to as closely as possible realize the imagined fight without going into so much bookkeeping it distracts from the excitement of the event by becoming the most salient play activity. 

What about social abilities? What thing can we do at the table that most resembles social interaction and is most cinematic in the same way combat rules achieve cinematic results? The answer turns out to be social interaction. The thing that is most like a scene in a movie where characters talk, for whatever reason that they talk, is simply acting out the scene by talking. It turns out that quite the opposite of what happens with combat, the more rules simulation that you add to a social conflict, the less it actually produces a transcript of dialogue and the less it resembles the thing you are trying to simulate. Social interaction is in fact the most cinematic way to simulate social interaction.

So what this means is that there turns out to be almost no direct relationship between how many rules you have for adjudicating social interaction and how much the game intends for social RP to be a central pillar of play.  And in fact, in my experience the game designers that have gone all in with the intention of making social interaction the central pillar of play by sort of intuitively taking the sort of rules we have for combat systems and creating social combat systems complete with maneuvers, reputation points, and simulated social combat actually end up creating an incoherent system where social interaction is minimized in importance.  After all, if social interaction is simulated as combat, then the transcript of play resembles combat by other means and not actual role play.   All that is really need for a game that involves a lot of social interaction is thinking about the game being about social interaction and making that rewarding.   As far as rules go, I've never seen anything actually be more effective than just a simple test to see if a proposition challenging an NPC's beliefs (or sometimes a PC's beliefs) worked and maybe to what degree.  Anything more than that actually detracts from social focused play.


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## Eric V (Apr 1, 2020)

Is there some sort of in-between here?  I totally get what you're saying, but taken to its conclusion, wouldn't that mean no one could really play an 18 CHA bard (for example)?

In most games I have been in, the player engages in social interaction with the DM, and then the mechanics take place with a + or - depending on the effectiveness of said social interaction.  That way, the introvert can still walk on the wild side by playing a high CHA character.  It also allows for less verbose players to say "I try to persuade him of my point of view, bringing up points x, y, and z" without acting it out.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 1, 2020)

Elfcrusher said:


> Oh, so they don't go on adventures?  They stay home and farm and raise children and just try to get by?




I'd like to expand on my previous (somewhat flippant) comment.

I might say, "Good thing Frodo and Sam didn't behave like normal Hobbits."

To which a certain flavor of roleplayer might say, "That's because Frodo had Tookish blood, and Sam was driven by an extraordinary love and loyalty."

Right!

So the question is, what is special about _your_ character, that leads them to behave in ways un-like "normal" members of their race/culture?

And, I would add, you don't necessarily have to figure that out during chargen.  You might have some kind of inspiration into that question several (or many) levels in.  And you might even have that inspiration because you want to rationalize an action you are taking for metagame reasons.  I think that's totally, 100% fine, for two reasons:

As DM, I don't want to waste neurons trying to figure out when you are making decisions for RP reasons, and when it's for gamist reasons.  You be you.
The gamist objective might be the impetus behind a really great character idea.  Win-win!


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## MGibster (Apr 1, 2020)

Elfcrusher said:


> I'd like to expand on my previous (somewhat flippant) comment.
> 
> I might say, "Good thing Frodo and Sam didn't behave like normal Hobbits."
> 
> To which a certain flavor of roleplayer might say, "That's because Frodo had Tookish blood, and Sam was driven by an extraordinary love and loyalty."




I think it's important to note that most adventurers aren't normal people.  Either by circumstances or choice, these folks are bucking the norms of their society.  With that said, Frodo and Sam still acted like people which is what makes Lord of the Rings such a compelling story.  

The problem isn't that players play their characters differently from the norm.  The problem is when players treat their characters as game pieces rather than characters.  



> As DM, I don't want to waste neurons trying to figure out when you are making decisions for RP reasons, and when it's for gamist reasons.  You be you.




Hear!  Hear!  And quite honestly, sometimes it's better for players to make decisions for gamist reasons in order to actually move the plot along!  And you're right, you don't have neurons to waste on that kind of thing.  You've got other things to worry about.


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## hawkeyefan (Apr 1, 2020)

Elfcrusher said:


> And you might even have that inspiration because you want to rationalize an action you are taking for metagame reasons.  I think that's totally, 100% fine, for two reasons:
> 
> As DM, I don't want to waste neurons trying to figure out when you are making decisions for RP reasons, and when it's for gamist reasons.  You be you.
> The gamist objective might be the impetus behind a really great character idea.  Win-win!




Yeah, this is really relevant, I think, and something that is often cited as a problem. I think largely because many people tend to not differentiate between making the "decisions in the best interests of the character" and "making decisions that the character would make". There's a difference between these two things, as evidenced by the staggering frequency with which people act in ways which are not in their best interests.

Also, there really isn't a problem if there are two reasons for a decision....one for the player ("attacking these bad guys will be fun") and one for the character ("I have no sense of caution and don't understand consequences"). 

And I think this is probably what's going on here is that the system in place is not supporting that duality, so you have characters behaving in ways based on player desires, without a corresponding fictional justification.


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## MGibster (Apr 2, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> Yeah, this is really relevant, I think, and something that is often cited as a problem. I think largely because many people tend to not differentiate between making the "decisions in the best interests of the character" and "making decisions that the character would make". There's a difference between these two things, as evidenced by the staggering frequency with which people act in ways which are not in their best interests.




And in defense of the players, there's a good possibility that "bad decisions" have so often led to such overwhelmingly negative results that it pushes away any thought of playing their character.


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## DrunkonDuty (Apr 2, 2020)

Celebrim, you bring up some good points.

I agree that combat _should _be modelled by the system. Otherwise we start hitting one another with nerf bats. Pop culture reference here: _"Do you want LARPing? Because that's how that's how we get LARPing."* _

But combat _can _be modelled with a single die roll. The same way that social interaction is in DnD.

I also agree that social interaction _can_ be roll-played without any dice or system at all. But, as Eriv V pointed out in #194, having no system can be unfair to players who are less socially adept, or who struggle to get into character.

Neither of which points intersect with the point I was making: 
If a game system as written puts emphasis** on a given aspect of RPG it will lead to more emphasis on that aspect of RPG in the playing of that RPG.
Caveats: It's not a 1:1 ratio. At some tables it may not happen at all. It's not even the biggest motivator in how a game will play out.

As a corollary I then posited that going against the perceived emphasis of a particular game system will lead to a certain amount of inertia that will need to be overcome. (Types of inertia and ways of overcoming/ failing to overcome it varying from case to case.)

Haweyefan, I agree wholeheartedly. Rewards in play are a huge part of how a given game winds up playing out; be it the style, the end goals, or what mechanical systems actually end being used. And I think it is a direct cause of what was mentioned in the OP about players having their characters camp outdoors rather than spend a limited game resource for the illusion of comfort. (Sorry if this has already been pointed out, I kinda jumped from page 1 to page 9 of this thread.)

Virtual & Covid-19-free hugs, y'all.


*in case it needs pointing out, combat does not actually have to have a system as LARPing is perfectly fine way to get your RPG on.

** I am equating page count to emphasis. There are other ways of applying emphasis, the broader community has a lot of impact on gaming styles, but my thesis is referring to the emphasis from game systems as they are written in the rule books.


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## pemerton (Apr 2, 2020)

I don't see CHA and social mechanics primarily as a way of allowing shy players to play extrovert PCs (though sometimes that might be a happy side-effect).

I see it as playing the same role as any other mechanic - a device for working out what happens in the game.

When there are two players whose PCs are sitting in a tavern drinking and boasting and arguing about who will win the favour of the lovely Violette, how is this to be resolved? We're not going to actually go to a pub, drink and boast - that would be ending the session and taking up a different social activity. I'm not interested in adjudicating which rival has won over the other. But a contest on Fellowship, factoring in Brawn or Presence as appropriate (is this roll about the _drinking_, or about the _boasting_?) is fun, and gives us an outcome that flows from the fiction much as combat mechanics do when they come into play.



Celebrim said:


> So what this means is that there turns out to be almost no direct relationship between how many rules you have for adjudicating social interaction and how much the game intends for social RP to be a central pillar of play.  And in fact, in my experience the game designers that have gone all in with the intention of making social interaction the central pillar of play by sort of intuitively taking the sort of rules we have for combat systems and creating social combat systems complete with maneuvers, reputation points, and simulated social combat actually end up creating an incoherent system where social interaction is minimized in importance.  After all, if social interaction is simulated as combat, then the transcript of play resembles combat by other means and not actual role play.



Is this based on actual play with DitV, Burning Wheel, HeroWars/Quest, Cortex+ Heroic, Prince Valiant, and similar systems? Or D&D 4e skill challenges? Or even Classic Traveller, which has a reaction roll system for resolving many social interactions

It's very different from my experience of play in those systems. An action declaration in social interaction resolution involves a player saying what his/her PC is saying - either directly as performance, or via indirect speech. An action declaration in combat resolution generally involves a player saying who the PC is fighting with, and how.

These are different things: different framings, different considerations factoring into the resoution, different resulting fictions.


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## Celebrim (Apr 2, 2020)

Eric V said:


> Is there some sort of in-between here?  I totally get what you're saying, but taken to its conclusion, wouldn't that mean no one could really play an 18 CHA bard (for example)?




Well, yes, I do feel it's very hard for people without a lot of charisma to play a character that has a lot of charisma. You can get part of the way by having a mechanic that allows successful interaction based on a die role, but you can't get all the way and actually also have a realized transcript of play. 

So, yeah, you could probably have a game where someone says, "I use persuasion on the guard.", rolls a dice and then successfully gets the guard to do something. But then the question arises, what did that character say that so persuaded the guard? There is no actualized transcript of play here. There is no movie playing out in the participants head. There is really less of a transcript of play than, "I hit the guard with a big stick." At least that causes you to imagine something.

