# Mearls' "Stop, Thief!" Article



## mudlock (May 17, 2011)

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Stop, Thief!)

"Saddled with a variety of at best unreliable skills, the thief forced  me to improvise, invent, and interact* with the game in ways the other  classes weren’t forced to."

Seriously? Mike Mearls, head of D&D R&D, believes that crappy rules are just great!, because they force you to find creative ways to not use them?

If he were just waxing nostalgic about the hilarious olden days and the stupid things we did, that would be one thing, but it sure doesn't sound like that's what he's saying here.

Please, someone tell me I'm reading this wrong; that the #1 rules-guy doesn't really think that bad rules are good.


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## malraux (May 17, 2011)

I think its more that the rules function as blinders to all possible options.  Now, rules can't not do that, but really the most interesting events (IMO) happen outside of those rules.  And it is important for the rules designer to be aware of that, because he can either make rules that strengthen those blinders, or lessen them.


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## Whizbang Dustyboots (May 17, 2011)

mudlock said:


> Please, someone tell me I'm reading this wrong; that the #1 rules-guy doesn't really think that bad rules are good.



Everything not being guaranteed != "bad rules"


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## IanB (May 17, 2011)

mudlock said:


> Please, someone tell me I'm reading this wrong; that the #1 rules-guy doesn't really think that bad rules are good.




You're reading it wrong. I certainly don't think he's saying that bad rules are better than good rules, I think he's just saying that the experience of playing with bad rules can sometimes make someone a better player (or GM), which I totally agree with. I'm not saying going out and playing F.A.T.A.L. is going to help, but playing earlier editions of D&D and similar systems can be pretty instructive.


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## LostSoul (May 17, 2011)

mudlock said:


> "Saddled with a variety of at best unreliable skills, the thief forced  me to improvise, invent, and interact* with the game in ways the other  classes weren’t forced to."
> 
> Seriously? Mike Mearls, head of D&D R&D, believes that crappy rules are just great!, because they force you to find creative ways to not use them?




I think he's saying that

1. Thieves had a poor chance of success when using skills
2. This forced him to improvise, invent, and interact
3. He really enjoyed doing that

I don't see how you can frame rules that reinforce what the game is about as crappy rules.  Maybe you don't like the same type of game mearls talks about, but I think it's pretty obvious why they work for him, and why they work for others.

It's interesting that when you gain levels and your skills start to rise to the point where you might actually use them, what's happening is that how you play the game is changing.  You no longer have to improvise, invent, and interact.  That's a neat trick; I imagine that you've been through so many traps already that you don't mind rolling for a few now that you're name level.


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## P1NBACK (May 17, 2011)

Does anyone have an interview or reference somewhere explaining why/how they decided on the Thief skill percentages?


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## ForeverSlayer (May 17, 2011)

They just locked the L&L thread over on the Wizard's site.  Looks like the devs just run, lock all their doors, and hide.  Happens when people point out mistakes and others fail to acknowledge them and admit it.


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## ForeverSlayer (May 17, 2011)

LostSoul said:


> I think he's saying that
> 
> 1. Thieves had a poor chance of success when using skills
> 2. This forced him to improvise, invent, and interact
> ...




Thing is he was talking about a thief that I think most people didn't use.  Hell the d6 HD thief came out like 2 or 3 years later and was used for 11 years.  

Why are you going to point out a bad class that was only used for a short time to represent the thief?  That would be like having "Clear Pepsi" represent "Pepsi" products as a whole.


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## IanB (May 17, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> Thing is he was talking about a thief that I think most people didn't use.  Hell the d6 HD thief came out like 2 or 3 years later and was used for 11 years.
> 
> Why are you going to point out a bad class that was only used for a short time to represent the thief?  That would be like having "Clear Pepsi" represent "Pepsi" products as a whole.




Um... what? The 1e thief was used for a lot longer than 2 or 3 years.


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## Scribble (May 17, 2011)

He's not saying bad rules are good- He's saying that one of the strengths of tabletop RPGs is their ability to bend, and the ability of a human interface (the DM) to improvise.

The article as a whole really isn't about the thief at all- he's just using that as a vehicle for his larger point- the ability to improvise is a strong point of tRPGs, and something a good DM should foster.

The "bad" rules of the 1e thief served to highlight this because there wasn't much else he could do BUT improvise with the system.

This doesn't mean bad rules are good- just that improvisation is.


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## renau1g (May 18, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> They just locked the L&L thread over on the Wizard's site.  Looks like the devs just run, lock all their doors, and hide.  Happens when people point out mistakes and others fail to acknowledge them and admit it.




What's an L&L thread?


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## Droogie128 (May 18, 2011)

renau1g said:


> What's an L&L thread?




Legends and Lore.


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## Patryn of Elvenshae (May 18, 2011)

I'm guessing "Legends and Lore," the article series that Mearls is writing.


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## Saracenus (May 18, 2011)

renau1g said:


> What's an L&L thread?




Legends & Lore thread over on the WotC forums discussing Mereal's latest editorial. I was unable to find it by clicking the discussion link from the article and Forever Slayer didn't bother with a link so I don't know the circumstances of the lockdown.

Double Ninja'd... damn its a bad day to be a pirate.


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## Obryn (May 18, 2011)

renau1g said:


> What's an L&L thread?



Basically whenever Mike Mearls posts a Legends & Lore article, all the trolls on the WotC site flock to the thread about it on the General forum and talk about what a horrible human being he is, how 5e is around the corner and will basically be 1e again, and how he is RUINING THE GAME FOREVER!

ForeverSlayer, that thread had turned to crap several pages before it was locked.  Quit pretending it's the devs hiding.

-O


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## Obryn (May 18, 2011)

Saracenus said:


> Legends & Lore thread over on the WotC forums discussing Mereal's latest editorial. I was unable to find it by clicking the discussion link from the article and Forever Slayer didn't bother with a link so I don't know the circumstances of the lockdown.



The Thread!

This is also ignoring the fact that every thread regarding the Templar is still open, so if the devs are hiding, they're doing an awful job of it.

-O


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## Saracenus (May 18, 2011)

Ok, having read that thread... Um, Forever Slayer... that thread was one post away from Godwin's Law. 

In fact, it would not surprise me if I missed a Nazi analogy post because my eyes rolled up into my head with the level of mindless vitriol that was spewed on that thread...

If that had been a message board or mailing list I was moderating the ban hammer would have come out and many of those folks would no longer have posting privileges.

That thread lock was not the Devs hiding, that was a moderator dropping flame retardant water from a large plane on a wildfire. Kudos to WotC_Trevor for putting that out.

Disagreeing doesn't mean being disagreeable.


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## ForeverSlayer (May 18, 2011)

Obryn said:


> The Thread!
> 
> This is also ignoring the fact that every thread regarding the Templar is still open, so if the devs are hiding, they're doing an awful job of it.
> 
> -O




That thread wasn't about the Templar at all.


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## ForeverSlayer (May 18, 2011)

IanB said:


> Um... what? The 1e thief was used for a lot longer than 2 or 3 years.




That is the 1e thief that I am talking about.  He is talking about thief from the Greyhawk supplement.  1e edition AKA AD&D 1 edition is the d6 thief that I am referring to.


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## ForeverSlayer (May 18, 2011)

Obryn said:


> Basically whenever Mike Mearls posts a Legends & Lore article, all the trolls on the WotC site flock to the thread about it on the General forum and talk about what a horrible human being he is, how 5e is around the corner and will basically be 1e again, and how he is RUINING THE GAME FOREVER!
> 
> ForeverSlayer, that thread had turned to crap several pages before it was locked.  Quit pretending it's the devs hiding.
> 
> -O




If you say so.


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## Nagol (May 18, 2011)

IanB said:


> Um... what? The 1e thief was used for a lot longer than 2 or 3 years.




Mearl's references a Thief having d4 hit points.  That places it in the Holmes Basic game from 1974 which worked from level 1 to 3 and then recommended upgrading to AD&D.

In AD&D the Thief had d6 hit points.


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## IanB (May 18, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> That is the 1e thief that I am talking about.  He is talking about thief from the Greyhawk supplement.  1e edition AKA AD&D 1 edition is the d6 thief that I am referring to.




Which had the same problem with terrible % chance of success on thief skills.

That wasn't 'fixed' until 2e.


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## ForeverSlayer (May 18, 2011)

IanB said:


> Which had the same problem with terrible % chance of success on thief skills.
> 
> That wasn't 'fixed' until 2e.




You could improve your percent by race and with a really good Dex.


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## Obryn (May 18, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> That thread wasn't about the Templar at all.



Nope, but when you say...


ForeverSlayer said:


> Looks like the devs just run, lock all their doors, and hide.  Happens when people point out mistakes and others fail to acknowledge them and admit it.



...you should probably back it up with evidence.  The devs don't seem to be locking those.



ForeverSlayer said:


> Thing is he was talking about a thief that I think most people didn't use.  Hell the d6 HD thief came out like 2 or 3 years later and was used for 11 years.
> 
> Why are you going to point out a bad class that was only used for a short time to represent the thief?  That would be like having "Clear Pepsi" represent "Pepsi" products as a whole.



Are you making stuff up, or stretching the truth?  That's the Thief in B/X, BECMI, and the Rules Cyclopedia.  All of which were very popular all through the 80's; probably as popular as 1e AD&D, and more familiar to a good many players.  The d4 Hit Die Thief was in use from Holmes Basic in 1977 at least through the Rules Cyclopedia in 1991, which basically capped off the BECMI line.  AD&D wasn't an upgrade from the Basic line; it was a separate line of game material.

And you couldn't buff his thief skills with race or dex; you were a Human if you were a Thief, and dex didn't do a thing for your thief skills.

You're making the same fundamental mistakes in history as a poster on the WotC boards.  Which is awfully funny!

-O


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## IanB (May 18, 2011)

Yeah I missed the bit about the d4. That does pretty much mean BECMI I'd guess.


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## Dannager (May 18, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> They just locked the L&L thread over on the Wizard's site.  Looks like the devs just run, lock all their doors, and hide.  Happens when people point out mistakes and others fail to acknowledge them and admit it.




What is really disturbing here is that despite the ample evidence in that thread that it was locked because of multiple forum rule violations and a discussion that was going nowhere (and would be _long_ locked if it had taken place on ENWorld), you instead chose to characterize it as having been locked because the devs (who don't manage the forums) don't like criticism.

Choosing to ignore the most plausible and parsimonious reason in favor of an unlikely, borderline-paranoid reason is a pretty clear indicator that you're posting with an agenda in mind.


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## P1NBACK (May 18, 2011)

Obryn said:


> ...how 5e is around the corner and will basically be 1e again...
> 
> -O




That would be awesome.


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## ForeverSlayer (May 18, 2011)

Obryn said:


> Nope, but when you say...
> 
> ...you should probably back it up with evidence.  The devs don't seem to be locking those.
> 
> ...




Got any evidence to back you up?  Why do you think they called one basic and one advanced for a reason? 

The 1st edition thief that we are talking about could have their percentages increased by race and by a high Dex.  Also at this time all races were able to choose the thief as a class. Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 1977 was the next step from Basic D&D.

I don't post on the Wizard's forums, I just observe.


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## ForeverSlayer (May 18, 2011)

Dannager said:


> What is really disturbing here is that despite the ample evidence in that thread that it was locked because of multiple forum rule violations and a discussion that was going nowhere (and would be _long_ locked if it had taken place on ENWorld), you instead chose to characterize it as having been locked because the devs (who don't manage the forums) don't like criticism.
> 
> Choosing to ignore the most plausible and parsimonious reason in favor of an unlikely, borderline-paranoid reason is a pretty clear indicator that you're posting with an agenda in mind.




There is no agenda, I just call it like I see it.  Seems to me Wizard's hit a nerve and when the crap hit the fan they locked the thread instead of toughening it out.


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## P1NBACK (May 18, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 1977 was the next step from Basic D&D.




No. 

"The original _*Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set*_ boxed set (TSR 1001) was first published by TSR, Inc. in 1977,[1] and comprised a separate edition of the _Dungeons & Dragons_ fantasy role-playing game, *distinct from the first edition of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game*, which was initially published in the same year."

Unlike recent "basic sets" which are introductions to the complete game, the original Basic game was a distinct version of D&D that stood alone from AD&D, but shared common elements. 

The Basic set was actually meant to springboard characters into the "Expert Set", which comprised levels 4+.


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## ForeverSlayer (May 18, 2011)

P1NBACK said:


> No.
> 
> "The original _*Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set*_ boxed set (TSR 1001) was first published by TSR, Inc. in 1977,[1] and comprised a separate edition of the _Dungeons & Dragons_ fantasy role-playing game, *distinct from the first edition of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game*, which was initially published in the same year."
> 
> ...




I saw the basic set as where you started and AD&D as where you ended up.  Now if I am not mistaken the OD&D thief had d4 hit dice, but it also had 2d4 at 2nd level and then 3d4 at 3rd etc...

We used a blue box if I remember straight and then we moved to the hardback book with the guy stealing the gem on the front.


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## ForeverSlayer (May 18, 2011)

Oh god now I remember!  Weren't there like 20 boxsets or something?  I think one was black and and another like a magenta looking color? I do remember a blue box with the dragon on it.


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## IanB (May 18, 2011)

Yeah take it from those of us who were alive at the time and played both systems, Basic-Expert-etc. was an entirely separate game with its own full slate of products, a fully supported campaign world, etc.


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## wayne62682 (May 18, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> There is no agenda, I just call it like I see it.  Seems to me Wizard's hit a nerve and when the crap hit the fan they locked the thread instead of toughening it out.




Again, that's SOP over at the WotC boards.  I've been going there for some... 5 years now?  Maybe six, and they were always unwilling to actually accept responsibility for half the stupid garbage they spout out, hiding behind the fact it's "their" forum to squash dissent under the guise of keeping the forums friendly for the kiddies.  It used to be a lot worse.


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## Henry (May 18, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> You could improve your percent by race and with a really good Dex.




Ooh, an extra 5 or 10%! I quiver with anticipation! 

More seriously, an ultra-high Dex and different race really didn't make a huge difference in 1E. In the majority of cases, it took that 10% or 15% chance and raised it to 20 or 25 as a one-time shot. The quicker level gain really doesn't do enough to offset the Thief's disadvantages. 

On the one hand, it does reinforce, as Mearls says, the idea that Thieves are screwed by life and never catch an even break, and so have to maximize their potential by cheating in some ways. Let's face it, Magic-users until level 5 or 6 had the same problem - they had to play dirty pool to keep alive once that one or two spells per day got used. I used to play with guys who would load their mages with paint packets, flash powder, stage magician style tricks, and flaming oil and poison, and anything else the DM would let them get away with, to game the system in the absence of parity.


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## mudlock (May 18, 2011)

Arguing which editions of D&D had what size hit-die for thieves and whether or not a thread on a different forum sucks is... not where I had hoped this thread would go.

Look, I'm not gonna say that creativity isn't a good thing, or that necessity isn't the mother of invention. But it's stupid and, frankly, terrifying to me that the top rules-writer for a game would expound on how AWESOME it was that it was necessary for him to act creatively because, basically "the rules were just so terrible, lol!" That's not what I would be looking for in a head of R&D. I'd want to hear how his rules continue to allow for and reward that kind of creativity while also being BETTER RULES.

It's not a trade off! Bad rules don't inspire creativity, and good rules don't kill it.


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## Obryn (May 18, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> But it's stupid and, frankly, terrifying to me that the top rules-writer for a game would expound on how AWESOME it was that it was necessary for him to act creatively because, basically "the rules were just so terrible, lol!" That's not what I would be looking for in a head of R&D. I'd want to hear how his rules continue to allow for and reward that kind of creativity while also being BETTER RULES.



Is that what he wrote, or what you read?

-O


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## wayne62682 (May 18, 2011)

Obryn said:


> Is that what he wrote, or what you read?
> 
> -O




Judging by some of the comments on the now-locked thread, a lot of people seem to have read that, or similar.  I'm one to agree, even if it's not indicative of any sort of trend with the game, to have someone who is the lead designer for the game basically say they enjoyed the game when the rules were utter garbage is a little frightening, more so because he didn't mention anything about what was *wrong* about that style; it indicates (or hints at, at least) that he might not KNOW what was wrong about that style and therefore be incapable of making sure that 4e and future editions don't go that route as well (and based on the response to things like Cleric nerfs and the Vampire class, it might have started down that path already).

To put it in perspective:  I am a software developer by trade.  If the CIO of my company says that he enjoyed programming the most when it was in COBOL on a mainframe, because it was harder to do than it is to write C# with Visual Studio on Windows 7, it's a fearful prospect because it indicates a complete lack of evolution and understanding of better things.  That's a similar situation here with Mearles - he is basically saying "I had fun when I had to think creatively to get around shoddy rules", but he's making it sound like the shoddy rules were not a problem that shouldn't have existed in the first place.

If he had said basically, _The old rules weren't balanced at all and the Thief class was way underpowered, so I had to resort to being creative to get around the bad rules_ it would have been better received because it at least indicates an acceptance that the old style was *bad* compared to the new way things are going.  Instead, he basically said _I had a lot of fun playing an underpowered class because it was underpowered so I couldn't use the rules to my advantage_, which isn't acknowledging anything except the fact that he doesn't mind lousy rules (or worse still, cannot determine if rules are lousy) and, it could be inferred, prefers them *because* they fostered creativity as a workaround.


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## malraux (May 18, 2011)

But even the best rules are no substitute for creativity.  And losing sight of what makes the game fun (the creativity) and focusing on how mearls just wants bad rules seems to be an uncharitable reading at the least.

Look, a basic element of intellectual engagement is to give an author the benefit of the doubt.  If there are multiple interpretations of what someone says, you should engage not with the worst reading but the best one.  If your boss says that COBOL programing was enjoyable because one person could read and follow the entirety of a program, he's not saying he wants to cut all programs down to small sizes.


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## Obryn (May 18, 2011)

wayne62682 said:


> Judging by some of the comments on the now-locked thread, a lot of people seem to have read that, or similar.



Frankly, the WotC forum is a hive that breeds and feeds paranoid conspiracy theorists.  Not everyone, mind you, but it's way more prominent there than anywhere else.  (Remember the Rule of Three about clerics?  The board conclusion was, "5e is around the corner, and it won't have Leaders."  I mean, _really_.)

Anyway, I don't get anything out of the article which says, "Broken rules are awesome!  Let's make more!"  Let's review.

He had a blast playing a Thief in BECMI because he made his own fun.  He said he was basically forced to do so, because the class itself was pretty dire.  You could conclude, "Hey, this means Mike wants to make crap classes!"  Or you could take the article at face value, where it's clear the point is this:



> Most entertainment fosters a sense of admiration and fandom in us for its creators. D&D fosters a fandom in ourselves. We are the stars, we are the creators. The game gives back to you as much energy and love as you put into it. Not too many forms of entertainment can claim that. That’s what makes D&D great. That’s why I still play after all these years.




IMO, that thread encapsulates everything that's wrong with the worst kind of fandom.

-O


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## The Human Target (May 18, 2011)

Its hilarious.

If WotC implies that older editions had problems, people go frothing at the mouth crazy.

If WotC implies that older editions were somehow fun, people go frothing at the mouth crazy.

Which leads me to the conclusion that given any topic and a forum, people go frothing at the mouth crazy.


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## Incenjucar (May 18, 2011)

I concluded awhile back that Mearls was not communicating effectively, and so it was not useful for me to make any judgements on his actual thoughts based on his writings. I refuse to have a strong reaction over something I have to guess the point of, so I find it's no use to pay it any mind.


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## Obryn (May 18, 2011)

Incenjucar said:


> I concluded awhile back that Mearls was not communicating effectively, and so it was not useful for me to make any judgements on his actual thoughts based on his writings. I refuse to have a strong reaction over something I have to guess the point of, so I find it's no use to pay it any mind.



You see, I think he's communicating just fine, but for some reason people are looking for the hidden messages between the lines.

I mean, what's so hard about taking this column at face value?  "D&D has a long history, and some of it was awesome.  Let's talk about it, since we spend the rest of the time talking about 4e."

-O


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## Incenjucar (May 18, 2011)

Even if he's just rambling aimlessly, he's not making it clear that he's just rambling aimlessly. There's a communication failure one way or another, and so I personally find the article isn't worth paying attention to, as I personally only really care about information that goes somewhere and gives me something I can use.


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## Matt James (May 18, 2011)

Someone more savvy than I could probably round up all of the posts here on EN World where people slam WotC for not being more communicative. It's extremely ironic and it's community threads like this one, and others, that have completely accelerated a bunch of non-issues.

If you are so unimaginative that you cannot possibly comprehend ignoring (or changing) what is written in a sourcebook, an errata PDF, or any other medium, you have no business trying to qualify anyone's creative experience. To assume (in any fashion) you have a superior understanding of how humans should enjoy a game, is one of the most seriously arrogant and ignorant qualities a person could have in this industry.

If the whiners spent half as much time improving their own experiences, instead of grandstanding, they would find life that much more enjoyable.

I'm also going to head off the inevitable reply of "This is how we improve the game". I say: *B***Sh***. You don't improve the game by spreading a viral message of _damn the man._  You improve the game by discussing and sharing experiences and comparing them to what others have experienced. That's how things improve. Not griping on EN World or a WotC forum.


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## Incenjucar (May 18, 2011)

Criticism and complaint are crucial to the development of the game. Being rude and clumsy about it, however, will only cause problems and sour moods. That there is criticism and that negative opinions are voiced is fine, it's just that there is a distinct lack of social grace in how it is being done. However, grace must also be shown in how one points it out, or else the same issues arise. Screaming matches and pointed accusations from either side just make everything feel like a skill challenge in Pandemonium.


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## Matt James (May 18, 2011)

Incenjucar said:


> Criticism and complaint are crucial to the development of the game. Being rude and clumsy about it, however, will only cause problems and sour moods. That there is criticism and that negative opinions are voiced is fine, it's just that there is a distinct lack of social grace in how it is being done. However, grace must also be shown in how one points it out, or else the same issues arise. Screaming matches and pointed accusations from either side just make everything feel like a skill challenge in Pandemonium.




I would agree with all you said.


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## LostSoul (May 18, 2011)

What I read is this:

"Hey, look at what these rules inspired me to do!  I really enjoyed that."

I can't see how anyone would see those as bad rules.

*

In my opinion, good rules will inspire you to do things that you wouldn't normally do.  If you would normally do such a thing, you don't need rules for it.  Rules are there to guide you along a certain path, with the expectation of greater rewards than not having rules.


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## Obryn (May 18, 2011)

LostSoul said:


> What I read is this:
> 
> "Hey, look at what these rules inspired me to do!  I really enjoyed that."
> 
> I can't see how anyone would see those as bad rules.



I think the disconnect is this, but I could be wrong...

I agree, AD&D and the Basic line had _good rules_.  They were not balanced like 4e was, but they were solid enough that many thousands were sold, played, and enjoyed.

I think what _some _4e players want is for Mike to basically say, in each and every L&L article, how older editions sucked and how 4e is the best.  Not in so many words, mind you, but I think that's the gist.  And when he doesn't say how great 4e is doing in his article, and doesn't say where the missteps were in pre-4e D&D, they read it as, "Mike loves older editions more than he loves 4e.  Look at all the time he's spending on them!"

I think it's irrational, but then again, I've actually played 1e recently, and I have a ton of respect for both it and for the BECMI rules.  (I'd also love to run the 0e retro-clone, although its name escapes me at the moment.)  Do I think 4e's rule-set is a better chassis, mechanically-speaking?  Yep.  I think it is stronger mathematically, and I think it has a good handle on class balance.  And I know it's made for some awesome fun at my home table.  However, older editions - particularly way-older editions - have their own strengths, too.

At least, that's how I see it, and I could be completely wrong.

-O


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## renau1g (May 18, 2011)

You are completely wrong 

Older editions suckzorz! Viva la 4e (at least until 5e comes out and then that's the newest cool edition).... 

Really, I have an enjoyment of all systems, I generally much prefer the options provided for PC's in 3.5e/4e over the older editions more streamlined approach.

Personally, I think people get way too bent out of shape about D&D, I used to get more hot under the collar, but end of the day, it's a game, one that I play only on Play-by-Post now, sadly, and I have far more important things in life to get bothered about


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## wedgeski (May 18, 2011)

I think Mearls highlights an essential contradiction at the heart of any roleplaying game: it is simultaneously strengthened and weakened by rules which define a PC's options. I for one am very glad that the head of D&D understands this and is prepared to acknowledge it openly, and I'm *very* happy that the head of D&D has such a long history with the game.

One day D&D will be under the stewardship of people who only know of D&D in terms of 3rd or 4th Edition. Even as a lover of 4E, I want that day to be put off as long as possible.


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## Balesir (May 18, 2011)

Matt James said:


> If you are so unimaginative that you cannot possibly comprehend ignoring (or changing) what is written in a sourcebook, an errata PDF, or any other medium, you have no business trying to qualify anyone's creative experience.
> 
> <snippage>
> 
> I'm also going to head off the inevitable reply of "This is how we improve the game". I say: *B***Sh***. You don't improve the game by spreading a viral message of _damn the man._  You improve the game by discussing and sharing experiences and comparing them to what others have experienced. That's how things improve. Not griping on EN World or a WotC forum.





Incenjucar said:


> Criticism and complaint are crucial to the development of the game. Being rude and clumsy about it, however, will only cause problems and sour moods. That there is criticism and that negative opinions are voiced is fine, it's just that there is a distinct lack of social grace in how it is being done. However, grace must also be shown in how one points it out, or else the same issues arise. Screaming matches and pointed accusations from either side just make everything feel like a skill challenge in Pandemonium.



QFT - this needed to be said.  Matt James' point about 'sharing experiences' I think is especially germane - more on that below.



LostSoul said:


> In my opinion, good rules will inspire you to do things that you wouldn't normally do.



So, if a ruleset inspires me to rip out some pages, throw down the rulebook and storm out the door, that's a good thing, right? 



LostSoul said:


> What I read is this:
> 
> "Hey, look at what these rules inspired me to do!  I really enjoyed that."



OK, here is where I get to the meat of what I want to say.  I think Mike Mearls is doing a fair job, here, of explaining/revealing what it is about *roleplaying gaming in general* that _he_ likes - where he gets his fun and where he's coming from.  This is good stuff, and I'm not one of those throwing fits about his posts (I post to the WotC forums under the same name I do here; feel free to check).  But I do have one problem, so far: I get no inkling at all that Mike Mearls understands in the slightest why _I_ like the *D&D 4E system specifically*.  I don't take this as a failure on his part so much as a challenge to make it clear on my part, but it does cause me some anxiety.

The reason why it causes me anxiety is simple: Mearls is the guy in charge of D&D development and, if he really doesn't understand what it is that I like about 4E then he may lead the development in a direction that will take out of the game what I enjoy.  This wouldn't even be deliberate - there's no "conspiracy theory" going on, just the realisation that if he doesn't know why I think it's good, how will he know to keep what it has that I enjoy?

Now, in the final analysis all this shouldn't bother me, since I already have a game I enjoy.  If Mearls takes it off into a form I don't enjoy I still have a game as it is now - I just ignore all future changes and products.  Except that, as this anxiety that the head developer does not understand what I get out of 4E cuts in, WotC are simultaneously trying to make it harder to "get off the bus" by locking the electronic tools into online versions (that you can't just take away a "frozen" copy of for your own continuing use) and similar gambits.  None of this is insuperable, but it contributes to a creeping sense of disquiet so that I can well understand why several people are feeling insecure and dissatisfied, even if I disapprove of the ways they articulate that disquiet.

Speaking for myself, I think the most constructive thing I could see WotC (and Mike Mearls in particular) do is communicate some sense that they do understand what is so great about 4E* and that they have no intention to sacrifice that for what they seek to add to the game.  Mike Mearls does seem to consider that there is "something missing" from 4E - whether that is because of the number of folks playing other game systems (some of whom knock 4E for reasons that seem as puerile to me as the personal attacks aimed at Mr. Mearls recently) or because of some dissatisfaction with his own experiences with the system I have no idea.  That he feels the need to add "a certain something" does not bother me - that he might inadvertently take away just what I love about the system in order to do so *does* bother me.

For my part, perhaps what is needed is something to try to communicate to WotC what exactly it is about 4E that makes it a uniquely excellent roleplaying game in my opinion.  Maybe if several 4E 'patriots' were to make an honest attempt at this, it might either (a) increase understanding inside WotC or (b) prompt WotC to say "oh, yeah, we agree with this - we have no intention of taking this away!"  Result, either way around, I think.

* Like inspiring creativity, improvisation and innovation _within_ the rules, instead of the "sub-game" of influencing the GM to let you do other stuff that's more powerful/fun than what's in the rules...


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## Scribble (May 18, 2011)

One of my other hobbies is homebrewing beer... Homebrewing has a motto: Relax, Don't Worry- Have a Homebrew.

It boils down to, we do this for fun, and to relax. It's not a job it's a hobby, so quit worrying. 

Whenever someone starts freaking out because they think they've spoiled their wort- gotten it infected, added the wrong amount of this or that, or otherwise did something terrible, someone will say... RDWHAHB.

I think gaming needs a similar motto.

Relax Don't Worry- Roll Some Dice?


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## P1NBACK (May 18, 2011)

Here's what I think Mike Mearls was saying: 

"The Thief rules were crap, but since we were playing D&D (a tabletop RPG) it was OK because we could wing it and come up with creative ideas to overcome the weakness in the rules! Other games can't do this. So, D&D and tabletop RPGs are awesome and that's why I keep coming back!"

Here's what I wish he _would have_ said: 

"The Thief rules were crap, but since we were playing D&D it was OK because we could wing it and come up with creative ideas to overcome the weakness in the rules! _This is where D&D and other tabletop games shine. And, it's what brings people back. How can we make rules in the future that focus on *helping and inspiring players* to be creative and imaginative that *aren't overlooked* because they suck?"_


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## Raven Crowking (May 18, 2011)

mudlock said:


> If he were just waxing nostalgic about the hilarious olden days and the stupid things we did, that would be one thing, but it sure doesn't sound like that's what he's saying here.




Nope.  It sounds like he's saying 5e might be a game I would enjoy!



> Please, someone tell me I'm reading this wrong; that the #1 rules-guy doesn't really think that bad rules are good.




You're reading this wrong.

He's saying that _*they're not bad rules*_.


RC


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## Dausuul (May 18, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> Got any evidence to back you up?




I have four out of five of the BECMI boxed sets at home, the Mentzer versions published from 1983 to 1985 and covering levels 1 through 36. (I do not hold with the Immortals Set; as far as I'm concerned, when the PCs have literally become gods, it's time for a new campaign.) I could go on eBay and buy a Rules Cyclopedia from 1991 if I wanted to, but I don't particularly. In all of those rules, thieves have d4 hit dice and fixed percentages, and all thieves are human by definition.

What kind of "evidence" would you like? Scanned photocopies of the copyright page and the thief rules? Physical copies sent to your house? An affidavit from Frank Mentzer?


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## UngeheuerLich (May 18, 2011)

wayne62682 said:


> Judging by some of the comments on the now-locked thread, a lot of people seem to have read that, or similar.  I'm one to agree, even if it's not indicative of any sort of trend with the game, to have someone who is the lead designer for the game basically say they enjoyed the game when the rules were utter garbage is a little frightening, more so because he didn't mention anything about what was *wrong* about that style; it indicates (or hints at, at least) that he might not KNOW what was wrong about that style and therefore be incapable of making sure that 4e and future editions don't go that route as well (and based on the response to things like Cleric nerfs and the Vampire class, it might have started down that path already).
> 
> To put it in perspective:  I am a software developer by trade.  If the CIO of my company says that he enjoyed programming the most when it was in COBOL on a mainframe, because it was harder to do than it is to write C# with Visual Studio on Windows 7, it's a fearful prospect because it indicates a complete lack of evolution and understanding of better things.  That's a similar situation here with Mearles - he is basically saying "I had fun when I had to think creatively to get around shoddy rules", but he's making it sound like the shoddy rules were not a problem that shouldn't have existed in the first place.
> 
> If he had said basically, _The old rules weren't balanced at all and the Thief class was way underpowered, so I had to resort to being creative to get around the bad rules_ it would have been better received because it at least indicates an acceptance that the old style was *bad* compared to the new way things are going.  Instead, he basically said _I had a lot of fun playing an underpowered class because it was underpowered so I couldn't use the rules to my advantage_, which isn't acknowledging anything except the fact that he doesn't mind lousy rules (or worse still, cannot determine if rules are lousy) and, it could be inferred, prefers them *because* they fostered creativity as a workaround.



You know:

he really talks about my biggest problem of 3e+ (with 4e making it more obvious):

If you think in game terms, calculating your chances, trying to exploit powers, you are metagming...
Less powerful abilities, or abilities that can be combined with the terrain (like old school grease) increases your identification with the character you play and your feeling to be in an interactive world.
If you have powers and abilities, that are useful in a vaccuum, you stop paying attention to what is around you.
(This in no way means, that i want to go back to thief abilities with chances about zero, but maybe it is worth thinking about what is really important for a roleplaying game...)


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## Matt James (May 18, 2011)

The issue of optimization existed in 2e when I played. The problem now is that it is way more prevalent since the dynamic of the community has shifted. Digital gaming and TCGs have accelerated and rewarded this type of gaming.

If you go into Dungeons & Dragons expecting a pure storytelling experience, you are betraying yourself. It is a tactical combat system that has secondary support for providing a backstory. It's been that way since Gary Gygax turned miniatures wargaming into RPGs.


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## Dausuul (May 18, 2011)

Okay, on to actually discussing the Mearls article...

Before you get too worried about what Mr. Mearls might do to D&D, please bear in mind that he was on the 4E design team--if you like 4E as it is, he had a hand in it! More to the point, he was the creator of "Iron Heroes." While Iron Heroes has a gritty sword-and-sorcery flavor reminiscent of the old editions, the mechanics are fairly modern, and obviously designed with the intent that playing _within_ the scope of the rules should be fun and exciting. There are certainly no "intentionally crappy" classes in IH.

What I take away from this article is the understanding that rules aren't everything. Mearls isn't proposing to make deliberately bad rules, and if you think he is, you haven't been paying attention to anything he's done in the RPG industry. Playing within the rules should be fun. But D&D should _also_ encourage players to think beyond the rules, to imagine and experiment, because the ability to do that has always been central to the appeal of RPGs. If the designers lose sight of that, they might as well apply for a job at Blizzard to work on WoW.

The fact that Mearls had a blast playing his thief by going beyond the sucky thief rules is an argument, not for having sucky thief rules, but for going beyond the rules.


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## P1NBACK (May 18, 2011)

Matt James said:


> If you go into Dungeons & Dragons expecting a pure storytelling experience, you are betraying yourself. It is a tactical combat system that has secondary support for providing a backstory. It's been that way since Gary Gygax turned miniatures wargaming into RPGs.




I think that's a false dichotomy and I don't think anyone here is arguing that D&D doesn't have a "tactical" combat foundation. 

But, there's a difference between combat rooted in what is happening in the fiction and combat that is rooted in what is happening on the table. 

The original D&D largely focused on fictional combat with the real world elements (like minis and grids) being used as a rough sketch of what was happening in the fiction. Now, with 4E, we've gotten to the point where most of the action happens at the table, the moving of minis, selecting power cards, etc. What happens in the fiction (in our imagination) is largely irrelevant. It's like playing Chess and then going back and "describing" what happened when I moved my Knight and took your Rook. "My knight charges and thrusts his lance into your rook!" But, really, I'm just moving my piece up 2 and 1 sideways. 

