A forum for discussing and organizing recreational softball and baseball games and leagues in the greater Halifax area.
Possibilities are endless
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I always see rolling a 20 or a 1 as an opportunity for rediculousness to ensue and the modifiers help decide what kind of rediculousness. Skilled swordsman rolls a 1? They have a hilarious fumble meanwhile someone who's never picked up a sword might be stabbing themselves with disadvantage (because the goal isn't to kill the player but to let the dice add flavor. Also accidentally stabbing yourself would probably do less damage than intentionally stabbing someone) Person who's never picked up a sword rolls a 20? Guess they're now demonstrating awe-inspiring sword skill that they will never be able to matchPersonally I rather dislike "5% of every attempt will be wacky", especially when multiplied by "higher level people are making more attempts, and thus are having more wackiness". The fighter who makes three attacks a round is going to have three times as many "hilarious fumbles" compared to the lower level fighter only making one. This is part of why I prefer dice pools over a flat single die system.
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This post did not contain any content.Once, I played at a table where we did an x-mas themed one-off. Fast-forward to the climax of the session where we face off against an evil santa. As a bard, I had to get very creative. **Me**: Describe him for us. Is he wearing the full santa claus getup? **DM**: Of course! **Me**: Including the red hat and the big 'ol belt-buckle around his big 'ol belly? **DM**: Who do you take me for? He's the spitting image of St. Nick. **Me**: Great! _I cast [heat metal](https://dnd5e.wikidot.com/spell:heat-metal) on the belt buckle._ **DM**: ... **DM**: 
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> D&D is great because it allows for creative freedom This is not something unique to dnd! In fact, DND is not even especially good at this! It's like people are saying "mayonnaise is great because you can add it to any meal", which is technically true, but meanwhile *salt* is right there being ignored on the shelf.> It's like people are saying "mayonnaise is great because you can add it to any meal", which is technically true, but meanwhile *salt* is right there being ignored on the shelf. I think you're misinterpreting this discussion. > This is not something unique to dnd! In fact, DND is not even especially good at this! Of course creativity and flexibility are not exclusive to D&D. This discussion is not about D&D vs. other RPG systems, it's about the explicit permissiveness of D&D. Basically, some people consider the rules to be permissive (e.g. everything not explicitly forbidden is allowed) whereas others consider the rules to be restrictive (everything not explicitly allowed is forbidden). My point is that the permissive interpretation is better for gameplay, and I think that argument would apply to any gaming system in general.
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Everyone remembers the part in Mythbusters where they proved this is possible. Nobody remembers the part where they found no evidence of it ever happening. Also, the eye patch trope was originally for sailors in general. Which would make sense if this is what it was used for, since all sailors would need night vision, but that just means it's even crazier that nobody would bother to write it down. They used deck prisms to see below decks. That would give you plenty of light during the day, and during the night your eyes are already adjusted to the dark.Sure but we have also lost things that you'd think someone would write down properly if only for the purpose of manifests or similar things. Like Roman concrete where all the recipes we had failed to note that you needed to use salt water specifically or how I believe it was British naval vessels had three standardized condiments which we know the first two I think it was mayo and ketchup but we don't know what the third was we think it was probably vinegar due to its common use in recipes at the time but we aren't certain. It's often times the most mundane things that are lost, reminds me how in 40k it's all but stated that the control runes for more ancient tech are probably just our symbols for power on/off or whatnot they just lost the cultural context.
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> It's like people are saying "mayonnaise is great because you can add it to any meal", which is technically true, but meanwhile *salt* is right there being ignored on the shelf. I think you're misinterpreting this discussion. > This is not something unique to dnd! In fact, DND is not even especially good at this! Of course creativity and flexibility are not exclusive to D&D. This discussion is not about D&D vs. other RPG systems, it's about the explicit permissiveness of D&D. Basically, some people consider the rules to be permissive (e.g. everything not explicitly forbidden is allowed) whereas others consider the rules to be restrictive (everything not explicitly allowed is forbidden). My point is that the permissive interpretation is better for gameplay, and I think that argument would apply to any gaming system in general.This whole conversation is at least using the words "DND" even if one could argue they're not actually talking about DND specifically. Thus, I was making the point that if you do want a system that rewards creative players DND is not a good one. What system are you thinking of that stands in contrast to dnd's "explicit permissiveness"? I'm not even sure what you mean by the "permissive interpretation". Is that the Calvinball mode? Games can definitely go badly when it turns into an inconsistent, unpredictable mess. Games have rules so we don't argue like children on the playground going "I hit you. No you didn't. Yes I did. I have a force field. Well I have an anti force field laser.."
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Sure but we have also lost things that you'd think someone would write down properly if only for the purpose of manifests or similar things. Like Roman concrete where all the recipes we had failed to note that you needed to use salt water specifically or how I believe it was British naval vessels had three standardized condiments which we know the first two I think it was mayo and ketchup but we don't know what the third was we think it was probably vinegar due to its common use in recipes at the time but we aren't certain. It's often times the most mundane things that are lost, reminds me how in 40k it's all but stated that the control runes for more ancient tech are probably just our symbols for power on/off or whatnot they just lost the cultural context.It's still a huge stretch to go from "this could possibly work, but there's no evidence that it was ever used besides sailors often being drawn with eyepatches" to "ever single sailor on the ship wore an eyepatch, and everyone forgot why and also depicted most sailors as not having eyepatches for some reason".
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It's still a huge stretch to go from "this could possibly work, but there's no evidence that it was ever used besides sailors often being drawn with eyepatches" to "ever single sailor on the ship wore an eyepatch, and everyone forgot why and also depicted most sailors as not having eyepatches for some reason".Oh I doubt they all used that but it could've been a backup/specialist method dependent on ship or crew member. It wouldve been enough that when combined with actual eye injuries which could've been caused by any number of things it got stuck in on a cultural level, it's like how under shirts got labeled tank tops because enough tankers kept getting too hot in their tanks so they stripped down to their skivvies. Doesn't take much for memetics to kick in on such things, which when combined with ill records can cause a weird dissident of information.
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Oh I doubt they all used that but it could've been a backup/specialist method dependent on ship or crew member. It wouldve been enough that when combined with actual eye injuries which could've been caused by any number of things it got stuck in on a cultural level, it's like how under shirts got labeled tank tops because enough tankers kept getting too hot in their tanks so they stripped down to their skivvies. Doesn't take much for memetics to kick in on such things, which when combined with ill records can cause a weird dissident of information.> when combined with actual eye injuries > Doesn’t take much for memetics to kick in That alone is enough to explain our observations (the trope). So, to summarize your point, if this happened but not very often, it wouldn't leave any evidence. We have no evidence, therefore it must have happened, just not very often.
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> when combined with actual eye injuries > Doesn’t take much for memetics to kick in That alone is enough to explain our observations (the trope). So, to summarize your point, if this happened but not very often, it wouldn't leave any evidence. We have no evidence, therefore it must have happened, just not very often.Probably, there may be evidence if you cross referenced a bunch of old journals, possibly medical logs, and maybe familial oral traditions. But yeah without going through largely inane and scattered documents it's probably one of those self perpetuating memetic things that pops up on occasion because for a short period of time an uptick in sailors with eye patches happened and it got stuck culturally. The best you could probably do to actually disprove such a thing would be to find where the source was, which would in all likelihood come down to a certain model of ship or a specific cultural tradition. Hell given how commonly shit goes back to Odin it could be a lost form of worship that got wrapped up in with sailor folklore after the viking age.