And as you attempt to create that transcript of play, you find that some people not only do a better job, their understanding of social dynamics and their natural charisma helps them in much the same manner that a player with a strong understanding of tactics is better able to succeed in combat. They understand what levers to pull. They understand what not to do. You tend to find socially awkward people saying socially awkward things in social situations as well, and there is only so much having 18 CHA on the sheet can protect them from that - in much the same way that an optimized combat twink can succeed despite their poor tactics but still can get in over their head. I have had any number of times where a supposedly charismatic character lied when the truth would have sufficed fine, tried to intimidate rather than persuade, told the truth when a lie plus all that points in social deception would have worked better, insulted characters rather than befriended them, and generally just acted a jerk. Yes, 18 CHA lets you get away with that more than 8 CHA does ("Coming from anyone else...") but there are limits or the transcript of play just gets silly, and often a game system will differentiate between persuasion, deception and intimidation and a player will for whatever reason just rely on the one not actually on their character sheet. 

There are also something you just can't pull off with a die roll.   As a GM you become really aware that no matter how much charisma you give an NPC, if you can't make an NPC likable or funny or whatever, then no amount of telling the players the NPC is funny or likeable matters.


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## Maxperson (Apr 2, 2020)

Celebrim said:


> Yes, 18 CHA lets you get away with that more than 8 CHA does ("Coming from anyone else...") but there are limits or the transcript of play just gets silly, and often a game system will differentiate between persuasion, deception and intimidation and a player will for whatever reason just rely on the one not actually on their character sheet.
> 
> There are also something you just can't pull off with a die roll.   As a GM you become really aware that no matter how much charisma you give an NPC, if you can't make an NPC likable or funny or whatever, then no amount of telling the players the NPC is funny or likeable matters.



When it comes to players with high charisma PCs, I tend to use a filter on what comes out of the player's mouth.  For example, if the player with the 18 CHA PC says, "I like the garden flowers," the king might hear, "What a lovely garden you have.  The flowers are beautifully tended and cared for."  It only goes so far, though.  If the player says, "Your flowers stink, kingy," the king is going to be insulted no matter what.  He'd probably hear an insult that was delivered more smoothly, though.  

By doing that, I let the players without an 18 charisma themselves, have a closer experience with playing a high charisma PC.  NPCs will also just naturally gravitate and speak with those PCs, as well as often treat them more favorably without any rolls happening.


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## Celebrim (Apr 2, 2020)

DrunkonDuty said:


> But combat _can _be modelled with a single die roll. The same way that social interaction is in DnD.




It can, but then it will tend to be less reified in its transcript.  Unless combat is very rare, then combat modeled with a very simple system will tend to not produce descriptive play.  No one tries to shove, trip, grapple, and so forth if there isn't some sort of system that supports that.   In the long run, unless a descriptive choice is meaningful, then players will bore of investing description when it doesn't change the outcome.  So you'll end up with, "I roll to attack and do 6 damage" as your process of play, which even D&D can devolve to if you aren't careful.  (Even say 4e, once you've fired off your limited choices.)



> But, as Eriv V pointed out in #194, having no system can be unfair to players who are less socially adept, or who struggle to get into character.




But as I point out, that's like saying that combat systems are unfair to players who are less tactically adept, or who struggle to visualize things spatially.  



> If a game system as written puts emphasis** on a given aspect of RPG it will lead to more emphasis on that aspect of RPG in the playing of that RPG.




I think I'd need examples.  And I can give counter examples.  For example, Champions has a very complicated combat system.   However, Gary Fine in Shared Fantasy documented how the Champions group he observed actually avoided combat precisely because of the complicated combat system, and instead spent almost all of their time in interpersonal RP of the low melodrama sort.   Combat was rare and not a large part of the process of play simply because going to combat meant such a large investment in time and energy.



> ** I am equating page count to emphasis. There are other ways of applying emphasis, the broader community has a lot of impact on gaming styles, but my thesis is referring to the emphasis from game systems as they are written in the rule books.




I have a somewhat different view of this. In my opinion, the rules don't dictate the process of play, or at least, not very much. What dictates the process of play more than anything else is how the participants think about playing the game, and in particular how the GM prepares to play that game. So how a game presents its process of play, or how the game encourages the players to think about the game matters a whole lot more than the page count of the rules. 

Likewise, how the game encourages the GM to prepare for the game - which in D&D is done through having "modules" - dictates what the game is going to be like far more than the rules. 

This is the reason that D&D is much more about kicking doors down, killing monsters and taking their stuff than it is about magic despite the massive page count devoted to magic. D&D does an incredibly good job of telling the participants what the game is, much better than most of its competitors. 

But, and this is the key point, if you think about the game differently and prepare for it differently, you get an entirely different experience of play using the exact same rules.

And I have a lot of examples for how that works, but this late at night (and after this long of a post) I'll need to wait on them if anyone is interested.


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## Celebrim (Apr 2, 2020)

Maxperson said:


> When it comes to players with high charisma PCs, I tend to use a filter on what comes out of the player's mouth.  For example, if the player with the 18 CHA PC says, "I like the garden flowers," the king might hear, "What a lovely garden you have.  The flowers are beautifully tended and cared for."  It only goes so far, though.  If the player says, "Your flowers stink, kingy," the king is going to be insulted no matter what.  He'd probably hear an insult that was delivered more smoothly, though.




That's the point. Yes, an 18 CHA PC can say, "Your garden is lousy." to a King with far less risk of making a mortal enemy of the King than an 8 CHA PC, but as you say there is a limit to that.

The trouble is that the 18 CHA Player has a much clearer understanding of what the consequences of saying things to the King is likely to be. The 8 CHA player with a side order of say Asperger's Syndrome* tends to find themselves lost in a world of side effect social consequences and no real plan for navigating through the maze. So when the player has an 18 CHA character and insults the King's garden, perhaps he's more likely to get the gardener beheaded than himself, but was getting the gardener in trouble really the plan in the first place? Does it further the mission, or is the player now lost in the humor of having gotten the gardener in trouble and decides to start pushing his luck by insulting everything - including say the King's simple minded daughter that everyone in the court knows not to mention? And is he not at the least more likely to have gotten himself beheaded than the guy who said, "Lovely roses, your majesty", especially if the guy had successfully figured out that the King was proud of his roses and liked to be flattered? And let's face it, one legitimate interpretation of 18 CHA is that when someone with 18 CHA insults you, it stings. It hurts. It's humiliating. So, is the guy persuading the king or is he taunting them and calling them out? The trouble with players without a lot of charisma is that they don't tend to think about it in those terms. As in life, whatever comes to mind tends to come out of the mouth without having understood the consequences.

There is only so much filter you can use before you are playing the character for the player and taking away player agency.

"Introversion" usually is an overcomeable problem.  Playing an RPG is probably the best therapy for shyness I'm aware of.  (Yes, the scare quotes are deliberate, I do know the difference.)


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## doctorbadwolf (Apr 2, 2020)

pemerton said:


> I don't see CHA and social mechanics primarily as a way of allowing shy players to play extrovert PCs (though sometimes that might be a happy side-effect).
> 
> I see it as playing the same role as any other mechanic - a device for working out what happens in the game.
> 
> When there are two players whose PCs are sitting in a tavern drinking and boasting and arguing about who will win the favour of the lovely Violette, how is this to be resolved? We're not going to actually go to a pub, drink and boast - that would be ending the session and taking up a different social activity. I'm not interested in adjudicating which rival has won over the other. But a contest on Fellowship, factoring in Brawn or Presence as appropriate (is this roll about the _drinking_, or about the _boasting_?) is fun, and gives us an outcome that flows from the fiction much as combat mechanics do when they come into play.



So, what I want to know is, how is that different from a skill check in 5e dnd?  
Sure, the stats are different, but brawn and presence are pretty easy to translate, and fellowship sounds like a skill similar to 5e's Persuasion, but perhaps more about getting along with people and less about getting people to do things. (I miss "Diplomacy" as a name for the positive social interaction skill)

And an opposed check gives us an outcome that flows from the fiction just as much as your example, or combat. So, is it that Prince Valiant has everything named and described in a way that promotes a certain type of play, or is there something actually mechanical going on that isn't coming across?


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## bloodtide (Apr 2, 2020)

I think people missed my point: The dual nature of D&D is what made it successful.  

The D&D is a pure combat adventure game supported by thousands of pages of mechanical crunch.  You can play the game ''by the book": Kill, Loot, Repeat.  

Now you can, as players have done forever Add more to the game: specificaly Role Playing.  The simple fact that the D&D game has...maybe..a couple pages on any ''non-combat adventure" rules is a good thing: It basically says that you can freeform role play as much, or little, as you want too.  The role playing fluff does not effect the crunch mechanics....directly anyway.

Technically, when you stop to role play you are "not" playing D&D, sort of like when you tell a joke or story at a poker game you are "not" playing poker.  But really, it's a technicality and you can just put it all under ''playing".


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## Reynard (Apr 2, 2020)

bloodtide said:


> I think people missed my point: The dual nature of D&D is what made it successful.
> 
> The D&D is a pure combat adventure game supported by thousands of pages of mechanical crunch.  You can play the game ''by the book": Kill, Loot, Repeat.
> 
> ...



That's just not true. The same books full of mechanical crunch talk extensively about playing in character, telling stories and engaging in other non-combat based activities. you can't claim doing one thing written in the books is "playing D&D" but doing another thing also written in the books "not playing D&D." And frankly I don't understand the motivation to do so. D&D is all those things, in varying degrees based on the desires of the participants. THAT is what gave the game legs.


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## bloodtide (Apr 2, 2020)

Reynard said:


> That's just not true. The same books full of mechanical crunch talk extensively about playing in character, telling stories and engaging in other non-combat based activities. you can't claim doing one thing written in the books is "playing D&D" but doing another thing also written in the books "not playing D&D." And frankly I don't understand the motivation to do so. D&D is all those things, in varying degrees based on the desires of the participants. THAT is what gave the game legs.




I think your missing my point.

What makes D&D great IS you can put aside the combat adventure crunch mechanical rules AND do other things like Role Play.  As D&D have very little rules for non combat, you are free to do as little or as much role playing as you want.  

Still, technically, you are only playing D&D IF your using the D&D rules to take some sort of action IN the game.  The same way you are only playing any game really.  Once you start the freeform role playing, you are not playing D&D.  