You can see this when people on 4E forums argue against basic fictional tactics (most recently, pulling a cloak off a vampire)... 

_Wtf? 

_What's largely missing (and I think what many people are actually referring to when they say 4E has no "soul" or that it's "not _really _D&D") is that aspect of creativity, imagination and fictional weight. 

And, that's what Mike Mearls is saying that tabletop RPGs _*excel *_at. It's why even though he was playing a Thief with 10% Open Locks he could still _make an impact on the game_.

But, guess what? If everyone is rooted in the numbers, and the only thing that matters is the battlemat, minis and power cards... Well... You see where I am going, yeah?


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## mudlock (May 18, 2011)

wedgeski said:


> I think Mearls highlights an essential contradiction at the heart of any roleplaying game: it is simultaneously strengthened and weakened by rules which define a PC's options.




THAT truth, and how it has informed the evolution of D&D,  would be an interesting topic for an L&L article. But it was not the topic of yesterday's L&L article.

I hope that's what's in Mearls' head, but it certainly didn't come out through his fingers.


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## Dausuul (May 18, 2011)

UngeheuerLich said:


> If you have powers and abilities, that are useful in a vacuum, you stop paying attention to what is around you.




This is a point worth giving some thought. One of the things that bugs me about the design of classic 4E is that it has very little room for powers that are situationally useful. Classes are balanced on the premise that your at-will powers will produce X damage, your encounter powers will produce Y, and your daily powers will produce Z. If you have an encounter power that's only useful in 25% of combats, it's going to throw those numbers off.

Contrast my current favorite 4E class, the Executioner. The Executioner is a solid combatant capable of holding its own with the rest of them. But its most devastating powers are not usable in combat at all! The Executioner has the ability to do things like "Target creature is dazed for the entire encounter, no save." But to use that ability, you have to figure out a way to poison the target's food or drink, and there's no rule that tells you when the target will have dinner. It's a situational power that encourages players to find creative ways to produce the desired situation--and in the process requires them to think outside the rules.


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## AbdulAlhazred (May 18, 2011)

LostSoul said:


> What I read is this:
> 
> "Hey, look at what these rules inspired me to do!  I really enjoyed that."
> 
> ...




Meh, I'm going to have to say I disagree, at least in the context of this particular topic about Mearls' reflections on the thief.

Lets illustrate with an example of 3 systems, core OD&D (pre greyhawk, so no thief at all), 1e AD&D, and 4e D&D. The rules in question (stuff rogues can do) is roughly as follows:

OD&D - there are no rules for these things except possibly ability checks.
1e AD&D - there are crappy rules for these things which actually make it hard to run them and make rogues pretty worthless in most situations.
4e AD&D - there are generalized rules for these things, plus page 42.

In OD&D the situation was perfectly acceptable. You could climb, hide, sneak, etc. It was up to the DM to decide exactly how it worked, but these activities WERE "thinking beyond the rules" inherently. 

In 1e AD&D things got worse. Climbing, hiding, and sneaking were no longer outside the rules, they were just lame rules that made it so you were totally discouraged from doing these things. Mike's "enjoyment of thinking outside the box" is thus essentially no different than it would have been in OD&D, except the things he'd have been doing in that game actually made the most sense and he only didn't do them in 1e because the rules took them away.

In 4e AD&D you have a sort of in-between situation. Sneaking, climbing, or hiding is no longer "outside the box" as it is covered by the rules. However it is covered in a reasonable way that lets any character try it and makes it a viable option. You can still think outside the box, just as Mike did in 1e with his thief, but again it makes more sense because you're doing it when the situation warrants, not when your sad chance of success forces you to even if logically just sneaking would be more intelligent.

Which is the better set of rules? Depending on your taste and theory of gaming it could be OD&D or it could be 4e D&D, but it will NEVER be the way 1e AD&D did it. That was the WORST OF ALL WORLDS, and illustrates why it really was a fairly poor game design in many respects (and the thief was actually one of the real butt-ends of AD&D). 2e made a bit of progress in this area, but not much. 

So, I basically respond to your comment with "If a more minimalist design can be better, then go all the way. Half measures are the worst of all worlds."


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## Tony Vargas (May 18, 2011)

Dausuul said:


> This is a point worth giving some thought. One of the things that bugs me about the design of classic 4E is that it has very little room for powers that are situationally useful. Classes are balanced on the premise that your at-will powers will produce X damage, your encounter powers will produce Y, and your daily powers will produce Z. If you have an encounter power that's only useful in 25% of combats, it's going to throw those numbers off.



It's not just about damage, but, yes, 4e used an underlying structure to maintain a never-before-achieved-in-D&D class balance.  There were a few highly-situational sacred cows that made it through, like Turn Undead, and some Wizard powers, but in general, the design tended towards making powers and actions in general broadly useful and balanced with eachother.  

Highly situational abilities compensated with radical power are inherently imbalancing, since there's no telling how often the situation may come up.  In theory, if you fought undead in every encounter for a whole campaign, Turn Undead would have been wildly overpowered (aparently, that's the assumption they're going with, now).  I played a Cleric from 1-16 in a campaign that featured Undead in a total of perhaps 8 encounters - most of them at the end of the campaign (yes, I took Healer's Mercy).  In 3.5, I played a rogue in a campaign that featured nothing but undead and constructs through 4 full levels of play (I spent a lot of money on Holy Undead Bane arrows and an andamantine construct-bane sword).   

4e tried to be balanced and succeeded.  It's clear from the change in direction that some people - like the ones making design decisions at WotC at the moment - hated the imposition of game balance on D&D.  Game balance is a hard thing to build into a system, very hard to impose on an imbalanced system in play, and it's very easy to blow away with a few house rule.  Those who hate balance can break a game easily enough.


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## UngeheuerLich (May 18, 2011)

I really like the in-combat balance. But I really liked rituals that are actually able to produce damaging effects, if you are able to pull it of in 5 min. I like the poison, Dausul mentions.
And I like the design of the executioner´s at-wills. More powers you vould theoretically do all the time, but limited by beeing in a good situation.

It is not that i despise the encounter powers, that allow the player to influence the narrative, but i really do despise powers that you usually use without paying attention to the action.
Some encounter powers or at-wills look so superior to everything if you don´t look at it in a vacuum. The ranger actually has other at-will powers that are worth looking at. Just none of them having that high damage potential.

Terrain powers are a concept, i am really fond of. Those powers reward clever use of terrain. You really should just say yes, if the thief tries to flambee the troll, setting up the damage high enough to make it worth using in this situation. Or better making it supplement the rogues ability to deal damage, by making it a minor action and dealing one or two ongoing fire damage (save ends)...

it is the DM who makes improvisation work. And it is the rule set that helps inexperienced, lazy or uncreative DM´s (like me).
3e was really helpful, by giving rules for disarming or tripping but those powers were usually too restrictive (just like 1st edition thief skills chances were too low). The concept of encounter powers with prerequisites like combat advantage and actually giving a realistic chance is a definitely better design approach than allowing it all the time but making it useless if you not invest a lot in feats...

(bull rush and grab of 4e are not goof enough later on too...)


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## Dausuul (May 18, 2011)

Tony Vargas said:


> 4e tried to be balanced and succeeded.  It's clear from the change in direction that some people - like the ones making design decisions at WotC at the moment - hated the imposition of game balance on D&D.  Game balance is a hard thing to build into a system, very hard to impose on an imbalanced system in play, and it's very easy to blow away with a few house rule.  Those who hate balance can break a game easily enough.




And you obviously want D&D reduced to a board game. Or perhaps World of Warcraft. Can we dispense with the hyperbolic accusations now?

There's a difference between "hates the imposition of game balance" and "thinks the overwhelming focus on game balance has led to sacrificing other important concerns." I'm not advocating a return to the time when the party lived or died on the basis of whether the wizard had prepared the right spell that day, and I doubt Mearls is, either. But there is a place for situational powers within the framework of 4E.

True, the results cannot be perfectly balanced because different DMs will have different priorities; but that's going to be the case regardless. My very first 4E session, I killed the fighter and nearly TPK-ed the party with what should have been a moderate-difficulty encounter, because I sent a bunch of swarms in a tight space at a party without a controller. Such is life.


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## AbdulAlhazred (May 18, 2011)

UngeheuerLich said:


> I really like the in-combat balance. But I really liked rituals that are actually able to produce damaging effects, if you are able to pull it of in 5 min. I like the poison, Dausul mentions.
> And I like the design of the executioner´s at-wills. More powers you vould theoretically do all the time, but limited by beeing in a good situation.




I think that WAS the genius of rituals (and other similar things) is that they don't count against any limited slot. So you can for instance make up an Alchemical poison formula for a poison that works in food and it is purely to the good. More of that kind of thing could exist. The great thing about it is that the option CAN be pretty powerful, but since you didn't trade your general utility for it you can just give every class some of that kind of option.


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## UngeheuerLich (May 18, 2011)

I however believe, the addition of rare components would make alchemy and rituals great. I would totally buy a ritual book that gives guidelines, how to substitute rare items for bland general components (allowing the speeding up or reucing the price)
I would even suggest, that such things get incorporated into a monster manual kind of book...
This would be treasure i am most happy to give out.


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## Herschel (May 18, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> They just locked the L&L thread over on the Wizard's site. Looks like the devs just run, lock all their doors, and hide. Happens when people point out mistakes and others fail to acknowledge them and admit it.




Or maybe after several pages of brain-dead troll rantings they decided enough was enough as it didn't serve a purpose any more.


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## Herschel (May 18, 2011)

Obryn said:


> The Thread!
> 
> This is also ignoring the fact that every thread regarding the Templar is still open, so if the devs are hiding, they're doing an awful job of it.
> 
> -O




Great, now Mike Mearls ruined hiding. Flashlight tag  and hide & seek have been stolen from the repertoire of fun for children everywhere. Is there no end to the madness?


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## Herschel (May 18, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> There is no agenda, I just call it like I see it.




Maybe I can be of assistance. 
LensCrafters - Eyeglasses, Contact Lenses, Prescription Sunglasses & Designer Frames


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## Herschel (May 18, 2011)

mudlock said:


> But it's stupid and, frankly, terrifying to me that the top rules-writer for a game would expound on how AWESOME it was that it was necessary for him to act creatively because, basically "the rules were just so terrible, lol!" That's not what I would be looking for in a head of R&D. I'd want to hear how his rules continue to allow for and reward that kind of creativity while also being BETTER RULES.




Would you rather have had him love the rules as they were even though they sucked and never made changes once he was in a position to do so? 

When he talks about how he was inspired to do things which in turn made him want to make rules that allowed characters to do the cool things is exactly what I want out of him.


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## ForeverSlayer (May 19, 2011)

Herschel said:


> Maybe I can be of assistance.
> LensCrafters - Eyeglasses, Contact Lenses, Prescription Sunglasses & Designer Frames




Nah, even a blind man can see the crap that's going on.


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## ForeverSlayer (May 19, 2011)

Dausuul said:


> Okay, on to actually discussing the Mearls article...
> 
> Before you get too worried about what Mr. Mearls might do to D&D, please bear in mind that he was on the 4E design team--if you like 4E as it is, he had a hand in it! More to the point, he was the creator of "Iron Heroes." While Iron Heroes has a gritty sword-and-sorcery flavor reminiscent of the old editions, the mechanics are fairly modern, and obviously designed with the intent that playing _within_ the scope of the rules should be fun and exciting. There are certainly no "intentionally crappy" classes in IH.
> 
> ...




Musicians, Athletes, Presidents, Actors, Writers, Game Developers have all brought us some wonderful things, and yet they have also brought us utter crap at times.  Just because Mearls had a hand in some things and came up with good ideas in others doesn't make him flawless.  The excuse, "to err is human" is fine, but it doesn't get you anywhere in business.  Looking at someone's achievements doesn't always forgive them for their failures.  Mearls is rocking the boat on this one and I don't understand why is even talks about the basic thief.  Hell when you compare the thief to what we have now, yes it sucks major.  

I think the problem is looking at D&D now and looking at it then.  Now all characters start out heroic, back then you didn't.  You were a novice and you had to work your way up to being a hero.  Some of you talk about how long basic D&D lasted, well did the 1st level thief change all that much during those years?

What makes you think outside the box are things the rules don't cover and situations that present themselves.  I wouldn't say the thief was a product of bad rules, its just that it was a weak character.  

Now I am looking at the Basic Thief and while his skills are low at 1st level, I understand why. 

First off yes his HP is 1d4 but that's 1d4 + Constitution bonus. Now mind you the highest HD classes were d8. 

The thief gains levels faster than any other class. 

Let's give the thief a 16 Dex with leather armor and that gives him a 5 AC which is the same as Chainmail.  Not bad for a class that is supposed to rely on hitting from behind. 

The magic-user could cast one spell and then that was it for him.

I see nothing wrong with the Basic Thief aside from being a little weak at 1st level, well so were the other classes for that matter. 

I can see player's from each of those classes thinking outside the box at times, more so with the magic user.


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## UngeheuerLich (May 19, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> Nah, even a blind man can see the crap that's going on.



If you say so...


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## Dausuul (May 19, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> Musicians, Athletes, Presidents, Actors, Writers, Game Developers have all brought us some wonderful things, and yet they have also brought us utter crap at times.  Just because Mearls had a hand in some things and came up with good ideas in others doesn't make him flawless.  The excuse, "to err is human" is fine, but it doesn't get you anywhere in business.  Looking at someone's achievements doesn't always forgive them for their failures.




I said nothing about forgiving anybody for any failures. I said Mearls obviously does not buy into a "make bad rules to encourage players to go beyond them" philosophy and you can see this by looking at his work. Sometimes he screws up--Iron Heroes is a brilliant piece of work, but its flaws are considerable--but you don't lavish that kind of effort on rules you don't mean to be used.


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## generalchaos34 (May 19, 2011)

so what the heck is all the hubbub about? ive meandered through all your crazy and often off topic posts and i do not see what the issue is.

Let me put this in the most basic terms possible, or at least why im not overly concerned....

Think about in terms of your first car, for alot of us it was a total piece of crap (1988 Nissan Sentra that spewed toxic black clouds and had mystery stains). For some reason you cant explain, even if you own a sexy Mercedes or some equally awesome car, you still think of that junker fondly. You dont know why, but you do, and sometimes often enough that you question it. But heres the deal, you dont go around buying crappy cars to relive your glory days, or you try to find a car with the same kind of stains on the back seat. You get a nice car you can afford and show off to your friends. That first car represented freedom, adulthood, and possibly late night runs to taco bell. Thats why you think of it that way.

This is what i see is the same deal with the legends and lore article. Mearls is pointing out that he remembers that old game fondly, it inspired him, it made him happy in odd and wonderful ways, it taught him to think. Remember, before Dnd the average person didnt have any access to fantasy type stuff, especially not in a way that worked the ol noggin and fired the imagination like an RPG, it was a revolution of sorts! Now that dosent mean hes going to design 4e to mirror 1e like he remembers, like he said, it was crap! However, he is going to remember what got him into playing RPGs and ultimately into writing, it was those experiences. 

Seriously though, the point of the L&L is to reminisce and talk about the olden days, usually making a connection to the modern game. If you take it too seriously you probably didnt listen to your grandparents rumble on about how much better things were when they were younger. Did you actually expect your grandparents to go around making people segregate or wearing poodle skirts after that? Not really, unless they are really crazy, which I do not think Mearls is. He may be alot of things to alot people, but I think you guys are thinking waaaay too deep into this whole thing.

And once agiain....its a game, i come here to get ideas on how to make mine run smoother, not read you guys going at each others throats over a silly interpretation.


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## wedgeski (May 19, 2011)

mudlock said:


> I hope that's what's in Mearls' head, but it certainly didn't come out through his fingers.



Clearly it did when I read it.


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## P1NBACK (May 19, 2011)

generalchaos34 said:


> Remember, before Dnd the average person didnt have any access to fantasy type stuff...




I just have to take exception to this part of your post. I mean, come on: 

_[FONT=verdana,arial]The following authors were of particular inspiration to me. In some cases I cite specific works, in others, I simply recommend all of their fantasy writing to you. From such sources, as well as any other imaginative writing or screenplay, you will be able to pluck kernels from which will grow the fruits of exciting campaigns. Good reading![/FONT]_
_[FONT=verdana,arial]  Anderson, Poul: THREE HEARTS AND THREE LIONS; THE HIGH CRUSADE; THE BROKEN
 SWORD
Bellairs, John: THE FACE IN THE FROST
Brackett, Leigh
Brown, Frederic
Burroughs, Edgar Rice: "Pellucidar" series; Mars series; Venus series
Carter, Lin: "World's End" series
de Camp, L. Sprague: LEST DARKNESS FALL; THE FALLIBLE FIEND; et al
de Camp & Pratt: "Harold Shea" series; THE CARNELIAN CUBE
Derleth, August
Dunsany, Lord
Farmer, P. J.: "The World of the Tiers" series; et al
Fox, Gardner: "Kothar" series; "Kyrik" series; et al
Howard, R. E.: "Conan" series
Lanier, Sterling: HIERO'S JOURNEY
Leiber, Fritz: "Fafhrd & Gray Mouser" series; et al
Lovecraft, H. P.
Merritt, A.: CREEP, SHADOW, CREEP; MOON POOL; DWELLERS IN THE MIRAGE; et al
Moorcock, Michael: STORMBRINGER; STEALER OF SOULS; "Hawkmoon" series (esp. the
 first three books)
Norton, Andre
Offutt, Andrew J.: editor of SWORDS AGAINST DARKNESS III
Pratt, Fletcher: BLUE STAR; et al
Saberhagen, Fred: CHANGELING EARTH; et al
St. Clair, Margaret: THE SHADOW PEOPLE; SIGN OF THE LABRYS
Tolkien, J. R. R.: THE HOBBIT; "Ring trilogy"
Vance, Jack: THE EYES OF THE OVERWORLD; THE DYING EARTH; et al
Weinbaum, Stanley
Wellman, Manley Wade
Williamson, Jack
Zelazny, Roger: JACK OF SHADOWS; "Amber" series; et al[/FONT]_​ _[FONT=verdana,arial]
	

	
	
		
		

		
			





The most immediate influences upon AD&D were probably de Camp & Pratt, R. E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, H. P. Lovecraft, and A. Merritt; but all of the above authors, as well as many not listed, certainly helped to shape the form of the game. [/FONT]
_


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## Balesir (May 19, 2011)

UngeheuerLich said:


> You know: he really talks about my biggest problem of 3e+ (with 4e making it more obvious):
> 
> If you think in game terms, calculating your chances, trying to exploit powers, you are metagming...



Sure, but why is this badwrongfun?  My experience is that you are typically also thinking for and about your character in their current situation, so it's still roleplaying - just a specific and "gamist" style of roleplaying.



UngeheuerLich said:


> Less powerful abilities, or abilities that can be combined with the terrain (like old school grease) increases your identification with the character you play and your feeling to be in an interactive world.



I don't recognise the lack of situational importance in the play of 4E.  My experience is that players are still thinking very much about the terrain and situation surrounding their characters as they play.  They may be doing so in a more "game system" way than a "world physics (as I see it)" way, but that is a style issue, to me, not a right way/wrong way issue.



UngeheuerLich said:


> If you have powers and abilities, that are useful in a vaccuum, you stop paying attention to what is around you.



Maybe that is so for you, but flanks, sight lines, terrain effects and the inbuilt interactions between character abilities seem to keep me and those I play with just as engaged as our individual characters' abilities.



P1NBACK said:


> I think that's a false dichotomy and I don't think anyone here is arguing that D&D doesn't have a "tactical" combat foundation.
> 
> But, there's a difference between combat rooted in what is happening in the fiction and combat that is rooted in what is happening on the table.



Yes, I recognise this difference, too, but I think we need to be very careful to think about what is really going on, here.  "The fiction" does not actually have any independent existence.  It resides in our imaginations - often there is assumed to be a "master copy" residing in one person's imagination.  Imagining things that have no independent existence is commonly called "making stuff up".  So, actually, the 'system' in use in these games is actually "we make stuff up".  There is absolutely nothing wrong with that - I love it as a game style, as one among several - but it can lead us astray in our thinking if we forget that this is what we are doing and ascribe the adjudications to any external "reality".

Often there are strong guidelines that shape the "making stuff up".  A particular world concept, personal aesthetic sense ("taste") and personal beliefs about how the "real" world works are common influences.  But to assert that "the fiction" itself dictates anything to us, as an independent entity, is in my view both erroneous and dangerous.



P1NBACK said:


> The original D&D largely focused on fictional combat with the real world elements (like minis and grids) being used as a rough sketch of what was happening in the fiction.



Actually, to begin with, I don't think that _was_ how D&D was originally intended to focus.  Both Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson were wargamers, and initially that was how they viewed the game.  Pretty soon, people _did_ start focussing on how combat (particularly) "should" work - and building a fiction ("making stuff up") to suit their own tastes and beliefs.  It was really this train of development that led me away from D&D in around 1980, because I was convinced at the time that "realism" was essential and D&D didn't have it.  What I see now is that what "realism" really meant was that D&D didn't fit with my personal beliefs about how the world worked; it was when those beliefs were gradually challenged and had to be changed that I realised that the "realism" my 20-odd year old self found was actually not significantly more "realistic" than D&D...

Don't get me wrong - there is definitely a place for collaborative world building according to a group's aesthetic preferences, demands for consistency and beliefs about existence.  I have been a fan of the Hârn setting (and system) since around 1983 or 4, and that is a place I still constantly revisit to dream of an alien world I can almost touch.  But D&D doesn't do that for me - never has.  If it does for you, then I understand your annoyance with 4E - it must feel like an intruder on sacred land peddling profane and over-boistrous 'fun'.  But, we are at an impasse - because that boistrous fun is just what I like about 4E D&D, and it has not been generated half so well anywhere else.



P1NBACK said:


> Now, with 4E, we've gotten to the point where most of the action happens at the table, the moving of minis, selecting power cards, etc. What happens in the fiction (in our imagination) is largely irrelevant. It's like playing Chess and then going back and "describing" what happened when I moved my Knight and took your Rook. "My knight charges and thrusts his lance into your rook!" But, really, I'm just moving my piece up 2 and 1 sideways.



Different strokes, I think.  To me, the system description plus a little 'fluff' *is* what is happening in the game-world.  I don't need much of a sense that it is "realistic", nowadays, so it's just an "alien" world that works differently.  If you haven't seen the webcomic "Erfworld", that is a graphic story that deals with just this concept really well.  It's also very funny... 



P1NBACK said:


> And, that's what Mike Mearls is saying that tabletop RPGs _*excel*_ at. It's why even though he was playing a Thief with 10% Open Locks he could still _make an impact on the game_.



Tabletop RPGs excel at a lot of things, in my experience.  Sadly, not all of them can be done at once, or with one mode of play.  That doesn't make any of them "wrong" or "suboptimal" - it just means that roleplaying is a broad and complex medium, like music or visual arts.  You can't _improve_ Mozart by adding a driving beat and you won't get a better rock anthem by performing it with an orchestra in six variations.  Both forms are fine as they stand - mixing them to get "the ultimate piece of music" won't ever work.



P1NBACK said:


> But, guess what? If everyone is rooted in the numbers, and the only thing that matters is the battlemat, minis and power cards... Well... You see where I am going, yeah?



Yes* - you get a playstyle that you don't care for.  Fair enough.  But that doesn't make that style invalid or wrong.

* I'm deliberately ignoring that this exclusive focus does not accurately fit any session of roleplaying I have ever been involved in, here - I understand it as exaggeration to make a point.


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## P1NBACK (May 19, 2011)

Balesir said:


> * I'm deliberately ignoring that this exclusive focus does not accurately fit any session of roleplaying I have ever been involved in, here - I understand it as exaggeration to make a point.




Balesir, I think you're not understanding what I'm saying and this comment illustrates that point. 

You can't possibly have "roleplayed" if you're saying my post doesn't include any session you've been in because my post is talking specifically about the act of roleplaying as specifically compared to the non-acts of roleplay, like rolling dice, moving miniatures, drawing maps, etc. 

The latter can complement actual roleplaying (you know, creating shared imagined events - i.e fiction), or it can obfuscate roleplaying or take it out entirely. 

The more the "real world" items, like battlemats, minis, dice, etc. take away from roleplaying, the closer we get to a boardgame. 

Now, some people will argue that you can "roleplay" a boardgame. And, to that, I'll say, "No, you can't. Not without serious houseruling."


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## bouncyhead (May 19, 2011)

Balesir said:


> You can't _improve_ Mozart by adding a driving beat and you won't get a better rock anthem by performing it with an orchestra in six variations.  Both forms are fine as they stand - mixing them to get "the ultimate piece of music" won't ever work.




Err... clearly you haven't encountered this:

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGQVETVVGf0[/ame]


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## UngeheuerLich (May 19, 2011)

@Balesir 

I am not sure where you got the impression, that i believein badwrong fun...

i am explicitely including 3e and 4e in my post to make sure noone reads it as a rant against a particular edition.
I am just stating, that in my observations as a DM, mathematically not so fokussed people and people that are not so fit in the rules system more often base their decisions on the world around them, and actually pay more attention.
If I am busy, calculating my chances as DM, i am not so aware of what is happening, and I catch myself making irrational decisions...

I also want to mention, that powers that allow the interaction with allies, flanking, and powers that allow combos, are also a huge fun factor for me. 

The best way to design a game is making it simple and efficient. The thing why I chose D&D ove different role playing systems.

But, and now I am ranting a bit, the entry level of some classes is quite high... actually the entry level of all PHB1 classes is quite high. So a new player is distracted by a lot of the rules. The PHB fighter is a beutiful piece of design. Not too hard to get a grasp of for a player that does play a lot of RPGs, but the slayer in its simplicity and for the sake of the topic, the thief of ADnD in my case allows and encourages players to think about the world, and how you can help the party with your very limited means...
Forever Slayer mentioned the saving grace for the Thief (and the bard), that you increase in levels a lot faster than most classes. In my opinion it has always been a feature, that you start simple and get better later on without too many choices at the start of your career.

4e (my edition of choice) would be an even better edition, if you didn´t have to pick a feat at level 1, only a single power and progress to level 2 very soon, where you get most of the other features you get now.

Simplicity and some inability at the starting level teaches your players how to interact with the given surrounding and situation...


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## D'karr (May 19, 2011)

*The obscurity of Page 42*

I understood Mike's point in the article and I agree, RPG's are a wonderful thing because they allow us to "create" in a completely imaginary fashion, even when the rules are not fantastic.

When running 4e the most inspiring piece of information was the section called *Actions the rules don't cover* on page 42 of the 4e DMG.  It gave the DM a ready made way of adjudicating in an ad-hoc basis.

The new Dungeon Master's Book, included in the DM Kit, has a similar section on pages 107-108.  The entire section starting on page 101 is very good for new DMs.

The problem I found was not the rules but their actual use, or lack of use, by the players.  What I started encountering was that the basic rules of 4e were very good and open to creative adjudication, but players were limiting their actions to those things they could see on their "extensive" character sheets.  The players were self-restricting to the printed page.  Since page 42 and ad-hoc rules are not on those pages they would completely miss the boat.  They were focused on their At-will, Encounter, and Daily Powers, almost exclusively.

I created a "fix" to that problem, and I expand on it in this blog entry.  I don't want to derail the conversation on this thread with it, but feel free to comment on the blog.

I guess it is always important for the DM to stress to his players that D&D is a game of the imagination.  The character sheet is not the end-all of the character but the beginning.


----------



## Balesir (May 19, 2011)

P1NBACK said:


> Balesir, I think you're not understanding what I'm saying and this comment illustrates that point.
> 
> You can't possibly have "roleplayed" if you're saying my post doesn't include any session you've been in because my post is talking specifically about the act of roleplaying as specifically compared to the non-acts of roleplay, like rolling dice, moving miniatures, drawing maps, etc.



I think you are taking what I wrote in a sense in which I didn't mean it.  When I made the quoted comment, I was referring, specifically, to where you said:

_"If everyone is rooted in the numbers, and the only thing that matters is the battlemat, minis and power cards..."_

I don't think I have ever experienced a roleplaying session where this picture applied - almost by definition, as you say.  Lots of other elements of your post I recognise very well.



P1NBACK said:


> The latter can complement actual roleplaying (you know, creating shared imagined events - i.e fiction), or it can obfuscate roleplaying or take it out entirely.



"Roleplaying" is a notoriously poorly defined term, but the act of creating a shared, imagined fiction seems as good a description as any - let's assume it for this discussion, if you wish.



P1NBACK said:


> The more the "real world" items, like battlemats, minis, dice, etc. take away from roleplaying, the closer we get to a boardgame.



Sure.  But since, in D&D, the paradigm is that the DM is responsible/empowered to define the imagined physical environment outside of the player characters, and the battlemap represents that environment, the figures represent the positions of "monsters" (i.e. non-player-character creatures) and player-characters in that environment and the dice and systems define the way the player-characters and the environment interact, how can this dissonance arise?  It seems to me that it can only arise if the players - individually or collectively - don't like the fiction that is generated using these elements.  In that case, they are playing the game, evidently, searching for aesthetic satisfaction that does not gel with what this particular game provides.  At that point, the options are to play without those aesthetic "itches" being scratched (either adjusting their aesthetic expectations, or playing without aesthetic investment in the fiction), or change the game.  Neither approach is wrong, but they are incompatible.

Incidentally, aesthetic satisfaction with the fiction created was not originally part of the definition of 'roleplaying' you seemed to assume earlier, but I get the impression that you think it an important element - is that so?  Should it be a part of the definition?



P1NBACK said:


> Now, some people will argue that you can "roleplay" a boardgame. And, to that, I'll say, "No, you can't. Not without serious houseruling."



I would say that depends on the boardgame, but in general the chance that a boardgame will generate a fiction _that is aesthetically pleasing to most of the players_ is reduced, I agree.  That is, perhaps, what you identify, exclusively as "roleplaying"?

A game like Squad Leader or several other wargames I can see being 'roleplayed' (per my suggested definition for this discussion) almost out of the box, however.



D'karr said:


> The problem I found was not the rules but their actual use, or lack of use, by the players.  What I started encountering was that the basic rules of 4e were very good and open to creative adjudication, but players were limiting their actions to those things they could see on their "extensive" character sheets.  The players were self-restricting to the printed page.  Since page 42 and ad-hoc rules are not on those pages they would completely miss the boat.  They were focused on their At-will, Encounter, and Daily Powers, almost exclusively.



It seems you see this as a flaw, but for the style of play I enjoy with D&D I don't.  That the *majority* of actions the PCs perform are covered by the _standard_ rule elements rather than the guidelines for adding new rules I see as _good_ rules design for this type of game, not bad.

[MENTION=59057]UngeheuerLich[/MENTION]: Aplologies if I took you wrongly, but it seemed to me that your saying "if you do this, you are Metagaming" was an indication that Metagaming was in all cases undesirable.  I never thought you were making any sort of edition attack - sorry if it came across that I was accusing you of such.  I simply used my play of 4E as a reference since I find it a very good example of non-simulationist, gamist play (which is what seems to be being deprecated, here).


----------



## Herschel (May 19, 2011)

P1NBACK said:


> Now, some people will argue that you can "roleplay" a boardgame. And, to that, I'll say, "No, you can't. Not without serious houseruling."




This part is, shall I say, pure BS. If you'd been party to some of our Arkham Horror/Battlestar Galactica games you'd find it's pretty easy.


----------



## P1NBACK (May 19, 2011)

Balesir said:


> I think you are taking what I wrote in a sense in which I didn't mean it.




Right on. That's exactly what I don't want to do to you, and you to do to me. So, I'm glad we're clarifying. Good stuff. 



Balesir said:


> When I made the quoted comment, I was referring, specifically, to where you said:
> 
> _"If everyone is rooted in the numbers, and the only thing that matters is the battlemat, minis and power cards..."_
> 
> I don't think I have ever experienced a roleplaying session where this picture applied - almost by definition, as you say.  Lots of other elements of your post I recognise very well.




You're saying you haven't experienced a session where _only _the numbers matter. I get it. 

Of course you haven't, because at that point it's not roleplaying right? 

My point is: 4E comes as close to this as D&D ever has. We're moving further away from roleplaying and toward a miniatures game. That's FINE for those who love miniatures games! Sweet! And, it's FUN too. I love miniature combat. 

But, it's not roleplaying. Yah dig? 



Balesir said:


> "Roleplaying" is a notoriously poorly defined term, but the act of creating a shared, imagined fiction seems as good a description as any - let's assume it for this discussion, if you wish.




Shared imagined events is not enough. That's just the term I'm using for fiction. What we agree that is actually happening, right? 

"I charge with my lance and stab your rook!" 

We can both imagine that happening during chess right? But, is that roleplaying? I don't think so. 

Roleplaying occurs when the things you do in the fiction (our shared described and imagined events) has an impact on what's happening at the table - and vice versa. 

If we're playing chess, and I say, "Now, that I've charged your rook, my Knight draws his sword and attacks the Pawn adjacent to him!" 

Well, I can't really do that right? Because the Knight piece has to move 2 up and 1 to the side and land on a space to take a piece. 

What happens is, there's a disconnect between what's occurring in the fiction, and what is happening in the rules. If I can't describe something that's totally plausible (a knight drawing his sword and swinging it at the pawn next to him), because the rules are so disconnected with the shared imagined events, well, then we're not roleplaying. 

Do you agree? 

The hallmark of a roleplaying game is: what we imagine, describe and agree to can impact the rules and what is actually happening in the fiction. 

_*Impact.*_ My description actually makes an _impact _on the game. Not just me moving my piece. 



Balesir said:


> Sure.  But since, in D&D, the paradigm is that the DM is responsible/empowered to define the imagined physical environment outside of the player characters, and the battlemap represents that environment, the figures represent the positions of "monsters" (i.e. non-player-character creatures) and player-characters in that environment and the dice and systems define the way the player-characters and the environment interact, how can this dissonance arise?  It seems to me that it can only arise if the players - individually or collectively - don't like the fiction that is generated using these elements.  In that case, they are playing the game, evidently, searching for aesthetic satisfaction that does not gel with what this particular game provides.  At that point, the options are to play without those aesthetic "itches" being scratched (either adjusting their aesthetic expectations, or playing without aesthetic investment in the fiction), or change the game.  Neither approach is wrong, but they are incompatible.




If the battlemat, dice, minis and other real world cues are empowering roleplaying, then we have a good system. Right now, I don't think we're there with 4E. 

It's not about aesthetic. It's about what I was describing above. How we define roleplaying. 

Aesthetic, as pointed out in our chess example, is irrelevant to what it actually means to roleplay. 



Balesir said:


> Incidentally, aesthetic satisfaction with the fiction created was not originally part of the definition of 'roleplaying' you seemed to assume earlier, but I get the impression that you think it an important element - is that so?  Should it be a part of the definition?




No. It shouldn't. As I just described. It's a _part _of roleplaying - what people might call "Color" or "Fluff" or whatever. And, I don't know if you could roleplay without it, but it's not what I mean by roleplaying. 

If I could draw a Vinn Diagram, it'd have Aesthetic as a big circle, and roleplaying inside of that circle as a smaller circle. You can imagine that, yes? 



Balesir said:


> I would say that depends on the boardgame, but in general the chance that a boardgame will generate a fiction _that is aesthetically pleasing to most of the players_ is reduced, I agree.  That is, perhaps, what you identify, exclusively as "roleplaying"?




I think so... 



