The Gaming Den

Novembermike: I think you're completely wrong. In a video game, the only things that work are things that were programmed in to work. So the "DM" (the game designer) has decided: "I'll give them the macguffin if they bring the X back from the Cave of Horrors." And then you go do ...

No, that's not a system of arbitration. Because it doesn't tell me, as the DM, how the NPC is going to react to something. It tells me to decide how the NPC is going to react to something. But I want there to be inputs to this decision that depend on the abilities of the characters (not just the pl...

Well, the problem with option (b) there is that ultimately, either the DM is going to give you the macguffin or he isn't. And if you don't have any rules for adjudicating social situations then the DM at some point has to just decide whether he's going to give it to you. And let's face it, he's goi...

Yes, exactly! More seriously, as far as I can tell there's sort of one core disagreement between the Denners and the pro-4e people. A couple of posters upthread commented something like, "the game splits into combat, which needs well-defined rules, and social interactions/everything else, whic...

Wait, you mean there are skills to know things about things? So if I could roll Nature to know things about a swamp, I could roll Arcana or Dungeoneering to know things about a magically spontaneously generated physics-violating obsidian tower full of monsters? So Kaelik's original argument about n...

That's an equally fair description, I think. As Frank says, the rule "never allow a human to come to harm" is prima facie unfollowable. In the robots it has some specific mathematical description, as do the other two. Because this is such a blunt substitute for a moral system, it has a bun...

To be fair to Asimov, he tended to be pretty consistent about "the three laws have actual rigorous mathematical formulations, and the way we express them in English is just an approximation that doesn't really explain the edge cases very well." Actually, that's the plot of most of his I Ro...

K: as I said above, I think Frank ran the numbers and "Making every iron smelter in the world obsolete" takes one wizard working full-time (on directly casting the spell, not on crafting), or something like that. So that's not implausible. I think that was one of those "if a 20th lev...

Mguy: that's all true. And honestly, the "is it technology" thing is kind of a red herring; among other things we can define the word to mean whatever we want it to mean. I was just trying to explain why that phrasing came up the last time around. The real point is that very few people can...

Vebyast, you're right of course that D&D isn't technology free. Things like "the knowledge that it's possible to become a 9th-level wizard and start casting "wall of iron"" are technology. But the ability to do that is a--very expensive--form of human capital. Which brings us...

Vebyast: except even that's wrong. You're saying that a wizard can use his human capital to produce physical capital. Which is of course true. And it's actually really cool if the capital he creates doesn't depreciate. But it's still just capital. Technology is stuff that improves productivity by be...

Anquirus: from an economist's point of view, the defining feature of "technology," roughly speaking, is extensibility: technology is the knowledge that society accumulates that people in general can use to be more productive. So, e.g. inventing the moldboard plough or the stirrup is a gain...

But you're still approaching it backwards. If I'm describing a room the players walk into, I shouldn't have to figure out ahead of time that a tumbling check that may or may not be needed should be hard, and therefore when someone asks "what's the floor look like" match a description to a...

And this is a fundamental difference of philosophy, I think. Frank can give a very eloquent rant on how if you don't have a persistent world in exactly this way, you're playing a video game, not a TTRPG. I'm not going to try to reproduce it because his will be way better, and half the reason I come ...

That depends on how difficult you plan for that room of the dungeon to be. I plan for it to be as difficult as a room with a plank over a ten-foot chasm should be. That's the problem I think we're identifying--the 4e system works well if you start with a difficulty and then create a terrain; it's r...

Why would an engineer go to law school, or a chemistry major to med school? Why would someone get two degrees? Because it seemed like a good idea at the time . The problem is when you (at an arbitrary level in your life) have to suddenly change gears, not because there is a reason why you need to c...

Swordslinger, here's my question. I'm a DM; I'm designing a dungeon. It has a ten-foot-long, six-inch-wide plank of wood over a chasm. What's the DC to cross it?

It's different when the MC does it because his characters don't have backstories. The PCs all have reasonably detailed backstories and motivations, so you can extrapolate how they'd react to things. With a random shopkeeper or a bunch of orcs, you don't have that. So you have a few options. 1) All s...

MGuy: you keep saying that "This change can be predicted by the MC". I think Frank wants some system for making this change--for determining NPCs' initial attitudes based on outside factors, that doesn't boil down to "the MC eyeballs it and says something."

Ubernoob: you're welcome. Other things you might find useful: I really liked Carnegie's book How to Win Friends and Influence People , as corny as that sounds; make sure you get an unbowdlerized edition with the hilarious chapters on things like "How to keep your wife from nagging you". I ...

Paul Graham wrote an essay you might find interesting. The topic is why nerds are unpopular. The key insight is that most groups of people exist for some reason. For instance, I have the circle of friends I go dancing with, and the circle of friends who are in choir with me, and the circle of friend...

I think my favorite part of the character point system in AD&D (if I'm remembering this right) was that priests get 120 points, and you can buy access to one school of wizard spells for 15 points, and there were eight schools... So you could play a wizard. Or you could play a cleric who has acce...

As an irregular mainly-lurker (and one who sympathizes with Koumei's problems), I really wanted to jump in and second this... I don't. I don't disagree with what you're saying (exposure lessens the anxiety, though that's also contingent on successful interaction) but there are other barriers to int...

Koumei, one way people who hate social interaction make friends is joining clubs. You know, animu clubs, gamer clubs, writers' clubs, etc. Going to a gathering of mutually assured interest is a way for people who have difficulty talking with others to talk with others without too much awkwardness. ...

Even when they are struggling with multiple unhappy players at once they will pick ONE and blame ALL their problems on that guy and his magically malign influence ruining everything and presumably somehow manipulating things behind the scenes to turn everyone and everything against him. I actually ...