And it is this dual nature...this divide that has kept D&D popular.  You can stop playing the game, put away all the characters and dice, and just talk doing freeform role playing for hours on end.  And you can even say your ''playing" D&D...by just sitting there and talking doing freeform role playing.  Really, no one would even bother with this technical point.


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## Maxperson (Apr 3, 2020)

bloodtide said:


> I think your missing my point.
> 
> What makes D&D great IS you can put aside the combat adventure crunch mechanical rules AND do other things like Role Play.  As D&D have very little rules for non combat, you are free to do as little or as much role playing as you want.
> 
> ...



Probably, because yes, you are still playing D&D.  D&D includes roleplaying without any dice.  There are even rules for it in the 5e DMG.


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## Reynard (Apr 3, 2020)

bloodtide said:


> I think your missing my point.
> 
> What makes D&D great IS you can put aside the combat adventure crunch mechanical rules AND do other things like Role Play.  As D&D have very little rules for non combat, you are free to do as little or as much role playing as you want.
> 
> ...



And what I am saying is that by the rules presented in the book, sitting around and freeform roleplaying IS playing D&D. it says so right there. You aren't going outside the rules to do that. The rules in fact TELL you to do that. So yeah, maybe, I might be missing your point.


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 3, 2020)

So, there's a lot going on here, and I think a few things might help organize the discussion.

Rule systems essentially do three things:  they assign authority, they provide incentives and constraints, and they operationalize play. 

Authority refers to who has the ability to make the final decision in an area of play.  That this is the final decision is important, because even if you run a game where you encourage players to add things and often run with it, if you retain the final say, you still have the authority in this area.  To give an example in 5e, the GM retains the authority in almost every area of the game outside of action declaration by the player and, initial game constraints not withstanding, character build choices.  This is a reason D&D is often referred to as a GM-centered game, because the GM retains almost all authorities over the ficiton.

Incentives and constraints refers to how the game rules create expectations and rewards for play.  This affects authority in that the game rules may set up expectations of play that constrain authority in some ways or incentivize a focus on an area of play.  Looking at constraints, take 3.x, for instance.  While the GM retained the authority over much of the game, the rules set up and incentive structure that the GM would employ the rules as written (or at least only deviate slightly) in how encounters were balanced or monsters built, etc.  4e carried this even further with the constraints on how encounters and monsters were to be constructed.  Constrains place the expectation of a limitation on authority.   Incentives, on the other hand, reward play in some areas which leads to focus in those areas.  D&D, again, incentives combat by structuring most of the reward system on combat outcomes.  This also serves to limit authority in that the game strongly encourages certain themes as a focus which then channels expected authorities to generate fiction along those themes.

Finally, operationalization -- what rules exist and how they act to resolve questions in the fiction. This works with incentives and constraints to direct how play occurs.  To again go back to 5e, combat has a lot of operationalization for combat -- there are details rules for resolving combats, how to move, how to attack, how to deal damage, how to avoid damage, etc.  The combat rules in 5e are robust and drive to determine outcomes..  What isn't operationalized well in 5e is social interaction.  This is an area where there are scant rules that aren't robust and don't drive to outcomes.  

To pause here, the above aren't criticisms of any game system, 5e in particular.  It's a critical analysis, yes, but 5e is a solid game even if it doesn't check all of the boxes above.  No game does.

So, to use this to discuss the current topic of social engagements in 5e:  5e had strong authority for GMs to determine the outcomes of the fiction for social engagements, weak to no incentives or constraints in the rules structure for social engagement, and weak operationalization of social engagements.  This means that it's up to the GM, and that bears out in the discussion being had on the issue.  There are those that say that social engagements in 5e are a matter of freeform roleplaying, with the GM determining outcome.  This is well within the authority, incentive, constraint, and operationalizations of 5e.  Also, there's discussion of creating houserules for social engagement.  This would be adding operationalization and incentives and constraints because they aren't robust in 5e as written.  The discussion bears out that 5e lacks a robust social engagement framework in the rules, else we'd be seeing discussion of how to use the rules to create social engagements -- something that rarely happens outside of narrow circumstances.

And, that's okay.  It's perfectly fine that 5e doesn't do these things.  It seems preferable to many that the social engagement arena is left to the devices of the GM.  Likewise, it's not preferable to others.


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## happyhermit (Apr 3, 2020)

bloodtide said:


> ...
> Technically, when you stop to role play you are "not" playing D&D, sort of like when you tell a joke or story at a poker game you are "not" playing poker.  But really, it's a technicality and you can just put it all under ''playing".






bloodtide said:


> ...
> Still, technically, you are only playing D&D IF your using the D&D rules to take some sort of action IN the game.  The same way you are only playing any game really.  Once you start the freeform role playing, you are not playing D&D.
> ...




In Poker there are usually relatively few rules about bluffing and reading other players (to put it mildly), so when players are bluffing or getting a read on other players they aren't "really" playing poker? And it's only when you add more rules about those things that they become important to the game?


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 3, 2020)

@bloodtide is raising an interesting argument.  Whether or not he's "correct" is subjective, and although I tend to think he's not, it's still an interesting point to discuss.

Two broad definitions of "playing" a game (or sport):

Taking actions that are governed by specific rules
Participating in lots of others ways, some with long histories and traditions (that may appear to be informal rules), that add (or subtract?) from the game, but are not specifically governed by rules.

I would argue that in D&D the books talk a lot about roleplaying because that's part of the history and tradition, but there aren't many actual _rules_ about it. 

Some folks here (and I'm thinking of some arguments @Maxperson has made in the past) interpret the fluff surrounding the actual crunch as "rules".  By this measure, the description of a Paladin's oath is just as much a rule as the part that says how often he/she can use Divine Sense.  (I happen to disagree, but that's just my opinion.)


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## Maxperson (Apr 3, 2020)

Elfcrusher said:


> Some folks here (and I'm thinking of some arguments @Maxperson has made in the past) interpret the fluff surrounding the actual crunch as "rules".  By this measure, the description of a Paladin's oath is just as much a rule as the part that says how often he/she can use Divine Sense.  (I happen to disagree, but that's just my opinion.)



Slightly off.  SOME fluff acts as a rule.  The Oaths are a good example.  If they weren't rules, they couldn't trigger Oathbreaker and paladins wouldn't have to follow them or bad stuff happens.  Something doesn't have to be d20+modifiers equal to or higher than AC to hit in order to be a rule.


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 3, 2020)

happyhermit said:


> In Poker there are usually relatively few rules about bluffing and reading other players (to put it mildly), so when players are bluffing or getting a read on other players they aren't "really" playing poker? And it's only when you add more rules about those things that they become important to the game?



Two things.

One, this would be an area of no constraints and no operationalization (need a shoter word), and open authority.

Two, this would also be the metagame of poker.


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 3, 2020)

Maxperson said:


> Slightly off.  SOME fluff acts as a rule.  The Oaths are a good example.  If they weren't rules, they couldn't trigger Oathbreaker and paladins wouldn't have to follow them or bad stuff happens.  Something doesn't have to be d20+modifiers equal to or higher than AC to hit in order to be a rule.



They, um, don't trigger Oathbreaker and no bad stuff happens if they aren't followed unless the GM uses their authority to operationalize this and create constraints and incentives.  The rules as presented are pretty mum on these things.

GMs often will use their broad authority over the fiction and rules to interpret and add constraints and incentives because it matches their conceptions.  This is arguably very laudable, as it allows the game to flex into many configurations and please the most players.  However, care should be taken to not confuse a given GM's additions with what the rules do by themselves.


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## Maxperson (Apr 3, 2020)

Ovinomancer said:


> They, um, don't trigger Oathbreaker and no bad stuff happens if they aren't followed unless the GM uses their authority to operationalize this and create constraints and incentives.  The rules as presented are pretty mum on these things.




Not their authority.  The rules.  Unless you're saying the rules = DM authority, in which case d20 + modifiers = or greater than AC to hit is also the DM using his authority.



> GMs often will use their broad authority over the fiction and rules to interpret and add constraints and incentives because it matches their conceptions.




The DM is not adding constraints.  Those constraints are put into place by the rules.. They're called Breaking Your Oath and Oathbreaker, and you can read them in the PHB and DMG.



> However, care should be taken to not confuse a given GM's additions with what the rules do by themselves.



I'm not suggesting anything that the rules don't do themselves.


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## happyhermit (Apr 3, 2020)

Ovinomancer said:


> Two things.
> 
> One, this would be an area of no constraints and no operationalization (need a shoter word), and open authority.
> 
> Two, this would also be the metagame of poker.




I could argue the terms but I guess we agree? The point is, great games can often be "about" things that the rules don't spend a lot of "page count" on. Adding rules for a thing ie; constraints or operationalization as you put it, doesn't mean that it will be more important to the game and it doesn't mean it will be of higher quality.


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## bloodtide (Apr 3, 2020)

Reynard said:


> And what I am saying is that by the rules presented in the book, sitting around and freeform roleplaying IS playing D&D. it says so right there. You aren't going outside the rules to do that. The rules in fact TELL you to do that. So yeah, maybe, I might be missing your point.




The Rules of the D&D game never say or require Role Playing at all.  It's something you can do, but it's not part of the rules.  If your playing D&D and wish to have your character attack a monster you MUST use the crunchy mechanical D&D combat rules.  If you want to have your character talk to an NPC, there are NO rules for that: you could role play it out if you wish, but you don't have to by the rules.



happyhermit said:


> In Poker there are usually relatively few rules about bluffing and reading other players (to put it mildly), so when players are bluffing or getting a read on other players they aren't "really" playing poker? And it's only when you add more rules about those things that they become important to the game?




If there are ''a few" rules for bluffing and reading others....then there ARE rules.  As a social game, a common ''trick" in poker is to tell stories or jokes or whatever to distract other players: you will find this in just about any strategy advice on playing poker, but it is NOT in the rules of the game.

You get these three basic base ways D&D is Played(all are perfectly valid):

1.The Roll Playing Game-The by-the-book crunchy mechanical combat adventure game.  The granddaddy of them all.  Make a character, write 'Bob 1' and the top and go on an endless crunchy mechanical combat adventure: a murderhobo hexcrawl.  There is nothing else but the combat adventure: most NPCs don't get names other then 'guard one' or 'farmer two', there is no ''game world other then the adventure site and even if there is a town it gets a name like 'Border Town".  