Balesir said:


> A game like Squad Leader or several other wargames I can see being 'roleplayed' (per my suggested definition for this discussion) almost out of the box, however.




I never played squad leader. But, yeah, from what I've read about it, it could probably be roleplayed, but you'd likely need house-rules. 

You could roleplay Monopoly too, right? But, you'd need houserules. That's why I said, "as-is". If we're playing Monopoly, I can't say, "Well, my banker dude wants to chill out on Park Place for a couple weeks holed up in his penthouse with some hookers and blow." 

I can't do that right? I gotta roll the dice, move that many spaces, pay rent, etc. That's how the turns work. The fiction is not tied to the mechanics. What I can do without houserules is apply a completely disassociated "aesthetic" to what the rules tell me happens... So, I take my turn, roll my dice, land on Park Place, pay my rent, etc... And after the fact, say, "Oh, yeah... I was in there with hookers and blow the whole time, and now I'm moving on since it's my turn again." 

It's completely irrelevant. It's not roleplaying. It's story telling... Ok. But, not roleplaying. 

At least the way we've agreed to define it. 



Balesir said:


> It seems you see this as a flaw, but for the style of play I enjoy with D&D I don't.  That the *majority* of actions the PCs perform are covered by the _standard_ rule elements rather than the guidelines for adding new rules I see as _good_ rules design for this type of game, not bad.




Except, imagine the 1000s of actions you could possibly do. Are your rules covering them all? Probably not. That's why they added DMG Page 42, which is unfortunately often overlooked... 

I'm not saying 4E is _not a roleplaying game. _I am NOT saying that. I am saying, 4E moves closer to a board-game than any other RPG I've played. 

Maybe that's appealing for you? I don't know. 

But, if creative and imaginative roleplaying (as in, making an impact on the shared imagined events) is what RPGs *excel *at, then why not focus on making rules that _*inspire and promote that*_? 

_As an side:_ I don't think there's a "perfect copy" of the shared imagined space. There's a piece in each of our heads, and through roleplaying, discussion, questions, maps, etc... we build a "best version" that we can all agree on. The DM may have control over the environment and the player our character, but unless we agree on the fictional events, well, it's not really happening is it? If I say, "I leap 100 feet into the air..." and everyone else is looking at me like I'm an idiot... Well, it's not really happening in our shared imagined space is it?


----------



## Herschel (May 19, 2011)

P1NBACK said:


> You're saying you haven't experienced a session where _only _the numbers matter. I get it.
> 
> Of course you haven't, because at that point it's not roleplaying right?
> 
> ...




3E was all about number manipulation and skill trees. Oh, and it used templates, grids and miniatures extensively. 

1E and 2E had FACING. Yeah, not only did you have to know where your character was in regards to everything else, you also had to describe which way the character was turned. That generally used miniatures to make it easier to remember in larger combats. 

You can roleplay however much or little you want, regardless of the system


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## P1NBACK (May 19, 2011)

Herschel said:


> 3E was all about number manipulation and skill trees. Oh, and it used templates, grids and miniatures extensively.
> 
> 1E and 2E had FACING. Yeah, not only did you have to know where your character was in regards to everything else, you also had to describe which way the character was turned. That generally used miniatures to make it easier to remember in larger combats.
> 
> You can roleplay however much or little you want, regardless of the system




Your entire post takes me out of context, twists my words into something I never meant, and completely sidesteps the point I was making. 

Either, you don't understand what I'm saying, or you're just ignoring it. It's cool, but you can't expect a real response to this if it's so haphazardly written without regard for the actual substance of what I was saying. 

To clarify: I never said "rules = not roleplaying". 

Quite the contrary actually.


----------



## P1NBACK (May 19, 2011)

Herschel said:


> This part is, shall I say, pure BS. If you'd been party to some of our Arkham Horror/Battlestar Galactica games you'd find it's pretty easy.




Then our definition of roleplaying is dramatically different... See my post earlier. If we can't agree on what roleplaying is, then why call my stance on roleplaying BS? 

That's just dismissive and not very productive. 

Like I said, you can "tell a story" over the Monopoly game, but it's not roleplaying (by my definition).


----------



## UngeheuerLich (May 19, 2011)

[MENTION=27160]Balesir[/MENTION]:

I have to apologize too... i am having a very thin skin right now...

I like the gamist aproach of 4e. And Metagaming is in most cases undeirable... the good thing is: Many things in 4e have good ingame reasons to do so, and chances to accomplish your goals are (the DCs, now, after 2 erratas) very well.

Making strategicallly sound decisions is not necessarily metagaming, waiting for the leader to grant you a bonus to hit is also no metagaming... your character has good reasons to wait for the prayer...

On the other hand, i hate thinking along the lines of:

"Hmmh, it would be a good decision to disarm the foe instead of killing him... but i don´t have the feat, so i have to eat an attack of opportunity, and then i need to win the opposed check..."

Actually I would also hate:
"My thief would try to find traps, but my chances are so slim, that i better send the fighter, because he has the highest hp... (or for that matter, the cleric, because he is the most perceptive)"

Rules of 4e generally enable the character, which is why I like this edition. Once I got behind that kind of thinking, in the 3.0 or 3.5 era - lowering DCs to 10, 15 and 20 in general and making heavy use of take 10 and take 20 - the game was much more fun for level 1 characters, and suddenly skill points were abundant.

Not beeing able to disarm or trip by default is better than have a rule which you need to analyze so you notice that it actually means: no disarm here...
So I can accept the gamist approach here.

If you however had a power, that you can combine with terrain to make a trip attemt...
...like using mage hand to pull the rag away under your opponents feet,not thinking about chances for failure... it is a completely different matter...

(if you have in game reasons to assume failure it is no metagaiming at all)


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## P1NBACK (May 19, 2011)

UngeheuerLich said:


> Not beeing able to disarm or trip by default is better than have a rule which you need to analyze so you notice that it actually means: no disarm here...
> So I can accept the gamist approach here.




I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with disarm. What happened was, the devs created a problem with disarm by forcing items into being "required" for the maths. Therefore, disarm suddenly becomes "tainted" because it means changing the math dynamic in the game. 

Poor design. 

Very poor design.


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## mneme (May 19, 2011)

Pinback: Indeed.  Like I said in another thread a while back, +X weapons (or armor, or, now, neck) are a sacred cow.


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## D'karr (May 19, 2011)

Balesir said:


> It seems you see this as a flaw, but for the style of play I enjoy with D&D I don't.  That the *majority* of actions the PCs perform are covered by the _standard_ rule elements rather than the guidelines for adding new rules I see as _good_ rules design for this type of game, not bad.




Just to clarify I didn't call it a flaw, and I don't see it as a flaw.  Page 42 of the DMG and pages 101-109 of the DMB are both part of the _standard_ rules.

The problem I described is not that the design is bad either.  As I mentioned I believe that the basic rules of 4e are very good exactly because they are well designed.

The problem I describe is when players self-restrict to a subset of the _standard_ rules and completely obviate others that can be applicable and open up more avenues for them.  If a player restricts himself to only performing move actions on his turn, and never used standard, minor or immediate actions he would be missing a plethora of possibilities.  When players limit themselves only to the things written on their character sheet they fall into the same trap.  A D&D character is only limited by the imagination/creativity of the player.  The page 42 rules are part of the rules design exactly to allow that imagination/creativity to be used, and still remain within the balance of that design.  They open up entire highways of actions that cannot simply be described in the Powers Mechanic.

The designers of 4e wanted to have more options/action within the design space and they provided a very good way to do more.  What they did not provide was an easy to remember way to "know you can" do more.  I just added one thing that allows players to know they can do more.


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## Herschel (May 19, 2011)

P1NBACK said:


> Like I said, you can "tell a story" over the Monopoly game, but it's not roleplaying (by my definition).




Over Monopoly, no, but Monopoly isn't all boardgames. In something like Akham Horror it works just fine. Instead of a DM you have an end goal and whatever monster is drawn. If I'm playing Mike McGlynn I'm dusting freaks so someone with sanity can close gates. I can play that role easy enough or I can just roll the dice. It works either way.


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## AbdulAlhazred (May 19, 2011)

I don't think it is dismissive at all. I think it gets at the heart of the thing. RP is independent of the rules being used at the table, if any. Now, you can say that a game MUST allow for effectively unlimited options before you have RP, but many of us will have to disagree there. If I play a game of chess and I play it as an RPG what would I be doing? I'd be considering the motives and personality of my 'characters' (the pieces) and playing a game where I make moves in the game according to what I imagine their motives etc are. To me that's RP, definitionally.  The rules of the game aren't IMPEDING that, they're just defining the options available in that world.

Now, in a dedicated RPG the rules serve a somewhat different purpose, they provide a means of adjudicating conflicts in the game, not to define the totality of options, so there's a significant difference, but the extent and thoroughness of those rules isn't limiting anyone's options. 

Presentation is a somewhat different issue. I think what is being said here is that the PRESENTATION of 4e, as an example, is prone to stultifying people's thinking. Personally I haven't really seen that. I can't speak for anyone else's experience though. My feeling is that 1e's rules were MORE stultifying than the 4e rules are. Many of the mechanics were close to unworkable and in many cases effectively removed options from consideration. The thief with his 10% chance to hide in shadows was stultifying, no player would make a plan that involved hiding because it was so unreliable it would be a terrible plan (and contrary to some people's assertions a 1e thief only got to a reliable level with most of its abilities at quite high levels and didn't achieve those levels any faster than other classes due to the arithmetic progression of XP tables). Worse even than that the rules effectively disallowed ANY non-thief to even entertain the option to hide in a shadow, even if it made sense. 

I can understand feeling that 4e provides too many options, but at least they are high quality options with well considered mechanics that actually cater to DOING things instead of telling you what you can't do or how bad you are at it. IMHO that promotes RP more effectively than the minimalist but largely broken 1e rules.


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## P1NBACK (May 19, 2011)

Herschel said:


> Over Monopoly, no, but Monopoly isn't all boardgames. In something like Akham Horror it works just fine. Instead of a DM you have an end goal and whatever monster is drawn. If I'm playing Mike McGlynn I'm dusting freaks so someone with sanity can close gates. I can play that role easy enough or I can just roll the dice. It works either way.




Yeah, and I can "play the role" of the banker who goes 2d6 spaces and pays rent every time he lands on someone else's property. 

Seriously. If we can't agree on this basic principle of roleplaying, it's no wonder we disagree. 

I'm fine with that.


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## P1NBACK (May 19, 2011)

AbdulAlhazred said:


> If I play a game of chess and I play it as an RPG what would I be doing? I'd be considering the motives and personality of my 'characters' (the pieces) and playing a game where I make moves in the game according to what I imagine their motives etc are. To me that's RP, definitionally.




Great. How do you do that when you are "roleplaying" the White Knight who decides to turn against the White King and join the Black King's side? 

You fundamentally have to break Chess' rules for this to happen. Fundamentally. Hence, Chess is not a roleplaying game. 

How this is up for debate is beyond me...


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## Herschel (May 19, 2011)

P1NBACK said:


> Yeah, and I can "play the role" of the banker who goes 2d6 spaces and pays rent every time he lands on someone else's property.
> 
> Seriously. If we can't agree on this basic principle of roleplaying, it's no wonder we disagree.
> 
> I'm fine with that.




I think there's a big difference in those two games though, just as an example. 

Monopoly is essentially a stripped-down, straight competitive game. It's mano-a-mano. 

Arkham is not only a more complex game, it's a cooperative game. The cooperative portion is a huge factor. It's also based around stories and a mythology. I play a character, not a thimble. 

The rules of the game are fairly straight-forward, but is it really that much different than a "railroad" RPG module by a RAW-obsessed DM? 

A lot depends on what you want whatever game you play to be and how obsessed you are going to be over rules. While it does go kaput if a boardgame turns in to Calvinball, there's still a lot of room for story even in some of those. The clear delineation between game types is rather blurred, for many reasons. I don't mind wielding the eraser myself when it makes something more fun. 

Would it be my first choice for roleplaying? No way in heck, but when the group is right it can morph in to an RPG-type experience.


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## Aenghus (May 19, 2011)

For me a good balanced set of rules improves roleplay. There is a relatively open and transparent  model of how the world works, everyone gets a large variety of actions without having to step outside the box, there is less arguments and wheedling the DM for advantage or special privilege.

I think actions stepping outside the box should be uncommon. Wanting to do it too much is a symptom of bad rules, like in Mearls example (or a weak DM, but we won't go there). By being uncommon, going outside the box should feel special and unusual. 

One reason for my opinion is that prefer to see a direct correlation between the rules representation of the game setting and the world itself. Rules aren't perfect and some houserules may be needed to tweak things, but by and large the rules describe the game world for me. I don't rules as an enemy to be wrestled, or something obfuscating the truth of the gameworld.

In any case I don't see a huge amount of roleplaying in combat scenes, in any system, and the bulk of 4e rules are about combat. I really think roleplaying is something that happens if the players and referee want it to, with a fair degree of independence from the rules used.

I know some other people have a concept of their setting more or less independent from the rules they are using. I don't really understand this point of view, though it's as valid as any other viewpoint.


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## P1NBACK (May 19, 2011)

Herschel said:


> The rules of the game are fairly straight-forward, but is it really that much different than a "railroad" RPG module by a RAW-obsessed DM?




As I said, playing by the rules. For example, I can't "hail a taxi" in Arkham Horror instead of moving by spending my move points along the line. I can't gather clues outside of the normal method, I can't make any decisions about my character other than the prescribed actions dictated by the rules of the game (exactly like Monopoly or if you want to use cooperative games, Castle Ravenloft boardgame). 

If you can't make fictional choices that impact the outcome of the game, it's not roleplaying. 

I can play any game and plaster a "story" over it to describe what happened. That doesn't mean it's roleplaying. 

There's a reason why Castle Ravenloft is a boardgame and not an RPG expansion. 

Could I hack Monopoly, Arkham Horror, Chess, etc. with rules of my own to make it a roleplaying game? Yeah, sure. 

But, I said, as-written. Roleplaying games have a design that is fundamentally different from boardgames. And, that's why the "rules matter". 

Again, I didn't say rules = no roleplaying. In fact, I say the opposite. In order to make Chess a roleplaying game, we need to make _rules _for that. If I want my White Knight to betray the White King, I have to make (or change) a rule for that.



Herschel said:


> A lot depends on what you want whatever game you play to be and how obsessed you are going to be over rules. While it does go kaput if a boardgame turns in to Calvinball, there's still a lot of room for story even in some of those. The clear delineation between game types is rather blurred, for many reasons. I don't mind wielding the eraser myself when it makes something more fun.
> 
> Would it be my first choice for roleplaying? No way in heck, but when the group is right it can morph in to an RPG-type experience.




Story does not = roleplaying. 

It's like me playing Stratego and saying, "Oh, this piece is a soldier and back home he has a wife and children. We'll send his belongings home when he's blown up." 

We have a story right? Did we roleplay? No.


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## Scribble (May 19, 2011)

P1NBACK said:


> Great. How do you do that when you are "roleplaying" the White Knight who decides to turn against the White King and join the Black King's side?
> 
> You fundamentally have to break Chess' rules for this to happen. Fundamentally. Hence, Chess is not a roleplaying game.
> 
> How this is up for debate is beyond me...




You're adding rules- not really breaking them.

It's the same as if I were to say how does my character do x in an RPG when there aren't currently any rules for X?

The fundamental difference (I would say at least) between a roleplaying game, and not a roleplaying game is that in a roleplaying game we expect to occassionaly or sometimes frequently add/modify rules on the fly to cover actions not already covered or specifically covered by the rules, and not only that, but this is encouraged by the rules themselves.

A not a roleplaying game, on the other hand does not expect you to do this, nor does it encourage you to do this above and beyond a few minor houserules established prior to the game starting (aka free parking in monopoly.)


This I think is also the essence of what Mearls was saying. It's not "bad" or "Good" rules that make RPGs unique among games- it's the expectancy that a human interface allows the game to deal with literally anything you want it to that makes them so special.


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## P1NBACK (May 19, 2011)

Aenghus said:


> I think actions stepping outside the box should be uncommon. Wanting to do it too much is a symptom of bad rules, like in Mearls example (or a weak DM, but we won't go there). By being uncommon, going outside the box should feel special and unusual.




I disagree. I think the "box" should encompass what we normally consider "stepping outside". 

Or, in other words, we should have rules for being creative, imaginative and that should be the norm. Therefore, there is no "outside" the box. Only inside. 

_The norm should be creativity, imagination, description and exploration. _


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## P1NBACK (May 19, 2011)

Scribble said:


> You're adding rules- not really breaking them.




Adding rules is breaking rules. If I'm playing Chess against Vladimir Akopian and I decide that my Knight is going to take his Bishop prisoner and torture him for information about the King's plans... Well, I think he'd have problems with that. 

I said, "As written" Chess is not a roleplaying game and you cannot roleplay with those rules. I think that's pretty self-evident. 

In order to "roleplay" chess, like you said, you need to create or change rules. 



Scribble said:


> It's the same as if I were to say how does my character do x in an RPG when there aren't currently any rules for X?




There are rules for X in roleplaying games. In most traditional games, it's a DM who adjudicates those "non-specified" actions. 

That's a rule. It's there. It make not be "BAB + 1d20 to attack" but it's still a rule. 



Scribble said:


> The fundamental difference (I would say at least) between a roleplaying game, and not a roleplaying game is that in a roleplaying game we expect to occassionaly or sometimes frequently add/modify rules on the fly to cover actions not already covered or specifically covered by the rules, and not only that, but this is encouraged by the rules themselves. A not a roleplaying game, on the other hand does not expect you to do this, nor does it encourage you to do this above and beyond a few minor houserules established prior to the game starting (aka free parking in monopoly.)




That's part of it, but not entirely. You could still modify rules in Monopoly and have it be a non-roleplaying game. If I say, "Instead of rolling 2d6, roll 3d6 for moves..." 

It doesn't suddenly become a roleplaying game. So, no, I don't think "changing rules" is a definitive aspect of how to define a roleplaying game. 

Again: it's the ability to make an impact on the outcome of the game, based on the fictional circumstances you change via your character(s). 

Murder Mystery Dinner Parties are a good example of a roleplaying game.  



Scribble said:


> This I think is also the essence of what Mearls was saying. It's not "bad" or "Good" rules that make RPGs unique among games- it's the expectancy that a human interface allows the game to deal with literally anything you want it to that makes them so special.




Yes. This I can get onboard with, and THIS is what I have been saying for pages. 

Human interface that allows you to make an impact on the game fictionally via the rules.


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## Pour (May 19, 2011)

P1NBACK said:


> I disagree. I think the "box" should encompass what we normally consider "stepping outside".
> 
> Or, in other words, we should have rules for being creative, imaginative and that should be the norm. Therefore, there is no "outside" the box. Only inside.
> 
> _The norm should be creativity, imagination, description and exploration. _




Well we already have rules to be creative and imaginative with, but I don't want hard rules for being creative or imaginative. That sounds like the most constraining box of all. Don't those aspects come from within, anyway, from the DM and players? Even if they were outlined, they'd be broken the very first sessions, or expanded upon, or both.

And while I mostly agree that my preferred games contain creativity, imagination and description (and a fair helping of exploration, too), I would never presume to tell anyone what components should or must make their fun. No doubt most people have a combination of these things, but it just doesn't seem right to impose that on people who may like the structure and clarity of existing rules in varying degrees.


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## P1NBACK (May 19, 2011)

Pour said:


> Well we already have rules to be creative and imaginative with, but I don't want hard rules for being creative or imaginative. That sounds like the most constraining box of all. Don't those aspects come from within, anyway, from the DM and players? Even if they were outlined, they'd be broken the very first sessions, or expanded upon, or both.




If I make a rule that's decidedly for fostering creativity and imagination, how is that possibly constraining? 

I'm saying, open the box up entirely - so, you don't have a box anymore. There is no "outside" the box because everything is "inside" the box.


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## Dausuul (May 19, 2011)

As I see it, the way to foster creativity via the rules is to offer "carrots" for going outside the rules.

Earlier, I mentioned executioner poisons as an example of something I like about recent 4E class design. You can daze an enemy for the entire encounter, _if_ you can get it to eat or drink a dose of poison. How do you do that? There's nothing within the rules that tells you how to make a creature have dinner. You have to interact with the world and the DM and figure it out. _But_, if you do so, there's a rules-based reward awaiting you.

I would like to see more mechanics along those lines. Preferably as class abilities/powers, so they show up on your character sheet. It's similar to the "Do something cool!" power, except that it offers a defined incentive to do something cool, and some guidance as to what cool thing you might do.


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## P1NBACK (May 19, 2011)

Dausuul said:


> As I see it, the way to foster creativity via the rules is to offer "carrots" for going outside the rules.
> 
> Earlier, I mentioned executioner poisons as an example of something I like about recent 4E class design. You can daze an enemy for the entire encounter, _if_ you can get it to eat or drink a dose of poison. How do you do that? There's nothing within the rules that tells you how to make a creature have dinner. You have to interact with the world and the DM and figure it out. _But_, if you do so, there's a rules-based reward awaiting you.
> 
> I would like to see more mechanics along those lines. Preferably as class abilities/powers, so they show up on your character sheet. It's similar to the "Do something cool!" power, except that it offers a defined incentive to do something cool, and some guidance as to what cool thing you might do.




Definitely! I dig it. 

Just because there's no "rule" for something specific, doesn't mean there aren't rules that encourage those things. 

It's what Vincent Baker likes to call the "Fruitful Void".  

So, yes. This is what I'm trying to say, but on a larger scale!


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## IanB (May 19, 2011)

P1NBACK said:


> If I make a rule that's decidedly for fostering creativity and imagination, how is that possibly constraining?
> 
> I'm saying, open the box up entirely - so, you don't have a box anymore. There is no "outside" the box because everything is "inside" the box.




Can you give an example of this kind of rule?


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## P1NBACK (May 19, 2011)

IanB said:


> Can you give an example of this kind of rule?




DMG Page 42 is a kind of example.


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## Herschel (May 19, 2011)

P1NBACK said:


> I disagree. I think the "box" should encompass what we normally consider "stepping outside".
> 
> Or, in other words, we should have rules for being creative, imaginative and that should be the norm. Therefore, there is no "outside" the box. Only inside.
> 
> _The norm should be creativity, imagination, description and exploration. _




We have rules that support creativity within the game but also the freedom to be creative in areas the rules don't cover. One of the biggest things that drew me back to D&D (with 4E) was that there weren't all these set rules for everything under the sun. I absolutely DETESTED that about 3E. That wasn't freedom, that was nitpicking rules bloat. Now, if you think it, you can try it. Tell me what you want to do and I'll give you a way to do it (or as close as I see reasonable). There's a basic set of skill rolls and a DC system I can use if I choose. 

Creativity is outside the norm, by definition.


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## P1NBACK (May 19, 2011)

Herschel said:


> Creativity is outside the norm, by definition.




Huh? No. Not _by definition. _

And, especially not in old school D&D. Creativity was the norm. _That's how you played. _

My recent Sunday B/X game was a testament to that. If you didn't get creative, you likely didn't survive. It took me a couple characters to realize that. 

Maybe in 4E play, creativity is outside the norm. Maybe in your game, yeah. Maybe when you get on ENWorld and people are telling you, "No! Don't be creative! That's not fair!" Of course, how can you say that "Now, if you think it, you can try it" if creativity is outside the norm? Your players don't think it? They don't try it? 

Definitely not by definition. Definitely not in every game. And, that's probably why Mike Mearls is rambling on in his Legends & Lore article about _how much fun he had_ getting creative with his Thief.


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## Aenghus (May 19, 2011)

Creativity can be great. But it isn't automatically great. It's inherently subjective and one person's creativity can be another person's badwrongfun -e.g.  metagaming, cheating or just attempting the impossible.

I think rules that encourage creativity are great, but think they need to be bare skeletons, thinks like page 42 and the encouragement not to give a bare "no" to players.

However, I think making "creativity" compulsory is potentially disasterous. I see creativity is best spontaneous, while it can be improved with practice, its not  something you can force out of just anybody. Some players are more creative than others, some players visions will match the DM closer than others. The potential for favoritism and excluding players increases the more subjective judgement is relied upon.

It can work great when everyone involved has the same vision, but this is rare. The average group IMO has a variety of different viewpoints and don't see everything the same way. Rules produce a semi-objective framework to give everyone a baseline for comparison and stop perceptions from drifting apart.

I see the demand "you must be this creative to play RPGs" as being elitist. Now this is valid criterion for a particular group ( though it would need more detail than just "creative" as, like I said above, this is a subjective label).


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## Herschel (May 19, 2011)

P1NBACK said:


> And, especially not in old school D&D. Creativity was the norm. _That's how you played. _




Yes, because the rules sucked. If you stuck to them, you were toast. That's the whole point of Mike Mearls' article. I'm not sure I could even run or play in a "adhere strictly to the rules" game of 1E because I don't think I've ever been exposed to a game or anyone that actually used them all as written. 

Now the game just gives you more cool stuff to do "within the box", which seems to be what you want while not acknowledging it being in there. Basically 4E took a "list" of all these cool things people did or wanted to do and made powers around them while still giving you freedom to do other stuff that wasn't them.


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## Balesir (May 19, 2011)

Wow, lots to respond to in what is becoming a very good discussion that I think has fruit to bear, but it's too late at night here for me to do it now.  I'll try to post tomorrow morning.

P1NBACK - I think the key may be in what _I_ mean by "aesthetic", which I didn't explain very fully earlier.


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## AbdulAlhazred (May 19, 2011)

P1NBACK said:


> Great. How do you do that when you are "roleplaying" the White Knight who decides to turn against the White King and join the Black King's side?
> 
> You fundamentally have to break Chess' rules for this to happen. Fundamentally. Hence, Chess is not a roleplaying game.
> 
> How this is up for debate is beyond me...




Well, what if I don't move my white knight into the situation where he would checkmate the black king because I'm RPing him as a traitor? Is that not RP affecting the course of the game? Sure it is! Notice that it also inherently implies that I have a wider range of goals in playing that particular game of chess than simply winning the game. 

I did make a distinction though between 'open ended' games and 'closed' games. I don't think closed games are automatically impossible to RP in. You simply have a limited menu of options. Admittedly that means the amount of RP you can encompass in closed games is much less, but I don't draw the line on RP at the same point as the open/closed distinction. 

And I wouldn't want to take this whole argument to the completely absurd level. Chess is a terrible RPG.

Winding it back more to the original discussion though clearly more rules or more restrictive rules don't make some game 'not an RPG', they just make it a more or less useful one. 

Really I think OD&D or 1e AD&D and the thief is a bit of a bad example, Mearl's could have used a better but equally simple system as a better example (except it would have missed his nostalgia angle). AD&D was pretty restrictive in a lot of odd ways. Something like Savage Worlds would probably be a better example of a system with simple generalized rules and few complex 'baked in' options for a given PC, vs the implicit comparison to 4e where you have a lot of that. OTOH SW and 4e both have quite generalized rules, older D&D just had a mass of very specific rules and little else. I think both SW and 4e are better RPGs than AD&D/OD&D were, even if they are quite different in some ways.


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## LostSoul (May 19, 2011)

IanB said:


> Can you give an example of this kind of rule?




Sorcerer's conflict resolution rules work like this.

You have 4 stats rated as a die pool number - Stamina, Lore, Past/Cover, and Will.  Each has one or two descriptors, like "Lore 4: Unnatural Means; I bathe in hot coals every day".  When you get into a conflict you roll one of your stats if the descriptor applies, and 1 die if it doesn't.

You can't say "I roll Stamina" without describing what you're doing.  The game literally cannot proceed; we don't have enough information.  Do we need to roll?  How many dice do you roll?  What happens when you succeed or fail?  What bonus dice are you going to get?

You get bonus and/or penalty dice for the specifics of your action.  You never have enough dice so you want to build off previous actions, and make sure that you take smart and creative ones.

The equivalent of saying "I roll Stamina" in 4E or 3E would be to say, as your turn, "I rolled a 19."  Is that a save, a skill check, a move over challenging terrain, using a power, or what?

When you use Spinning Sweep on a snake, it doesn't matter what your character actually did; what matters is the attack roll, HP damage, and condition applied.  I think that none of these are part of the fiction, they're part of the real world, the same way landing on Park Place is.  They suggest something fictional - you flipped the snake over on its back, you spent a week holed up in the penthouse with hookers and blow - but that fictional element isn't part of the game; the game doesn't need it to proceed.

Here's a quick combat that happened in our last game:

Dhalia Doomfey heard some painful moans coming from a haughty courtesan's room.  She's got _Martial Awareness_ - a skill that lets her know when violence is going down - and the hair on the back of her neck stood up, telling her that something was wrong.

The fact that she has _Martial Awareness_ as a skill means that we have to consider the fictional elements of the game world in a way that we wouldn't if she had a general Perception skill.  Martial Awareness is only applicable in certain situations, and those situations are governed by the fictional details of the game world.  We needed to know that violence was occurring in order to apply the skill.​
She tried to pick the lock to the door but failed since she was using improvised tools.  She decided to burst through the door, using her gauntlets of ogre power, tumbling into the room, trying to appear drunk.

She saw Mysteval the Portal-Watcher tormenting the haughty courtesan with a spell - she was held by bands of white fire, burning her flesh.  When he saw Dhalia, he said, "I'm glad you decided to join us," and began casting a spell, turning his hand toward Dhalia in a clutching manner, as if to grab her.

The description of his spell casting is going to be important.​
Dhalia's player wanted to use her power Sudden Surge.  However, this requires that she has something to push off of - if that fictional requirement is used, she can use the power all the time.  Since she tumbled into the room, she wasn't next to the wall.  As DM, I didn't have a map of the room, so I rolled a d6, giving a 50% chance that there would be something nearby.  Nope.

We determined if she could use Sudden Surge based on the description of her previous action; if she hadn't tumbled into the room, she could have pushed off of the wall.  That's how fictional details matter!​
Dhalia saw the spell being cast, and an icy hand forming in the air to grab her.  She got up, _Cursed_ Mysteval in the name of Bercalion of the Dark Vow, and leapt at him, grabbing and twisting his spell-casting hand and grabbing him in the throat.  She succeeded, and as Mysteval's spell formed, she twisted his hand away at the last moment so the icy hand missed her.

She got a +2 bonus to her Ref because she twisted his hand like so.  That was enough for the hand to miss her.​
In the next round, Dhalia put her leg behind his and tripped him with force, slamming his head to the ground and stunning him.  Mysteval grabbed her with his hand.

Mysteval was dazed as a result of this attack, which was consistent with the fiction.  Dhalia got a bonus to attack because of her description of her action - the precise way she tripped him - and the fact that she already had him grabbed, her trip following up directly on her last action.​
So there's a lot of fiction and creativity generated there.  In standard 4E it would look something like this:

Roll init
Dhalia wins, uses Sudden Surge to hit him for some damage
Mysteval shifts back, casts Bigby's Icy Hand, misses
Dhalia uses some other power, possibly Spinning Sweep; he takes damage and has the prone condition
Mysteval responds by sustaining Bigby's Icy Hand, hits
etc.

We could generate similar fiction, but it wouldn't have an effect on the choices the players make round-to-round.  But we don't _have_ to generate any fiction at all; we could ignore it and simply track HP and conditions, and the game would proceed in the same way.


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## mudlock (May 20, 2011)

That all sounds very interesting, but reminds me far-too-closely of "Well, since you didn't SAY you're character checked the ceiling for green slime before walking into the room, no, they didn't see it; doesn't matter WHAT number you have next to 'perception' or 'dungeonering' on your sheet."

I've had some good times with, for example, bonus dice in Exalted... and some really lame times with yet another minute-long tortured explanation of how THIS slash-with-my-sword is different from the previous five slashes-with-a-sword because someone desperately wants that 2nd extra die but really doesn't have any good narrative ideas.

I've had some good times and some lame times with diceless Amber, AKA, "If I, as a player, can fast-talk the GM, then my character wins!" (That, much like the board game Diplomacy, is a game I will not play with a newly in-love couple ever again.)

Different things will work at different tables with different people. For D&D, I want a game that's more like 4e and less like Merls' "Fast-talk the GM or die" 1e.


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## LostSoul (May 20, 2011)

mudlock said:


> That all sounds very interesting, but reminds me far-too-closely of "Well, since you didn't SAY you're character checked the ceiling for green slime before walking into the room, no, they didn't see it; doesn't matter WHAT number you have next to 'perception' or 'dungeonering' on your sheet."




I've thought about that:

Careful Travel: You move at a much slower pace, but this allows you to check for hidden objects (including hidden characters, traps, and secret doors).  Describe your character's actions to the DM; this will determine if you make a check to find hidden objects, find hidden objects automatically, or pass by them without a check.  Your pace is determined by your speed; you may only move up to your normal speed while travelling carefully, but if you move one-half your normal speed or slower you can gain a +2 bonus to any checks made.​
While "Crawling" (exploring small-scale dangerous areas), players describe the actions of their characters and we resolve those actions, using conflict resolution rules if needed.  Players describe the "standard operating procedure" so the game doesn't bog down too much.

If the PCs are looking at the ceiling, and the green slime doesn't have some way to hide, then they'll see it; the players might not realize it's green slime, but that's too bad.  If it does have some way to hide (the whole area is covered in moss), then it makes a check and the PCs make a check (rolled in secret by the DM).  If they don't have a way to see the slime (can't think of a situation where that would be true), then there's no check to be made.

Then there's the Free-and-Clear stage: when you declare your action for the round, the other players (including the DM) do so at the same time, and anyone can change their action in response.  The action isn't committed to until the dice are actually rolled, after the modifiers have been worked out.



mudlock said:


> I've had some good times with, for example, bonus dice in Exalted... and some really lame times with yet another minute-long tortured explanation of how THIS slash-with-my-sword is different from the previous five slashes-with-a-sword because someone desperately wants that 2nd extra die but really doesn't have any good narrative ideas.




I've never seen this happen in my game.  I think it's because your first slash with your sword sets up a situation in the game world and you build off of that for your next slash.



mudlock said:


> Different things will work at different tables with different people. For D&D, I want a game that's more like 4e and less like Merls' "Fast-talk the GM or die" 1e.




I think "fast-talk the GM or die" is a bad way to describe the sort of play in my example above.  Dhalia's player was thinking, "What is my character doing in the game world?  What would she do next?", not "What is the DM going to allow me to get away with?"


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## AbdulAlhazred (May 20, 2011)

LostSoul said:


> Sorcerer's conflict resolution rules work like this.




It is just a different level of abstraction and different representational tools. I don't agree that there is something fundamentally different going on between Sorcerer and 4e (or say DitV either for a similar example). You can no more resolve an action in 4e without making the relevant choices than you can in Sorcerer. Fundamentally it boils down to the same thing. 4e simply has a STRONG concrete representation framework (a battle map with a grid, etc). That may allow you to be LAZY, but you can likewise be lazy in Sorcerer, just at a slightly different level. Notice in both games there may be preconditions for or favorable adjustments for specific actions in specific contexts.

With a given group of players you probably WILL get slightly different results. Each approach has its strengths and weaknesses. Nor does one or the other directly enable more or less creativity in play. A more abstract representation may demand that the players spend more time negotiating and clarifying details, but if those details matter that will have to happen somehow (usually automatically in 4e). 

Really I would say what I see is that 4e tends towards a more expositive mode where you explain the results of things "the wall was slippery, I fell" where you might work it out more ahead of time in other systems (since you will need to clarify the operant conditions enough to decide what to try in the first place). 

