Acknowledging RAW in Setting with roleplay?

[Promethean]

A small thought: would it be better for setting cohesion and roleplay to acknowledge optimization and weird quirks of RAW in setting the way we acknowledge science IRL?

For example: from a Lore standpoint Mechanus and the lords of Law are responsible for maintaining the "Physics" and cohesion of the various settings. Wouldn't it make sense that if a wizard or whatever discovers an infinite loop or inconsistency in local physics, they could bring it to mechanus to be fixed in return for a large sum of gold as payment for their assistance in "Debugging" the realms(and avoid a cosmic lawsuit if it was found out that they'd abused a disproportionate reality glitch without informing Mechanus). If the bug is determine by the court of mechanus as "Legitimate", the wizard/fighter/random peasent/whatever gets a smaller sum and the Lords of Law's blessing to abuse their find to their hearts content

Different things could be ruled "Valid" or not by Mechanus based on what Type of setting the DM is going for and having players file Appeals or turn in NPCs to mechanus to allow/ban certain magic and fighting styles(I.E. builds) would be great for role-play and give players some agency over the ban list at the table.

This could also allow Higher TO custom settings to exist without being destroyed by Pun-puns, all without having to hand-wave much. You could easily say the first person to try a Pun-pun strat would have pissed of AO and gotten un-made, leading to the formation of the mechanus court of reality violations in the first place.

[NichG]

It can be useful, but it also can push the feel of the setting towards one with a noticeable 4th wall. Certain sorts of tensions and stories that are cheapened by that, so handle with care. You also have to be careful about moving stuff to patch a small hole and getting a bigger hole somewhere else as a consequence. Once 'enforcement of the laws of reality' becomes a thing done by finite beings that exist within reality, it also becomes a lever that forces in the setting might want to act upon. And by its nature its sort of a definitionally more powerful lever than any other lever that might exist, which again might cheapen things.

The idea can be generalized I think. All of these sorts of things are what I would call 'escape valves' for inconsistencies between metagame and game. Having the rules be an in-setting construct and amenable to decisions and actions would be one such escape valve, but 'the rules are just an abstraction appropriate to a certain scale of character-driven activities, and are not the physics of the setting' is another escape valve. You can have more of these like 'the proximity of the Far Realm to reality means that in this universe, cause and effect are not completely coherent with each-other, and sometimes there will be glitches in reality where even multiple observers of the same event cannot agree on what happened' or 'the setting is the dream of a sleeping overdeity and sometimes operates on dream logic, whenever one of the many souls of the overdeity are present and dreaming a particular scene' or so on.

So I would certainly use this, but maybe I'd take a step back on how literally 'the rules of the game' its about. Rather than having the bureau target enforcement of things like peasant railguns or drown healing, I'd basically say 'regardless of everything else, the rules are still an abstraction and are not the physics of reality - but! the physics of reality in the setting is more conceptual than mechanical and that means that there are Godel incompleteness sorts of things about how concepts interact which are undecidable - this bureau in Mechanus is responsible for deciding such things when such undecidable interactions occur'

[Promethean]

Mostly presenting this for High PO/TO settings. Personally seen a lot of conflict between "the rules are abstractions" and "the rules can be taken advantage of for disproportionate benefit" whenever as setting tries to do anything other than pretend optimization doesn't exist.

It also means players can keep playing and get in-game goals/benefits rather than everyone having to stop play to hash things out if issues come up.

[NichG]

Mostly presenting this for High PO/TO settings. Personally seen a lot of conflict between "the rules are abstractions" and "the rules can be taken advantage of for disproportionate benefit" whenever as setting tries to do anything other than pretend optimization doesn't exist.

It also means players can keep playing and get in-game goals/benefits rather than everyone having to stop play to hash things out if issues come up.

You can do high PO/TO with 'the rules are abstraction'. It basically means focusing more on stuff that is pretty straightforward about what its doing and happens to combo well, rather than looking e.g. for sentences where the placement of a comma or period implies a reading that makes it work differently than everything else in the system or things like that.

[Quertus]

A small thought: would it be better for setting cohesion and roleplay to acknowledge optimization and weird quirks of RAW in setting the way we acknowledge science IRL?