2.The Middle.  It's a combat adventure game, with Role Playing mixed in where ever people want.  Make a character, have at least the ''10 minute" backstory and at least a ''10 minute character personality test'' and be prepared to not only engage in a crunchy mechanical combat adventure, but also Role Play your character interacting with the world outside of the crunch and mechanics. This world has at least an ''average" amount of detail and most NPCs have a ''paragraph"  about them other then the mechanical crunch stat block, the world has lots of detail with at least a couple paragraphs about each place or thing all connected together.

3.The Role Playing Game-The game of extreme detail, a massive epic storytelling event.  Make a character and have at least a novels worth of history, personality, traits and everything else and be prepared  not only engage in a crunchy mechanical combat adventure, but also Role Play your character interacting with the world outside of the crunch and mechanics with Extreme focus and detail.  This world has several novels worth of detail, both big and small and most NPCs get at least a ''short story" or "novella" with many getting a whole novel about them other then the mechanical crunch stat block,  This game has an insane amout of detail about everything.

Or for quick reference:

1.A video game
2.A novel
3.One of those huge triple sized novel books with tiny type, a five to ten page 'cast of characters', five or so maps, a glossary, a lexicon, articles, and it says on the cover something like ''the MagicWyrm Quest Book one of Sixteen".


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## Maxperson (Apr 3, 2020)

bloodtide said:


> The Rules of the D&D game never say or require Role Playing at all.  It's something you can do, but it's not part of the rules.  If your playing D&D and wish to have your character attack a monster you MUST use the crunchy mechanical D&D combat rules.  If you want to have your character talk to an NPC, there are NO rules for that: you could role play it out if you wish, but you don't have to by the rules.




You should try reading the 5e books sometime.  The entire PHB and DMG are written with roleplaying in mind.  They describe roleplaying all over the place.  As for being REQUIRED to roleplay, nothing in the game is REQUIRED.  It's all optional.  So what. Not being REQUIRED does not remove roleplaying from the game. 

You think that you must use the crunchy part of the combat rules for an attack, but you don't.  If the outcome is not in doubt, the DM is perfectly able to just say you win.  Or, since it's rulings over rules, he can just say that you hit or miss and have you roll damage, or just choose the damage.  There is no "must" with anything in the game. 

If you choose to remove roleplaying from the game,  you can and that's okay.  But it's a part of the game unless you do actively remove it.


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## happyhermit (Apr 3, 2020)

bloodtide said:


> ...
> If there are ''a few" rules for bluffing and reading others....then there ARE rules.  As a social game, a common ''trick" in poker is to tell stories or jokes or whatever to distract other players: you will find this in just about any strategy advice on playing poker, but it is NOT in the rules of the game.
> ...




So you are arguing that it's a binary proposition? That there are either rules or not rules for a thing? In that case D&D has rules for social interaction, exploration, pretty much anything.

If it clears it up any, Poker games can have no rules for bluffing and reading other players, but that doesn't stop those things from being an important part of the game, agreed?


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 3, 2020)

happyhermit said:


> So you are arguing that it's a binary proposition? That there are either rules or not rules for a thing? In that case D&D has rules for social interaction, exploration, pretty much anything.
> 
> If it clears it up any, Poker games can have no rules for bluffing and reading other players, but that doesn't stop those things from being an important part of the game, agreed?



I think that the part of poker you're discussing is a poor fit.  Specifically, as I noted above, the part you're talking about is the metagame -- the game that exists outside of the rules of poker.  Bluffing, reading, calculating odds, etc., these are really part of a different game that occurs when you sit down to play poker.  Nothing you do with bluffing affects how the rules of poker play out -- in fact, bluffing depends on those rules being immutable because it's the game that exists when you play the game of poker.

Meanwhile, roleplaying is, nominally, part and parcel of an RPG.  Roleplaying is not a metagame that is created when you play an RPG; it's the objective, at least in part.

This is a careful distinction, but talking about how a game might or might not have rules for something really doesn't address a metagame that exists on top of the presented game.  I can play poker and not bluff, not read, just the game as the rules say.  I shouldn't be able to play an RPG without roleplaying.

And, really, you cannot, as the first part of playing an RPG is taking on a role via your character.  Now, there's a lot of discussion about what roleplaying is, with some having extremely narrow definitions, but at it's most basic, it's just the playing of a role.  Which you do if you play a character in an RPG, even if you never once put on a silly voice, provide dialog, or speak in the first person.  Those things may be expectations of a table, a given group may constrain or incentivize roleplaying (@Celebrim clearly incentivizes speaking dialog in character for his games), but this isn't required by the rules.  This is where table agreements and traditions start entering the game with expectations from outside the rules that then create constraints and incentives within the rules.


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 3, 2020)

Maxperson said:


> Not their authority.  The rules.  Unless you're saying the rules = DM authority, in which case d20 + modifiers = or greater than AC to hit is also the DM using his authority.



No, the PHB and the DMG clearly give the GM the authority to decide, but do not provide any operationalization of this.  There's no rule you can point to and say, "here is where a paladin has a bad thing happen to them for not following their oath."  Nor can you find where a paladin has crossed a line to become an Oathbreaker, just that such things exist somewhere.  So, what you have here is an assignment of authority -- the GM decides what becomes of a paladin and their oaths -- and a loose constraint -- the GM may decide bad things if you don't follow your Oath.  I say loose here because there's very little to say what following your Oath means in any given situations -- it's rather subjective.  What did happen here is that the authority to decide what happens with character build, usually a player authority, has be explicitly reassigned to the GM in this case.  That's the extent of the rules -- GM says.

Largely, a lot of 5e can be summed up this way.  Not a bad thing.





> The DM is not adding constraints.  Those constraints are put into place by the rules.. They're called Breaking Your Oath and Oathbreaker, and you can read them in the PHB and DMG.



Those rules don't say anything other than GM decides.  If the GM is having a conversation with their players about what constitutes oathbreaking, then that's the GM using their authority to apply both constraints and operationalizing oathbreaking.



> I'm not suggesting anything that the rules don't do themselves.



You're implying the rules are much more robust than they are.  The "rules" for oathbreaking are weak and don't provide the player with handles except that it's up to the GM.  This makes the rules for oathbreaking entirely a matter of trusting your GM. Again, not necessarily a bad thing, but it's fairly trivial to find horror stories on this exact topic that are both, well, horror stories and entirely within the rules as presented.  IE, the GM is granted this authority with no constraints so even when outcomes might be less than desirable, their still within the rules.  Suggesting the oathbreaking rules are more than the assignment of authority without constraint is adding things.  Use of that authority is use of that authority, which is as I said, the GM adding constraints to the player (presuming the GM bothers to discuss it at all).

Now, I generally admonish others by going to bad faith play, so I'm going to admonish myself, here, and note that in good faith play the oathbreaking "rules" are usually sufficient.  This assumes good faith between the player and the GM, so the outcome of "GM decides" should be clear and follow from the fiction and no one should be surprised.  As I noted earlier, not having things tightly constrained or operationalized is okay -- 5e does just fine doing this quite a lot.  And, a number of people like it this way.  Some don't.  Either way, it's good to be critically open about what's actually happening in play, even when you get good outcomes (because you're a well adjusted adult person playing with other well-adjusted adult people and not being jerks to each other, usually).  In the case of the rules for oathbreaking, there are none outside a blanket reassignment of authority from the player to the GM to determine the PC build effects of player choices.  And, this is fine.


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## bloodtide (Apr 3, 2020)

Maxperson said:


> You should try reading the 5e books sometime.  The entire PHB and DMG are written with roleplaying in mind.  They describe roleplaying all over the place.  As for being REQUIRED to roleplay, nothing in the game is REQUIRED.  It's all optional.  So what. Not being REQUIRED does not remove roleplaying from the game.
> 
> You think that you must use the crunchy part of the combat rules for an attack, but you don't.  If the outcome is not in doubt, the DM is perfectly able to just say you win.  Or, since it's rulings over rules, he can just say that you hit or miss and have you roll damage, or just choose the damage.  There is no "must" with anything in the game.
> 
> If you choose to remove roleplaying from the game,  you can and that's okay.  But it's a part of the game unless you do actively remove it.




Well, if you don't use any D&D rules, then you are not playing the D&D game.  If things are just ''decided" then not only are you not playing D&D, but your not even playing a game then.  There is no place in the rules for Role Playing.




happyhermit said:


> So you are arguing that it's a binary proposition? That there are either rules or not rules for a thing? In that case D&D has rules for social interaction, exploration, pretty much anything.
> 
> If it clears it up any, Poker games can have no rules for bluffing and reading other players, but that doesn't stop those things from being an important part of the game, agreed?





Maybe your thinking of some game other then D&D when you say D&D has rules for pretty much anything.  Reading the rules would show that is not true.  And it's not that D&D does not have rules for some crunchy mechanical in-game social interaction Like I said the game has maybe a whole page of social rules, compared to the 500 pages of combat rules.  Or more simply put: there is no crunchy mechanical Social chapter in the rules (you know where a character would have a social AC and another character would have a base social attack and use the social maneuver ''make a valid point" with the feat of "logical argument" for a +2 bonus to hit)

Role Playing is something extra added outside the game, not as part of it.


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## happyhermit (Apr 3, 2020)

Ovinomancer said:


> I think that the part of poker you're discussing is a poor fit.




I'm sorry, but I think a large part of why you think it's a poor fit is because it doesn't illustrate your point.



Ovinomancer said:


> Specifically, as I noted above, the part you're talking about is the metagame -- the game that exists outside of the rules of poker.  Bluffing, reading, calculating odds, etc., these are really part of a different game that occurs when you sit down to play poker.




Labeling some parts of a game the "metagame", correctly or incorrectly doesn't make them any less important parts of the game. You can label the most important parts of many games ie; social deduction games, trading games, alliance games, calling plays in football, a pitcher reading a batter, etc. etc.; "metagame" but that more often that not just leads to a lack of understanding of what those games are and how the rules influence that. 