Some differences there, but IMHO less than some people make out. Both types of games are fun though and quality narrative should happen in both cases (and may not in either case).


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## pemerton (May 20, 2011)

Balesir said:


> I think the most constructive thing I could see WotC (and Mike Mearls in particular) do is communicate some sense that they do understand what is so great about 4E* and that they have no intention to sacrifice that for what they seek to add to the game.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ...





P1NBACK said:


> there's a difference between combat rooted in what is happening in the fiction and combat that is rooted in what is happening on the table.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ...



I tend to agree with both these posts, which probably puts me in a pretty awkard situation. The one point where I (perhaps) disagree with P1NBACK is that I think his/her comment about 4e shifting the focus from fiction to the boardgame-like reality of the battlemap is perhaps true as a generalisation of tendency, but is not a universal truth.



Balesir said:


> I don't recognise the lack of situational importance in the play of 4E.  My experience is that players are still thinking very much about the terrain and situation surrounding their characters as they play.  They may be doing so in a more "game system" way than a "world physics (as I see it)" way, but that is a style issue, to me, not a right way/wrong way issue.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ...



I like these points, and share your experience of 4e combat resolution.

But if P1NBACK was right that 4e's rules tend to discourage the creation of a shared imaginative space as the locus of action resolution - that is, if s/he was right that the rules tend in the direction of all the action being resolved at the board game/dice rolling level with no need for the players to engage one another with respect to the fiction - then that would be a pretty serious indictment of 4e. As P1NBACK has said, it wouldn't show that 4e is _not_ an RPG, but it would diagnose a certain sort of weakness or flaw in 4e as an RPG. Because rather than a criticism of the particular system used to generate the fiction (eg dice mechanics vs "make stuff up"), it would be a criticism that there _is no fiction_ in these sense that is integral to an RPG.



LostSoul said:


> Sorcerer's conflict resolution rules work like this.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ...





AbdulAlhazred said:


> It is just a different level of abstraction and different representational tools.



I tend to agree with AbdulAlhazred on this. In 4e, for example, that Spinning Sweep can't happen unless you explain, in the fiction, how your fighter crosses the distance to the snake. So some aspects of the fiction are in play, and (in my experience) moreso than in many other fantasy RPGs.

Of course, the retort to this is that the player of the fighter _doesn't_ have to engage the fiction, but simply move a piece on a board - which is to say, that AbdulAlhazred's "different representational tools" are actually "RPG-negating action resolution techniques". I personally don't agree with this - I think the player has to engage with the fiction that the battlemap represents, like "is that difficult terrain rubble or a tree - so does it grant cover or not?" or "how high is that wall?" - but I understand that experiences could differ with respect to this.

But as a general proposition, I don't agree that the 4e rules don't encourage the creation of a shared imaginative space that is relevant to action resolution. The skill challenge guidelines in both PHB and DMG, for example, are very clear on this, despite frequent suggestions to the contrary - but I do think that WotC consistently fails in its publications - particularly its adventure publications - to explain _how_ to use 4e mechanics to support the share imaginative space. 4e material needs more good advice to both players and GMs on how to run the game so that the fiction matters.

For example, while the skill challenge guidelines make it clear that there is to be a shared imaginative space which both players and GM are to engage in when resolving a skill challenge - but it doesn't give any advice on how, in practice, this is to be done. As a result, I didn't learn to GM 4e by reading 4e books - I learned to GM it mostly by reading rulebooks for HeroQuest, Maelstrom Storytelling and the Burning Wheel, plus reading essays and threads at the Forge. In my view, this is a problem that I think WotC is yet to address.

(I think that the guidelines on combat encounter design are better than those for skill challenges - they encourage design elements that make the representation suggestive of the fiction rather than a subsitute for the fiction - but again in my experience the adventures often don't comply with the encounter design guidelines. Also, there are some interesting disuccsion of some of these issues on the recent Fictional Positioning thread.)


----------



## UngeheuerLich (May 20, 2011)

P1NBACK said:


> I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with disarm. What happened was, the devs created a problem with disarm by forcing items into being "required" for the maths. Therefore, disarm suddenly becomes "tainted" because it means changing the math dynamic in the game.
> 
> Poor design.
> 
> Very poor design.



I beg to differ:

beeing able to disarm a fighter at will is bad design... A fighter who is capable of fighting is not disarmed regularily.

So an encounter power that allows you to try under some circumstances. Ok. Something you can do at will. No.

The only thing I can imagine that resembles a disarm at will is a 2 stage attack with quite good chances to do so.

=> Standard action to prepare the disarm. (feint). Second standard action to actually do it. (With good chances or one of them even near automatic) The defender may react between those two actions, disallowing such a trick usually.

But if you spend your action point, you can pull off the trick well enough. (And it is sure, that the standard monster can´t do this trick with no chance to defend against.)

The question is, if you are willing to have a system with 2 staged actions. (Like getting CA + sneak attack)


----------



## Raven Crowking (May 20, 2011)

pemerton said:


> But if P1NBACK was right that 4e's rules tend to discourage the creation of a shared imaginative space as the locus of action resolution - that is, if s/he was right that the rules tend in the direction of all the action being resolved at the board game/dice rolling level with no need for the players to engage one another with respect to the fiction - then that would be a pretty serious indictment of 4e. As P1NBACK has said, it wouldn't show that 4e is _not_ an RPG, but it would diagnose a certain sort of weakness or flaw in 4e as an RPG. Because rather than a criticism of the particular system used to generate the fiction (eg dice mechanics vs "make stuff up"), it would be a criticism that there _is no fiction_ in these sense that is integral to an RPG.






> In 4e, for example, that Spinning Sweep can't happen unless you explain, in the fiction, how your fighter crosses the distance to the snake. So some aspects of the fiction are in play, and (in my experience) moreso than in many other fantasy RPGs.




You and I know that there are many people who would claim that the DM ought not to, say, disallow a power that knocks a snake prone, on the basis that he doesn't believe it makes sense within the fiction.

Should you like, I can scour EN World for many, many pro-4e posts that demonstrate, for those players at least, that a _*shared* fictional space _is not so very important to the experience of the game.  I.e., if it's Bob's character, and the use makes sense to Bob, it should be allowed.

This is very different than a role-playing game in which a Game Master exists, among other reasons, specifically to ensure that resolution creates a shared fictional space.

How many posts do you require where it is claimed that the DM should simply allow something, whether or not it concurs with his image of the fiction, before serious questions about the nature of that fiction begin to arise?  

However, 4e does provide a shared fictional space in the form of the battlemat, wherein things are defined by their rules alone.  Unless, of course, like the rules for "prone", the RAW turns out to be rather inconvenient when trying to use a power to inflict that condition on a creature that is already, by the written rules, prone.

This has been called a lot of things on this board -- "pop quiz role-playing", where one has to decide how the fiction is changed secondary to the use of a power (How exactly did I knock that snake prone?) is evocative.  I prefer, however, "rules-first", where the rules take primacy over the fiction.

You do not have to play the game that way.  Some don't.  

Some even go to elaborate lengths to make their own "hacks" of the system that restores primacy to the fiction.  From the current WotC blogs that I have read, I actually have some small hope that the designers are among those creating their own "fiction-first" hacks, and I have some small hope that 5e will return to more "fiction-first" game play.



RC


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## AbdulAlhazred (May 20, 2011)

Raven Crowking said:


> You and I know that there are many people who would claim that the DM ought not to, say, disallow a power that knocks a snake prone, on the basis that he doesn't believe it makes sense within the fiction.
> 
> Should you like, I can scour EN World for many, many pro-4e posts that demonstrate, for those players at least, that a _*shared* fictional space _is not so very important to the experience of the game.  I.e., if it's Bob's character, and the use makes sense to Bob, it should be allowed.
> 
> ...




You're in severe danger of coming across as condescending... 

Also, don't put this at 4e's door. Nowhere in the rules or presentation is such a concept as "rules trump story" ever so much as suggested. In fact (particularly in DMG2) quite the opposite. This whole myth seems to have arisen based on one FAQ entry where someone in CS suggested that oozes can be 'knocked prone'. Note too that in that case the suggestion was simply "the fiction can easily accommodate such a thing." and in all fairness all that was suggested is that the associated game effects of prone made enough sense as a way to portray some kind of equivalent effect that it was sensible to just go with it.


----------



## Balesir (May 20, 2011)

My previously promised responses - this turned out LOOONG - sorry!



P1NBACK said:


> You're saying you haven't experienced a session where _only_ the numbers matter. I get it.
> 
> Of course you haven't, because at that point it's not roleplaying right?



Exactly.  When the focus is entirely on the systems, props and numbers it can't be roleplaying.  But, while I agree that the system used _affects_ whether or not those are the entire focus, I do not agree that it _determines_ whether or not those are the entire focus.



P1NBACK said:


> My point is: 4E comes as close to this as D&D ever has. We're moving further away from roleplaying and toward a miniatures game. That's FINE for those who love miniatures games! Sweet! And, it's FUN too. I love miniature combat.
> 
> But, it's not roleplaying. Yah dig?



I disagree, because I think a miniatures game can be roleplayed - but more on this below.



P1NBACK said:


> Shared imagined events is not enough. That's just the term I'm using for fiction. What we agree that is actually happening, right?
> 
> "I charge with my lance and stab your rook!"
> 
> We can both imagine that happening during chess right? But, is that roleplaying? I don't think so.





P1NBACK said:


> If we're playing chess, and I say, "Now, that I've charged your rook, my Knight draws his sword and attacks the Pawn adjacent to him!"
> 
> Well, I can't really do that right? Because the Knight piece has to move 2 up and 1 to the side and land on a space to take a piece.





P1NBACK said:


> How do you do that when you are "roleplaying" the White Knight who decides to turn against the White King and join the Black King's side?
> 
> You fundamentally have to break Chess' rules for this to happen. Fundamentally. Hence, Chess is not a roleplaying game.
> 
> How this is up for debate is beyond me...





P1NBACK said:


> If I'm playing Chess against Vladimir Akopian and I decide that my Knight is going to take his Bishop prisoner and torture him for information about the King's plans... Well, I think he'd have problems with that.



I have grouped these excepts from your posts together because they all illustrate one assumption I think you are making and that I want to point up as an assumption, not a necessary fact.

Throughout all this 'chess as roleplaying' discussion you assume that the "world" of chess is much like our own.  Knights have swords, and can use them to cut down creatures standing next to them.  Bishops are physically capable of being tortured.  A 'knight's move' represents a lance charge.

You do the same also with Monopoly - the "world" of Monopoly necessarily has hookers, penthouses and the characters there desire some "blow time".

This is what I am talking about when I refer to "aesthetics".  Having a world where more-or-less mundane "real world" features largely apply is your 'taste' in roleplaying games.  But _it's not a required basis for any roleplaying game_.  For me, roleplaying games range far wider than that in their potential scope of "realities" they might cover.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, what if I don't move my white knight into the situation where he would checkmate the black king because I'm RPing him as a traitor? Is that not RP affecting the course of the game? Sure it is! Notice that it also inherently implies that I have a wider range of goals in playing that particular game of chess than simply winning the game.



This is just one example of how a treacherous 'Chess Knight' might behave if he was living in "the world of chess" where the world "physics" really do constrain him as the rules of chess stipulate.  Note, though, that, to be fair, you have already added a rule - that the characters in chessworld are psychologically capable of treason.  A chessworld canon purist might take issue with you over that point... 



P1NBACK said:


> What happens is, there's a disconnect between what's occurring in the fiction, and what is happening in the rules. If I can't describe something that's totally plausible (a knight drawing his sword and swinging it at the pawn next to him), because the rules are so disconnected with the shared imagined events, well, then we're not roleplaying.



No, what happens is that there is a disconnect between the fiction as it is described by the rules that were accepted as the basis for the game world, and what _you_ think the world should be like.  Who says the knights in chessworld have swords?  You do.  Who says that physical adjacency must be what enables attacks in chessworld physics?  You do.

You are limiting "roleplaying" to only being acceptable in worlds that fit your own personal aesthetic of what roleplaying worlds "should" be.  There is nothing wrong with you limiting yourself to that - that is entirely your prerogative.  But understand that that is not a definitive restriction on what roleplaying worlds can conceivably be.  Even if we accept the limitation that the roleplaying world should accord with the aesthetics of those playing, peoples' aesthetics differ, so not everyone will share the same set of limitations.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> I wouldn't want to take this whole argument to the completely absurd level. Chess is a terrible RPG.
> 
> Winding it back more to the original discussion though clearly more rules or more restrictive rules don't make some game 'not an RPG', they just make it a more or less useful one.



Just to pull things back a little, I agree with this - chess would be a really poor basis for a roleplaying game.  I think the reason is not so much the tight constraints as the lack of easy, intuitive "hooks" to allow the players to really grok the world's physics.  I can't imagine ever actually roleplaying chess except as some sort of challenge, to prove to ourselves that we can do it!

Even if _I_ could not do it, though, I can still imagine how another could, so I would still maintain that it could be roleplayed - it would just require extraordinary powers of imagination.



P1NBACK said:


> Roleplaying occurs when the things you do in the fiction (our shared described and imagined events) has an impact on what's happening at the table - and vice versa.



OK, but this happens in all roleplaying, regardless of the system in use, regardless of the props in use, and even if there is no actual table.  This is simply a description of a shared fiction - by description, either aided by system conventions and props such as miniatures or not, we share additions to the fiction to keep all our fiction-models in synch.  The fact that we may have agreed descriptions of the gameworld physics in the rules, or agreed representations of the gameworld situational layout formed by a battlemat and figures merely defines the techniques we are using to communicate our additions to the fiction in a codified, clear and unambiguous way.  We can still decide, each for ourselves, the form of the "imagined space" in our minds that is taking input from those representations.  It's interesting that I nearly said "whether or not we have an "imagined space"" in that last sentence.  Then I realised that we necessarily, always, must have some sort of model in our minds - it's just how we operate as sentient beings.  All we really can control is whether that "imagined space" contains representations of miniatures, rulebooks and a battlemat or representations of creatures and elements in an imaginary world.



P1NBACK said:


> The hallmark of a roleplaying game is: what we imagine, describe and agree to can impact the rules and what is actually happening in the fiction.
> 
> _*Impact.*_ My description actually makes an _impact_ on the game. Not just me moving my piece.



So you want the power to add rules and capabilities to the gameworld.  That's fine - not necessary, in my opinion, but fine.  It may well be helpful in more closely aligning the gameworld to your aesthetic of what the gameworld "should" be.

But my view of roleplaying is simply that we approach it from the angle of picturing the imaginary world in our minds as we play, instead of picturing the props and people in the "real" world that we are gaming with.  How we settle upon the forms and rules of that world is an immensely mutable thing.  A thing that determines what style or focus of roleplaying we are doing - but does not determine whether what we are doing is "valid" roleplaying or not.



P1NBACK said:


> If the battlemat, dice, minis and other real world cues are empowering roleplaying, then we have a good system. Right now, I don't think we're there with 4E.
> 
> It's not about aesthetic. It's about what I was describing above. How we define roleplaying.
> 
> ...



And here's why I said last night that I need to further explain my use of the word "aesthetic", because I do *not* just mean "colour" or "fluff".

By "aesthetic" what I mean is what _quality_ of imaginary world you are happy to roleplay in.  What aspects of world physics, what "truths" of reality are needed in the imagined setting for you to be capable of and/or comfortable with roleplaying in it?  Some people find the very idea that fireballs in 4E are cubic unpalatable; but, really, why should a world not exist where fireballs are both possible to create and cubic?  Certainly, it's a world somewhat different to the one we ordinarily interact with, but there really isn't anything that says such a world cannot (or even should not) exist.

I even specifically include ideas about "reality" in aesthetics, here.  A short illustrative story as to why:

Back in the day I was a fan of "realistic" combat systems.  We used complex mechanics where every weapon had statistics for reach, 'speed' and so on.  Hand-and-a-half swords, naturally, had fair reach, slow speed and were severely handicapped if the combatants were "inside" (close together).  Then I saw some professional recreators fighting with bastard swords in the style they had recreated from medieval fighting manuals.  I suddenly realised that just about everything I had been assuming about how fighting with such swords worked was wrong.  Fair reach - yeah, OK.  Slow?  Garbage.  Disadvantaged in close? Drivel.  I realised that there was only one sort of fighter that would use such a sword as I had previously imagined - one with an extremely short life expectancy!

My lesson from this is that we all have a picture, a model in our minds, that is vast and complex and represents how we think the "real" world works.  But it's not necessarily accurate for any specific case - and, overall, it's most definitely not accurate for all cases.  It's an aesthetic.  It's the way we think the world is, combined with a bit of how we think the world should be.  But it's still a fiction - our own, personal conception of the "shared imagined space" that is "reality", if you will.



P1NBACK said:


> If I could draw a Vinn Diagram, it'd have Aesthetic as a big circle, and roleplaying inside of that circle as a smaller circle. You can imagine that, yes?



Right - if the (small circle) roleplaying is inside the (big circle) aesthetic then you are saying that only worlds fitting with your aesthetic count.  I don't say that - my venn diagram has two circles that overlap, but part of the 'roleplaying' one falls outside the 'my aesthetic' one.



P1NBACK said:


> I never played squad leader. But, yeah, from what I've read about it, it could probably be roleplayed, but you'd likely need house-rules.



You would only need houserules if, instead of deciding to play in a world where the physics was determined by the Squad Leader rules, the physics were those of your personal model of the "real world" or otherwise fitted some specific (non-rules-described) aesthetic that you (and, presumably, the rest of the players) had decided to use.

I suppose I'm asking you to see that this choice is arbitrary.  You are _choosing_ to play (exclusively?) in world settings that are defined by your personal aesthetic.  There is nothing essential or definitional about this - it is a *choice*.  It's a perfectly valid choice - there is really nothing wrong with you playing the way you wish to play - but it is not a choice that everyone else must, should or will select, for a simple reason.  Their own aesthetics will differ from yours; indeed, part of finding a "good gaming group" might be finding others whose aesthetics fit well with your own.  The reason I said my venn diagram had areas of "roleplaying" outside the "my aesthetic" circle is that others will have different "aesthetic" circles, and the parts of "roleplaying" that fall outside my "aesthetics" circle may well fall inside theirs.  Just as one example, to me, roleplaying in an Anime-styled world sounds difficult and cludgy, but to others it sounds easy and fun!



P1NBACK said:


> _As an side:_ I don't think there's a "perfect copy" of the shared imagined space. There's a piece in each of our heads, and through roleplaying, discussion, questions, maps, etc... we build a "best version" that we can all agree on.



Right - I mentioned that only because some people do seem to see the "authoritative version" model as required.  I wanted to make it clear that it's a possibility, but not a requirement - I think we're on the same page, here.



P1NBACK said:


> The DM may have control over the environment and the player our character, but unless we agree on the fictional events, well, it's not really happening is it? If I say, "I leap 100 feet into the air..." and everyone else is looking at me like I'm an idiot... Well, it's not really happening in our shared imagined space is it?





P1NBACK said:


> If I make a rule that's decidedly for fostering creativity and imagination, how is that possibly constraining?
> 
> I'm saying, open the box up entirely - so, you don't have a box anymore. There is no "outside" the box because everything is "inside" the box.



I grouped these two excepts because they seem to highlight a contradiction - or maybe a clarification.  If the game group defines 100ft leaps as impossible, isn't that a "box"?

It seems to me as if what you are saying is "for a roleplaying game to be really roleplaying, the players should (implicitly) agree that the game setting (the "fiction") should be defined by the unstructured aesthetics and predefined assumptions of the players about what a roleplaying world "should be", rather than by any text or similar world definition".  My question is "why should the game world for D&D not be described by the text of the rules?"  Sure, subordinating the rules to the players' personal notions of "D&D world" is a valid option - and can be a fun one.  But it's not the only valid option.



P1NBACK said:


> As I said, playing by the rules. For example, I can't "hail a taxi" in Arkham Horror instead of moving by spending my move points along the line. I can't gather clues outside of the normal method, I can't make any decisions about my character other than the prescribed actions dictated by the rules of the game (exactly like Monopoly or if you want to use cooperative games, Castle Ravenloft boardgame).



I'm in danger of being repetitive, but who says that, in arkhamhorrorworld, "hailing a taxi" is a meaningful concept?  Or that it does not result in the character moving through locations as restricted by their movement points?  You say "I can't make any decisions about my character other than the prescribed actions", but if "I say, "I leap 100 feet into the air..." and everyone else is looking at me like I'm an idiot", isn't that exactly analogous?  It seems to me that we are discussing how the rules of the gameworld are defined and ascribed, not whether there are such constraints at all.



P1NBACK said:


> I can play any game and plaster a "story" over it to describe what happened. That doesn't mean it's roleplaying.



Sure - stories are ways we organise the relation of past events when presenting this relation to others for social and political reasons, they have no direct relation to roleplaying (or, indeed, to "truth").



P1NBACK said:


> There's a reason why Castle Ravenloft is a boardgame and not an RPG expansion.



Yeah - it's a way to sell more stuff.

Not to be too cynical, but I am certain that CR (well, the Ashardalon game, to be exact) _can_ be roleplayed - I have done it - but it doesn't support a persistent roleplaying world in the way D&D does, for sure.



UngeheuerLich said:


> On the other hand, i hate thinking along the lines of:
> 
> "Hmmh, it would be a good decision to disarm the foe instead of killing him... but i don´t have the feat, so i have to eat an attack of opportunity, and then i need to win the opposed check..."
> 
> ...



I'm not sure I really "hate" this manner of decision making.  I would certainly ideally prefer the chain of thought to be more intuitive and subliminal than such explicit evaluation of the rules systems, but in the end I see this as the player only clumsily mimicking the character's native understanding of how the gameworld works.  Unless we take the (in my view lazy and unnecessarily constraining) view that only world settings that are immediately and intuitively understandable by the players are valid for roleplay, then I think some period of adjustment, as the players get used to how the game world operates, is inevitable.



P1NBACK said:


> There are rules for X in roleplaying games. In most traditional games, it's a DM who adjudicates those "non-specified" actions.
> 
> That's a rule. It's there. It make not be "BAB + 1d20 to attack" but it's still a rule.





D'karr said:


> Just to clarify I didn't call it a flaw, and I don't see it as a flaw.  Page 42 of the DMG and pages 101-109 of the DMB are both part of the _standard_ rules.



I have grouped these two as pointing up a distinction that I failed to make, earlier.  Page 42 and similar rules are certainly part of the game rules, but what they do is interesting.  They do not describe or define the world setting - they describe and define who has the authority to describe and define elements of the world setting that are not already described and defined.

As such they are not part of the definitional structure of the game setting - the "agreed model" - that I was lazily referring to as "the rules".  They are a description of how new elements of that "world physics model" may be created.  This is a very valuable rule to have in any roleplaying game - but I still maintain that the rules as published (for a gamist game, I should perhaps specify) are better if they have already done the job of "world physics model definition" for the majority of cases that come up in the game as it is intended to be played.  Having said this, it's perfectly true that you can have a functional roleplaying system that *only* defines how and by whom the world definition may be created - Universalis is a fine example of this.



D'karr said:


> The problem I describe is when players self-restrict to a subset of the _standard_ rules and completely obviate others that can be applicable and open up more avenues for them.  If a player restricts himself to only performing move actions on his turn, and never used standard, minor or immediate actions he would be missing a plethora of possibilities.  When players limit themselves only to the things written on their character sheet they fall into the same trap.



I agree that the player's understanding of the game world should, ideally, approach the level of facility that the character has, with their native, intuitive comprehension of the world in which they live their lives.  But, unless we restrict ourselves entirely to imaginary worlds with which we are already familiar, some period of "acclimatisation" is going to be needed for every new world.  Simple worlds that are very similar to ones we already know will require less adjustment time; complex worlds with significant differences will require more, as a general rule.



D'karr said:


> A D&D character is only limited by the imagination/creativity of the player.  The page 42 rules are part of the rules design exactly to allow that imagination/creativity to be used, and still remain within the balance of that design.  They open up entire highways of actions that cannot simply be described in the Powers Mechanic.



I would say that, following on from what I wrote above, the D&D character is limited by the conception of the gaming group of how the D&D universe works.  Page 42 tries to shape this conception by adding some sketchy guidelines, but even when specific rules are given the "real" limitation in most roleplaying groups is "what the group sees the world as being like".  Some take their cues from existing rules for this, some follow the DM's lead, some discuss and collaboratively agree a world model and some assume a model based on preconceived or previously used ideas.  All methods are fine, but it can help to be clear which you are using.



D'karr said:


> The designers of 4e wanted to have more options/action within the design space and they provided a very good way to do more.  What they did not provide was an easy to remember way to "know you can" do more.  I just added one thing that allows players to know they can do more.



An invitation like this is good.  I really like the ideas of terrain powers and such like, too, to expand the interactions between characters and environment, for example.  But more useful, still, might be increasing clarity on what the world model that is in use is based on, exactly.


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## Raven Crowking (May 20, 2011)

AbdulAlhazred said:


> You're in severe danger of coming across as condescending...




That's not my fault.

It's a warm, humid room, and my skin is cooler than the air temperature.


RC


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## pemerton (May 20, 2011)

Raven Crowking said:


> You and I know that there are many people who would claim that the DM ought not to, say, disallow a power that knocks a snake prone, on the basis that he doesn't believe it makes sense within the fiction.



Furthermore, I'm one of them - my view, stated over many threads including the recent snake thread that got closed, is that an encounter power (or, at least, a martial encounter power) is a Fate Point that the player players to gain narrative control in respect of that particular event.

But I don't see how this is relevant to the post of mine that you quoted - what I said is that, in order to use any power against a target (be it a snake or something else) a PC must close to within range, and that this is something which happens in the fiction and is constrained by the fiction - as I said in the post you quoted from, by walls, trees, rubble etc. Cover, difficult terrain etc are mechanically-defined notions that are read of the fiction.

It's true that some aspects of the fiction don't matter all that much to 4e's action resolution - including facing and body shape (which makes the inclusion of a mechanical condition called "prone" a dubious design choice) - but most RPGs disregard _some _elements of the fiction which could conceivably be made relevant to action resolution.

I also don't see the relationship between a shared imaginary space and GM authority over the content of that space.


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## UngeheuerLich (May 20, 2011)

Actually, prone for most things make sense. And for those, where it does not, just wing it. And the best thing is the interaction with flying monsters.


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## Raven Crowking (May 20, 2011)

Well, then, don't mind me.

But terrain hazards which occur when you enter a space as "something which happens in the fiction and is constrained by the fiction" happen in Snakes & Ladders, too.  That seems to lend support to P1NBACK's post, to which it seemed as though you were replying (with some uncertainty).

But, as I said, if I misread you, don't mind me!

I'll just be quietly condensating over here.



RC


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## AbdulAlhazred (May 20, 2011)

pemerton said:


> Furthermore, I'm one of them - my view, stated over many threads including the recent snake thread that got closed, is that an encounter power (or, at least, a martial encounter power) is a Fate Point that the player players to gain narrative control in respect of that particular event.




Agreed, powers are just plot tokens really. People should think of them like action points, just a limited number of instances where the player can take over the narrative coupled with a mechanical explanation of what he can do with it.



> But I don't see how this is relevant to the post of mine that you quoted - what I said is that, in order to use any power against a target (be it a snake or something else) a PC must close to within range, and that this is something which happens in the fiction and is constrained by the fiction - as I said in the post you quoted from, by walls, trees, rubble etc. Cover, difficult terrain etc are mechanically-defined notions that are read of the fiction.




Yeah, I don't really understand the notion that just because a wall has a mechanical representation that it somehow "isn't part of the fiction". I would extend this to state that in ANY game where some aspect of the mechanical game state is representing something in an imagined space/fiction is a part of that fiction. Mechanics are secondary, they only aid the story telling. Even in Squad Leader the terrain marker of a ruined building is just a representation for something in a shared fictional battle. 

I'd also argue that despite all the apparent argument for the contrary that the shared fiction you have in a more abstract game that lacks physical representations of things at the table is no higher quality than that you have in 4e with its battle maps and grids and such. Nobody pays attention to the details of what the wall looks like unless it becomes relevant to the story in some way. The simple fact of some proxy for that wall existing on the table top doesn't change that at all. The notion that such proxies somehow destroy my imagination is actually rather close to insulting (not to give the impression I'm all insulted or anything, not at all, just saying give my imagination a little credit, it isn't impaired by the fact that I have a mini on the table).



> It's true that some aspects of the fiction don't matter all that much to 4e's action resolution - including facing and body shape (which makes the inclusion of a mechanical condition called "prone" a dubious design choice) - but most RPGs disregard _some _elements of the fiction which could conceivably be made relevant to action resolution.
> 
> I also don't see the relationship between a shared imaginary space and GM authority over the content of that space.




ANY amount of the fiction can be made relevant to action resolution. I can't speak for others, but my position has always been that the players and DM will decide exactly how and when the fiction has an affect on the mechanics. The rules cover the typical situations and generally form the basis for further adjudication. Some people might enjoy the rules aspect of the game more and just say "the snake is prone, it suffers x,y,z" and others might say "well, we'll just apply a little salt to this, the snake is discomfited but we'll ignore x because it doesn't match what we're imagining." Really, all the gnashing of teeth on this subject I've heard over the last several years seems extraordinary to me. Every RPG works this way. Some rely on it more than others, but sooner or later you're going to make these choices.


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## Journeymanmage (May 20, 2011)

IanB said:


> .... I'm not saying going out and playing * <The Game that shall not be named> * is going to help, but playing earlier editions of D&D and similar systems can be pretty instructive.




I've heard reference to "that game" and that "it shall not be named".

as to the OP:
The rules are a framework for playing the game.  You (the gms/players) then try to fill in the rest and see what works for you.


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## LostSoul (May 20, 2011)

AbdulAlhazred said:


> ANY amount of the fiction can be made relevant to action resolution. I can't speak for others, but my position has always been that the players and DM will decide exactly how and when the fiction has an affect on the mechanics. The rules cover the typical situations and generally form the basis for further adjudication. Some people might enjoy the rules aspect of the game more and just say "the snake is prone, it suffers x,y,z" and others might say "well, we'll just apply a little salt to this, the snake is discomfited but we'll ignore x because it doesn't match what we're imagining." Really, all the gnashing of teeth on this subject I've heard over the last several years seems extraordinary to me. Every RPG works this way. Some rely on it more than others, but sooner or later you're going to make these choices.




Yeah.  I'm too hard on 4E.  There is a reason I chose to use it as the base for my hack.  I saw the _potential_ within the system to easily adjudicate any action.  What I didn't see was much use of "actions the rules don't cover" _in play._

The "fiction first" elements of my hack are an attempt to bring that potential to the forefront.  I keep posting about the _one specific way_ I used to do that because it's in my mind, and I think that's what causes me to debate one side of this issue too strongly.

I also agree with AbdulAlhazred's paragraph in the quoted post on the quality of the narrative.  I never had the goal, in writing my hack, to bring about better "quality" of fiction; I don't know how I'd even attempt to do that!


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## AbdulAlhazred (May 21, 2011)

LostSoul said:


> Yeah.  I'm too hard on 4E.  There is a reason I chose to use it as the base for my hack.  I saw the _potential_ within the system to easily adjudicate any action.  What I didn't see was much use of "actions the rules don't cover" _in play._
> 
> The "fiction first" elements of my hack are an attempt to bring that potential to the forefront.  I keep posting about the _one specific way_ I used to do that because it's in my mind, and I think that's what causes me to debate one side of this issue too strongly.
> 
> I also agree with AbdulAlhazred's paragraph in the quoted post on the quality of the narrative.  I never had the goal, in writing my hack, to bring about better "quality" of fiction; I don't know how I'd even attempt to do that!




Oh, I think it is quite likely that different people are inspired by different tools to do better or worse art. I can throw a moderately interesting pot, but I can only paint a very bad oil painting. One day we'll just invent perfect telepresence and all play together (online just ain't the same, as much as it does help get me my RPG fix).


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## wayne62682 (May 21, 2011)

What I've noticed is that 4e and to a lesser extent 3.5 did feel like different games when in combat and out of combat.  I remember even in 3.5 having the "board game mentality" only when we broke out the minis and drew a battle map because the rules of the game encouraged that type of thought since IMO you had to think in those terms to be effective and it was distinctly less optimal to not take it into consideration.

For instance, in 3.5 and now it's optimal to count squares in the right fashion to let you move without provoking opportunity attacks; you *could* just move forward but you put yourself at unnecessary risk to do so.  4e is more guilty of this since even at the power level it focuses on the metagame of "squares" and conditions, but this isn't a new indictment.  The last version of D&D to really support the fiction and the narrative was 2nd edition pre-Combat & Tactics, because even in combat it was entirely abstract.  You could just say "I rush up to the Orc and hit him with my axe" and it was largely irrelevant _how_ you got up to him, as long as it was in reason.  Starting with 3rd edition you *had* to be aware of the "how" and not just the "what" because the "how" had a distinctive effect.

To be honest as much as I enjoy 4e, and enjoyed 3.5 before it, *as as a result of* the vast choices in combat, I do sometimes miss the abstract days of 2e where there wasn't such a rules-centric focus at the combat level (although I don't miss the "DM as Tyrant" aspect).  However, the overall focus on combat as a mini-game isn't something completely new to 4e, although 4e has focused the most on it.


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## pemerton (May 21, 2011)

Raven Crowking said:


> terrain hazards which occur when you enter a space as "something which happens in the fiction and is constrained by the fiction" happen in Snakes & Ladders, too.  That seems to lend support to P1NBACK's post



My drawing a contrast between the facing/prone issue, and the movement over the battlefield issue, is very deliberate. Accepting AbdulAlhazred's point that this is at best a generalisation of tendency, it is true as a general rule that 4e is indifferent to the fiction of facing etc. Just as AD&D (like 4e) is, as a general rule, mechanically indifferent to whether or not a PC is left or right handed (though a post in the Dragon magazine Forum somewhere around issue 90 to 100 suggested a way of overcoming this mechanical indifference). I think AbdulAlhazred is right that, even if a given piece of fiction may _in principle_ become salient at any time, in most RPGs for most of the time quite a bit of the fiction is merely colour.

But 4e is very obviously _not_ indifferent to the fiction of terrain on a battlefield. Terrain on a 4e battlefield is a fictional element that PCs routinely interact with as the players constitute a shared imaginative space with respect to it, and thereby generate consequences for the mechanics (cover, lighting, distance, concealment, etc).

The comparison of this to Snakes and Ladders is, I think, no more apt than comparison of 1st ed AD&D stronghold building to Monopoly (which is to say, in my view, not very apt). I don't think Snakes and Ladders supports players trying to disintegrate the snakes, or climb back up them. When the focus is on terrain, rather than facing and body shape, I think that 4e demonstrates precisely the traits that P1NBACK is using to distinguish a RPG from a board game.



Balesir said:


> Back in the day I was a fan of "realistic" combat systems.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ...



Balesir's point about expert knowledge and aesthetics is also something I find interesting.

LostSoul's posts about 4e _before_ he started running his hack taught me a good chunk of what I know about how to run it. His posts since he started running his hack are very interesting too, but are in some ways less useful to _me_ because I don't know much about positioning in combat and have no particular interest in improving my understanding. For me it is just colour, and I'm quite happy that way.