For example: from a Lore standpoint Mechanus and the lords of Law are responsible for maintaining the "Physics" and cohesion of the various settings. Wouldn't it make sense that if a wizard or whatever discovers an infinite loop or inconsistency in local physics, they could bring it to mechanus to be fixed in return for a large sum of gold as payment for their assistance in "Debugging" the realms(and avoid a cosmic lawsuit if it was found out that they'd abused a disproportionate reality glitch without informing Mechanus). If the bug is determine by the court of mechanus as "Legitimate", the wizard/fighter/random peasent/whatever gets a smaller sum and the Lords of Law's blessing to abuse their find to their hearts content

Different things could be ruled "Valid" or not by Mechanus based on what Type of setting the DM is going for and having players file Appeals or turn in NPCs to mechanus to allow/ban certain magic and fighting styles(I.E. builds) would be great for role-play and give players some agency over the ban list at the table.

This could also allow Higher TO custom settings to exist without being destroyed by Pun-puns, all without having to hand-wave much. You could easily say the first person to try a Pun-pun strat would have pissed of AO and gotten un-made, leading to the formation of the mechanus court of reality violations in the first place.

Better for roleplay? Boy oh boy. Queue arguments about why anyone choose to eat junk food and slack off instead of eating well and studying to become <optimized profession of choice>.

So, anyone optimizing and thinking in terms of optimizing most of these ways has already likely failed so hard at roleplaying that it really doesn’t matter.

That out of the way…

Having some weak bureaucracy in charge of such things? The Determinator would crush them. It fails at its intended purpose.

Personally, I just add Pun-Pun as the secret god of Optimization and Infinity to most any pantheon, and he (being obviously capable of dealing with such problems) deals with any such problems when/before they come up.

That said…

I like the idea, not of piddly Mechanus, but beings outside reality caring about issuing patches to reality. Of course, I’d most likely be trying to get them to roll back to 2nd edition - or slightly earlier, regardless of how Mystra complains about spells above 9th level.

[Promethean]

BSo, anyone optimizing and thinking in terms of optimizing most of these ways has already likely failed so hard at roleplaying that it really doesn’t matter.

Please tell you are not seriously pushing the stormwind fallacy.



Having some weak bureaucracy in charge of such things? The Determinator would crush them. It fails at its intended purpose.

Personally, I just add Pun-Pun as the secret god of Optimization and Infinity to most any pantheon, and he (being obviously capable of dealing with such problems) deals with any such problems when/before they come up.

That said…

I like the idea, not of piddly Mechanus, but beings outside reality caring about issuing patches to reality. Of course, I’d most likely be trying to get them to roll back to 2nd edition - or slightly earlier, regardless of how Mystra complains about spells above 9th level.

You do know mechanus isn't run by low-class modrons right? The realm resided over by the god Primus and his demi-god Secundus(who are basically 20th level law clerics, 20th level sorcerers, and 20th level monks at the same time).

Most builds would get curb-stomped by a multi-Tier-1 class monster, let alone multiple + a God.

[Quertus]

Please tell you are not seriously pushing the stormwind fallacy.

Not at all! Just saying that most of the “Glitch”-level optimization I’ve seen (especially in an already TO campaign) isn’t things characters would even think of, let alone attempt, in character.

The mindset in which this idea would be the most cool and useful… isn’t one that cares about maximizing “roleplaying”. :smalltongue:


You do know mechanus isn't run by low-class modrons right? The realm resided over by the god Primus and his demi-god Secundus(who are basically 20th level law clerics, 20th level sorcerers, and 20th level monks at the same time).

Most builds would get curb-stomped by a multi-Tier-1 class monster, let alone multiple + a God.

Remember: TO campaign power levels, *and* they are charged with dealing with beings that have potentially “gone infinite” due to a glitch in reality that, by definition, they themselves are unaware of and are not using. There’s not much in setting that can really be expected to be able to deal with that.

That said, I will concede (sight unseen) that Primus is among the most likely beings in setting to be capable of doing so. I just feel “something outside the system” is a better call. Of course, being a programmer, I’m biased that way. :smallbiggrin:

[NichG]

Anyhow, Stormwind isn't 'all forms of optimization in play are roleplay neutral', its 'just because you can optimize well doesn't make you a bad roleplayer'.

If someone says they're trying to depict a helpless orphan who has suffered years of deprivation and abuse by society (or are asked by setting or other circumstance to depict that character) and they come up with a build that can solo demon lords, "That's the Stormwind Fallacy!" doesn't shield them from people noting that they sure seem to be ignoring the roleplay element of that character rather than using their optimization powers to make e.g. the waif-iest waif. 'I've been starved for years but point buy doesn't let me go beneath an 8, can I figure out some way to get negative hitpoints per level despite all that?' on the other hand...