Adding more rules about those things DOESN'T mean the game will have more focus on those things, or that those things will function in a more satisfactory way.

To which the response is likely "Sure, that is easily observed, but ttrpgs are different." However, I am not the first one to make the observation that the same thing is true. Having more rules for things doesn't mean the game having will have more of that thing occur, or that it will be more satisfactory when it does.




Ovinomancer said:


> ...  I shouldn't be able to play an RPG without roleplaying.




And you can't, unless you specifically choose a definition of roleplaying that means you can.


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## happyhermit (Apr 3, 2020)

bloodtide said:


> Maybe your thinking of some game other then D&D when you say D&D has rules for pretty much anything.  Reading the rules would show that is not true.




There are specific and general rules that cover most anything. 



bloodtide said:


> And it's not that D&D does not have rules for some crunchy mechanical in-game social interaction Like I said the game has maybe a whole page of social rules, compared to the 500 pages of combat rules.  Or more simply put: there is no crunchy mechanical Social chapter in the rules (you know where a character would have a social AC and another character would have a base social attack and use the social maneuver ''make a valid point" with the feat of "logical argument" for a +2 bonus to hit)




You literally said; "If there are ''a few" rules ... ....then there ARE rules."



bloodtide said:


> Role Playing is something extra added outside the game, not as part of it.




Your argument is with Ovinomancer on this point, not me.


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## bloodtide (Apr 3, 2020)

happyhermit said:


> There are specific and general rules that cover most anything.




I'm not sure if your just being funny here?  No game in the history of forever has rules that cover most anything.  Simply put: that would be impossible.  

So, guess your joke here is funny?


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## Celebrim (Apr 3, 2020)

bloodtide said:


> I'm not sure if your just being funny here?  No game in the history of forever has rules that cover most anything.  Simply put: that would be impossible.




Would you like to place a bet of some sort on that? I believe I can prove to you that there is at least one RPG that has rules for everything. 

Small bet perhaps. I get upvoted if you agree that I won. I'll upvote you if you think I haven't.


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## bloodtide (Apr 3, 2020)

Celebrim said:


> Would you like to place a bet of some sort on that? I believe I can prove to you that there is at least one RPG that has rules for everything.
> 
> Small bet perhaps. I get upvoted if you agree that I won. I'll upvote you if you think I haven't.




I'm not sure we can have a bet on something that is impossible.  If a single RPG did have rules for everything it would need, roughly, one trillion trillion pages of rules.  And no game has that much.

To make a wild grab at any RPG from the last nearly 50 years of RPGs and say that you can find at least one game that has one rule about anyone subject...maybe?  Like the obvious thing for me to say is find an RPG with a rule about dating: but I....er think...there was an All My Children RPG back in the time before time, and sure it had a rule like ''roll a 6d6 -1d6 equal to your beauty score  vs his bachelor score to see if Blake Carlton dates your character".  But to prove one or two RPGs...maybe...have a rule for something is not the point.

The point is, no single game....especially D&D has rules for everything.


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## happyhermit (Apr 3, 2020)

bloodtide said:


> I'm not sure if your just being funny here?  No game in the history of forever has rules that cover most anything.  Simply put: that would be impossible.
> 
> So, guess your joke here is funny?




No joke, if you aren't being sarcastic, just talking about game design and rules. 

Like I said, there are specific and general rules, it's easy to make a game with rules that cover everything. ie; Player attempts something, flip a coin to determine whether they succeed. Obviously it takes a lot more to make a game that will do this and people will also find _good_, but it's done all the time. 

5e D&D has general rules that cover most anything ie; Player says what they want their PC to attempt, DM determines whether or not rolls must be made, then the results are determined. 

This is not a new concept, free Kriegsspiel is from the 1800's.


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## bloodtide (Apr 3, 2020)

happyhermit said:


> No joke, if you aren't being sarcastic, just talking about game design and rules.
> 
> Like I said, there are specific and general rules, it's easy to make a game with rules that cover everything. ie; Player attempts something, flip a coin to determine whether they succeed. Obviously it takes a lot more to make a game that will do this and people will also find _good_, but it's done all the time.
> 
> ...





Again, seems like a joke.

Sure you can have a rule that says ''flip a coin" to see if a character can do something...and it does not even matter if that is a ''bad rule":  The point is more that the rule only covers ''if" a character tries something that has success and failure.  

And such generic rules alone are pointless for RPGs, it's the whole reason why RPGs have lots of rules.  To know simply if ''a thing" succeed does not tell you anything really.  

The ability check to ''try something" goes all the way back to 1E, but it still only works in the larger framework of all the other rules.


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## Maxperson (Apr 3, 2020)

bloodtide said:


> Well, if you don't use any D&D rules, then you are not playing the D&D game.  If things are just ''decided" then not only are you not playing D&D, but your not even playing a game then.  There is no place in the rules for Role Playing.




D&D rule from the 5e DMG.

Page 236 "Ignoring the Dice."

D&D rules page 4 "The rules aren't in charge" and "The DM chooses when to abide by the rules and when to change them."

The DM can use those rules to just decide everything, and since according to you all it takes is using D&D rules to be playing D&D, what I described in my last post was playing D&D.  

That's actually the primary strength of D&D.  You can play it in a myriad of different ways and still be playing D&D.  10 different tables can all be playing 10 different ways and still all be playing D&D.


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## Celebrim (Apr 4, 2020)

bloodtide said:


> I'm not sure we can have a bet on something that is impossible.  If a single RPG did have rules for everything it would need, roughly, one trillion trillion pages of rules.  And no game has that much.




So let's up the bet.  Last 50 posts by the winner upvoted?


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 4, 2020)

happyhermit said:


> I'm sorry, but I think a large part of why you think it's a poor fit is because it doesn't illustrate your point.



Not sure I follow you.  My point is that the poker game you're talking about is a metagame for poker.  It's like claiming that character optimization is part of D&D.  it is, and it isn't.  It's an extra game that only exists when the first game does, and it's focused on gaming the underlying game.  I think it's an excellent distinction to note the game presented from a metagame that exists on top of it.  And that's what you're illustrating with your poker example.

It's a good point.  Metagames almost always exist.  But, I don't think it correlates to discussing how games function within their rulesets.  It's, well, extra.





> Labeling some parts of a game the "metagame", correctly or incorrectly doesn't make them any less important parts of the game. You can label the most important parts of many games ie; social deduction games, trading games, alliance games, calling plays in football, a pitcher reading a batter, etc. etc.; "metagame" but that more often that not just leads to a lack of understanding of what those games are and how the rules influence that.



I disagree.  I think noting something is a game about playing a game is a pretty big distinction from discussing how a game plays by itself.  As I said, I can play poker without bluffing -- this is pretty much what happens when you play against a computer.  Certainly we can't claim that my inability to read the computer or bluff it means I'm not playing poker.  The meta-level of games, where you play a game on top of the game, is very interesting, but, again, not actually part of the underlying game.  Poker is separate from bluffing, but bluffing in poker requires poker to exist.  



> Adding more rules about those things DOESN'T mean the game will have more focus on those things, or that those things will function in a more satisfactory way.



I'd disagree on the first, somewhat, and agree strongly on the second.

Re, the first point, having robust rules for a thing usually will mean that a game will focus on that thing over an area that has weak or no rules.  Take D&D.  Granted, you can have a session that focuses on roleplaying, or shopping, or building a castle, but how much occurs how quickly there?  Combat slows down and gets granular whenever it shows up in D&D -- it demands more focus for resolutions, and resolutions are always very precise and complete.  D&D directs focus to the combat rules across lots of segements, from character build, to equipment, to strategic play, to tactical play in the combat engine.  There's even the combat swoop, where you shift from the more freeform exploration/social pillars to the combat engine via the initiative roll, which particularizes timing and structure in a way the other pillars usually do not.

Does this always hold?  No, it's general statement, not an absolute one.  If a game system invests in robust rules to adjudicate an area of play, though, that area is usually going to be a focus for play, unless there's a strong effort to thwart this and use the system in other ways.  That's something you can do, but then the system fights you a bit by not providing the robust systems while you avoid it's most robust systems.

On the second party, absolutely.  More rules does not mean better rules.  Or better outcomes.  Heck, look at Palladium systems -- lots of rules, not great outcomes.  You have to hack that system a bit to get it to even work.



> To which the response is likely "Sure, that is easily observed, but ttrpgs are different." However, I am not the first one to make the observation that the same thing is true. Having more rules for things doesn't mean the game having will have more of that thing occur, or that it will be more satisfactory when it does.



Goodness, no.  I have no idea why anyone would assume that.




> And you can't, unless you specifically choose a definition of roleplaying that means you can.



Agreed.  Usually when people do choose those definitions, though, it's pretty clear they're either engaged in a bit of one-true-wayism or just trying to derail the discussion.  I do think that most systems leave roleplaying as an exercise for the players to develop rather than a place to provide operationalization.  Just some light constraints and incentives and a bit of authority granting and that's it.  5e does this through the background system (which is an operationalization with incentives), the usual genre constraints, and authorities to the player for action declaration and the GM for resolution.  This is enough, though, to get to roleplaying, and open enough to accommodate a number of definitions and styles of roleplaying.


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## Fenris-77 (Apr 4, 2020)

@Celebrim is obviously bluffing, call him down man.


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## pemerton (Apr 4, 2020)

Celebrim said:


> you could probably have a game where someone says, "I use persuasion on the guard.", rolls a dice and then successfully gets the guard to do something. But then the question arises, what did that character say that so persuaded the guard?



The only system I know where this _might _be a valid action declaration is 3E D&D (substituing _Diplomacy _for _persusasion_). I say "might" because I'm going here mostly on rumour and hearsay - I don't have very much 3E play experience.

But that's not a valid action declaration in 4e D&D, 5e D&D, Classic Traveller, Burning Wheel, HeroWars/Quest, DitV, Cortex+ Heroic, or Rolemaster. Because not actual _action _has been declared. All the player has done is nominate a mechanic s/he wishes to invoke. But s/he hasn't actually established any fiction that would invoke it.