On the other hand, many RPGs treat politics, society, religion, ethics and myth as just colour. But this is the subject matter that I do care about, and that is a good chunk of what actually appeals to me about fantasy RPGing. This is where my aesthetic sensibility and my expertise overlap. This is what my game tends to focus on. The function of combat, for me, is to be a locus of and representation of conflict (just as the classic Hulk comics from the 70s are about the Freudian conflict theory of the mind, although they use 4-colour punch ups to represent this). Given this, I'm somewhat indifferent to how the fiction treats or responds to facing, or handedness. 4e's emphasis on terrain, on the other hand, gives me easy material to work with - to give some very obvious examples, it makes it easy to set up situations where rescue scenarios, or "Do I move myself into this dangerous situation?" scenarios, can be vividly brought to life. It also supports party play in combat - whether that's party harmony or party conflict - very nicely, because physical proximity/separation is an immediately accessible and interesting aspect of interpersonal interaction.

There are other games that could also give me what I want, I'm sure, and in certain respects might be even better (though perhaps in others not as strong). But the notion that fiction, and fictional positioning, are irrelevant to 4e because facing, body shape, etc typically don't have a mechanical impact, is one that I really can't agree with.


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## AbdulAlhazred (May 21, 2011)

Well, in all honesty pemerton, I don't think P1NBACK is really implying that 4e is a board game. I think he's arguing there is some kind of continuum where one direction is 'less RP and more reliance on game mechanics' and the other direction is the opposite. 

I don't hold with that personally. I think instead there's a continuum from more flexible and open-ended rules to more closed and fixed rules. Either type can incorporate RP, but the quality of choice and ease of identification with a character will be greater in the more open case. I just don't think openness of the rules is gated by how many rules there are, but by whether or not you have access to a generalized resolution mechanism. Chess doesn't have that, ALL classic RPGs have it to the extent that they have at least an implicit 'rule 0'. Some games go a step further and have something like 'page 42'. Finally you have a variation between games with very few precise rules and abstract representations, like Sorcerer, and something like 4e which has some very precise rules and concrete representations. That last variance definitely plays to different player preferences and may encourage a player to engage in somewhat different styles of play. I'm just not at all convinced that RP is fundamentally different in either one. In fact I'd postulate that once the rules are open-ended that RP style and rules style are largely decoupled.


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## Raven Crowking (May 21, 2011)

Whereas, I understood him to be claiming that some methods of rules/fiction interaction tend to encourage role-playing more than others.  I.e., the more the board becomes the fictional space (rather than the less it is a representative, if even used, of a shared fictional space), the more removed the characters become.

Not only does the 4e ruleset seem to focus on the board more than any previous version of the game (unless you count 2e's Combat System, which I would claim has the same problem), but the arguments related to 4e consistently centre around the idea that the rules should take primacy over the fiction.

When the statement of a character's action is intended to be both (a) what is occurring in the rules and (b) what is occurring in the fiction, as is the case with "I attack" or "I attempt to disarm", role-playing identification is reinforced.

When the statement of a character's action is decoupled from what is occurring in the fiction, role-playing identification is to some degree disengaged as well.  "I use power X.  I miss, doing Y damage.  Well, it isn't really a miss, or isn't really damage, is it?" or "I use power Z.  The snake takes W damage and is knocked prone.  How can it be knocked prone?  Well, what I really did was flip it on it's back....."

YMMV.


RC


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## pemerton (May 22, 2011)

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, in all honesty pemerton, I don't think P1NBACK is really implying that 4e is a board game.



I entirely agree with this - P1NBACK introduced the board games point to explain the idea of a roleplaying game, but not to label 4e as one. Like I said on my first post on this thread, I tend to agree with P1NBACK, although on the particular issue about fiction and battlegrid I think we've had different experiences. I _think_ my main point of disagreement with P1NBACK (and also LostSoul) is as to where the issue with 4e and fictional positioning lies - they think it's in the mechanics - especially the battlegrid mechanics - whereas I think it's in the guidelines for playing the game.


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## Dausuul (May 22, 2011)

pemerton said:


> I entirely agree with this - P1NBACK introduced the board games point to explain the idea of a roleplaying game, but not to label 4e as one. Like I said on my first post on this thread, I tend to agree with P1NBACK, although on the particular issue about fiction and battlegrid I think we've had different experiences. I _think_ my main point of disagreement with P1NBACK (and also LostSoul) is as to where the issue with 4e and fictional positioning lies - they think it's in the mechanics - especially the battlegrid mechanics - whereas I think it's in the guidelines for playing the game.




I'd put it somewhere in between, but leaning toward the mechanics, because my experience--both as a gamer and as a software developer--is that hardly anybody reads guidelines, and those who read them seldom remember them. People default to doing things the easy way; if the easiest way to do combat is to treat the battlemat like a board game, that's what most players will do, even if the books are plastered with warnings saying "THIS IS NOT THE WAY!" Conversely, if the easiest way to do combat requires imagining a fictional reality, players will do that instead.

One can, of course, overcome this tendency; either by a sustained effort (usually on the part of the DM), or by having players so accustomed to a different style of play that they bring those habits into 4E. But in the absence of either of these, I think board-gamey play is the most likely outcome.


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## Tony Vargas (May 22, 2011)

Raven Crowking said:


> Whereas, I understood him to be claiming that some methods of rules/fiction interaction tend to encourage role-playing more than others.



Well, whether it's that or positing a continuum of RP-dependence on one end and rules-dependence on the other, I can't agree.

RP is independent of rules.  Completely.  You can RP with no rules.  You can RP while playing Monopoly.  The ability of a gme to encourage RP comes down to little more than having the book say 'please role-play, this is a role-playing game, afterall' somewhere.  A game can positively whine and lecture at you about the importance of RP, or it can barely deign to mention it.  But, the actual mechanics don't make a bit of difference - unless you want to think they do, then, of course, they may make a difference to you.  Even mechanics that provide for RP 'bonuses' or 'rewards' just encourage lip-service to RP, not the real thing (depending on the enclination of the DM judging whether the award is received, they could even discourage many sorts of RP).

Where rules do make a difference is in charater-definition.  If a ruleset gives you a lot of freedom to create a character that's close to your concept, you can RP /that/ character.  If the rules are klunkier, you may end up RPing a character that's notably different from the one you had in mind - but you can still RP it all you want.


So to everyone who says 'such and such system encourages/discourages RP,' no, it doesn't.  If you hate a system, maybe you're so distracted by hating it that you can't get your RP on, and if you like a system, maybe that added comfort makes it easier to get into an RP grove.


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## LostSoul (May 22, 2011)

Wow!  Lots of great posts in this thread.



Tony Vargas said:


> RP is independent of rules.  Completely.  You can RP with no rules.  You can RP while playing Monopoly.




Totally agree with that.



Tony Vargas said:


> The ability of a game to encourage RP comes down to little more than having the book say 'please role-play, this is a role-playing game, afterall' somewhere.  A game can positively whine and lecture at you about the importance of RP, or it can barely deign to mention it.  But, the actual mechanics don't make a bit of difference - unless you want to think they do, then, of course, they may make a difference to you.  Even mechanics that provide for RP 'bonuses' or 'rewards' just encourage lip-service to RP, not the real thing (depending on the enclination of the DM judging whether the award is received, they could even discourage many sorts of RP).




Don't agree with this.  This is one of the things I read that made me think differently: anyway: Lazy Play vs IIEE with Teeth

IIEE is Intent, Initiation, Execution, Effect.  How do I decide on which action I'm going to take?  That's Intent.  How do I clearly state that I am taking that action?  Initiation.  How do I connect that choice with the game?  Execution.  What are the consequences of my choice?  Effect.

Intent: "Should I use Tide of Iron here, guys?"
Initiation: "I'm using Tide of Iron."
Execution: "I rolled a 15, so I hit AC 26."
Effect: "He takes 8 damage and is Pushed 1 square; I Shift into that square."

What must we establish before we roll?   Which power is being used, the location of the target to my PC.

What does the roll decide?  How much damage he takes, if he's Pushed 1 square and if I Shift into that square.

What do the rules never, ever, ever require us to say?  The details of our characters' actual actions.

*My contention* is that RP is in the details of the character's actual actions.  Games that make those details a required element of resolution (IIEE) are going to support RP in a way that Monopoly doesn't.  Sorcerer is a great example of this sort of game; you need to determine the details of the character's actual actions before you can engage with the game's IIEE.

4E is, I think, _different_ from all other editions of D&D in that it's terribly simple to make the details of the character's actions and/or fictional position have an influence on resolution/IIEE (and the Tutorial article on Terrain Powers has simplified this even more!).  It's _similar_ to all other editions of D&D in that it never requires us to describe the details of our character's actual actions.

Personally, I think the solution to "I Full Attack" isn't the inclusion of AEDU powers, but instead making the details of the character's actual actions matter when determining IIEE - action resolution.


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## LostSoul (May 22, 2011)

Raven Crowking said:


> Not only does the 4e ruleset seem to focus on the board more than any previous version of the game (unless you count 2e's Combat System, which I would claim has the same problem), but the arguments related to 4e consistently centre around the idea that the rules should take primacy over the fiction.




Interesting.  How did 2E's combat system work differently from the other edition's?  (We should include all - OD&D, AD&D, B/X, Holmes, 2E, 2E Skills & Powers, 3E, and 3.5.)  

I started with B/X, spent a year with AD&D, and then moved into 2E; the big difference in play for me is probably best represented (and influenced!) by the games Wizardry: The Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord and Pool of Radiance.  Before PoR we'd put our character sheets in the marching order and engage combats as though we were playing Wizardry, and after PoR we'd use minis to determine location.

Combat pre-PoR was very abstract, and after - not so much.


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## Raven Crowking (May 22, 2011)

Tony Vargas said:


> Well, whether it's that or positing a continuum of RP-dependence on one end and rules-dependence on the other, I can't agree.
> 
> RP is independent of rules.  Completely.  You can RP with no rules.  You can RP while playing Monopoly.




This is not untrue, but it is so far from being the complete truth that no one I know, or have ever heard of, turns to Monopoly to satisfy that rpg itch.  And I very, very, very much doubt YMV.

Which is too bad, because Monopoly has a Star Wars version, a Simpsons version, etc., etc. .... a whole gamut of role-playing opportunities!  And it is so much cheaper than the buy-in to D&D!  Just buy one boxed set, and you can reskin it forever!  It even comes with minis!

And "The ability of a gme to encourage RP comes down to little more than having the book say 'please role-play, this is a role-playing game, afterall' somewhere." is complete bunk.

Write it in you Monopoly rules yourself.  Have fun.  You'll save a ton of money!  Perhaps you can play the shoe?



LostSoul said:


> Interesting.  How did 2E's combat system work differently from the other edition's?  (We should include all - OD&D, AD&D, B/X, Holmes, 2E, 2E Skills & Powers, 3E, and 3.5.)




Very grid-based; focus on the board.

This was the Player's Option series, sometimes known as 2.5.



RC


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## wayne62682 (May 22, 2011)

Player's Option: Combat & Tactics was the first time I saw outright suggestions to use a grid and figures; before that combat was very abstracted and it was more about "What do you want to do?" rather than "How do you do X?" like it is now (although IMO the fact that they added in opportunity attacks forces that, because it's actually *sub-optimal* and hinders you now to *not* think of where exactly you are going to move)


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## UngeheuerLich (May 22, 2011)

LostSoul said:


> Interesting.  How did 2E's combat system work differently from the other edition's?  (We should include all - OD&D, AD&D, B/X, Holmes, 2E, 2E Skills & Powers, 3E, and 3.5.)



I guess he refers to "combat and tactics" system. A battle grid system which was fiddly to be honest. Where in ADnD combat was abstract.

Ninja´d


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## Raven Crowking (May 22, 2011)

Exactly.

It almost feels as though the new material is tailored to groups of players who enjoy solving tactical puzzles, optimizing characters, and using rules to their advantage.  I prefer a game tailored to groups who enjoy role-playing.


RC


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## wayne62682 (May 22, 2011)

Raven Crowking said:


> Exactly.
> 
> It almost feels as though the new material is tailored to groups of players who enjoy solving tactical puzzles, optimizing characters, and using rules to their advantage.  I prefer a game tailored to groups who enjoy role-playing.
> 
> ...




You know... the more I think about how I used to play in 2e versus how I've played since 3.5... I agree with you.  And that's coming from someone who is a self-admitted powergamer (and WoW player) who enjoys making optimized characters.  Granted, I was really young when I played 2e (like 12) but our combats where a lot more... well, fun, when we didn't have to be concerned about exactly what squares we were moving, or what specific power to use to get the best effect.


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## pemerton (May 23, 2011)

Dausuul said:


> hardly anybody reads guidelines, and those who read them seldom remember them.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ...



The guidelines I had in mind were mostly those for the GM relating to encounter design.

If the GM designs encounters in accordance with the guidelines in the DMG and DMG2 (or the amalgam of them found in the newer DM's Kit book), then I think that doing combat _will_ require imagining a fictional reality - rooms, walls, trees, pits, ponds, etc, around and within which the combat takes place.

But I think those guidelines would be enhanced by helping to explain to the GM _what they are for_. At the moment the books talk rather generically about more "interesting" or "dynamic" combats, but don't talk about the contribution that encounter building in accordance with those guidelines will make to construction of and engagement with the shared imaginary space. (I think this is important - we're not just talking here about the players using their imaginations or talking in funny voices - we're talking about (or, at least, I'm talking about) the players engaging the fiction as part of action resolution).)

What the guidelines to GM's don't include is advice on how to build _conflicts_ in encounters that will also encourage that sort of engagement (eg how to choose monsters, plots etc that are relevant to particular PC races, classes, paragon paths, typical backstories etc).

And published adventures tend to undermine the force of the terrain/location guidelines, by not following the advice and producing fairly static encounter areas where the fiction doesn't matter all that much; and they tend to compound the lack of advice on conflict building by having banal hooks, banal plots and a general orientation in favour of railroading.

When it comes to skill challenges the published adventures on the whole are just as bad, and the published guidelines are equally bad - while there are exhortations to the GM to make the fiction matter in action resolution, there is no concrete advice on how to actually do this. (Which is dissapointing, given the other published examples on which the WotC writers could have drawn for inspiration.)

To an extent, then, I agree with you about a need for effort on the part of the GM - but it is not so much effort at the point of action resolution, as opposed to effort at the point of encounter design - to build encounters that will, in their resolution, _make the fiction salient to the players_. Because once this has been done, the players will engage with it because this is part of what has to be done to play the game.

The converse is equally true - _given that_ it is in relation to terrain and location, as well as to the thematic/plot significance of a conflict, that 4e makes the fiction relevant (and not at the level of facing, body shape, handedness etc), then if encounters are set up and resolved in complete indifference to these matters, the fiction will naturally tend to drop away, as a mere epiphenomenon.



Tony Vargas said:


> RP is independent of rules.  Completely.  You can RP with no rules.  You can RP while playing Monopoly.



I think that you're talking here about funny voice, first person descriptions of character actions, etc. But this is not roleplaying in the sense that (at least some of us) are debating here.

When P1NBACK, LostSoul and I (and I think also Dausuul and perhaps also RC) talk about roleplaying we're talking about _engaging the fiction being relevant to action resolution_. In Monopoly this is not true. In Magic: the Gathering this is not true. In these games the fiction is a mere ephiphenomenon. No doubt Magic or Monopoly would be more boring without the flavour text, but the flavour text does not contribute to the mechanical play of the game.*

In an RPG, the fiction should not be a mere epiphenomenon. I think that it is not in 4e, when encounters are built and resolved according to the design specifications. But my view on this (and experience that supports it) is not universal.

*Footnote: it is sometimes suggested that, because flavour text in 4e is not rigid across situations, it is irrelevant to resolution. I don't agree with this. For example, just because "prone" or "sneak attack" can mean different things in relation to a golem, an ooze, a snake etc, it doesn't mean that it's particular meaning on any given occasion of use is merely epiphenomenal. It establishes a particular fictional state of affairs which may be salient to action resolution. While in the case of prone, 4e generally tends not to care about body shape or facing, it could still make a difference - if a humanoid drops prone, for example, it will generally be harder to see any markings on its front, whereas if a snake has been knocked prone (= being flipped onto its back) then it will generally be easier to see the markings on its front. This is fiction as something other than epiphenomenon.



LostSoul said:


> *My contention* is that RP is in the details of the character's actual actions.



The issue for me is - at what level of detail? And what am I expected to do with that detail?

Like I posted upthread, I'm just not that interested in issues of facing, body shape, handedness, do I swing high or low?, etc. And even if my players told me, I wouldn't know what to do with it.

The part of the PC's actions that I do care about, and that I do know what to do with and how to respond to, are their motivations, their goals, and (in 4e) the way they move about on the battlefield to accomplish these things.

The first big paragon fight in my game has involved defending a village against an assault by a squad of hobgoblin soldiers riding a behemoth, plus a squad of bugbear assassins, plus a handful of devil-worshipping casters accompanied by an imp.

Two of the PCs are good with animals - the ranger-cleric and the wizard. The first thing they thought of when the say the behemoth was knocking of its hobgoblin controller and taking it over. After a couple of rounds the controller was dead and the ranger climbed onto the behemoth (with a successful Acrobatics check to get up on top of it) and proceeded to take control of it (with a successful Nature check). At the end of the combat, when one of the spellcasters was running away, the dwarven fighter joined the ranger to head off on a dinosaur-mounted tracking expedition, as the players discussed whether their should keep the behemoth (and if so, how exactly?), or let it go into the wild, or kill it (and if so, again, how exactly?).

Another thing that happened during the fight was that the drow sorcerer, who was on his own on top of a roof (having flown up there using Winds of Change) was attacked by the invisible imp - who turned out to be Twitch, an imp the PCs had met before and very tentatively bargained with - he had been offering to teach the sorcerer the art of mastering the chaos, but the wizard PC intervened (on general anti-diabolic-bargaining grounds) and drove the imp off. Twitch taunted the sorcerer about his continuing failure to master the chaos, and seemed to have the upper hand in the rooftop duel until the paladin intervened with a Ray of Reprisal, hurting Twitch badly and saving the sorcerer from a lot of damage. Twitch then tried to bargain in turn with the sorcerer - offering to tell him the secret of the mystic rune emblazoned on the inside of his eyelids if the sorcerer would spare him - but the sorcerer refused to bargain. Twitch nevertheless managed to turn invislbe and escape - he had only 5 hp left, but the ranger (the only one who could notice the invisible Twitch) had other more pressing foes to engage.

Another thing that happened was that the dwarf fighter (a polearm melee controller type), who had been locking down a good chunk of the hobgoblins as well as two spellcasters, got stunned by the hobgoblin captain and then knocked unconscious by the attacks of the other enemies surrounding him before he could use any of his many healing resources. At that point things were looking bad for the party. The ranger-cleric couldn't get close enough while staying on his behemoth (and didn't want to let it loose and have to mix it up in melee). But the wizard suggested to the teifling paladin that there was a clear path for him to get to the fighter, if he was able to bust through the wall of one of the houses, which surely was weakened by now after having been burning for a number of rounds. The paladin charged, broke through the wall (but suffered quite a bit of damage as bits of building fell down on him) and had a minor action left to use Lay on Hands - thus reviving the fighter and thereby saving the day.

In my view, what I've just described is roleplaying and not just a boardgame. Various sorts of fictional positioning was at work in all those events. In various ways, it has affected the action resolution, both mechanically (eg taking control of the behemoth, a teifling charging through a burning building) and fiction-to-fiction (eg the re-encounter with Twitch and Twitch's narrow escape).

And to achieve this, I (and my group) didn't have to push against 4e's rules. All I did, as GM, was to follow the encounter building guidelines that the rules provide, _plus_ consider seriously the thematic/plot aspect of conflict design. And given that I'd done that, all my players had to do was to play their characters.

In my view, the fact that facing/position/body shape (other than the behemoth's Huge size) didn't come into it didn't impede the roleplaying, because that is not all that counts when considering and responding to a character's actual actions.


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## Balesir (May 23, 2011)

I think I'm going to be repeating myself, here, but it's probably my fault for making a post that was too long to read, earlier... 



LostSoul said:


> Don't agree with this.  This is one of the things I read that made me think differently: anyway: Lazy Play vs IIEE with Teeth
> 
> IIEE is Intent, Initiation, Execution, Effect.  How do I decide on which action I'm going to take?  That's Intent.  How do I clearly state that I am taking that action?  Initiation.  How do I connect that choice with the game?  Execution.  What are the consequences of my choice?  Effect.
> 
> ...



OK, but what is meant, here, by "the character's actual actions"?  The character doesn't _have_ any actual actions - the character doesn't have any independent or physical existence!  I know this is an easy shorthand way of saying what is going on, but I think it masks a layer that is critical to understanding what you mean, here.  "What the character actually does" is not a physical, independent thing - it is a model in your own imagination with (more or less congruent) mirrors in the imaginations of the other players.  By saying that what matters is "the character's actions" as pictured in those models rather than as described by the mechanics you introduce a few of complications:

1) The models in the minds of the various players present are not necessarily identical.

2) By saying that these "actions" matter, rather than the actions as described in mechanical terms, you necessarily postulate an additional set of "rules of the world" that supercede (or at least supplement) the game mechanics.  This is not necessarily a problem - but we really ought to consider the form and source of those alternate or additional rules before accepting them.

3) As [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] mentions, the question arises "which actions, exactly, are "important"?".  I assume it's safe to say that nobody tries to model their ropleplating world at the level of atoms or molecules (even for those universes where such terms are in the slightest bit relevant), and even modelling the precise physical movements of the player characters in all circumstances would be most likely way beyond anything anyone would really consider.  I did once see a roleplaying system that modelled each layer of armour, clothing, skin, fat, muscle and bone in an impacted body (with resistances and damage attenuation for each one), but that was, I think, right at the edge of the envelope.  If not everything is treated as important/impactful, then the question of "What is?" becomes a defining one.

Now, consider the implications of these complications.  You are adding to or substituting for the game mechanics with rules of your own devising - possibly even rules that you prefer to keep intuitive, fluid and unwritten.  But you still need to select what aspects of the descriptions players give of the fiction are "important", and you still need to adjudicate the impact those aspects of their descriptions will have.  In other words, you are doing exactly the same job the game designers have done, you have just followed your view of what, in those descriptions, is important and what effect it has, rather than the game designers' view.  There is nothing wrong with that.  But it might help better define the set of rules you are looking for if you can be clearer about what your views about importance and appropriate impact are, rather than ascribing the judgement to a mythical "fiction" or assuming it is in some way "obvious" or "common sense".

My view is that this selection of importance and impact is one of personal aesthetics.  Each player will have a personal view - which is mutable to a greater or lesser degree - of what "should be" important and what an "appropriate impact" should be for each "important" element.  If the players have more-or-less congruent views on this - and/or enough flexibility to compromise over it - all goes well.  If the personal tastes clash, all goes not-so-well.

With all this in mind, I propose the following tenets:

- It is a virtue to be tolerant and accepting about what others consider "important" and "appropriate impact".

- It is a virtue to be open and broad-minded in terms of the range of combinations of "importance" and "impact" (i.e. play-styles) that one is prepared to engage with.

- Communication about the "important" and "impactful" aspects in a game is good, since no single model of what is "important" or what "should have impact" is a universal or self-evident "truth" - it is all essentially personal taste, since it is all imaginary, anyway.



Raven Crowking said:


> It almost feels as though the new material is tailored to groups of players who enjoy solving tactical puzzles, optimizing characters, and using rules to their advantage.  I prefer a game tailored to groups who enjoy role-playing.



For some value of "role-playing".  The reason I really prefer not to use the term in discussion is that the one thing I can say for sure about its meaning is that different people mean different things when they say it...

If we are to have a really useful discussion I think it would be useful to try to really decipher what we really mean when we use these "shortcut" terms.



wayne62682 said:


> You know... the more I think about how I used to play in 2e versus how I've played since 3.5... I agree with you.  And that's coming from someone who is a self-admitted powergamer (and WoW player) who enjoys making optimized characters.  Granted, I was really young when I played 2e (like 12) but our combats where a lot more... well, fun, when we didn't have to be concerned about exactly what squares we were moving, or what specific power to use to get the best effect.



So, does that really mean that you dislike what you do now, or that you like both?  I certainly like both abstracted and tactical combat - at different times, obviously - and use both in games I play.  This is why I try to be very clear that I find 4E D&D to be an excellent game *at what it does* - not at being any sort of "ultimate roleplaying game" (which I don't believe exists, even in principle).


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## P1NBACK (May 23, 2011)

LostSoul said:


> What do the rules never, ever, ever require us to say?  The details of our characters' actual actions.




Dude. Nice try, but it's going over (nearly) everyone's head.  I'm with you 100%, but... 

Here we are 10 pages later. My rule of thumb is that if a thread is going past 10 pages: lost cause.


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## Raven Crowking (May 23, 2011)

Balesir said:


> For some value of "role-playing".




Yes, the one consistent with the idea of "playing a role in a fictional space, where some level of identification with the role is to be desired."



> The reason I really prefer not to use the term in discussion is that the one thing I can say for sure about its meaning is that different people mean different things when they say it...




Like "game" or "Dungeons & Dragons"?  Or "prone"?

Perhaps, but that's not going to stop anyone from using those terms.  Moreover any attempt to "decipher what we really mean" is going, by necessity, to face the same limitations.  Assuming the use of language.  

So, I'm going to file this under "false dilemma".



RC


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## AbdulAlhazred (May 23, 2011)

Well, then define it, lol. 

Honestly, what a game like 4e has done for us is simply provide a shorthand. If you play say 1e without any kind of map/grid/miniatures (things I might add which were strongly assumed by the rules to exist, really read the rules) then you simply find that the players will spend an inordinate amount of time resolving the same questions again and again, "are both those orcs in range? Will the fireball miss the paladin? Can I jump far enough to cross the chasm?" Or you can simply put some markers on a grid and have the answers at your fingertips. In either case you're engaging in a world of imagination.

In fact what I found to be true of playing 1e in a fairly abstract style was that to a large extent the unclarity of such things simply inhibited people's creativity. It was easier for the fighter to simply hack at the orc than for the player to ask the 10 different questions they need answered before they even know if it makes sense to leap up onto the platform and push the ogre into the chasm (not to mention the rules didn't really cover things like leaping onto something or pushing someone, so is it even possible and what are my chances of success).

I have to agree with the notion that, in combat anyway, good encounter design makes a huge difference as to how much creativity the players can exercise and how much the fiction engages them. In no version of the game is there much potential existing in a featureless room full of orcs. If the scene is interesting and filled with interesting stuff then the players will do interesting things, and this is exactly where a system like 4e really shines.

Beyond that RP isn't figuring out a creative way to defeat the orcs. RP is "acting in character". I don't mean playing funny voices, I mean getting into the mind of your character. What are his motivations? What is his personality like? Is he an overconfident fool that rushes into danger? Is he cautious? Does he want revenge on orcs and will he overcome his caution if he sees a chance to put paid to them? THAT is RP, making choices that come together to depict a personality and tell a story about that character.

So, exactly where is it that this RP is in any way shape or form inhibited by the less abstract representation of combat used in 4e? This isn't about RP at all. This discussion seems to be about people tending to use the shorthand terminology 4e provides to describe their actions (I use power X) vs the 1e equivalent, which is first I ask the DM 6 questions so I know enough to proceed, and THEN I describe my action in enough detail that people can hopefully make sense of it. Either system can produce colorful descriptions and in either system the DM is free to apply whatever mechanical restrictions, modifications, etc that he feels are justified by the situation and might not be spelled out in the rules. 

Another thing to remember is that this entire discussion has basically revolved around one small aspect of the game, combat. Granted that there's a lot of fighting in D&D, but it really isn't the venue in which the most elaborate RP takes place, nor has it ever been. I'd venture to say that with the more nitpicky details of combat taken care of by the system and game aids though there's more room for the players to at least think about it than there were in the past. 

Once you leave 'combat space' though? Seriously, one game is much different from another? Not really.


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## Raven Crowking (May 23, 2011)

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, then define it, lol.




Another false dilemma, and one that is quite common (not only here, but elsewhere on the InterWeb).  We have all seen far too many threads that amount to:

Do not use Term X because it is ill-defined.

No, we cannot supply a better-defined term that means the same.

No, we do not acknowledge that Term X is as well-defined as other terms that we agree may be used.

No, we refuse to accept that other people understand the term.

No, we refuse to accept that we should ask for clarity when we are confused.

No, we refuse to say exactly what about the term we find confusing.​
and, by far most importantly,

No, despite the above, we are not trying to shut down conversation which used terminology _*that might demonstrate that it is reasonable for someone else to not like*_ whatever it is that the discussion is about.​


> Honestly, what a game like 4e has done for us is simply provide a shorthand. If you play say 1e without any kind of map/grid/miniatures (things I might add which were strongly assumed by the rules to exist, really read the rules)




They were not strongly assumed.  They were not even assumed.  Really read the rules.  In fact, that the preponderance of time would be spent in combat, or that combats would take a long time to resolve, was not assumed, either.



> then you simply find that the players will spend an inordinate amount of time resolving the same questions again and again, "are both those orcs in range? Will the fireball miss the paladin? Can I jump far enough to cross the chasm?"




Oddly enough, I play without a grid every week, and yet never spend an inordinate amount of time resolving those questions.  Indeed, I have found that putting "some markers on a grid" *vastly increases* the amount of time spent on those inordinate questions.

Or, to put it another way, 3e, 4e, and 2e Combat & Tactics combats all take far, far longer to resolve than 1e combats or 2e combats without a grid.  And much of that extra time is spent focusing on the grid, focusing on those questions, and not "engaging in a world of imagination".

The focus becomes the physical grid, rather than the imagined space.  The less abstract the grid, the more that this is true.  Likewise, the more the rules focus on the grid, the more that this is true.



> So, exactly where is it that this RP is in any way shape or form inhibited by the less abstract representation of combat used in 4e? This isn't about RP at all.




Strongly disagree.

Indeed, I don't think it possible for me to disagree any more strongly!

Some methods of rules/fiction interaction tend to encourage role-playing more than others. I.e., the more the board becomes the fictional space (rather than the less it is a representative, if even used, of a shared fictional space), the more removed the characters become.

Not only does the 4e ruleset seem to focus on the board more than any previous version of the game (unless you count 2e's Combat & Tactics, which I would claim has the same problem), but the arguments related to 4e consistently centre around the idea that the rules should take primacy over the fiction.

When the statement of a character's action is intended to be both (a) what is occurring in the rules and (b) what is occurring in the fiction, as is the case with "I attack" or "I attempt to disarm", role-playing identification is reinforced.

When the statement of a character's action is decoupled from what is occurring in the fiction, role-playing identification is to some degree disengaged as well. "I use power X. I miss, doing Y damage. Well, it isn't really a miss, or isn't really damage, is it?" or "I use power Z. The snake takes W damage and is knocked prone. How can it be knocked prone? Well, what I really did was flip it on it's back....."

Role-playing, IMHO, is not simply about whether or not each system can "produce colorful descriptions".  If you define role-playing as producing colourful descriptions then, sure, there is no difference.  However, if this is the case, I am "role-playing" when I write a short story.  Heck, perhaps I am "role-playing" more when writing than I am at the table!

Sorry, but that is not at all what I mean by the term!



> Another thing to remember is that this entire discussion has basically revolved around one small aspect of the game, combat. Granted that there's a lot of fighting in D&D, but it really isn't the venue in which the most elaborate RP takes place, nor has it ever been. I'd venture to say that with the more nitpicky details of combat taken care of by the system and game aids though there's more room for the players to at least think about it than there were in the past.
> 
> Once you leave 'combat space' though? Seriously, one game is much different from another? Not really.




Okay, but then one must look at how a game is devised.  How long do combats take?  What happens between combats?  Is the game devised so that combats are sprinkled among other factors, or are those other factors merely intended as a vehicle to go from combat to combat?

If you say, "Outside of combat they are the same", the obvious response is "Then they are not the same, as you spend far, far longer in (far fewer) combats than in previous editions."

(And, no, you don't have to play the game that way.  And, yes, you can role-play Monopoly.  But if you aren't playing the game that way, you aren't playing it the strengths it is designed for.....and if you can role-play Monopoly as well, then cool! as it is both cheaper and comes with minis!)

And "is tailored to groups of players who enjoy solving tactical puzzles, optimizing characters, and using rules to their advantage" are not my words; I am quoting a WotC press release about their new organized play program.



RC


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## Balesir (May 23, 2011)

Raven Crowking said:


> Yes, the one consistent with the idea of "playing a role in a fictional space, where some level of identification with the role is to be desired."



Excellent - thanks!  This brief description tells me much more clearly what you actually meant than a term that *AbdulAlhazred*, in the post following yours, clearly uses to mean something quite different.

Taking this description I can now actually agree or disagree with your original remark.  And I disagree, because I don't see that "solving tactical puzzles, optimizing characters, and using rules to best advantage" is necessarily antithetical to imagining a fictional space or identifying with your character's role.  Maybe you find it difficult - that would be a good reason for you to dislike all games with a tactical focus - but not everyone does.



Raven Crowking said:


> Or, to put it another way, 3e, 4e, and 2e Combat & Tactics combats all take far, far longer to resolve than 1e combats or 2e combats without a grid.  And much of that extra time is spent focusing on the grid, focusing on those questions, and not "engaging in a world of imagination".
> 
> The focus becomes the physical grid, rather than the imagined space.  The less abstract the grid, the more that this is true.  Likewise, the more the rules focus on the grid, the more that this is true.



Blow me!  I have been betrayed by my own brain!  I have not really been thinking what I, er, thought I was thinking all this time!  Aaaagh - I'm going mad!

Or, um, wait - did you mean "for you"?

The grid is not the game setting.  The grid is a communication mechanism, nothing more.  Different communication mechanisms work better for some people than for others.  If the grid and minis don't work for you, fine - but claiming that they work poorly for everyone is simply false.



Raven Crowking said:


> Not only does the 4e ruleset seem to focus on the board more than any previous version of the game (unless you count 2e's Combat & Tactics, which I would claim has the same problem), but the arguments related to 4e consistently centre around the idea that the rules should take primacy over the fiction.



Ah, this mythical "fiction" again.  The "fiction" can have no primacy over anything since it has no independent existence.  It consists of a mental model of the game setting in each players' mind.  These models are coordinated (assuming things are working well) through communications between the players - often using a set of understandings, shorthands and background knowledge that they have communicated previously and that forms the "canon" for their game.  Adding to or changing these models is done by the players, each for their own model.  Saying "the rules have primacy over the fiction" simply means "this is an alien world where the rules define how the world works, not the players' preconceived ideas or arbitrarily selected parallels to the real world".  This is a perfectly valid way to play.  It's not the only way - having rules that are essentially "the players may add things to the world models based on their own tastes and views of what the game world should be like" also works, provided that clear rules exist for who has authority to add what and how.  But it is a valid way, and it can be quite compatible with roleplaying, both as you explain it and as *AbdulAlhazred* explains it.



Raven Crowking said:


> When the statement of a character's action is intended to be both (a) what is occurring in the rules and (b) what is occurring in the fiction, as is the case with "I attack" or "I attempt to disarm", role-playing identification is reinforced.



Wheras with "I attack with a Spinning Sweep" or "I attempt to perform a Footwork Lure" it's not!?!?

What is _physically_ happening is that you are rolling dice and consulting tables/comparing values; none of these action descriptions relate directly to that.  All of the descriptions relate to the game-world model in the players' heads, not to what is physically happening.  But you object to one set and not the others?  Colour me baffled.



Raven Crowking said:


> When the statement of a character's action is decoupled from what is occurring in the fiction, role-playing identification is to some degree disengaged as well.