Also, Primus was killed offscreen in 2ed Planescape by a demon lord, so... oversold maybe?

[Promethean]

Remember: TO campaign power levels, *and* they are charged with dealing with beings that have potentially “gone infinite” due to a glitch in reality that, by definition, they themselves are unaware of and are not using. There’s not much in setting that can really be expected to be able to deal with that.

That said, I will concede (sight unseen) that Primus is among the most likely beings in setting to be capable of doing so. I just feel “something outside the system” is a better call. Of course, being a programmer, I’m biased that way. :smallbiggrin:

The Divine Salient abilities are a pretty big exception to that. Things like Alter Reality(replicate any spell of up to 9th level, with unlimited metamagic, an uncapped version of permanency that works on basically anything, the ability to freely alter landscapes, etc. as One Power) is something even the lowliest demigod can have with 29+charisma(standard array for gods is 35, 28, 25, 24, 24, 24, before class levels, divine ranks, inherent bonuses, etc).

Besides, The point of the original post isn't that mechanus would be putting out a cease and desist if they find out someone was juicing. Mechanus controls the physics of D&Ds reality(to the point that Primus can shut down cause and effect at will by stopping Mechanus's gears from turning, basically at-will time-stop). Primus and the Secundus would be able to flip a couple switches and the "Infinite" wizard would suddenly be very Finite or worse depending on build(Omnifiscer would probably explode from now having to deal with the consequences of infinite damage for example)

Mystra also canonically throws a hissy fit any time a not-god tries to use above 9th level spellcasting, so trying to use epic spell cheese without a pre-arrange approval and permit is basically like calling the police and leaving them on speaker while you're in the middle of committing a very loud and very messy murder.



Also, Primus was killed offscreen in 2ed Planescape by a demon lord, so... oversold maybe?

By orcus using the most powerful spell to ever exist(The Last Word), a spell that now doesn't exist anymore.

Primus was killed by an overpowered plot device designed specifically to explain why orcus could punch above his weight-class temporarily. I wouldn't call getting killed by Diablo-Ex-Machina a good anti-feat against primus.

[Inevitability]

One view I typically take is that D&D is not a mechanistic world operating exactly according to the game rules: the game rules are an abstraction for the world, and a way for the players to interface predictably with that world, but it's incorrect to say they are the world.

Quick example: if Rohan the Barbarian swings his sword at a goblin, the game rules provide a good tool for player and DM (who likely know little about swords and goblins) to figure out how this affects the goblin. If Bruce the Wizard casts Ray of Frost, the game rules provide guidelines for how far the spell reaches.

But this layer of abstraction is just that: a layer of abstraction. Even though in mechanical terms Bruce Wizard's spell will always extend [number divisible by 5] feet from its caster, on the story level this isn't what's going on, because the story level might have wizards and dragons but it doesn't have 5-foot grids. There's dissonance here, but it's dissonance that should be fixed at the player level: that is, by saying "Actually Bruce Wizard lives in a continuous reality, and thus he cannot notice in the first place that 5 ft. cubes seem to be important somehow".


Or maybe you do see D&D as a mechanistic world operating according to game rules. That's fine! But such a world would look very different from any published campaign setting and 99% of homebrew worlds. Even OotS or similar 'self-aware' takes only really lampshade the mechanical layer, while continuing to enforce the story layer's logic. There might be a joke about the lack of penalties from sleep deprivation or wizards learning their two free levelup spells automatically, but ultimately characters are still shown getting sleepy, and wizard towers are still filled with arcane libraries.

An actual world where RAW is a real and physical force would be an interesting thought experiment, but it would abandon the whole point of a role-playing game and simply turn into a weird kind of barebones simulation.

[vasilidor]

I think that it would work to a limited extant. Like we know that Warblades are better than fighters the majority of the time given the same stats? And fighters are better than Warriors? So The Fighter turns out to be the occasionally talented warrior but the people from (X) were the the Warblades get taught are scary and people who are Warblades are also scary. And warriors would know better than to try to engage a wizard that they know is capable of a certain level of magic leading to most warriors being extra cautious when they do have to fight a wizard (Kill that guy first mentality). though it can get screwy with resurrection spells and the cost of gems.