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## pemerton (Apr 4, 2020)

doctorbadwolf said:


> So, what I want to know is, how is that different from a skill check in 5e dnd?
> Sure, the stats are different, but brawn and presence are pretty easy to translate, and fellowship sounds like a skill similar to 5e's Persuasion, but perhaps more about getting along with people and less about getting people to do things. (I miss "Diplomacy" as a name for the positive social interaction skill)
> 
> And an opposed check gives us an outcome that flows from the fiction just as much as your example, or combat. So, is it that Prince Valiant has everything named and described in a way that promotes a certain type of play, or is there something actually mechanical going on that isn't coming across?



I think that 5e D&D  (i) doesn't have a clear system for extended PC vs PC social contest, and (ii) is ambigous over whether the outcome of a successful skill check is _you did that well_ or _you got what you wanted _(roughtly task vs conflict resolution, without wanting to hang too much on tha parituclar terminology), and (iii) doesn't have a system for incorporating emotional/relationship components into a check.

I'm sure these things could be sorted out at a particular table, but I don't think they're there in the basic presentation of the rules. I think that makes it harder to get things going, or make some things obvious.

To elaborate on those thoughts a bit more: in D&D, if - during the course of the PC vs PC rivalry - one of the PCs suddenly escalates to violence, the whole arena of conflict is changed and there's no straightforward way to have the social conflict feed through into the new situation. Eg there's no obvious mechanic for the other PC to cow/shame the escalating PC into stepping down. I would generalise this point by saying - outside of some magical effects, and 4e skill challenges - D&D doesn't make it easy to establish finality in a scene simply via social interaction.

I also think that Prince Valiant "has everything named and described in a way that promotes a certain type of play" but I don't think that that is a separate thing bur rather is related to the features I've been describing above in this post.

All of this is before we get to the default XP-and-gp reward framework of D&D. Because, by default, social interactions tend not to yield either of these that also tends to make the seem secondary in play. 4e again is an exception, and you could easily drift 5e away from the default (though I don't think "milestone levelling" would necessarily help in this respect), but it is another feature of the game that differs from those systems that (as I've experienced them) tend to give the OP more fo what he's looking for out of the box.,

To finish, none of this is meant as a critique of D&D. It's meant as an attempt to reflect on how one might want to tweak/drift to get what one wants. If you - @doctorbadwolf - already have it then my thoughts are unncessary. But @Reynard did seem to be looking for some thoughts. (I hesitate to call it _advice _because I don't know 5e well enough. Maybe _goal-oriented musings_?)


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## pemerton (Apr 4, 2020)

With respect to the tangent that has broken out - is _roleplaying _being used as a synonmy for _character-oriented colour and narration_? Or something in the neighbourhood? That seems unfortunate, because it would tend to imply that a lot of classic D&D play isn't RPGing at all.

The idea that there is a _contrast _between _playing a character_ (in some think sense of that phrase) and _engaging the mechanics of a RPG_ is itself an artefact of a certai approach to RPG design that is hardly the only way to do it. In a system like Burning Wheel or DitV or Apocalypse World or even 4e D&D the contrast doesn't obtain.


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## happyhermit (Apr 4, 2020)

bloodtide said:


> Again, seems like a joke.




Still not a joke, but if poking fun at my honest attempts to communicate is what you need in these times, fine. It's the least of my concerns right now.



bloodtide said:


> Sure you can have a rule that says ''flip a coin" to see if a character can do something...and it does not even matter if that is a ''bad rule":  The point is more that the rule only covers ''if" a character tries something that has success and failure.




"The point"? You seem to be going from one point to another, that certainly isn't the point that I was addressing.



bloodtide said:


> And such generic rules alone are pointless for RPGs, it's the whole reason why RPGs have lots of rules.  To know simply if ''a thing" succeed does not tell you anything really.
> 
> The ability check to ''try something" goes all the way back to 1E, but it still only works in the larger framework of all the other rules.




They aren't pointless for ttrpgs, the ideas go back to the 1800's at least, this is not a D&D thing. Many ttrpgs outside of D&D use more general rules, and often have less specific ones.



Ovinomancer said:


> Not sure I follow you.  My point is that the poker game you're talking about is a metagame for poker.  It's like claiming that character optimization is part of D&D.  it is, and it isn't.  It's an extra game that only exists when the first game does, and it's focused on gaming the underlying game.  I think it's an excellent distinction to note the game presented from a metagame that exists on top of it.  And that's what you're illustrating with your poker example.
> 
> It's a good point.  Metagames almost always exist.  But, I don't think it correlates to discussing how games function within their rulesets.  It's, well, extra.




"Metagame" has several definitions, the one usually referred to when talking about ttrpgs is not the one you are using. The one most commonly referred to when talking about other tt games is not really what you are referring to either, as it usually refers to things that actually don't relate to the game being played directly. In social deduction games for instance, like The Resistance, trying to determine who the spy's are isn't considered "the metagame", it's the game. Whereas "metagame" refers to when one considers how they acted in past games, or outside of the game entirely. Like in Poker where the "metagame" is when you take in things you know about the player based on things outside of the game/hand being played. Or in a game with alliances like Cosmic Encounter it's the metagame when you choose to trust someone based on how they acted in past games.

You can say that all those things are the metagame, even though that's not how it's usually used, and basically say that many games are 90% metagame, but I don't think it's helpful.



Ovinomancer said:


> ...
> I'd disagree on the first, somewhat, and agree strongly on the second.
> 
> Re, the first point, having robust rules for a thing usually will mean that a game will focus on that thing over an area that has weak or no rules.




Well, we aren't disagreeing by much here. What I was saying is that it doesn't neccesarily lead to it. I would almost agree with you on "usually", not long ago I definitely would have.


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## pemerton (Apr 4, 2020)

bloodtide said:


> Sure you can have a rule that says ''flip a coin" to see if a character can do something...and it does not even matter if that is a ''bad rule":  The point is more that the rule only covers ''if" a character tries something that has success and failure.
> 
> And such generic rules alone are pointless for RPGs, it's the whole reason why RPGs have lots of rules.  To know simply if ''a thing" succeed does not tell you anything really.



What RPGs do you have in mind? Cthulhu Dark doesn't have many rules at all, and is a good RPG. Prince Valiant has more intricate PC build than Cthulhu Dark, and slightly more complex action resolution, but doesn't have "lots of rules".

When you say _To know simply if ''a thing" succeed does not tell you anything really_ you seem to be assuming that _a thing_ is purely a task attempted by the PC and abstracted out of all the rest of the prior and subsequent fiction. But that's not the only way to approach action resolution. The most basic rule for resolution I know of that _will tell us something, really _is this: player declares intent and task; check is resolved (could be a coin toss, or something more intricate depending on system); if the player wins, the intent comes true; if the player loses, the GM says what happens.

That will generally give a pretty good RPG experience.


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## doctorbadwolf (Apr 4, 2020)

pemerton said:


> I think that 5e D&D  (i) doesn't have a clear system for extended PC vs PC social contest, and (ii) is ambigous over whether the outcome of a successful skill check is _you did that well_ or _you got what you wanted _(roughtly task vs conflict resolution, without wanting to hang too much on tha parituclar terminology), and (iii) doesn't have a system for incorporating emotional/relationship components into a check.
> 
> I'm sure these things could be sorted out at a particular table, but I don't think they're there in the basic presentation of the rules. I think that makes it harder to get things going, or make some things obvious.
> 
> ...




I think perhaps my 4e experience makes the Tools 5e very quietly has more obvious to me than to many others.

So, one way to resolve shaming a rival into stepping down because their escalation is unbecoming, is simply to use skill checks in combat. It’s generally an action, but I’d allow it as part of taking the Dodge Action, if you wanted to take a defensive stance while shaming the offender into putting his damned sword away and acting like a knight.

Intimidation seems like a good fit, but I’d also allow persuasion or even Insight paired with Charisma.

As for letting relationship impact checks, there are many ways in the 5e rules to do that, they just aren’t explicitly called out (I really want a D&D setting book that is focused on romantic fantasy, that would have stuff like relationships, group morale, etc, with a more detailed and up front presentation).

*Advantage and Disadvantage obviously is the simplest way to model the impact of a relationship on a roll. 

*Morale can be renamed to Fellowship, or Hope, or any number of other things, from the DMG

*Loyalty from the DMG or the crew quality score from Ghosts can represent a relationship score

A homebrew idea for such a thing, to add an emphasis on such things.

Create an additional ability score that is not generated at CharGen, but instead varies with contacts. Call it your Fellowship Score. You can have anywhere from a -3 to a +3 in Fellowship, and you have a score for each Relationship. You also have a Faith Score, which is the same thing, but for Factions.

When a check is related to a Relationship or a Faction (maybe call them a Loyalty?), you use your Fellowship or Faith score instead of another Ability Score and add a relevant proficiency mod.

as for rewards, I find it pretty easy to just...not use the standard reward structure.


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## pemerton (Apr 4, 2020)

@doctorbadwolf - I think @Reynard should look closely at your post to see what ideas he could take from it!


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 4, 2020)

happyhermit said:


> /snip
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Yes, I'm aware that there's a specific, narrow use of metagame in RPGs, however it's still a subset of the general use of metagame, which is the game about the game.  The usual RPG usage is specifically using knowledge from outside the game's reference to play the game, or, playing a game outside the game by using that knowledge to excel at the base game.  I generally use the broad definition because it does encompass the narrower ones, but recognize that others might only be using the narrow definition in a given argument.  I apologize if I wasn't clear I was using the general definition of metagame.

I agree that The Resistance has, as part of the game, discerning motives from other players.  It operationalizes this in the rules, though, but providing rules that allow one to determine that information.  Poker does not.  Cosmic Encounters, as you note, does not provide any rules for trust.  Those are, indeed, the metagames of those games -- the game that exists about the game.




> Well, we aren't disagreeing by much here. What I was saying is that it doesn't neccesarily lead to it. I would almost agree with you on "usually", not long ago I definitely would have.



I thought as much, and am happy to have reached at least a cool agreement.