If the statement of the character's action is decoupled from the world model it fails utterly as a game device, since it cannot, by definition, change the situation in the model if it is decoupled from it.  Statements of a character's action do change the model - that is their very _raison d'être_ - ergo they _cannot_ be decoupled from the model.



Raven Crowking said:


> "I use power X. I miss, doing Y damage. Well, it isn't really a miss, or isn't really damage, is it?"



You trip on the stairs but manage to grab the handrail, spraining your ankle rather than plunging head first down the steps - is that a "success" or a "failure"?



Raven Crowking said:


> or "I use power Z. The snake takes W damage and is knocked prone. How can it be knocked prone? Well, what I really did was flip it on it's back....."



After it is explained what "I polymorph the XXX" means you readily interpret it whenever it comes up in the game, and yet for some reason the phrase "is rendered prone" cannot be incorporated into the game lexicon in the same way?

Seriously - you have problems with how 4E treats, well, just about everything, as far as I can tell.  I get that - it's fine.  But it's just not universal - in fact, in my own gaming group of eight people it doesn't seem to be a problem at all.  We play D&D 4E and we roleplay - both in and out of combat, and by both your description of "roleplay" and AbdulAlhazred's.  It's clearly not that hard, even if it doesn't suit you.



Raven Crowking said:


> Role-playing, IMHO, is not simply about whether or not each system can "produce colorful descriptions".  If you define role-playing as producing colourful descriptions then, sure, there is no difference.  However, if this is the case, I am "role-playing" when I write a short story.  Heck, perhaps I am "role-playing" more when writing than I am at the table!
> 
> Sorry, but that is not at all what I mean by the term!



Quite right - you explained what you mean, and this isn't it.  But then it isn't what *AbdulAlhazred* means by it, either (as I know because he explained what he meant by it, too - and it was different from what you mean, thus explaining why I think these short explanations are far more useful than the term itself).  In fact, I don't recall anyone saying that this is what "roleplaying" means to them, so I'm not sure what your point is?


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## Raven Crowking (May 23, 2011)

Balesir said:


> Excellent - thanks!  This brief description tells me much more clearly what you actually meant than a term that *AbdulAlhazred*, in the post following yours, clearly uses to mean something quite different.




Out of curiosity, do you think that there is anything odd that I cut & pasted that brief description from the post he was answering?  I.e., that the post where he asks for a definition is a response to the post containing the same?



> Seriously - you have problems with how 4E treats, well, just about everything, as far as I can tell.




That seems to be an impression which, AFAICT, the remainder of your post (preceding this comment and after this comment) is actually addressed to.  Which is odd, because I can cut & paste the answer to this from a prior post, too:

No, despite the above, we are not trying to shut down conversation which used terminology that might demonstrate that it is reasonable for someone else to not like whatever it is that the discussion is about.​
I am sorry that you have decided that criticism = "you have problems with how 4E treats, well, just about everything, as far as I can tell"; and I am sorry that your response to rational criticism is to try to ridicule it into being somehow irrational.

Moreover, I am sorry that you (apparently) cannot grasp the concept of fiction.  I mean, watching television, going to the movies, or reading a book, must be difficult if you cannot grasp the concept of what this "mythical" fiction is.

But, I don't take responsibility for that.

Some methods of rules/fiction interaction tend to encourage role-playing more than others. I.e., the more the board becomes the fictional space (rather than the less it is a representative, if even used, of a shared fictional space), the more removed the characters become.

Not only does the 4e ruleset seem to focus on the board more than any previous version of the game (unless you count 2e's Combat & Tactics, which I would claim has the same problem), but the arguments related to 4e consistently centre around the idea that the rules should take primacy over the fiction.

When the statement of a character's action is intended to be both (a) what is occurring in the rules and (b) what is occurring in the fiction, as is the case with "I attack" or "I attempt to disarm", role-playing identification is reinforced.

When the statement of a character's action is decoupled from what is occurring in the fiction, role-playing identification is to some degree disengaged as well. "I use power X. I miss, doing Y damage. Well, it isn't really a miss, or isn't really damage, is it?" or "I use power Z. The snake takes W damage and is knocked prone. How can it be knocked prone? Well, what I really did was flip it on it's back....."

If you define "role-playing" as "colourful description" or "moving the shoe in Monopoly", yes, you can then say correctly, "and there is no differences based upon the ruleset."

Likewise if you define red as blue, you can easily claim that the sky is most often red.

But that doesn't mean that the sky is most often red, in general, nor does it mean that the problem people are describing vis-a-vis role-playing doesn't exist.  All it means is that you fail, willingly or unwillingly, to either understand the problem or to "see" it if you do.

Thankfully, though, as I said upthread,_* the designers of the game seem to understand and see the problem*_!  Which might lead to a 5e that I would enjoy.

YMMV, though.  Indeed, I would be surprised if it did not.

RC


----------



## Dannager (May 23, 2011)

Raven Crowking said:


> That seems to be an impression which, AFAICT, the remainder of your post (preceding this comment and after this comment) is actually addressed to.




No, it seems to just be an observation. An observation that is supported by the content of your posts in this thread. If you believe that this observation is in error, you are free to attempt to explain away the content of your posts.



> I am sorry that you have decided that criticism = "you have problems with how 4E treats, well, just about everything, as far as I can tell";




Apologizing on behalf of someone else for something they ought not to feel any remorse over is a very arrogant, very combative approach to a conversation that really doesn't have any place here.



> and I am sorry that your response to rational criticism is to try to ridicule it into being somehow irrational.




The same applies here.



> Moreover, I am sorry that you (apparently) cannot grasp the concept of fiction.




And here.



> I mean, watching television, going to the movies, or reading a book, must be difficult if you cannot grasp the concept of what this "mythical" fiction is.




To boot, you have, in the sentence above, responded to rational criticism with a ridicule that attempts to make it appear irrational. Which is, word for word, what you just tried to take Balesir to task for doing.



> But, I don't take responsibility for that.




A sincere apology is a tacit admission of some level of responsibility. You can have it one way or the other.



> Some methods of rules/fiction interaction tend to encourage role-playing more than others. I.e., the more the board becomes the fictional space (rather than the less it is a representative, if even used, of a shared fictional space), the more removed the characters become.




This is true of you, apparently. It is not true of others. The five year-old who brings dolls to her make-believe tea party finds that a physical representation of the fictional construct she has created helps to enhance her experience - one that could be considered _entirely_ roleplaying.



> Not only does the 4e ruleset seem to focus on the board more than any previous version of the game (unless you count 2e's Combat & Tactics, which I would claim has the same problem), but the arguments related to 4e consistently centre around the idea that the rules should take primacy over the fiction.




This is misrepresentation, and it is misrepresentation that I find difficult to believe is unintentional. Those who play and enjoy 4e do so because the rules provide a framework which facilitates the fiction. Nowhere in the game's rules is it stated or implied that if the fiction and rules are in conflict, the rules should win. In fact, the designers have stated on _multiple occasions_ that the rules ought to take a back seat or be glossed over in favor of the fiction when they don't mesh.

You are confusing an _unresolvable_ _conflict_ between the rules and fiction (something that rarely occurs) with an _unwillingness to reconcile_ the rules and fiction. Fix the latter problem, and you will find that the former magically disappears.



> When the statement of a character's action is intended to be both (a) what is occurring in the rules and (b) what is occurring in the fiction, as is the case with "I attack" or "I attempt to disarm", role-playing identification is reinforced.




This is not a given, but let's accept it for the sake of argument.



> When the statement of a character's action is decoupled from what is occurring in the fiction, role-playing identification is to some degree disengaged as well.




The statement of a character's action is rarely, if ever, decoupled from what actually takes place. If it _is_ decoupled, it is because the DM and players are allowing that to occur rather than reconciling the two.



> "I use power X. I miss, doing Y damage. Well, it isn't really a miss, or isn't really damage, is it?"




What ruins this argument for you, of course, is that D&D damage has been abstract for a long, long time. A character can miss with a literal attack (a swing of the sword) and still deal mechanical damage, because that damage represents things like battle fatigue, will to fight, bruises from rough dodges, and glancing blows, as well as any potential physical injuries.

So it's never _"really"_ been damage. You're playing D&D of some sort, which means you've already bought into the idea that damage is abstract. I can't imagine why you would try to lay this at 4e's feet as if it were a problem that it deserves the blame for, unless this was just willful ignorance on your part.



> or "I use power Z. The snake takes W damage and is knocked prone. How can it be knocked prone? Well, what I really did was flip it on it's back....."




Yep, it's definitely prone now.



> If you define "role-playing" as "colourful description" or "moving the shoe in Monopoly", yes, you can then say correctly, "and there is no differences based upon the ruleset."
> 
> Likewise if you define red as blue, you can easily claim that the sky is most often red.




So you agree that having a common, accepted definition _is_ important to a discussion! Good to hear!



> But that doesn't mean that the sky is most often red,




It does if you've decided to define "red" as meaning "blue".



> in general, nor does it mean that the problem people are describing vis-a-vis role-playing doesn't exist.




You're right! But it does indicate that they probably need to do a better job at communicating their problem.



> All it means is that you fail, willingly or unwillingly, to either understand the problem or to "see" it if you do.




Yes, the appropriate response to someone highlighting valid criticisms of your position is to say "You just don't get it!" Making an effort to communicate better is just more effort than it's worth, really.



> Thankfully, though, as I said upthread,_* the designers of the game seem to understand and see the problem*_!  Which might lead to a 5e that I would enjoy.




This is, I believe, wildly wishful thinking on your part. If you do not enjoy 4e, chances are you will not enjoy 5e. The design direction they took in developing 4e was an intelligent one, and they will likely continue to move in that _general_ direction with the development of any subsequent iteration of the game.

But if I'm proven wrong, here, I'll still play 5e.


----------



## Balesir (May 24, 2011)

Raven Crowking said:


> Out of curiosity, do you think that there is anything odd that I cut & pasted that brief description from the post he was answering?  I.e., that the post where he asks for a definition is a response to the post containing the same?



Ou tof curiosity, did you notice what post I was responding to with this comment?  Because it was the one you originally gave the explanation in.  I am using a forum facility to "multi-quote".



Raven Crowking said:


> That seems to be an impression which, AFAICT, the remainder of your post (preceding this comment and after this comment) is actually addressed to.  Which is odd, because I can cut & paste the answer to this from a prior post, too:
> 
> No, despite the above, we are not trying to shut down conversation which used terminology that might demonstrate that it is reasonable for someone else to not like whatever it is that the discussion is about.​



Except that, in that post, you were listing "far too many threads that amount to:...", not describing your own position.  Am I to take it that you are adding one more post on that topic to the "far too many" we have already?



Raven Crowking said:


> I am sorry that you have decided that criticism = "you have problems with how 4E treats, well, just about everything, as far as I can tell"; and I am sorry that your response to rational criticism is to try to ridicule it into being somehow irrational.



I'm sorry that you see it as me trying to make your argument seem irrational - I wasn't trying to do that and I certainly don't think I did so (nor that it would be possible - your argument was as rational as mine, as far as I could tell).



Raven Crowking said:


> Moreover, I am sorry that you (apparently) cannot grasp the concept of fiction.  I mean, watching television, going to the movies, or reading a book, must be difficult if you cannot grasp the concept of what this "mythical" fiction is.



I can grasp the concept of fiction; I even described what it is (a model in each player's head of the game setting and situation).  What I disagree with is that "the fiction" can "have primacy" over anything - because it doesn't have an independent existence.  The fiction is merely a set of models that are manipulated by the players, in much the same way as they might also be manipulating miniatures and terrain, to play the game.  The model in the players' heads will have much more detail, and be far more vivid, normally, than miniatures and a mat, because the effects budget of an imagination is much less constrained!   But the content of the fiction can come only from the players aesthetic and presuppositions or the communications from the game publications and between the players about the game.  In other words, either the game rules, the players' preconceptions about what the game world looks like, the players' tastes as to what game worlds "should" look like or the communications between the players must provide every element of the fiction.  What "giving the fiction primacy over the rules" means, therefore, is that the players' preconceptions and tastes about what the world looks like should override what the game publications say.  This is a perfectly valid approach to roleplaying games, but so is agreeing that the publications define the game world and all other sources of content for the fiction must comply with that.  You seem to be saying that this latter technique makes roleplaying (as you describe it) impossible - my personal experience is that it does not.



Raven Crowking said:


> Some methods of rules/fiction interaction tend to encourage role-playing more than others. I.e., the more the board becomes the fictional space (rather than the less it is a representative, if even used, of a shared fictional space), the more removed the characters become.



The board must always be representative of a mental model that each player holds - that is just how our brains work.  You may find it hard to get a model that you find aesthetically pleasing without the freedom to apply certain preconceived ideas about how a roleplaying world "must" work; you may simply not like the game world described by the 4E rules.  Either of these positions is entirely reasonable.  But neither constitutes "proof" thet the 4E "world vision" is dysfunctional for roleplaying (by your description) or that it somehow, for all people, prevents happy visualisation of a functional game world.



Raven Crowking said:


> Not only does the 4e ruleset seem to focus on the board more than any previous version of the game (unless you count 2e's Combat & Tactics, which I would claim has the same problem), but the arguments related to 4e consistently centre around the idea that the rules should take primacy over the fiction.
> 
> When the statement of a character's action is intended to be both (a) what is occurring in the rules and (b) what is occurring in the fiction, as is the case with "I attack" or "I attempt to disarm", role-playing identification is reinforced.
> 
> When the statement of a character's action is decoupled from what is occurring in the fiction, role-playing identification is to some degree disengaged as well. "I use power X. I miss, doing Y damage. Well, it isn't really a miss, or isn't really damage, is it?" or "I use power Z. The snake takes W damage and is knocked prone. How can it be knocked prone? Well, what I really did was flip it on it's back....."



Repeating these comments verbatim while ignoring the comments I made on them will not make them inviolate, no matter how many times you copy-paste them.  I can do it, too - look:



Raven Crowking said:


> When the statement of a character's action is intended to be both (a) what is occurring in the rules and (b) what is occurring in the fiction, as is the case with "I attack" or "I attempt to disarm", role-playing identification is reinforced.



Wheras with "I attack with a Spinning Sweep" or "I attempt to perform a Footwork Lure" it's not!?!?

What is _physically_ happening is that you are rolling dice and consulting tables/comparing values; none of these action descriptions relate directly to that.  All of the descriptions relate to the game-world model in the players' heads, not to what is physically happening.  But you object to one set and not the others?  Colour me baffled.



Raven Crowking said:


> When the statement of a character's action is decoupled from what is occurring in the fiction, role-playing identification is to some degree disengaged as well.



If the statement of the character's action is decoupled from the world model it fails utterly as a game device, since it cannot, by definition, change the situation in the model if it is decoupled from it.  Statements of a character's action do change the model - that is their very _raison d'être_ - ergo they _cannot_ be decoupled from the model.



Raven Crowking said:


> "I use power X. I miss, doing Y damage. Well, it isn't really a miss, or isn't really damage, is it?"



You trip on the stairs but manage to grab the handrail, spraining your ankle rather than plunging head first down the steps - is that a "success" or a "failure"?



Raven Crowking said:


> or "I use power Z. The snake takes W damage and is knocked prone. How can it be knocked prone? Well, what I really did was flip it on it's back....."



After it is explained what "I polymorph the XXX" means you readily interpret it whenever it comes up in the game, and yet for some reason the phrase "is rendered prone" cannot be incorporated into the game lexicon in the same way?



Raven Crowking said:


> If you define "role-playing" as "colourful description" or "moving the shoe in Monopoly", yes, you can then say correctly, "and there is no differences based upon the ruleset."



Well, so you can.  Good job neither I nor anyone else defined "roleplaying" that way.  Any more straw men to demolish?



Raven Crowking said:


> Likewise if you define red as blue, you can easily claim that the sky is most often red.



Oh, yes, here's one.



Raven Crowking said:


> But that doesn't mean that the sky is most often red, in general, nor does it mean that the problem people are describing vis-a-vis role-playing doesn't exist.  All it means is that you fail, willingly or unwillingly, to either understand the problem or to "see" it if you do.



I'm not saying the problem doesn't exist - I'm saying it's in the minds of those who have the problem.  I'm not trying to be dismissive, here - the whole activity of roleplaying goes on in our minds, so a problem in your mind is a real problem, where roleplaying is concerned.  But the problem does not exist for all people, and appears to be fixable, if someone wishes to make the effort.



Raven Crowking said:


> Thankfully, though, as I said upthread,_* the designers of the game seem to understand and see the problem*_!  Which might lead to a 5e that I would enjoy.



Hopefully they also see that the solution is not to make an inconsistent and dysfunctional published system, such that the players' preconceptions and preferences *have* to substitute for the game publications, since the game publications present an inconsistent and dysfunctional world.



Raven Crowking said:


> YMMV, though.  Indeed, I would be surprised if it did not.



Possibly less than you might think.  I enjoy collaborative world-building and "real-world-with-twists" worlds, too - I just don't like _only_ such worlds.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred (May 24, 2011)

I guess my position is subtly different from Balesir's. I seem to recall this coming up once before too. I don't consider the game mechanics/rules to be DEFINING anything. They facilitate play. To the extent that they match the world you want to play in they are useful. When they fail to do that you can change them. If you really seriously just want snakes that never go prone, well that's the way it works at your table. 

There is never in 4e any statement that says "rules are inflexible and the fiction must conform." Quite the contrary, the SC rules state the opposite directly. In a number of other places it is made clear that the rules are both extensible and malleable.  

My personal preference is to play with the rules as they are as much as it makes sense. I am using 4e because 4e's rules fairly well support the world I'm describing and presenting to the players. In the few cases where that fails to happen to the extent that it demands some adjustment then that's what will happen. Remember too, monsters can use page 42, or the DM can just give them extra powers (same difference really, what dragon wouldn't have a couple of terrain powers set up to work in its lair?). Things will work out, the fiction will be honored.

Anyway, I certainly agree with Balesir that I can can't understand how Reaping Strike is 'decoupled from the fiction' but "I swing my sword (MBA)" isn't. If MBA is decoupled then so is any similar feature in any game that isn't so abstract that I can't isolate a specific point where I'm attacking at all. 

And again, really, isn't combat just one part of the game? Just because the non-combat rules are more abstract and take up less mass of verbiage and resources doesn't mean they are meant to be an unimportant part of the game. The combat scenes should all be firmly set in the context of the rest of the adventure, so when players are fighting, which they admittedly very often do, the players can be thinking about their character's motivations and proclivities from an in-game perspective, while also enjoying the ability to think tactically (as much as they want, many groups don't do a lot of it).


----------



## pemerton (May 24, 2011)

Balesir said:


> The grid is not the game setting.  The grid is a communication mechanism, nothing more.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Ah, this mythical "fiction" again.  The "fiction" can have no primacy over anything since it has no independent existence.





Dannager said:


> The five year-old who brings dolls to her make-believe tea party finds that a physical representation of the fictional construct she has created helps to enhance her experience - one that could be considered _entirely_ roleplaying.



I agree with Balesir and Dannager here. I would add one caveat, which is really an acknowledgement of what P1NBACK and LostSoul have said upthread - under some circumstances, I can conceive that a grid and minis "become the game", and that their relevance to a shared imaginary space drops away. This would be not unlike playing 1st ed "My 20th level Lord vs Deities and Demigods" - ie not a RPG but a skirmish game or something similar.

But I know of no general evidence that 4e is typically played like that. And, as I posted upthread, if you follow the encounter building guidelines you will have established situations in which the shared imaginary space _is_ made relevant to action resolution.



Raven Crowking said:


> Some methods of rules/fiction interaction tend to encourage role-playing more than others.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ...





Balesir said:


> Wheras with "I attack with a Spinning Sweep" or "I attempt to perform a Footwork Lure" it's not!?!?



I agree with Balesir here. The assertion that a statement of action in 4e is typically decoupled from the fiction (and hence is analogous to playing a card in Magic: The Gathering) is one that, as far as I'm aware, has no basis in fact.

As AbdulAlhazred and I have posted upthread, 4e is indifferent to certain details of action resolution. In this respect it resembles many other RPGs such as AD&D, Runequest, Rolemaster etc.  This doesn't mean that it can't support RPing, that it doesn't, or that it is not generally played as an RPG.

I posted some actual play upthread. Is this not roleplaying (and if not, why not)? Or is this not typical of 4e play (and if not, why not)?


----------



## Raven Crowking (May 24, 2011)

Balesir said:


> I can grasp the concept of fiction; I even described what it is (a model in each player's head of the game setting and situation).  What I disagree with is that "the fiction" can "have primacy" over anything - because it doesn't have an independent existence.




Have you ever gone to a movie, where something simply didn't seem to make sense?  Have you ever evaluated the performances of actors?  Have you ever read a book and decided that you didn't believe a character would actually do something?  Have you ever noticed that something in a movie was actually an ad, rather than arising from the fiction?  Have you ever noticed the manipulative hand of the author in a novel, making the characters dance to the author's plots in ways that seem unlikely at best?

You can say, "The fiction is merely a set of models that are manipulated by the players, in much the same way as they might also be manipulating miniatures and terrain, to play the game", and in your case this may be true.

Likewise, one can say that "The fiction in a movie is merely a set of models that are manipulated by the actors, screenwriters, and director, in much the same way as they might also be manipulating props and sets, to resolve the plot (or to insert product placements)".  Or one can say that "The fiction in a book is merely a set of models that are manipulated by the writer to resolve the plot".  

But these would reveal a rather shallow understanding of what film, books, and rpgs are capable of.

Indeed, for some people -- perhaps not for you, but for some people -- a film that doesn't seem like it follows the logical outcome of its fictional space (including setting and characters) isn't a good film.....and seeing the hand of the author isn't a good thing in a novel.

There are techniques of film-making, or writing, that disrupt the primacy of the fiction in what is being watched/read.  Just as there are rules techniques that disrupt what is occurring at the table.

Actors can present good performances and bad performances.  It is nonsensical to say that this is not so of the performance "because it doesn't have an independent existence" -- it is likewise nonsensical in this context.

So, again, this is a false dilemma.  Any argument that begins with the premise that the fiction cannot have primacy over the rules is an automatic fail.  Some of us -- I dare say, among older gamers at least, many of us -- have experienced it.  Or _*do experience it on a regular basis*_.

If your argument is based on "I don't see it, so it doesn't exist", I wish you luck with that.  But you will only convince those who haven't experienced otherwise!



> I enjoy collaborative world-building and "real-world-with-twists" worlds, too - I just don't like _only_ such worlds.




How is this relevant?



RC


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## Herschel (May 24, 2011)

Raven Crowking said:


> But these would reveal a rather shallow understanding of what film, books, and rpgs are capable of.
> 
> RC




Ah yes, the "your game is shallow and simple while mine is for the robust thoughts of pure creative genius" meme. 

4E basically took a "list" of really cool stuff PCs had done/could do in combat and quantified them, drew them out, cleaned them up and put them in to level tiers. They certainly aren't everything you can do, but they're part of your regular repertoir of moves. Nothing else has changed.

The biggest "change" 4E made to actual role playing was saying "go for it" with a set of general guidelines rather than boxing in players with a bloated set of skill trees and rules minutia. They returned to the "roots" of the RPG and their 1e/2e counterparts with the freedom to develop the story in any way needed rather than relying on pre-planned skill sets that may be missing applicable portions.


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## Raven Crowking (May 24, 2011)

Herschel said:


> Ah yes, the "your game is shallow and simple while mine is for the robust thoughts of pure creative genius" meme.




Erm...No.  I said nothing there about the game; only about the idea that the "mythical" fiction could not have primacy over the rules "because it doesn't have an independent existence"....And, yes, that demonstrates a very shallow understanding of fiction.

I also wonder where you get the "shallow and simple" from?  Even were you to grant my contention that 4e includes elements that impede (but do not prevent) role-playing, that hardly makes it "shallow and simple".  Chess is not shallow or simple, and it has far greater impediments to role-playing that 4e does.

Also, if one is able to X with impediments the same way that another person does without, that doesn't usually imply that the first person is shallow or simple (at least, regarding X).  Anyone who is capable of the same depth of immersion with 4e as I am with my game of choice, by my own argument, would have to be *better at it that I am*.

And that's cool.  I am willing to grant that this might be the case for many folks.  I'm just not willing to grant that it is the case for folks who believe that the fiction is "mythical", or that immersion in that fiction cannot take precedence over the rules.


RC


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## Raven Crowking (May 24, 2011)

At the risk of cross-posting:

Granted, it is impossible to prevent anyone from role-playing in any game.  You can role-play with Monopoly, if you have a mind to.  It is also cheaper, and comes with its own minis.

That said, it depends very much what one means by "role-playing".  I would consider role-playing to be taking the role of a fictional character within a fictional game milieu, but I would add the caveat that actual "role-playing" isn't based upon colourful descriptions or pithy one-liners, but rather upon identifying with the fiction.

A ruleset for a role-playing game is, therefore, IMHO, an interface to support identification with the fictional persona and setting to occur.  And a ruleset can be more -- or less -- successful at doing so.

IMHO, role-playing occurs when the fictional characters/setting are more important that the rules structure that allows interface.  I.e., if a rule gives an outcome that jars the fictional setting, the rule should not be applied.  Thus the importance -- and primacy -- of Rule 0.  

To the degree that a system causes players to focus on the rules structure, that system is going to inhibit role-playing.  Not prevent, mind you -- nothing can do that -- but inhibit.

So we add our first rule:  *"The less rules intrude on the fiction, the more the game supports role-playing."*

And, frankly, you can see the same applied to computer games.  The more you have to think about what must be done to manipulate your avatar in the computer game, the less enmeshed you are in the computer game's "world".  Were this not true, we would still be typing in command codes, and the Wii wouldn't be as popular as it is.

For that matter, many computer games I have played hide your "game stats" (apart from health) for the purpose of fostering identification with the character rather than the stats.

So, we can add:  *"The less often you have to break from the fiction in order to check your stats/character sheets, the more the game supports role-playing."*

I would also add:  *"The less often you have to break from the fiction in order to check a game board/grid, the more the game supports role-playing."*

And herein we see why Monopoly is not ideal as a role-playing game (strong board focus, rules prevent logical actions within the fictional milieu -- such as not trying to stay in a Boardwalk Hotel when you're cash is running out) and where it shines (Minimum of "stats checking" that interferes with your chosen role -- your only "stats" are the properties you own, what you've built on them, and what cash you have).

Obviously, the more familiar you are with any system, the easier it will be to role-play within that system.  It is to be expected, with any system, that rules mastery limits the amount of rules checking and character sheet checking, and thus increases the quality of a game vis-a-vis role-playing.  The amount of errata (if used) and new material being pumped into a system (again, if used) tends to erode system mastery, however.  

Also, one should note that the three rules given above support another, rather obvious conclusion.

1.  *"The less rules intrude on the fiction, the more the game supports role-playing."*

2.  *"The less often you have to break from the fiction in order to check your stats/character sheets, the more the game supports role-playing."*

3.  *"The less often you have to break from the fiction in order to check a game board/grid, the more the game supports role-playing."*

In any edition of the game, when do the rules intrude the most, character sheets need the most checking, and the game board/grid become most relevant?  Why, combat, of course!

So, 

4.  *"The less time you spend in combat -- especially in the same long combat, or engaged in the rules minutia of combat -- the more the game supports role-playing."*

All IMHO and IME, of course.  YMMV.


RC


----------



## Matt James (May 24, 2011)

Repeating your conclussions in multiple posts won't make it any more true. You break several logical fallacies. I wish I had more time to write a detailed response.


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## Raven Crowking (May 24, 2011)

Matt James said:
			
		

> You break several logical fallacies.





Thank you.

However, AFAICT, I haven't actually addressed any logical fallacies _per se_.....hence, no one's fallacy is there for me to "break".

OTOH, "I don't have time to post in detail, but I could prove you wrong if I did" will certainly convince those already convinced I am wrong, I suppose.  Which is a large enough audience, I imagine.

Hope you get some XP for your post!


RC


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## Balesir (May 24, 2011)

Aaaahhh - clarity strikes (I think).

I was thinking through a (long) response to your last post quoting me:



Raven Crowking said:


> Have you ever gone to a movie, where something simply didn't seem to make sense?



...but now I realise I don't need to.  The confusion has become clear from this post:



Raven Crowking said:


> At the risk of cross-posting:
> 
> <snip>
> 
> A ruleset for a role-playing game is, therefore, IMHO, an interface to support identification with the fictional persona and setting to occur.  And a ruleset can be more -- or less -- successful at doing so.



And, as I thought a couple of posts ago, it has to do with the understanding of "role-playing".

What you mean when you say "role-playing" is "*immersion*"!  Now, many things you have been saying make sense.  No, 4E does not support immersion well - perfectly true.  In fact, replace the term "role-playing" with "immersion" in every instance and I think I pretty much agree with most of what you have written here.

I don't agree that "Immersion"* is the only way "roleplaying" can be done, though.  It's a fairly minor subset - albeit an appealing one in several ways - because it is fairly restrictive unless you have truly exceptional players.  But, if it's the only form of roleplaying you like, I understand your position.  There are better supports for it than D&D (any edition) out there, frankly, but if some form of D&D works for you, go for it!

 *: Basically as close to "Enthralled Audience" mode you can get with an active participant in a roleplaying game - "live in the world/character and direct your character using as naturalistic a set of "controls" as possible", roughly.  It's tricky to manage, can be very good fun, but isn't any sort of "ultimate" roleplaying form, IMO, just one among many.


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## Raven Crowking (May 24, 2011)

Balesir said:


> What you mean when you say "role-playing" is "*immersion*"!




Not exactly, but what I mean when I say "role-playing" _*requires*_ immersion.



> I don't agree that "Immersion"* is the only way "roleplaying" can be done, though.




Sure, but only (I think) because we disagree on terminology....like Red Sky/Blue Sky.

However, if you are at all interested in understanding the viewpoint of someone who feels 4e impedes role-playing (to whatever degree), I think you will have to accept their understanding of "role-playing" (for the purpose of the discussion only).  Just as I am happy to agree that no game impedes X, so long as you define X so that the statement is true!


RC


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## Raven Crowking (May 24, 2011)

To be clear, I am not claiming that role-playing _*is immersion*_, but rather that role-playing is the action within the game that is taken _*while immersed*_. Thus, immersion =/= role-playing, but role-playing requires immersion.

As I have said elsewhere, should you state "X is not impeded by game Y", so long as X is defined in such a way that the statement is true, I won't argue with you. BUT, if the discussion is about why some people believe that X is imeded by game Y, then the way those people define X is, IMHO, the critical one, and the one that should be adopted (for purposes of discussion only).

There should be no cognitive dissonance in our agreeing that what I mean by X is impeded by game Y, and also that what you mean by X is not.

I'm wondering if you believe that roleplaying can occur without any immersion? And, if so, what does "role-playing" mean in that context?


RC


EDIT:  Having been working on my own system for some years now (playtesting and revising is a long process, and one that will make the dourest heart feel for professional game designers!), I have been involved in debating these sorts of questions repeatedly during the last few months.  What is the function of X?  How does it affect Y?  What if we decide Z?  Is the complication of rule A worth the value it adds to the game?  Is there an easier way to do it that doesn't damage immersion?  How much immersion, vs. how much game rules play, is desireable?  Etc., etc., etc.

So, I have some strong opinions on these topics now....but I am also interested in the opinions of others.


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## Matt James (May 24, 2011)

Raven Crowking said:


> Not exactly, but what I mean when I say "role-playing" _*requires*_ immersion.




I just had a very similar conversation with a LARP guy I know back here at home. He seems to think the same way as you. My argument is that as long as a person takes on a persona and develops traits selected to the character, _that_ is roleplaying.

Here is where I will concede some valid points that some have used against 4e. Up until the past several months, much of the story behind the powers, places, classes, races, and all subsets of the game, were lacking with description and "fluff". With the shift in how they decided to do business (from what I can tell, this time last year), WotC appears to be focusing on these elements and have really started to ramp it up. Some of my favorite books in 4e thus far have been Open Grave and books like the Manual of the Planes. These offer a lot of inspiring content that does not translate to specific game mechanics. if you look at the new Gloomwrought product and others out recently, they follow this trend and path.

Both a game system and the ability to roleplay are topics that are mutually exclusive. That being said, inspiration for affecting each can be important. I really think they have hammered down a solid system, and now more focuses on story will be prevalent.

To summarize: A game _system_ cannot inherently produce roleplaying. It comes from the inspiration of the text and guidance from the community (i.e. your group, or friends, or interactions with the game itself). As an example, Monopoly could easily be a RPG if everyone who played it focused on creating characters that worked to purchase various properties. The rules could include a section on this, but it can't inherently induce it without acceptance from the player.

We (4e consumers, et al.) need to cultivate an environment that rewards character development, and not one that gets kudos for finding the most math-tastic combinations. That being said, I would be a massive jerk to assume I know best how others should derive their enjoyment.


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## Raven Crowking (May 24, 2011)

Matt James said:


> Both a game system and the ability to roleplay are topics that are mutually exclusive.




Strongly disagree, but otherwise good post!

RC


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## Matt James (May 24, 2011)

Then you disagree with a lot of people. This is fine, but I would love to open the debate. Possibly in another thread. Some people won't roleplay, or simply don't want to. They want to run around like Conan and swing a big sword. Anything attached to their character in the form of traits or characteristics, are meaningless to them. Just because they chose to play this way, in no way makes them inferior or unfit for playing tabletop RPGs. It takes a community to cultivate and educate them. No amount of *system rules* will remedy this--unless you want to just push them away to something else. Hopefully they'll decide to join the crowd. If not, who am I to judge them? They're having fun, I am having fun. That's what playing games is all about.


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## Neonchameleon (May 24, 2011)

Raven Crowking said:


> Exactly.
> 
> It almost feels as though the new material is tailored to groups of players who enjoy solving tactical puzzles, optimizing characters, and using rules to their advantage. I prefer a game tailored to groups who enjoy role-playing.




In which case I have one simple question for you.  If you find tacticians a problem then w_hy is your RPG of choice a D&D derivative?_  D&D 1e is about problem solving and tactical puzzle solving to get the most loot with minimal risk.  It was tactical puzzle and optimising friendly and always has been at that extreme.  Just ask the players of Tomb of Horrors.

I don't see enjoying the tactical element and RPing the sort of people who prepare before handling dangerous situations as a bad thing.  But if you do, the Forge is thataway and D&D has IMO _never_ been a game that was a good fit.  (I'd also argue that optimisers have much more leverage under any edition of AD&D (see: dual classing, stat minimums, and imbalanced races) than they do under 4e; yes there's more fun to be had optimising, but much less of a requirement to do it defensively because the game is better balanced).


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## Neonchameleon (May 24, 2011)

P1NBACK said:


> You're saying you haven't experienced a session where _only _the numbers matter. I get it.
> 
> Of course you haven't, because at that point it's not roleplaying right?
> 
> My point is: 4E comes as close to this as D&D ever has. We're moving further away from roleplaying and toward a miniatures game. That's FINE for those who love miniatures games! Sweet! And, it's FUN too. I love miniature combat.




Let's turn 4e into something more like minatures combat and a tabletop wargame.  We'll start by removing that grid and replacing it with movement speeds measured in inches (and tapemeasures or templates to measure where fireballs go).  Then we'll lower the hit points.  We want the combats to resolve fast and it shouldn't matter if you die - you can simply take another character.  Then we'll take out all the non-combat skills - they aren't needed.  But the rogue needs a few, so we'll give him and only a couple of other people some skills.  We'll then take out all the powers  - we want minatures combat not strong focus on who we are and what we are doing.  And then let's compress the defences.  It's the class of your armour that matters.