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## Reynard (Apr 4, 2020)

pemerton said:


> @doctorbadwolf - I think @Reynard should look closely at your post to see what ideas he could take from it!



While that looks like an interesting system to articulate relationships, it is well beyond the scope of my initial request. My goal wasn't to codify role playing or to createa social conflict resolution system, but rather just inject a little bit of behavioral realism between dungeon delves.


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## Fenris-77 (Apr 4, 2020)

Reynard said:


> My goal wasn't to codify role playing or to createa social conflict resolution system, but rather just inject a little bit of behavioral realism between dungeon delves.



I feel like this is something players either do or don't do left to their own devices. If your players aren't doing it, the easiest way to try and course correct is probably to provide consequences for their choices. If they want to sleep rough and look like vagabonds, then have people treat them like vagabonds (for example). They'll probably get the message.


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## chaochou (Apr 5, 2020)

Reynard said:


> My goal wasn't to codify role playing or to create a social conflict resolution system, but rather just inject a little bit of behavioral realism between dungeon delves.




So in a world of implausibly controllable magic, impossible monsters and improbable locales, whose conception of 'realism' are you proposing to use?


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## Reynard (Apr 5, 2020)

chaochou said:


> So in a world of implausibly controllable magic, impossible monsters and improbable locales, whose conception of 'realism' are you proposing to use?



I think we've covered this but in short: people are complex and I like it when the PCs show a little bit of that complexity.


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## chaochou (Apr 5, 2020)

Reynard said:


> I think we've covered this but in short: people are complex and *I like it* when the PCs show a little bit of that complexity.




So you want the players to change the portrayal of their characters to something which you like better, according to your conception of 'realism'.


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## Reynard (Apr 5, 2020)

chaochou said:


> So you want the players to change the portrayal of their characters to something which you like better, according to your conception of 'realism'.



You have either skipped most of the thread, in which we discuss this is much more detail -- in that case I invite you to go back and review that discussion -- or you have read the thread and are being disingenuous in your question. In the latter case I'm not really interested in playing the game where you to get me to admit I have preferences. Of course I do.


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## Maxperson (Apr 5, 2020)

chaochou said:


> So in a world of implausibly controllable magic, impossible monsters and improbable locales, whose conception of 'realism' are you proposing to use?



This fallacy again?  Realism doesn't go away just because you introduce fantasy elements into it.  A human in a mundane world and a human wizard in a fantasy world are still.................human, and will act.............human.

When you introduce a fantasy element, you are explicitly stretching or diminishing realism for that one element, not for everything.


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## chaochou (Apr 5, 2020)

Reynard said:


> I'm not really interested in playing the game where you to get me to admit I have preferences. Of course I do.




But you haven't had a 'discussion'. Your posts just repeatedly reiterate a desire for a set of aesthetic preferences to better suit your conception of how 'realistic people' behave.

If you can't accept the basic premise that you want to change the players' charactersisations for your own benefit, then you've no hope of finding a solution either through 1) a re-discussion of social contract, nor through 2) incentivatisation of altered behaviour through mechanics.

You don't want to acknowledge (1) and have been endlessly resistant to (2).


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## darkbard (Apr 5, 2020)

chaochou said:


> But you haven't had a 'discussion'. Your posts just repeatedly reiterate a desire for a set of aesthetic preferences to better suit your conception of how 'realistic people' behave.
> 
> If you can't accept the basic premise that you want to change the players' charactersisations for your own benefit, then you've no hope of finding a solution either through 1) a re-discussion of social contract, nor through 2) incentivatisation of altered behaviour through mechanics.
> 
> You don't want to acknowledge (1) and have been endlessly resistant to (2).




As a "subscribed" observer to but nonparticipant in this thread, @Reynard, I think chaochou's critique here is important. His (1) and (preferably) his (2) above offer you legitimate avenues out of your quandary, but you don't seem open to taking his (and similar) advice as constructive rather than combative.


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## pemerton (Apr 5, 2020)

Reynard said:


> While that looks like an interesting system to articulate relationships, it is well beyond the scope of my initial request. My goal wasn't to codify role playing or to createa social conflict resolution system, but rather just inject a little bit of behavioral realism between dungeon delves.





darkbard said:


> chaochou said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I think these posts point in a certain direction: if you're not going to pursue option (2) - ie of actually looking at how the mechanical systems and the fiction you build around them shape play - then you're going to have to look at (1).

What does that actually look like, as a social interaction? And what reason do the players have for going along with it? Depending on the dynamics of and relationships within the group, this could actually be pretty tricky I think. No one likes being told that their play sucks!


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## Maxperson (Apr 5, 2020)

pemerton said:


> What does that actually look like, as a social interaction? And what reason do the players have for going along with it? Depending on the dynamics of and relationships within the group, this could actually be pretty tricky I think. *No one likes being told that their play sucks*!



There is a world of difference between, "I'd like a bit more realism in play." and "your play sucks!"  Don't read more into what @Reynard is saying than is there.


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## Fenris-77 (Apr 5, 2020)

Hmm, yeah, I don't think it's about anyone's play 'sucking' either. I think we have a case of the GM not being entirely happy with the overall table, which is more a matter of realizing the table conventions than it is about success or failure of role playing.


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## hawkeyefan (Apr 5, 2020)

I think what was meant is that people could take it as a comment that their play sucked. That’s the risk you run when you approach them to ask them to change how they portray their characters. The potential for upsetting them is there, and that’s why @pemerton described it as “tricky”.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 5, 2020)

The problem could be solved if @Reynard would just say, "There are certain behaviors, such as the aforementioned inn/bathing one, that enhance the game experience for me.  Does anybody have any suggestions for how I could encourage my players to engage in those behaviors?"

That's perfectly legitimate, but he insists on trying to wrap it in a "realism" argument, perhaps not recognizing that this just pisses off people who take it as a dig that their own game, their own roleplaying, is inferior.  It's a totally unnecessary provocation to the basic ask.


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## Aldarc (Apr 5, 2020)

So yet another tabletop problem that could be solved if adults talked to other adults like adults?


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## Maxperson (Apr 5, 2020)

Elfcrusher said:


> That's perfectly legitimate, but he insists on trying to wrap it in a "realism" argument, perhaps not recognizing that this just pisses off people who take it as a dig that their own game, their own roleplaying, is inferior.  It's a totally unnecessary provocation to the basic ask.



People who get offended by his statements fail to understand that realism is a spectrum and not all or nothing.  His statement about realism does not in fact make any dig at anyone or imply that their game and RP are inferior.  It does imply that their game is different and that they want different things than he does, though.


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## Maxperson (Apr 5, 2020)

Aldarc said:


> So yet another tabletop problem that could be solved if adults talked to other adults like adults?



Yeah.  I've skipped around, so I haven't seen @Reynard say that he won't talk to his players like some here are saying.  Talking to the players seems like the best first step to me.


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## Reynard (Apr 5, 2020)

Maxperson said:


> Yeah. I've skipped around, so I haven't seen @Reynard say that he won't talk to his players like some here are saying. Talking to the players seems like the best first step to me.



As I noted in the original post, this whole thing started with a conversation with one of my players who agreed with me. So I started a thread to discuss some methods to encourage certain play behaviors. Much of that conversation has been along the lines of whether or not to use mechanical incentives to do so versus non mechanical incentives. While I have a preference against mechanical incentives, I haven't suggested such things were badwrongfun. Nor have I called my players or any theoretical players names or derided them. I have repeatedly noted that this was not a deal breaker. Somewhere along the line I feel like the tone of the discussion turned much more negative than it started.

Such is the way of threads. They usually move far more quickly than game sessions occur, and some people seem to get especially offended if their proposed solution is not immediately hailed as perfect. The fact is we have not played our regular game since I started this thread and even if I wanted to implement some particular poster's suggestions, I haven't been able to.

Again, I think overall the discussion has been productive and interesting and it has certainly given me much to consider. I just don't know how I got to be the unbending villain in all this.


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## happyhermit (Apr 5, 2020)

In most games and sports you can say things like "Some players are better at this or that" or "In this game they did a really good job at this" and nobody bats an eye, because why would they. You can also say an actor/writer/director did an incredible job of realizing a character, or they didn't and people might disagree with you but you won't find mobs of them saying "That makes no sense, all realizations are equal".

Unique (AFAICT) to ttrpgs though, a large number of people for a variety of reasons will bend over backwards in an attempt to make all roleplaying "equal" in quality. So, no matter what a character does; actions that conflict with stated motives or previous charachterization, anachronisms, using knowlege the character couldn't have, exploiting fringe-case rules, it's all perfect roleplaying and no more "realistic" than a player that tries to consider all the factors and act in the way that character would actually act in that situation. I understand some of the motivations for why people think this way, though I obviously don't agree. I think we would be much better off admitting when some people do a good job at something, like we do in all other walks of life. It doesn't mean the people who don't do a great job at one particular thing can't already do it but don't care to and/or can't get better at it if they want to.

The entire "This type of play is inevitable because of the rules" makes no sense because we have millions of people using the same rules and having entirely different experiences. I have seen players sleeping out in the woods and players buying every luxury in town, both can make sense from an in character perspective and it's usually pretty clear when that's the case vs when the players are making the choice by largely ignoring the fictional world.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 5, 2020)

Reynard said:


> I just don't know how I got to be the unbending villain in all this.




I think it's because you keep doggedly insisting on calling "it behavioral realism" instead of "my aesthetic preference."


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## Fenris-77 (Apr 5, 2020)

Elfcrusher said:


> I think it's because you keep doggedly insisting on calling "it behavioral realism" instead of "my aesthetic preference."



His aesthetic preference is for more behavioral realism. I'm not sure why people decided to pile on the term usage rather than answer the actual question at hand. Well, I do, internet, but still...


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 5, 2020)

Fenris-77 said:


> His aesthetic preference is for more behavioral realism. I'm not sure why people decided to pile on the term usage rather than answer the actual question at hand. Well, I do, internet, but still...




And a bunch of us presented evidence/arguments for why nearly any behavior is realistic (including not bathing and sleeping in the woods), and what he was really describing was really just _common_ behavior, but not necessarily more realistic. 

By his standard, "behavioral realism" would be severe emotional and psychological problems stemming from guilt for all the killing, and the horror of nearly being eaten by monsters on a regular basis.  Because that would be the response of the vast majority of people.  You know, the ones who like to bathe.

And yet he persisted.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 5, 2020)

Maxperson said:


> People who get offended by his statements fail to understand that realism is a spectrum and not all or nothing.  His statement about realism does not in fact make any dig at anyone or imply that their game and RP are inferior.  It does imply that their game is different and that they want different things than he does, though.




It may be a spectrum but, let's face it, we're _all_ on the far end of the spectrum where it's 99.999% unrealistic.  We're arguing about that third decimal place.

And there are some denigrations that don't need to be explicitly stated, but are intrinsic to the claims.

Let's say I post, "Hey I want my games to be authentic heroic fantasy.  How can I get more players to choose Paladin?"   It sounds innocuous, but I am, by the nature of the argument, telling Lowkey that his fantasy is neither heroic nor authentic.  Maybe the image I have in my head of heroic fantasy involves paladin-like action, but I'm taking my aesthetic preference and wrapping it in completely subjective claims.


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## Fenris-77 (Apr 5, 2020)

Elfcrusher said:


> And a bunch of us presented evidence/arguments for why nearly any behavior is realistic (including not bathing and sleeping in the woods), and what he was really describing was really just _common_ behavior, but not necessarily more realistic.
> 
> By his standard, "behavioral realism" would be severe emotional and psychological problems stemming from guilt for all the killing, and the horror of nearly being eaten by monsters on a regular basis.  Because that would be the response of the vast majority of people.  You know, the ones who like to bathe.
> 
> And yet he persisted.



I'm not suggesting that the behavior on either side isn't 'realistic'. However, as I pointed out more than once, behavior without consequence isn't realistic either. The players in question wanted to sleep rough to save coin for gear, which, on the surface, is fine, but they weren't doing so with any expectation of consequence. Without having to dip into trauma, or apply the term too widely (which was never something anyone actually wanted, other than as a rhetorical point), it's possible to just apply consequence and end up with more 'realism' baked into your 'behavior'. Stuff like the fancy tavern won't let you in because you look like a ragamuffin. There was no need to raise the stakes to trauma to prove a rhetorical point. 

This has been a mountains out of molehills thread pretty much from the get go, and through no particular fault of @Reynard either, IMO anyway.


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## Reynard (Apr 5, 2020)

Elfcrusher said:


> And a bunch of us presented evidence/arguments for why nearly any behavior is realistic (including not bathing and sleeping in the woods), and what he was really describing was really just _common_ behavior, but not necessarily more realistic.
> 
> By his standard, "behavioral realism" would be severe emotional and psychological problems stemming from guilt for all the killing, and the horror of nearly being eaten by monsters on a regular basis. Because that would be the response of the vast majority of people. You know, the ones who like to bathe.
> 
> And yet he persisted.



I defined a term at the beginning of the discussion and continued to use that term for clarity. Hell, I even used scare quotes a whole bunch to signify that it's just a term to express what I was talking about.

But we've reached the point in the thread where we are no longer talking about the subject so I'm going to bow out.

Thanks everyone that contributed productively.


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## Maxperson (Apr 6, 2020)

Elfcrusher said:


> It may be a spectrum but, let's face it, we're _all_ on the far end of the spectrum where it's 99.999% unrealistic.  We're arguing about that third decimal place.




It isn't even remotely close to being that unrealistic.  Something that unrealistic would break our minds.  We couldn't conceive of something so absurd.  

D&D is actually more realistic than not.  Humans have two arms, two legs, breath, eat, etc.  Swords are edged, arrows are shot from bow.  There is sky.  Air.  Trees.  Gravity exists.  And so on.  

If I had to guess, I'd say it was probably somewhere between 60 and 70% and we are arguing about 1% or 2% difference.  Er, discussing. 



> Let's say I post, "Hey I want my games to be authentic heroic fantasy.  How can I get more players to choose Paladin?"   It sounds innocuous, but I am, by the nature of the argument, telling Lowkey that his fantasy is neither heroic nor authentic.




That's not the same thing.  We're talking about wanting MORE realism for our games, which doesn't in any way say anything positive or negative about your games.  We can discuss our preferences without it being insulting to you. 

Nobody here is saying that if we act more like people are supposed to act, that it makes our game like reality and therefore better than your game.  You are inventing negative judgement and attributing it to us where there isn't any.  That's not a Strawman, but it's probably some sort of fallacy.


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## pemerton (Apr 6, 2020)

Elfcrusher said:


> The problem could be solved if @Reynard would just say, "There are certain behaviors, such as the aforementioned inn/bathing one, that enhance the game experience for me.  Does anybody have any suggestions for how I could encourage my players to engage in those behaviors?"



A lot of pepole have given those suggestsions. With reference to other systems that seem to readily generate the desired behaviours. And with discussions about how one might work around or overcome any possible obstacles D&D might place in the way.

As someone who's been participating in this thread for most of its duration, this is predominantly what I have seen discussed. The two basic lines of suggstion have been _introudce systems to make it matter _(carrots/sticks) and _change your fiction to make it matter_ (which might also involve introducing systems to support and generate that fiction). To me those seem broad enough to basically cover the field of @darkbard and @chaochou's (2) above.



Aldarc said:


> So yet another tabletop problem that could be solved if adults talked to other adults like adults?



And that would be those same two posters' (1) above. Ie focusing on the metagame (in @Ovinomancer's sense) or "social contract", rather than looking at the game itself as (2) does.

So is this thread basically done then?


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## pemerton (Apr 6, 2020)

happyhermit said:


> Unique (AFAICT) to ttrpgs though, a large number of people for a variety of reasons will bend over backwards in an attempt to make all roleplaying "equal" in quality. So, no matter what a character does; actions that conflict with stated motives or previous charachterization, anachronisms, using knowlege the character couldn't have, exploiting fringe-case rules, it's all perfect roleplaying and no more "realistic" than a player that tries to consider all the factors and act in the way that character would actually act in that situation. I understand some of the motivations for why people think this way, though I obviously don't agree. I think we would be much better off admitting when some people do a good job at something, like we do in all other walks of life.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I have seen players sleeping out in the woods and players buying every luxury in town, both can make sense from an in character perspective and it's usually pretty clear when that's the case vs when the players are making the choice by largely ignoring the fictional world.



I think the reason some (not all) of the issue your raise comes up is because there is no general agreement, in RPGing. on the extent to which _the fictional world, _beyond immediate details like the dungeon walls and traps, should matter to play. Are they part of the focus of play, or a mere backdrop to establish some degree of verisimilitude (like the role of the completely abstract "home base" suggested by Moldvay in his Basic set)?

If you're playing that latter sort of game, then expecting players to have their PCs care about bathing as something they would pay for with their hard-won treasure seems ike a category error.

Where I think some confusion arises is when someone is running the second sort of game but think s they're running the first sort. I've seen this happen more than once in real life, and have read accounts of it also.


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## happyhermit (Apr 6, 2020)

pemerton said:


> I think the reason some (not all) of the issue your raise comes up is because there is no general agreement, in RPGing. on the extent to which _the fictional world, _beyond immediate details like the dungeon walls and traps, should matter to play. Are they part of the focus of play, or a mere backdrop to establish some degree of verisimilitude (like the role of the completely abstract "home base" suggested by Moldvay in his Basic set)?




To some though, the agreement doesn't matter, the very idea that someone could do a better job at roleplaying is offensive to them. Even if you were to couch it as; "That player did/does a better job at portraying their character's actions and reactions in light of their situation in the fictional world." (commonly called roleplaying) those people would reject the premise and take issue with whoever brought it up.


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## Fenris-77 (Apr 6, 2020)

Except that this has never been an issue of "your role playing is bad". Specifically not actually. So I don't really see a lot of value in continuing to insist that value judgments are the key component here. Saying "I'd like things to look different" isn't actually the same as saying "what you're doing is bad" as much as you'd like it to be. The first is about managing and discussing table expectations and the second is a value judgment targeted at players. I guess you can find it offensive of you want, but that's probably an outsized reaction, IMO anyway.


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## happyhermit (Apr 6, 2020)

Fenris-77 said:


> Except that this has never been an issue of "your role playing is bad". Specifically not actually. So I don't really see a lot of value in continuing to insist that value judgments are the key component here. Saying "I'd like things to look different" isn't actually the same as saying "what you're doing is bad" as much as you'd like it to be. The first is about managing and discussing table expectations and the second is a value judgment targeted at players. I guess you can find it offensive of you want, but that's probably an outsized reaction, IMO anyway.




Not sure if this is addressing my post but I think the OP was saying things along the lines of wanting their players to make decisions that are _more _based in the fiction and that maybe they wished their players would put _more_ care into making their decisions based on the fiction, so that it seemed "realistic". My point about why they felt they were villainized was that for some people, even that moderate (IMO) concept is problematic and implies one depiction might be more realistic which implies (to them) that it might be construed as better. About the only way to avoid this is to couch things as one's purely idiosyncratic preferences that bears no relation whatsoever to concepts like "realistic". It puts a lot of hobbles on the conversation compared to the way we can discuss other subjects, and I don't agree with it, but that's my observation.


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## Fenris-77 (Apr 6, 2020)

I wasn't passing judgement on either side, just expressing an opinion that the 'judginess' was I feel more added by subsequent posters than inherent in the OP. This really feel like a table contract kind of issue, which isn't about judging better or worse, just ensuring that peoples expectations match and are met as much as possible. Grownups should be able to have that conversation without anyone's feelings getting hurt.


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## Imaculata (Apr 6, 2020)

Honestly, I think the OP's question is just a matter of storytelling. When my players have been trekking through the jungle for hours in the blistering heat, I describe what that feels like. I describe how despite the shade from the trees, sweat is running down their back constantly and their clothes are a soaked mess. I describe how thirsty they get as a result of sweating so much, and how their feet ache. It's all a matter of setting the scene properly. If your players are anything like the ones in my group, they'll take a bath immediately after a lively description of their harrowing trek through the jungle.


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