You know what?  Every change I am making to make 4e more like the minatures combat games I also enjoy _makes it more like 1E AD&D_.  The very origins of D&D are a hack to minatures combat rules.  Because that's what Gygax and Arneson were working with.  Given this history of D&D, saying that "4E comes as close to this as D&D ever has" and "We're moving ... toward a miniatures game." is somewhere between saying "it's moving back towards its origins" and a ridiculous assertion.


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## TwoSix (May 24, 2011)

Matt James said:


> To summarize: A game _system_ cannot inherently produce roleplaying.




If you mean immersive roleplaying, I'd probably agree.  But there are games out there where it's near impossible to even engage the mechanics without doing some roleplaying.


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## TwoSix (May 24, 2011)

Neonchameleon said:


> You know what?  Every change I am making to make 4e more like the minatures combat games I also enjoy _makes it more like 1E AD&D_.  The very origins of D&D are a hack to minatures combat rules.  Because that's what Gygax and Arneson were working with.  Given this history of D&D, saying that "4E comes as close to this as D&D ever has" and "We're moving ... toward a miniatures game." is somewhere between saying "it's moving back towards its origins" and a ridiculous assertion.




I have to say, I am curious as to what this "more roleplaying, less minis" D&D nirvana would look like.  Is it 2e++?  2e certainly seems like the edition that most fetishized "roleplaying", and held the most disdain for playstyles focused on the game's own wargame-based mechanics.


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## Matt James (May 24, 2011)

The problem with a lot of trunk-junk that 2e (and 3e) had, was that while a lot of content was created, so much of it was forgotten/lost/ignored due to its horrible interaction with the game. I'm still looking for an example of a D&D mechanic that exemplifies roleplaying (I probably need to rewrite this sentence, I am not trying to be snarky or rude). I have run a very successful and non-combat focused Dark Sun 4e game; one by which my players still ask when it will restart. They can lay down examples where character choses were more potent than character system options, and how it changed the story as they went along.


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## Raven Crowking (May 24, 2011)

Matt James said:


> Then you disagree with a lot of people.




Could be.  But a lot of people thinking a thing doesn't make it so.

OTOH, the rest of your post makes be believe that you don't understand what I was trying to convey in the slightest.  Which is probably my own fault, rather than yours.


RC


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## Raven Crowking (May 24, 2011)

Neonchameleon said:


> In which case I have one simple question for you.  If you find tacticians a problem then w_hy is your RPG of choice a D&D derivative?_




I think you are misunderstanding me.

Tactics have a place in a role-playing game....just not the primary place.

Just as role-playing can have a place in a tactical game....just not the primary place.



> D&D 1e is about problem solving and tactical puzzle solving to get the most loot with minimal risk.  It was tactical puzzle and optimising friendly and always has been at that extreme.  Just ask the players of Tomb of Horrors.




I think you are misunderstanding 1e.

Tactics have a place in 1e....just not the primary place.  Quick -- name the one D&D module where pacifism is explicitly rewarded and combat punished!  Quick -- name the edition it was published for.



> I don't see enjoying the tactical element and RPing the sort of people who prepare before handling dangerous situations as a bad thing.




Nor do I......But I don't see that it's the _*only thing*_, either.

Now I've a question for you:  Why didn't you address the rulesplay parts?  *Optimizing characters, and using rules to their advantage?*

RC


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## Raven Crowking (May 24, 2011)

Neonchameleon said:


> You know what?  Every change I am making to make 4e more like the minatures combat games I also enjoy _makes it more like 1E AD&D_.  The very origins of D&D are a hack to minatures combat rules.  Because that's what Gygax and Arneson were working with.  Given this history of D&D, saying that "4E comes as close to this as D&D ever has" and "We're moving ... toward a miniatures game." is somewhere between saying "it's moving back towards its origins" and a ridiculous assertion.




The very origins of D&D are a movement away from the minatures combat rules that Gygax and Arneson were working with.  Repeatedly, in rulebook after rulebook, the players are admonished that the spirit of the rules takes precedence over the rules themselves.  Because "the rules themselves" are kind of like a wargame, and that is not what is desired.

In early D&D, the Game Master is encouraged to take the fiction into account when adjudicating the rules, rather than the other way around, because anything else is moving toward a miniatures game.  

To claim otherwise is, indeed, "a ridiculous assertion".

(It convinces no one to answer an objection in a way that fails to show understanding of the objection being answered!)


RC


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## 13garth13 (May 24, 2011)

Raven Crowking said:


> Tactics have a place in 1e....just not the primary place.  Quick -- name the one D&D module where pacifism is explicitly rewarded and combat punished!  Quick -- name the edition it was published for.
> 
> 
> RC




Just for fun, I believe it had something to do with a Crystal Cavern, it may or may not have been UK1 depending on my memory , and it was most assuredly 1st edition (prior even to the release of MMII, 'cause it had the mudmen and those wierd, lignifying tree creatures in it).  Took place largely in some time-stopped demi-plane where the Green Man dwelt and two lovers were hiding out from their families, yeah?

The rest of the topic I'm not approaching with a 10' pole....

Cheers,
Colin

EDIT: Beyond the Crystal Cave?  Regardless of the title, it had Tim fricking Truman artwork, and that just isn't seen nearly as often in gaming material as it bloody well ought to be......damn, I loved his stuff!


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## P1NBACK (May 24, 2011)

Neonchameleon said:


> Let's turn 4e into something more like minatures combat and a tabletop wargame.  We'll start by removing that grid and replacing it with movement speeds measured in inches (and tapemeasures or templates to measure where fireballs go).




1E AD&D doesn't use this system. Sorry. False. 



Neonchameleon said:


> Then we'll lower the hit points.  We want the combats to resolve fast and it shouldn't matter if you die - you can simply take another character.




Fallacy. 

1) More hit points doesn't mean that "death matters". Actually, what it really means is that combat lasts longer. Death in 4E matters about as much as it does in 1E in so much that making death matter is an act of the gaming group, not the rules necessarily. 



Neonchameleon said:


> Then we'll take out all the non-combat skills - they aren't needed.  But the rogue needs a few, so we'll give him and only a couple of other people some skills.




You think not having "skills" makes the game into a wargame? There's hundreds of indie roleplaying games that would beg to differ. Again: logical fallacy. 



Neonchameleon said:


> We'll then take out all the powers  - we want minatures combat not strong focus on who we are and what we are doing.  And then let's compress the defences.  It's the class of your armour that matters.




You think "powers" give a strong focus on who you are and what you do? Actually, the opposite is true. 

Without powers, we need to know _exactly _what you are doing so that we can adjudicate it. With a power, it doesn't matter what your character is _actually doing in the fiction, only what happens on the tabletop: shift 1, deal 2dX damage, fall prone. _

What happened? Who cares? 



Neonchameleon said:


> You know what?  Every change I am making to make 4e more like the minatures combat games I also enjoy _makes it more like 1E AD&D_.




You need to go back and play 1E AD&D. 



Neonchameleon said:


> The very origins of D&D are a hack to minatures combat rules.  Because that's what Gygax and Arneson were working with.




A hack that added roleplaying. Braunstein was the first hack and it evolved from there. What changed? Major David Wesley decided to let the players play individual "roles" with motivations and freedom to improvise and use their imagination outside of the normal scope of wargaming. 

_That's _what 1E AD&D eventually became, and a lot of wargamers hated D&D because of the far departure from actual wargaming. 

Again, your assumptions are false. 



Neonchameleon said:


> Given this history of D&D, saying that "4E comes as close to this as D&D ever has" and "We're moving ... toward a miniatures game." is somewhere between saying "it's moving back towards its origins" and a ridiculous assertion.




That's not at all what I am saying, as noted above.


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## Raven Crowking (May 24, 2011)

P1NBACK said:


> You think "powers" give a strong focus on who you are and what you do? Actually, the opposite is true.
> 
> Without powers, we need to know _exactly _what you are doing so that we can adjudicate it. With a power, it doesn't matter what your character is _actually doing in the fiction, only what happens on the tabletop: shift 1, deal 2dX damage, fall prone. _
> 
> What happened? Who cares?




Good post, and sorry I can't XP it right now.

This part is, I think, actually critical in parsing out Neonchameleon's objection, because it does display a real problem....and not just with his knowledge of the history of the game.

4e's power system could have been engineered to provide a "strong focus on who we are and what we are doing" had it been coupled to the fiction.  There is some evidence in the rulebooks that it was intended to do this; that an ooze should not have been knocked prone, and that the DM was intended to step in and put the fiction first.  And, when used in this way, I am sure that role-playing is more strongly engaged.

The online community (or a portion thereof) has been very vocal in opposing the RAW interpretation of the rules (where the DM does intervene in using powers in ways that make no sense to him or her).

I wonder how this discussion would fare without that element?  I am guessing that my objections would be far fewer.


RC


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## P1NBACK (May 24, 2011)

Raven Crowking said:


> 4e's power system could have been engineered to provide a "strong focus on who we are and what we are doing" had it been coupled to the fiction.  There is some evidence in the rulebooks that it was intended to do this; that an ooze should not have been knocked prone, and that the DM was intended to step in and put the fiction first.  And, when used in this way, I am sure that role-playing is more strongly engaged.




I'm working on something that does exactly this. 

It's based around expanding DMG Page 42 into a comprehensive resolution system that incorporates mechanical tidbits (prone, forced movement, damage, etc.), but stems from the fictional description. 

So, there are no "powers" per say. Everything relies on adjudicating the fiction. 

Describe what you do, then we apply the rules. 

It's the opposite of 4E's general mechanic, where we choose the rules we want to use, and then overlay a fictional description. 

If I can rewrite the rules to be robust enough to give DM's solid guidelines for adjudicating from fiction to rules, and allowing players to be effective by using creative and vivid descriptions, well, I'll consider that a success.


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## LostSoul (May 24, 2011)

Balesir said:


> 1) The models in the minds of the various players present are not necessarily identical.
> 
> 2) By saying that these "actions" matter, rather than the actions as described in mechanical terms, you necessarily postulate an additional set of "rules of the world" that supercede (or at least supplement) the game mechanics.  This is not necessarily a problem - but we really ought to consider the form and source of those alternate or additional rules before accepting them.
> 
> 3) As pemerton mentions, the question arises "which actions, exactly, are "important"?".  ...  If not everything is treated as important/impactful, then the question of "What is?" becomes a defining one.




1) I'm not sure that's a good thing or a bad thing.  It does exist, though.

2) The kind of system I enjoy makes the imagined or fictional details of your character and/or setting an important element in the game's mechanics.

3) When I wrote the rules for my hack of 4E I intentionally left this vague.  I wanted different DMs to satisfy different aesthetic preferences.  However, based on the stats a character has, the skill list (including weapon and implement proficiencies), and the way that DCs are set, I think my hack does suggest a certain level of detail in resolution.



Balesir said:


> But it might help better define the set of rules you are looking for if you can be clearer about what your views about importance and appropriate impact are, rather than ascribing the judgement to a mythical "fiction" or assuming it is in some way "obvious" or "common sense".




I don't ascribe judgement to the fiction or assume anything is obvious; I give one player (the DM) the authority to make judgement calls based on his aesthetic preferences and the responsibility to maintain the consistency of the game's imagined setting.

When I say "aesthetic preferences", what I mean is that one DM might have a view of combat that is more in line with what is seen on TV and base judgements to keep with that view, and another with more knowledge about combat in the real world might have a more realistic vision for combat in the setting and want to make judgement calls that reinforce that view.



Balesir said:


> If we are to have a really useful discussion I think it would be useful to try to really decipher what we really mean when we use these "shortcut" terms.




Good call.



Balesir said:


> So, does that really mean that you dislike what you do now, or that you like both?  I certainly like both abstracted and tactical combat - at different times, obviously - and use both in games I play.  This is why I try to be very clear that I find 4E D&D to be an excellent game *at what it does* - not at being any sort of "ultimate roleplaying game" (which I don't believe exists, even in principle).




I'm not sure what you mean by "both".


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## P1NBACK (May 24, 2011)

LostSoul said:


> I don't ascribe judgement to the fiction or assume anything is obvious; I give one player (the DM) the authority to make judgement calls based on his aesthetic preferences and the responsibility to maintain the consistency of the game's imagined setting.




There's some weird baggage that comes about with RPGs where I think people fight against this. It's odd to me. 

The most powerful tool an RPG has is its ability to react to anything the player wants to do with their character. In a lot of games, this tool is called the DM (or GM or MC or whatever). In other games, that role opens up to multiple people. But, I find the most satisfying play comes from a single authority that has this responsibility. 

And, like that cliche phrase: with great power comes great responsibility. 

But, instead of D&D going in a direction that emphasized this aspect of play, and gave new DMs tools to _not be douchebag DMs, _we have 3rd Edition+ that tried to just codify everything. 

I think that was the wrong direction personally. It persists in 4E. 

I'd like to see RPGs take the stance that creative imaginings is the most powerful aspect of roleplaying games, and give DMs and players tools to take advantage of that aspect. So, I'm happy to see you going in this direction.


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## pemerton (May 26, 2011)

P1NBACK said:


> The most powerful tool an RPG has is its ability to react to anything the player wants to do with their character.





LostSoul said:


> based on the stats a character has, the skill list (including weapon and implement proficiencies), and the way that DCs are set, I think my hack does suggest a certain level of detail in resolution.



I agree with P1NBACK, but have also quoted LostSoul to make the point that _what counts as a satisfactory description of what a player wants to do with his/her character_ is a variable matter. Some may care about details of positioning. I don't.



P1NBACK said:


> instead of D&D going in a direction that emphasized this aspect of play, and gave new DMs tools to _not be douchebag DMs, _we have 3rd Edition+ that tried to just codify everything.
> 
> I think that was the wrong direction personally. It persists in 4E.



I don't regard powers in 4e as codifying everything that a PC does, and thereby removing the GM's role in adjudicating the fiction. Powers give players a set of descriptions that they can reliably deploy - "My guy does this thing!" - which are then used in the course of expressing what it is that the character is doing, _in the sense of "doing" that is relevant, in 4e, to engaging with the fiction for the purposes of RPGing_. Those things might be "rescuing my friend" or "deploying my holy might against this demon" or "dancing over this pit trap like a ninja of old" or whatever. They are obviously not things like "hitting high" or "jumping over his blade while using his weight against him" - in 4e that stuff is almost always just colour (perhaps not in some page 42 contexts).

I regard 4e as appealing most naturally to those who share the sensibilities of 1970s Marvel Comics or the John Boorman's (I think that's right) 1981 Excalibur - combat is an important expression of value (moral, aesthetic and prudential) not in virtue of its nuances of positioning and the like, but in virtue of the means of combat that a protagonist brings to bear, and the goals that s/he pursues via those means.

Of course, in forming this view I could just be projecting from my own case! (And if I'm right then it's a sad indictment of most of the 4e modules - which I regard as completely at odds with the design sensibilities of the published hardbacks.)


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## Balesir (May 26, 2011)

Raven Crowking said:


> As I have said elsewhere, should you state "X is not impeded by game Y", so long as X is defined in such a way that the statement is true, I won't argue with you. BUT, if the discussion is about why some people believe that X is impeded by game Y, then the way those people define X is, IMHO, the critical one, and the one that should be adopted (for purposes of discussion only).



Fine, but this works both ways.  You can state any "X *is* imeded by game Y" and it will be true for some definition of X, such that the statement is true.  The key lies either in seeking some universal (or, at least, generally accepted) definition of X or defining what X means for you when you make such statements, surely?



Raven Crowking said:


> I'm wondering if you believe that roleplaying can occur without any immersion? And, if so, what does "role-playing" mean in that context?



Yes, I believe that roleplaying can occur without immersion - perhaps it's time I defined what I see "roleplaying" as.  This is likely to be long - sorry...

Let me divide the word into two parts - "role" and "playing".  Taking the first, "role" refers to taking the part of an entity or entities in an imagined game world.  The entity/ies should have at least some degree of sapience and at least the appearance of free will.  The range is really broad, here, in that the only sapient, free-willed entity whose part I could not take in roleplaying is myself, in the real world (because in any other world it wouldn't be 'me').

The second part is almost as broad, but requires more explanation.  "Playing" I see as referring to a spectrum; at one end is the total, immersive identification of the "Turku style" roleplaying; at the other is the type of identification that might come while playing a game like Squad Leader or even, at a stretch, Monopoly.  The base requirements are (1) that the actions taken by the entity/ies whose role I am playing takes place in a world I can imagine as having independent existence (even though, clearly, it does not - hence it is a "fiction"), (2) that I identify with the entity/ies I am playing the role(s) of, at least to the extent of thinking of them as "my guy(s)", and (3) that I 'play' them in the sense that I select their goals and intentions.  I have used conditional plurals, here, but I will, in general, only be identifying with and 'playing' one individual entity at any one time - although there may be exceptions (mob psychology, groupthink and such like - even hive mentalities, possibly).  This plural identification is most relevant when I GM, rather than when I am a player.

The identification aspect is perhaps more clearly explained by analogy to movies, television and books.  Most movies and television are not filmed in "first person"/"through the eyes of the protagonist" mode - and yet I, at least, can still identify with the movie characters.  Likewise, most fiction in books is not written in the first person - and yet I can identify with the protagonist in many novels without problems.  In the same way, I can picture a roleplaying world in my mind from a third-person view and have no problem identifying with a particular character in that tableau.  Add to that that I decide what they wish to do, at least in their conscious mind, and you have what I call "roleplaying".

The "playing" part of "roleplaying" thus runs the gamut from "play" in the sense of "take on the persona of, as if it were a mask over my own personality", to "play" as an actor (non-method actor type) might portray a part, to "play" in the sense of a puppetmaster "playing" the strings of a marionette, to "play" in the sense that a director directs the actions of actors on a set, to "play" in the sense of using the entity I am portraying as a (mutated) proxy for myself in a competition.

In all of the described scenarios I am "playing a role", rather than acting directly as myself.  All of them require some exploration of an "imaginary space" and taking part in the definition of that imaginary space (by, at a minimum, describing the goals and intentions of the entity/ies I am playing the role of).  Pretty much all else - the nature of the entity/ies I am portraying, the rules of the imaginary surroundings, the social mechanisms for communicating about the imagined space and the focus or aim of the roleplaying activity, to mention just a few elements - is almost infinitely malleable.  To me, in fact, that is a major - perhaps the ultimate - attraction of roleplaying as an activity.  There are almost no limits - anything I can imagine, I can roleplay.

Hence, for me, 'immersion' is required for a subset of roleplaying, and is not a superset.



LostSoul said:


> 1) I'm not sure that's a good thing or a bad thing.  It does exist, though.



Sure - I said it was a "complication".  That's not necessarily bad, but it might need some thinking about and planning for.



LostSoul said:


> 2) The kind of system I enjoy makes the imagined or fictional details of your character and/or setting an important element in the game's mechanics.



The more I think about this I think it boils down to "at what level?"  I think *pemerton* makes some good points, here - the difference between wanting to know that a character tries to physically harm another creature and wanting to know the angle of the sword cut they make, the bodily manoeuvre used and the justification of any and all subsequent effects is one of _degree_, not fundamental _quality_.  Is it sufficient to know simply that the character is good at this stuff and, depending to some extent on chance, may get certain results from doing it - or do we need to know how and why they achieve these results in detail?  And, if the latter, what specific detail, exactly?  In the former, aspects of the setting - that this sort of result is possible, that the situation is suitable to achieve such a result and that this character is good at getting these results, for example - _are_ important.  The only difference, perhaps, is that it is the player's decisions of character intent, rather than their justification of their desired result, that has effect.



LostSoul said:


> I don't ascribe judgement to the fiction or assume anything is obvious; I give one player (the DM) the authority to make judgement calls based on his aesthetic preferences and the responsibility to maintain the consistency of the game's imagined setting.



That is a perfectly valid way to play.  It's one I am tired of, personally, and maybe a little disillusioned with, but for those that find it satisfying I wish them well with it.  But other ways to play also exist.



LostSoul said:


> When I say "aesthetic preferences", what I mean is that one DM might have a view of combat that is more in line with what is seen on TV and base judgements to keep with that view, and another with more knowledge about combat in the real world might have a more realistic vision for combat in the setting and want to make judgement calls that reinforce that view.



Quite so.  It's these sorts of "world attributes" that I think are very much better communicated clearly up-front.  The game rules are a generally pretty effective way to communicate them - but other communication methods clearly exist!



LostSoul said:


> I'm not sure what you mean by "both".



Heh - good point!  I should have said "all of them", maybe...

Basically, I enjoy both games where the action is described in a very general, abstract way (with the in-game outcome described in an arbitrary manner post-facto) and games where the action is detailed down to the intended sword cut angle (Riddle of Steel, anyone?) before the outcome is determined.

I also enjoy both games where the rules define the world-setting "physics" for both the GM and the players, with GM discretion dialled to a minimum and tactical competition to the fore, and games of collaborative world-building, where the world "physics" is defined by mutually agreed aesthetics, subject only to consistency with what has been settled upon before, during play.


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## P1NBACK (May 26, 2011)

Balesir, your definition completely defies and contradicts your earlier statements and statements within your most recent post. 

You say you need "free will" and you "decide what they wish to do". 

This is impossible in most boardgames (especially Monopoly), without house rules. 

So, the fact that you claim you can roleplay Monopoly proudly, then turn around and give us a definition of roleplaying that completely contradicts the requirements, makes me believe that you really don't have a clue as to what roleplaying is in contrast to how you define it. 

Cheers.


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## Scribble (May 26, 2011)

P1NBACK said:


> You think "powers" give a strong focus on who you are and what you do? Actually, the opposite is true.
> 
> Without powers, we need to know _exactly _what you are doing so that we can adjudicate it. With a power, it doesn't matter what your character is _actually doing in the fiction, only what happens on the tabletop: shift 1, deal 2dX damage, fall prone. _
> 
> What happened? Who cares?




This same thing can be said though about any version of the game if you want to boil it down to its base elements.

Roll some dice for damage. What happened? Who cares.

Take a look at a couple of spells in prior editions. They're just a bunch of fancy words telling you to ultimately roll some dice, but described in a way to help evoke your imagination.

The powers I'd say are no different. They're just a bunch of fancy words trying to help evoke the player's imagination.

Tying a bunch of similar powers together can help the player feel a stronger focus on what he is and what he does in the same sense that tying similar spells together did in prior editions.


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## P1NBACK (May 26, 2011)

Scribble said:


> This same thing can be said though about any version of the game if you want to boil it down to its base elements.
> 
> Roll some dice for damage. What happened? Who cares.




Nah, that's not true. 

You need to do something in order to roll damage right? You can't just say, "Ok, I roll damage." 

The GM will look at you like, "Wtf? No. What are you _doing_?" 

It's different in 4E, where you say, "I'm using Flaming Phoenix of the Iron Tower Spikes Lure..." And, then the GM says, "Oh, ok. Damage?" 

It works without saying, "Yeah... But, what did you _do_?" 

Even though, when I DM 4E, I always ask, "What happens? How are you doing that?" etc. Unfortunately, it's largely irrelevant to the resolution of said mechanic. 



Scribble said:


> Take a look at a couple of spells in prior editions. They're just a bunch of fancy words telling you to ultimately roll some dice, but described in a way to help evoke your imagination.
> 
> The powers I'd say are no different. They're just a bunch of fancy words trying to help evoke the player's imagination.
> 
> Tying a bunch of similar powers together can help the player feel a stronger focus on what he is and what he does in the same sense that tying similar spells together did in prior editions.




I disagree. Components alone tell you something about the fiction occurring. Verbal? You're chanting then yeah? What happens when you're gagged? The rules lead into the fiction. And, vice versa. 

I'm not saying all 4E rules are like this. I'm saying 4E goes _further _toward the boardgame, disassociated end of the spectrum, where we layer fiction on top of the rules instead of invoking rules because of what's happening in the fiction.


----------



## Herschel (May 26, 2011)

P1NBACK said:


> You think "powers" give a strong focus on who you are and what you do? Actually, the opposite is true.
> 
> Without powers, we need to know _exactly _what you are doing so that we can adjudicate it. With a power, it doesn't matter what your character is _actually doing in the fiction, only what happens on the tabletop: shift 1, deal 2dX damage, fall prone. _
> 
> What happened? Who cares?




Only if you're an unimaginative sod. The only difference between powers and earlier editions is powers give you a bit of potential narrative and some things pre-codified you can do. They in no way limit what you can do, they do expand what you can do in that they have other things going on outside of "I swing my sword after taking a move action". 

In any edition you can play the "I make a power attack/I use spell X"  or you can narrate and describe what/how you do something. The system is irrelevent, the player, DM and game are what matters.


----------



## Neonchameleon (May 26, 2011)

P1NBACK said:


> 1E AD&D doesn't use this system. Sorry. False.




1e does use inches as its explicit movement speed - go re-read the movement rules on p101 (at least in my copy of the 1e PHB).  If you're going to cry false, get your facts right.  And why would movement be measured in inches unless you were expected to measure it somehow?  For in-character adjudication it's a meaningless quantity, but for tabletop + minatures from a wargame it's perfect.  And for anything other than tapemeasures, it's an absurd quantity.  Now I'm well aware that you and almost every other group ditched measuring the inches.  But ditching one of the rules is a house rule rather than the rules of the game.



> Fallacy.
> 
> 1) More hit points doesn't mean that "death matters".




You miss the point.  More hit points mean that death is less of a lottery.  If you're effectively playing russian roulette and dying to a single die roll (I suppose it was 2e which introduced the domestic cat, bane of low level wizards) then death is going to be regular and meaningless.  In 4e you do not die to an errant roll and so can trace where things went wrong. 



> You think not having "skills" makes the game into a wargame? There's hundreds of indie roleplaying games that would beg to differ. Again: logical fallacy.




And none of them have a combat system remotely as complex as 1e.  A solid wargame core with no skills is completely different from a system like Dread or 3:16 that is almost statless.  Apples to oranges comparison here.



> You think "powers" give a strong focus on who you are and what you do? Actually, the opposite is true.




I think that selecting your powers encourages you to chose exactly how you approach the world and what you do under stress.  Rather than when the chips are down approaching the world as Sword + Board Fighter #27.  A burly fighter who puts his shield between the enemy and his mates moves differently in 4e from one who mostly wants to  the enemy up - and has different powers.  Powers that reflect and expand on who he is and how he approaches the world.



> Without powers, we need to know _exactly _what you are doing so that we can adjudicate it. With a power, it doesn't matter what your character is _actually doing in the fiction, only what happens on the tabletop: shift 1, deal 2dX damage, fall prone. _
> 
> What happened? Who cares?




Another apples to oranges comparison.  Without powers you can just swing your axe, roll to hit, and roll damage.  "I hit him for 8 damage."  And according to Old Geezer on RPG.net, that was how it was played at Gygax's table.  Narrative isn't enforced by the rules of 1e.  And basic combat is explicitely covered by the rules.

With powers and without narrative in 1e you have next to nothing.  But the 4e system, what happened was that the person using that power moved carefully round their target in a set direction, and hit them hard knocking them to the floor.  Much more interesting than "Chop.  Eight damage."  Which would be the 1e comparison.

And in both games you can bring the chandelier down on people, requiring DM adjudication.  (4e presents better guidelines for the DM to judge what happens when you do, but I digress).



> You need to go back and play 1E AD&D.




I have played 1e AD&D/OSRIC.  The combat system was the most fundamentally disempowering I have ever played as a RPG, and that despite a good DM (hi, S'mon).  (I've had far more disempowering games - I'm talking about the system here).  The combat rules mean that in a high pressure, high lethality situation you get to decide what you are doing _once every minute_.  That's how long a turn is.  You can not adapt to changing situations or exploit openings like that.  And a minute is much too long to describe what you are doing - with swords and spells flying around, what happens in fifteen seconds is IMO far too much.  Even six is pushing it.  Any description you give of what you are doing is either a broad brush, a photo snapshot, or requires massively writing the scene.  And then you only get to make an attack roll once in a minute most of the time - an absurdly long time for things to last.

I prefer T&T bucket of dice approach.  Get the combat out of the way rather than having a lot of rules for it - and rules geared to tabletop wargaming at that.  If you just roll a bucket of dice and say it was a confused skirmish, and here was the outcome, it works.  But plotting out minute-long turns _doesn't_.



> A hack that added roleplaying.




Which left it as a hacked wargame.  This is not to in any way denegrate Gygax or Arneson.  They were doing amazing things with the tools they had available.  But we have better tools now than having to use hacked wargames.

_



			That's
		
Click to expand...


_


> what 1E AD&D eventually became, and a lot of wargamers hated D&D because of the far departure from actual wargaming.




Of course.  They wanted to play wargames, not hacked wargames that were groping towards becoming good roleplaying games.  And D&D was better at what it did than anything that had come before.  We've just learned a lot since then.



> Again, your assumptions are false.




You seriously need to go back and read the rules for 1e AD&D if you want to continue this conversation.  Because right now you aren't talking about 1e, you are talking about P1NBACK D&D - if you weren't you'd know that movement in 1e was in inches.  And Raven Crowking is talking about RCFG v0.1.  This isn't a surprise.  Few people I've spoken to played 1e straight out of the book and for good reason.  But if you want to talk about actual 1e AD&D, claiming that inches weren't the system used merely undermines any credibility you have.

And @Pmerton, I agree completely about combat being values reflected at the sharp end so to speak.  I like the positioning and movement details because the way I look at the world is kinaesthetic and it nails them down - I'm well aware that this is far from universal.  But your choice of approach to high stress and high risk situations is a fundamental reflection of who you are.  And the character powers are how the character naturally approaches the common high stress and high risk situation of combat.


----------



## P1NBACK (May 26, 2011)

Herschel said:


> The system is irrelevent, the player, DM and game are what matters.




Herschel, we're going to have absolutely agree to disagree here. I don't think we have much to talk about if you think system is irrelevant to the outcomes at the table. 

Thanks!


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## Scribble (May 26, 2011)

P1NBACK said:


> Nah, that's not true.
> 
> You need to do something in order to roll damage right? You can't just say, "Ok, I roll damage."
> 
> The GM will look at you like, "Wtf? No. What are you _doing_?"




Entirely depends on the DM, just as it still entirely depends on the DM.

Someone in any edition of the game can just boil things down to: I attack, here's the damage- without ever getting into what he or she did.



> It's different in 4E, where you say, "I'm using Flaming Phoenix of the Iron Tower Spikes Lure..." And, then the GM says, "Oh, ok. Damage?"




Again this entirely depends on the group and the DM.

The DM can say "Oh ok" just as much as the DM can say "Oh ok" in response to "I Attack."

The only difference I see is that powers, like spells before them, now come with convenient flavor attached that you can either accept, and use to your advantage, or change to something that fits what's happening in the game.




> It works without saying, "Yeah... But, what did you _do_?"




So does simply saying I attach, here's the damage. Nothing breaks in the game at all.

I have friends that are like that- as hard as I tried to get them to be more descriptive they boiled everything down to I hit AC Whatever for 10 damage.

Lack of power descriptions doesn't force people to be more descriptive at all. The person wanting to be more descriptive does.



> Even though, when I DM 4E, I always ask, "What happens? How are you doing that?" etc. Unfortunately, it's largely irrelevant to the resolution of said mechanic.




Same is true in every edition. I can ask how are you attacking all I want, but it largely boils down to, roll a d20 add some stuff, try to beat an ac then roll some damage.

If I as a DM WANT to modify the course of the game based on what the player says, that's cool- but the same is true in every edition. 



> I disagree. Components alone tell you something about the fiction occurring. Verbal? You're chanting then yeah? What happens when you're gagged? The rules lead into the fiction. And, vice versa.




Those are all rules questions though. 

If you're gagged you can't use spells that have a verbal component... Just like if you're dazed you can't do actions that require multiple actions.

Fancy words helping to evoke the player's imagination while he or she rolls some dice.



> I'm not saying all 4E rules are like this. I'm saying 4E goes _further _toward the boardgame, disassociated end of the spectrum, where we layer fiction on top of the rules instead of invoking rules because of what's happening in the fiction.




Maybe we play differently. To each his own then man.


----------



## Raven Crowking (May 26, 2011)

Neonchameleon said:


> 1e does use inches as its explicit movement speed - go re-read the movement rules on p101 (at least in my copy of the 1e PHB).  If you're going to cry false, get your facts right.  And why would movement be measured in inches unless you were expected to measure it somehow?





How many times have we been through this already?  

1e uses inches, which mean different things on different scales of conflict, as a holdover from the game's origins.  The distance (1-inch to 10-feet, or 1-inch to 10-yards) is easy enough to translate without a grid, and actually works well for the game's purposes.  

Because 1e mapping also takes place in 10-foot squares, the DM can conveniently count squares when characters are moving down a corridor, and know exactly how far they travel in one turn.

OTOH, from numerous reports of those who played with Mr. Gygax, Gary didn't use minis.  Moreover, examples in 1e do not assume the use of minis, and minis are clearly described as optional.  (Battlesystem is, of course, an exception!)  

This is, of course, directly in contrast to the examples in WotC-D&D.

As you say, get your facts right.


RC


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## P1NBACK (May 26, 2011)

Neonchameleon said:


> 1e does use inches as its explicit movement speed - go re-read the movement rules on p101 (at least in my copy of the 1e PHB).  If you're going to cry false, get your facts right.  And why would movement be measured in inches unless you were expected to measure it somehow?  For in-character adjudication it's a meaningless quantity, but for tabletop + minatures from a wargame it's perfect.  And for anything other than tapemeasures, it's an absurd quantity.  Now I'm well aware that you and almost every other group ditched measuring the inches.  But ditching one of the rules is a house rule rather than the rules of the game.




For one, I never said 1E didn't use inches. I said it didn't use this "system", by which you described it. 

Interesting, considering this quote from the 1E PHB: 

_Movement scale is kept as flexible as possible in order to deal with the
multitude of applications it has,,i.e. dungeon movement (exploring and
otherwise), city travel, treks through the outdoors, and combat situations
arising during the course of any such movements. Your referee will have
information which will enable him or her to adjust the movement rate to
the applicable time scale for any situation._

What's even more interesting is that you are equating "inch" rated movement to "wargaming". 

Guess what: 4E uses inches for movement speed as well as ranges! 

1 square = 1 inch... So... 4E is a _wargame _right? Please say yes, because if you're going to be a hypocrite about that, man, we need to just stop the conversation right now. 

1E breaks movement down on a variety of scales based on indoor/outdoor environments, etc. In order to emphasis the varying locales you'll encounter. 

Your original quote tried implied that the wargaming method of using a tape measure, etc. were employed during all 1E D&D games... Gimme a break, dude. 

This is straight up false equivocation. 



Neonchameleon said:


> You miss the point.  More hit points mean that death is less of a lottery.  If you're effectively playing russian roulette and dying to a single die roll (I suppose it was 2e which introduced the domestic cat, bane of low level wizards) then death is going to be regular and meaningless.  In 4e you do not die to an errant roll and so can trace where things went wrong.




I think you miss the point. Just because death doesn't happen on the 1st hit in 4E, doesn't mean that death is _any _more meaningful for the game. 

1E wasn't about straight up, tactical battles. It was about using strategy, careful planning, and exploration to get the advantage on your foes and be in a situation where you never get hit in the first place. 

A completely different method of play. So, if we're comparing "meaningful" death, then you can't possibly compare it based on _amount of HPs_. Because, despite that, death in 1E and 4E is very much left open to interpretation by the group playing the game. I've ran sandbox 4E games where death came sometimes swift and sometimes often. You know what happened? Death (and more importantly, survival) became _more _meaningful. 

It meant you overcame something. You survived. You made it. Congrats. 

The actual numbers have little to do with it. 



Neonchameleon said:


> And none of them have a combat system remotely as complex as 1e.  A solid wargame core with no skills is completely different from a system like Dread or 3:16 that is almost statless.  Apples to oranges comparison here.




Really? You're going to pick out two games and say that encompasses all indie games? Hilarious. 

Your original point was, 1E doesn't have skills, therefore: wargame. 

Now, it's because 1E's combat is complex. I say again, 4E's combat is robust. Does that mean it's a wargame? 

Let us not forget it uses inches as movement measurement... lol 



Neonchameleon said:


> I think that selecting your powers encourages you to chose *exactly* how you approach the world and what you do under stress.Rather than when the chips are down approaching the world as Sword + Board Fighter #27.  A burly fighter who puts his shield between the enemy and his mates moves differently in 4e from one who mostly wants to  the enemy up - and has different powers.  Powers that reflect and expand on who he is and how he approaches the world.




Wait a minute... So, because my character doesn't have a "power" that says, "You use a shield" that means I can't portray a fighter who uses a shield to protect his allies? 

Wtf? 

How does that make sense _at all_? 

In Basic D&D I can portray both thank you very much, without the need for powers, by simply _doing those things_ in the fiction! I can play a fighter who rushes ahead and "s up the enemy" or I can play a fighter who yanks the wizard behind his shield and defends him. 

I don't need a power to do this. 



Neonchameleon said:


> Another apples to oranges comparison.  Without powers you can just swing your axe, roll to hit, and roll damage.  "I hit him for 8 damage."  And according to Old Geezer on RPG.net, that was how it was played at Gygax's table.  Narrative isn't enforced by the rules of 1e.  And basic combat is explicitely covered by the rules.




Well, for one, "I swing my axe" is a narrative... So, if you are required to say, "I swing my axe" well, that's fiction isn't it? 

"I use Stomping Dragon of the Fiery Helljism..." isn't really fiction is it? 

It's the difference between "I use my shield to block..." vs. "I use AC." 

One references a rule. The other references fiction. Can you tell the difference? 



Neonchameleon said:


> With powers and without narrative in 1e you have next to nothing.  But the 4e system, what happened was that the person using that power moved carefully round their target in a set direction, and hit them hard knocking them to the floor.  Much more interesting than "Chop.  Eight damage."  Which would be the 1e comparison.




Really? That's funny, because in my recent B/X game, we did exactly that. The DM was running Keep on the Borderlands, and we entered a room with a high priest that had platemail and a mace, casting evil spells at us. 

Guess what we did? We carefully maneuvered to get in past his army of zombies, set up a grapple attack and then knocked him down, so that our Fighter could move in and stand over him to keep him down, while me (the Thief) used my blade to cut our Cleric free from a snake that had been summoned by the priest to entangle him. I took my blade and wedged it in and sliced the snake's neck off. Lots of blood, but at least the Cleric was free. 

Wow. I guess "Chop. Eight damage." isn't the only thing you can accomplish in old school D&D (and, we were using B/X! Notorious for being super rules light!). 

I'm not saying you can't do this in 4E. You won't hear me say that. But, in 1E it wasn't an "after the fact" description we added after using Power 319, which knocks target prone, Power 406 that lets you keep them prone, Power 27 that lets you deal 14 damage, etc... 

No, we were immersed in the fiction, and what came about was directly because of the details of what was actually happening. 



Neonchameleon said:


> I have played 1e AD&D/OSRIC.  The combat system was the most fundamentally disempowering I have ever played as a RPG, and that despite a good DM (hi, S'mon).  (I've had far more disempowering games - I'm talking about the system here).  The combat rules mean that in a high pressure, high lethality situation you get to decide what you are doing _once every minute_.  That's how long a turn is.




A round is 1 minute. A segment is 6 seconds... No? 

Again, from the 1E PHB: 

_In adventuring below ground, a turn in the dungeon lasts 10 minutes (see
also MOVEMENT). In combat, the turn is further divided into 10 melee
rounds, or simply rounds. Rounds are subdivided into 10 segments, for
purposes of determining initiative (q.v.) and order of ottocks. Thus o turn is 10 minutes, a round 1 minute, and a segment 6 seconds._

Usually, what you are doing falls within the segment time frame, based on initiative. 

Not to mention, in B/X, a turn was 10 seconds... Not much closer to 1 minute. 

From the Moldvay Basic book: 

_TIME: Time in D&D adventures is given in turns of ten minutes each. A turn is not a measure of real time, but is a measure of how much a character can do within a given time frame. A character may explore and map an area equal to his or her movement rate in one turn. 

MOVEMENT: In the D&D, rules movement is given in the number of feet a character may move in one turn. All characters are able to move 120' or feet in one turn when exploring a dungeon. 

SCALE MOVEMENT: *If miniatures figures are used*, the actual movement of the characters can be represented at the scale of one inch equals ten feet. 

TIME IN ENCOUNTERS: "Normal" time in D&D games is measured in turns of 10 minutes each. ... Time in encounters is measured in *rounds *of 10 seconds each. 

_You are making some serious exaggerations here. 



Neonchameleon said:


> You can not adapt to changing situations or exploit openings like that.




I can't? Wow. See my example above. I'd say that was all about adapting to changing situations... 



Neonchameleon said:


> And a minute is much too long to describe what you are doing - with swords and spells flying around, what happens in fifteen seconds is IMO far too much.  Even six is pushing it.  Any description you give of what you are doing is either a broad brush, a photo snapshot, or requires massively writing the scene.  And then you only get to make an attack roll once in a minute most of the time - an absurdly long time for things to last.




See above. 



Neonchameleon said:


> I prefer T&T bucket of dice approach.  Get the combat out of the way rather than having a lot of rules for it - and rules geared to tabletop wargaming at that.  If you just roll a bucket of dice and say it was a confused skirmish, and here was the outcome, it works.  But plotting out minute-long turns _doesn't_.




Again, see above. Lots of misinformation here. 



Neonchameleon said:


> Which left it as a hacked wargame.  This is not to in any way denegrate Gygax or Arneson.  They were doing amazing things with the tools they had available.  But we have better tools now than having to use hacked wargames.




Better tools? You mean like 4E's inch-based, miniature required tactical combat system? 

Hmmm.... 



Neonchameleon said:


> Of course.  They wanted to play wargames, not hacked wargames that were groping towards becoming good roleplaying games.  And D&D was better at what it did than anything that had come before.  We've just learned a lot since then.




"Good" of course is a subjective matter. And, I'd never say that B/X, BECMI, 1E, 2E, 3E, etc... don't have their faults. They do. 

But, they were all damned good RPGs. 

And, 4E is _too_. 

But, this thread is about a _specific fault_ of 4E. Something that we can look back at older editions and see what went wrong. 



Neonchameleon said:


> You seriously need to go back and read the rules for 1e AD&D if you want to continue this conversation.




I'd never say I knew all the rules 100% by memory. But, I think I have a decent grasp. But, how about taking a bit of your own advice here?


----------



## P1NBACK (May 26, 2011)

Scribble said:


> Entirely depends on the DM, just as it still entirely depends on the DM.
> 
> Someone in any edition of the game can just boil things down to: I attack, here's the damage- without ever getting into what he or she did.




How is that possibly true? You need to know how you are attacking to determine damage die, no? You can't just say, "I attack" without some sort of description, like, "with my axe..." and get a damage result. 



Scribble said:


> Again this entirely depends on the group and the DM.
> 
> The DM can say "Oh ok" just as much as the DM can say "Oh ok" in response to "I Attack."




Not true. See above. The DM needs that information in order to resolve the attack. "How are you attacking? Are you using your axe, or your bow?" 

It's necessarily information to resolve the attack. 



Scribble said:


> The only difference I see is that powers, like spells before them, now come with convenient flavor attached that you can either accept, and use to your advantage, or change to something that fits what's happening in the game.




Yup. Exactly. It's completely disassociated from what you are actually doing. 



Scribble said:


> So does simply saying I attach, here's the damage. Nothing breaks in the game at all.




If you have all the necessary information, "I attack with my sword." Sure. That's fiction though, right? Then we go to rules... "Roll d20. Roll for damage." 

4E can occur like this: "Footwork Lure, Roll d20, Slide 1, Roll for damage." Success! "Oh, cool, I attack him with my sword and he falls forward." 

Or, it can be any other description you want to make up. "Oh, I swing my sword in the air and it creates a whirlwind that blows the guy toward me and I slap him in the face with my sword blade..." 

It doesn't really matter what you say, does it? 



Scribble said:


> I have friends that are like that- as hard as I tried to get them to be more descriptive they boiled everything down to I hit AC Whatever for 10 damage.
> 
> Lack of power descriptions doesn't force people to be more descriptive at all. The person wanting to be more descriptive does.




There's a difference between ignoring the fiction, and not requiring the fiction. 

If someone says, "I hit AC. I do 10 damage." I'm going to say, "Huh?" Because it makes no sense. Did you attack with your axe? Or, did you use a dagger? 

"I attack with my axe" is sufficient. But, "AC, hit. 10 damage" is not. How do we know to apply 10 damage? Where did that come from? 

What may be happening there is, a lack of communication. Clearly, the player is drawing the 10 damage and attack vs. AC from somewhere? Right? 

It's like someone saying, "Dungeoneering. Success." 

How do you adjudicate that? What were they trying to do? You simply can't. You need the fiction to resolve it. 



Scribble said:


> Same is true in every edition. I can ask how are you attacking all I want, but it largely boils down to, roll a d20 add some stuff, try to beat an ac then roll some damage.




You keep saying this. My response is, no you need details to determine d20 bonuses, damage type, etc. 

If I'm using my +1 sword, that is going to make a difference on my attack. If I'm using my dagger, that'll make a difference in damage. 



Scribble said:


> If I as a DM WANT to modify the course of the game based on what the player says, that's cool- but the same is true in every edition.




That's not entirely true. If the player says, "I swing at him with my sword!" 

You can't say, "Uh, no. I'm modifying that. Use your dagger instead." 

Well, maybe you can, but my players wouldn't have it.  



Scribble said:


> If you're gagged you can't use spells that have a verbal component... Just like if you're dazed you can't do actions that require multiple actions.




Yup. Agreed. I never said all the rules of 4E are disassociated. Being "dazed" has particular fictional weight to it. You can't _do _anything. That's certainly fictional. 



Scribble said:


> Fancy words helping to evoke the player's imagination while he or she rolls some dice.
> 
> Maybe we play differently. To each his own then man.




You don't need "fancy words" for fiction. You just need to know what's happening. 

"I swing my axe." Is as simple as it goes. But, guess what? It's fiction. And, now we know what rules to apply: d20 attack, using axe damage dice.

By contrast:

"I use Butt Fandom Squeamish Fiery Death!" Cool: d20 attack, axe damage, knock prone, poison ongoing 5. 

See? What happened? 

Who knows? We don't need to know. Everything is in the real world on dice, minis, character sheets, etc.

_Edited to add: Actually, that's not entirely true. We know an axe was involved. I would say, "And, a guy is lying on the ground." But, apparently in 4E (according to many members of this board), "Prone" is not a fictional thing - it's simply a mechanical condition. It doesn't inform us about what actually happened, but what "state" (combat advantage, etc.) the target is in.  I disagree of course, especially since they errated the condition to say, "_When a creature is prone, it is lying down."


----------



## Herschel (May 26, 2011)

P1NBACK said:


> Herschel, we're going to have absolutely agree to disagree here. I don't think we have much to talk about if you think system is irrelevant to the outcomes at the table.
> 
> Thanks!




You get out of the game what you put in to the game regardless of the system or game.


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## P1NBACK (May 26, 2011)

Herschel said:


> You get out of the game what you put in to the game regardless of the system or game. You have a bias you're trying to "prove" with complete fallacy, period. Go back the the 3E forum where others share your like-minded, edition-warring ignorance.




I'm not edition-warring. And, I haven't played 3E in years... lol. 

You're being angsty and combative. It's all good dude. Go back and read my post 1 or 2 up about how I think pretty much all the editions are awesome RPGs with faults and goodness all their own. 

That's by definition the opposite of "edition-warring ignorance". 

But, if that's how you want to paint people who disagree with you, so be it. I think we're done.  

Cheers.


----------



## Herschel (May 26, 2011)

Cut the PA bullcrap and man up. Your bias is not fact, period. You get out of a game what you put in to it, just like everything else in life. If you have a bad attitude about it or are apathetic about it, then that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy but for you and you alone. That's the whole point. Your experience does not mean the game is wrong, it means you're playing it in a way not consistent with the way others are. That would be fine except you claim that your feeling is universal in its direction which it quite clearly is not.


----------



## P1NBACK (May 26, 2011)

Just to clarify: I am not "anti-4E". I'm here checking up on, discussing the game because I dig a lot of things 4E brought to the table (pun intended). I play in a bi-weekly 4E campaign, I've ran numerous 4E campaigns, and I'm a current D&D Insider subscriber (I think that's just about the most "fanlike" you can become, subscribing to the poor quality of D&DI [it has potential I tell ya!]). 

However, I am criticizing what I see as faults in 4E's core design ethos. I'm not saying "you can't roleplay 4E" or any of that diatribe. I'm saying, "some mechanics in 4E are antithetical to inspiring creative and imaginative gameplay, which I feel is one of the most powerful aspects of tabletop roleplaying games." 

That's a far cry from what I gather some of you are interpreting my posts as. 

It's all good. There's a ton of baggage in this forum. I get it. And, I'll politely refrain from further discussion as to omit this perception of "edition-warring". 

I'll take my observations, opinions, thoughts, ideas, etc. elsewhere, dudes! 

Thanks for the insightful discussion, particularly, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION], [MENTION=23977]Scribble[/MENTION], [MENTION=18280]Raven Crowking[/MENTION], [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION] (despite our ardent disagreements), etc.


----------



## Neonchameleon (May 26, 2011)

P1NBACK said:


> Herschel, we're going to have absolutely agree to disagree here. I don't think we have much to talk about if you think system is irrelevant to the outcomes at the table.




For once we agree.



P1NBACK said:


> Nah, that's not true.
> 
> You need to do something in order to roll damage right? You can't just say, "Ok, I roll damage."
> 
> The GM will look at you like, "Wtf? No. What are you _doing_?"




Of course the GM will.  That's because you haven't rolled to _hit_ first.  "I attack him, hitting AC -3.  Five damage."  Works.



> Even though, when I DM 4E, I always ask, "What happens? How are you doing that?" etc. Unfortunately, it's largely irrelevant to the resolution of said mechanic.




Just like any description at all of what you do with your weapons in 1E unless you are attacking something that isn't the enemy.  4e has, however, some of the description baked into the rules.



> I disagree. Components alone tell you something about the fiction occurring. Verbal? You're chanting then yeah? What happens when you're gagged? The rules lead into the fiction. And, vice versa.




Oh, they do.  (I just wish they weren't terrible puns).  But why on earth do you claim that little details like components tell you something about the fiction occurring when you seem to think that large details like where someone moves, how they move (a casual or fast move is different from the more careful shift is different again from flying and is different again from teleporting), whether they push someone back or knock them over, and much much more _doesn't?_

And for that matter components don't say much about who the person using them is (with the exceptions of ones like brain of infant).  The difference between a puff of sand to put someone to sleep and a tin piece to give them a penny for their thoughts (not the exact components but certainly in the spirit) isn't more than a curlicue.  On the other hand where someone is and how they move says a lot about their character in ways that following a preset recipie from a recipie book does not.  I don't care whether the recipie calls for feather of duck or eye of newt - it's just a recipie I'm following.  And whether spells have verbal or somatic portions is simply binary and is just part of the recipie.  It's something to interact with but says very little about the person following the recipie.



Raven Crowking said:


> OTOH, from numerous reports of those who played with Mr. Gygax, Gary didn't use minis.




Believe it or not, most of the time Gary Gygax didn't play by the book 1e AD&D.  He played what he chose to at the time and what he wrote down was only a loose approximation of what he played (or in some cases explicitely conflicted with it).



> Moreover, examples in 1e do not assume the use of minis,




And this is actually a good point.


----------



## Scribble (May 26, 2011)

P1NBACK said:


> How is that possibly true? You need to know how you are attacking to determine damage die, no? You can't just say, "I attack" without some sort of description, like, "with my axe..." and get a damage result.
> 
> Not true. See above. The DM needs that information in order to resolve the attack. "How are you attacking? Are you using your axe, or your bow?"
> 
> It's necessarily information to resolve the attack.




Sure... I still fail to see the difference you're making here. 

I attack with a sword is no different then I attack with Phoenix blast.



> Yup. Exactly. It's completely disassociated from what you are actually doing.




Again only if YOU want it to be.  



> If you have all the necessary information, "I attack with my sword." Sure. That's fiction though, right? Then we go to rules... "Roll d20. Roll for damage."
> 
> 4E can occur like this: "Footwork Lure, Roll d20, Slide 1, Roll for damage." Success! "Oh, cool, I attack him with my sword and he falls forward."
> 
> ...




Just like I could say I dive forward desperately swinging my sword in a graceful arc toward his chest... Which ultimately boils down to rolling  ad20- it doesn't matter what you say.



> There's a difference between ignoring the fiction, and not requiring the fiction.
> 
> If someone says, "I hit AC. I do 10 damage." I'm going to say, "Huh?" Because it makes no sense. Did you attack with your axe? Or, did you use a dagger?
> 
> ...




Right- the player has done damage. That's the only important part for resolving the action.

Axe or Sword, or Dagger are just variable names. 

We could just as easily say I attack with my blazing huffelsnuff for 10 damage, and it would mean the exact same thing.



> It's like someone saying, "Dungeoneering. Success."
> 
> How do you adjudicate that? What were they trying to do? You simply can't. You need the fiction to resolve it.




What's happening is you seem to be conflating something the system NEEDs with something that helps make it enjoyable to some players.

The system doesn't NEED fiction to resolve anything. That's done through math. 

Fiction leads to more enjoyment from some, (most?) players.

For some it's more fun to describe every detail of the dungeoneering check. For others, they just want to know the number they need to roll.

Luckily the system can handle both.



> You keep saying this. My response is, no you need details to determine d20 bonuses, damage type, etc.




But those details come from the rules, not the fiction. 



> If I'm using my +1 sword, that is going to make a difference on my attack. If I'm using my dagger, that'll make a difference in damage.




Again variable names the system uses.

There is nothing inherently d6ish or d8ish about a sword that the fact that I'm using one with my character implies I should roll a d6. 






> You don't need "fancy words" for fiction. You just need to know what's happening.
> 
> "I swing my axe." Is as simple as it goes. But, guess what? It's fiction. And, now we know what rules to apply: d20 attack, using axe damage dice.
> 
> ...


----------



## Herschel (May 26, 2011)

If you feel that having a lot of the tricks codified for you ahead of time limits your creativity then it generally means either:

A: The powers encompass enough of what you want to do you don't need to look elsewhere. That's good game design. 
or 
B: You don't have the creative desire and/or capacity to look beyond what's on the page. 

That's not a system flaw, that's a personally chosen interaction with the game.


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## Matt James (May 26, 2011)

Herschel said:


> If you feel that having a lot of the tricks codified for you ahead of time limits your creativity then it generally means either:
> 
> A: The powers encompass enough of what you want to do you don't need to look elsewhere. That's good game design.
> or
> ...




Can't give Herschel XP. +1 buddy.


----------



## P1NBACK (May 26, 2011)

Scribble said:


> Stuff.




Scribble, we'll just need to discuss it over beer sometime, in person.  Maybe over a game. 

Thanks for the thoughts.


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## P1NBACK (May 26, 2011)

Herschel said:


> If you feel that having a lot of the tricks codified for you ahead of time limits your creativity then it generally means either:
> 
> A: The powers encompass enough of what you want to do you don't need to look elsewhere. That's good game design.
> or
> ...




Awesome. That's not the argument I'm making, though.  

Cheers.


----------



## Scribble (May 26, 2011)

P1NBACK said:


> Scribble, we'll just need to discuss it over beer sometime, in person.  Maybe over a game.
> 
> Thanks for the thoughts.




Anytime man!  I don't make this stuff personal I just like to debate.


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## P1NBACK (May 26, 2011)

Scribble said:


> Anytime man!  I don't make this stuff personal I just like to debate.




Definitely! I'm just getting bad vibes from certain peeps (not you). No need to perpetuate that stuff.  

I think you're on my Xbox Live account, actually. We'll talk during a game sometime if I see you on.


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## Neonchameleon (May 26, 2011)

Herschel said:


> If you feel that having a lot of the tricks codified for you ahead of time limits your creativity then it generally means either:
> 
> A: The powers encompass enough of what you want to do you don't need to look elsewhere. That's good game design.
> or
> ...




Alternatively C: The system is too big and bulky to tweak.  I'd hate to add a new weapon to Rolemaster for example.


----------



## Neonchameleon (May 26, 2011)

P1NBACK said:


> Definitely! I'm just getting bad vibes from certain peeps (not you). No need to perpetuate that stuff.
> 
> I think you're on my Xbox Live account, actually. We'll talk during a game sometime if I see you on.



Sorry if I've been a bit hard.  I often am and it's not intended to be personal.


----------



## P1NBACK (May 26, 2011)

Neonchameleon said:


> Sorry if I've been a bit hard.  I often am and it's not intended to be personal.




No, you're good man. 

We got heated, and I had my part in that too, but you kept it to debate instead of personal attacks, insults and inflammatory accusations.


----------



## Herschel (May 26, 2011)

Neonchameleon said:


> Alternatively C: The system is too big and bulky to tweak. I'd hate to add a new weapon to Rolemaster for example.




Oh no you didn't. You did NOT just bust on the all-mighty Chartmaster! 

4E isn't that big and bulky. Then again, I think RAW is an absolutely STUPID acronym and term because it's complete nonsense. EVERYTHING can be interpreted, just look at any Supreme Court decision. That's why I don't worry about it. I never let the overall rule structure get in the way of fun in any edition.


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## Raven Crowking (May 26, 2011)

Herschel said:


> Cut the PA bullcrap and man up. Your bias is not fact, period. You get out of a game what you put in to it, just like everything else in life. If you have a bad attitude about it or are apathetic about it, then that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy but for you and you alone. That's the whole point. Your experience does not mean the game is wrong, it means you're playing it in a way not consistent with the way others are. That would be fine except you claim that your feeling is universal in its direction which it quite clearly is not.




That is true, but it is hardly the whole truth.  If it was the whole truth, no one would ever spend the money on new systems.  Again, Monopoly is cheaper, and comes with minis.

Yes, what you put into it matters.  But so does system.


RC


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## Imaro (May 26, 2011)

Herschel said:


> If you feel that having a lot of the tricks codified for you ahead of time limits your creativity then it generally means either:
> 
> A: The powers encompass enough of what you want to do you don't need to look elsewhere. That's good game design.
> or
> ...




Or...

D. It's the most tactically sound (though not necessarily the most interesting or exciting narratively) action available.  Especially in an rpg where tactical combat has become front and center and group dependencies and interactions are stressed.


----------



## Herschel (May 26, 2011)

Imaro said:


> Or...
> 
> *...and group dependencies and interactions are stressed*.




Emphasis mine, but you said it. Group dependencies and interactions are STRESSED. In other words, it's designed to have you work WITH other players. That isn't a barrier to role playing, that's an incentive. 

That you feel tactical combat is "front & center" is not accurate from a game standpoint, only a rules standpoint. They specifically and intentionally left the non-combat skills more open in order to facilitate flexibility, creativity and open interaction.


----------



## Imaro (May 26, 2011)

Herschel said:


> Emphasis mine, but you said it. Group dependencies and interactions are STRESSED. In other words, it's designed to have you work WITH other players. That isn't a barrier to role playing, that's an incentive.




Not when it's based around interacting with them on an optimal tactical level as opossed to an organic or narrative level. 



Herschel said:


> That you feel tactical combat is "front & center" is not accurate from a game standpoint, only a rules standpoint. They specifically and intentionally left the non-combat skills more open in order to facilitate flexibility, creativity and open interaction.




I think you misunderstood me, I don't mean tactical combat is front and center to everything else in 4e... I meant it is the type of combat (and I suppose gamist would be a better way to characterize it) that is front and center to 4e as opposed to something like LoA (Fate) or PDQ that is narrative based or Runequest which has a more simulationist leanings in combat. this in turn means that if a decision is not tactically sound in regards tothe game rules you and your group are more likely to be punished for making it.

As far as the other things you commented on such as skills... that's a whol other topic that would be better to address seperately to keep my posts clear.


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## LostSoul (May 26, 2011)

Balesir said:


> The more I think about this I think it boils down to "at what level?"  I think *pemerton* makes some good points, here - the difference between wanting to know that a character tries to physically harm another creature and wanting to know the angle of the sword cut they make, the bodily manoeuvre used and the justification of any and all subsequent effects is one of _degree_, not fundamental _quality_.  Is it sufficient to know simply that the character is good at this stuff and, depending to some extent on chance, may get certain results from doing it - or do we need to know how and why they achieve these results in detail?  And, if the latter, what specific detail, exactly?  In the former, aspects of the setting - that this sort of result is possible, that the situation is suitable to achieve such a result and that this character is good at getting these results, for example - _are_ important.  The only difference, perhaps, is that it is the player's decisions of character intent, rather than their justification of their desired result, that has effect.




That is food for thought!  I think you and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] are right - it is a matter of degrees.  I don't care about how much and what kind of food or drink a PC consumed before the fight, even though I know that would have an effect on its outcome.  (I might add a -2 penalty if the character is drunk, but that's about it.)  Thinking about it, that fine detail of actions is a personal preference of mine; it's probably why I've always preferred Palladium Fantasy's combat system over D&D's.  (Yes, seriously!  )

I think I might have to change my point of view that focus on the real-world things at the table - the battlemat, the minis - takes away from focus on the fictional details; those are representations of the fiction, in as much detail as most people want.  I just want more!

Here's an example of a combat from Tuesday in my hacked system:

[sblock=Hacked]Example:  Playing on Tuesday.  The PCs are in "Stormwatch"1, which is a city made of huge towers built into a basalt cliff face.  The PCs are crossing an open-air bridge on the third level, 120 feet or so above the ground, with no railings2.

Dhalia Doomfey, an emaciated Fighter/Warlock in the AD&D multiclass style, was alerted to danger on the bridge thanks to her almost-supernatural martial awareness3.  The other PC, Kronos the Exsanguinator, opened the far door using _Mage Hand_.  Dhalia threw a grappling hook into the far room, catching hold of the door, and the two carefully crossed.

Suddenly a grappling hook appeared from out of nowhere and latched onto Kronos4.  A leather-clad woman was hanging onto the side of the tower using some kind of magic.  She yanked and tugged on the rope, dragging Kronos off the bridge, but the wily mage held fast onto Dhalia's rope and used it to swing onto a bridge beneath them.  As Kronos fell, Dhalia grabbed onto the NPC's rope, braced herself, and pulled with all the might her _Gauntlets of Ogre Power_ could give.  The NPC came tumbling from the wall5.

As Kronos ran to get back into the fight, the NPC drew her blade defensively and rose, then leapt off the bridge to the tower wall, where her _Spider Climb_ spell would allow her to latch on.  Dhalia grabbed her sword hand before she could slip away and followed up with a knee to her chest, pinning the would-be assassin - half-off the bridge, one hand on the tower wall, her sword hand in Dhalia's crushing grip.6

Dhalia forced the NPC's sword to her throat while calling for her surrender, but the NPC was saved by her leather armour7.  The NPC whispered a _Sleep_ spell but Dhalia easily resisted.

1 - Stormwatch was an established city name in the campaign, but I am using Vornheim for it.
2 - I didn't know from the map of the tower if the bridge had a railing, so I rolled 1d6 to determine how much.  I got a 1 - no railing.
3 - The _Invisible_ NPC rolled a check to hide, but didn't hit Dhalia's passive score - 10 + 1/2 level + stat + skill, _Martial Awareness_ the skill in this case.  Dhalia could not actually see her, but I said, "The hairs on your neck stand up; there's danger out there."  This is a feat that would not have been possible at Heroic tier - she would have needed to look out and around - but Dhalia is a Paragon tier character and is almost supernatural.
4 - The NPC made a check (level + 3) against Kronos' Ref defence and succeeded.
5 - The NPC made a check (level + 3) against Kronos' Fort, succeeded; Kronos didn't need to roll anything, because his action - swinging down - wasn't opposed; Dhalia made a check (1/2 level + Str mod + her _Gauntlets of Ogre Power_ skill + a bonus for bracing herself) against the NPC's Fort - with a bonus for _Spider Climb_ - and succeeded.
6 - The NPC took a defensive action - drawing her sword and leaping away, which netted her a +4 bonus to her Fort defence; Dhalia made the same check as above, this time with a +2 because the NPC was on the ground and a +2 because this action built directly off her previous action.  Dhalia succeeded easily.
7 - This time Dhalia's bonus for building off previous actions was +4.[/sblock]

Here's the same thing, but in 4E's general rules:

[sblock=Regular 4E]I draw the map and tell players that it's 120' to the ground.  I make the Stealth check for the NPC against the Passive Perception, and fail.  The PCs notice the invisible NPC.

The NPC wins Init and throws the grappling hook, for which she has a special power - Ranged 5, Level + 3 vs. Fort, Hit: 1d6+4 damage, Pull 3 and Grabbed.  She hits.  Kronos is Pulled, but makes his hazardous terrain saving throw to avoid falling.

Dhalia grabs the rope and attempts to pull the NPC adjacent to her using an action the rules don't cover; I cast the attack as a check, saying it does no damage but instead Pull 5 and Prone.  Dhalia attacks using Str vs. Will (because of the Spider Climb) and succeeds.

Kronos drops down to the next level using their rope.

The NPC rises from Prone and Climbs away, triggering an AoO.  Dhalia misses, then moves adjacent to the NPC and Grabs her.

The NPC casts Sleep and misses; Dhalia takes an AoO and misses.  Dhalia makes an Intimidate check calling for her surrender and as DM I make a judgement call that, even though the NPC isn't Bloodied, she will surrender on a successful roll.  Dhalia succeeds.[/sblock]

I can see how the rules - positioning, terrain, spells cast, the ropes, the powers, actions taken - are all part of the fiction in 4E; what they are missing from my hack are those fine details.  How does Dhalia notice the invisible NPC?  How does Kronos save from falling off the bridge?  How does Dhalia Grab the NPC?  What is she doing when she takes her AoO?  I really want those fine details!



Balesir said:


> Heh - good point!  I should have said "all of them", maybe...
> 
> Basically, I enjoy both games where the action is described in a very general, abstract way (with the in-game outcome described in an arbitrary manner post-facto) and games where the action is detailed down to the intended sword cut angle (Riddle of Steel, anyone?) before the outcome is determined.
> 
> I also enjoy both games where the rules define the world-setting "physics" for both the GM and the players, with GM discretion dialled to a minimum and tactical competition to the fore, and games of collaborative world-building, where the world "physics" is defined by mutually agreed aesthetics, subject only to consistency with what has been settled upon before, during play.




I tend not to enjoy games where the _in-game outcome_ of an action doesn't have an influence on resolution of any future actions.  If I use my spear to push back a kobold with a rusty dagger, and the fact that I pushed him back and should have some kind of reach advantage doesn't change future resolution, I stop describing what I'm doing in-game.


----------



## pemerton (May 26, 2011)

LostSoul, I think your description of the 4e variant is, perhaps, a little sparse - because of your footnotes in your first description, it's a bit hard to tell how much of the original narative is essential to the resolution and how much colour - for example, why does Martial Awareness cause the hairs to rise on the back of the neck when a successful roll is made, but Passive Perception not? And presumably the grappling hook can appear out of nowhere, Kronos be a wily mage and so on in regular 4e. The spider climb would also give a bonus to resist being pulled off the wall in 4e, because it would mean that the climbing target doesn't grant combat advantage.

The main thing that I can see in your hack description that clearly wouldn't come into play in regular 4e would be the description of the grabbing of the sword hand.

I also agree with your comment about earlier outcomes affecting subsequent resolutions - in 4e this tends to be confined to the imposition of conditions or to the resolution of forced movement, which is not all that fine grained.


----------



## pemerton (May 26, 2011)

P1NBACK, I don't think you're edition warring but I do disagree with some of your characterisation of 4e.



P1NBACK said:


> How is that possibly true? You need to know how you are attacking to determine damage die, no? You can't just say, "I attack" without some sort of description, like, "with my axe..." and get a damage result.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ...





P1NBACK said:


> "I swing my axe" is a narrative... So, if you are required to say, "I swing my axe" well, that's fiction isn't it?



4e requires the same amount of fiction. No fighter power, for example, can be used without specifying the weapon used to execute the power. So your Footwork Lure example isn't entirely accurate.

Of course, in practice in AD&D I think that if everyone knows the fighter uses a two-handed sword the weapon description might not be reiterated every time. Likewise in 4e.

Also, the description of the Fireball spell in Moldvay Basic is almost identical to 4e - it simply gives the spell name, and states that creatures in a certain radius take a certain amount of damage from a missile of fire that explodes into a sphere of fire. 4e reformats that description. If it was obvious to everyone playing Moldvay Basic what, in the fiction, casting fireball involved - and that it might set fire to books even though nowhere is that hinted at except in the description of the spell as a Fireball - then I don't see why 4e should be expected to produce a different result.


----------



## pemerton (May 26, 2011)

Imaro said:


> It's the most tactically sound (though not necessarily the most interesting or exciting narratively) action available.





Imaro said:


> Not when it's based around interacting with them on an optimal tactical level as opossed to an organic or narrative level.



What I feel is missing here, based on my own experience, is that unlike many combat-focused fantasy RPGs 4e allows the player to signficiantly dictate _tactical soundness_ by choices made both in PC building and in play, with the result that the play of combat can be very expressive of the character of the PC.

If others find it _more_ constraining in this respect than in other versions of D&D or other classic fanatsy RPGs, that's quite interesting, and quite a different experience from mine.


----------



## Imaro (May 26, 2011)

pemerton said:


> What I feel is missing here, based on my own experience, is that unlike many combat-focused fantasy RPGs 4e allows the player to signficiantly dictate _tactical soundness_ by choices made both in PC building and in play, with the result that the play of combat can be very expressive of the character of the PC.




Before I comment on this I want to make sure I understand you properly. When you make the claim that play of combat can be very expressive of the character could you please give an example of this? 



pemerton said:


> If others find it _more_ constraining in this respect than in other versions of D&D or other classic fanatsy RPGs, that's quite interesting, and quite a different experience from mine.




I've found it more constraining in the sense that character's actions tend to affect the group as a whole in 4e more than they seemed to in 3.x and thus doing something sub-optimal... even if it is expressive of the character... is more likely to hurt not just you, but the group as well, and the other players aren't usually too forgiving of this.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred (May 27, 2011)

LostSoul said:


> I tend not to enjoy games where the _in-game outcome_ of an action doesn't have an influence on resolution of any future actions.  If I use my spear to push back a kobold with a rusty dagger, and the fact that I pushed him back and should have some kind of reach advantage doesn't change future resolution, I stop describing what I'm doing in-game.




Yet 4e is blessed with an excellent system in this regard, almost too good. 

However I'd just like to point out one thing. RPGs are fairly abstract. Remember the post about the guy with all the detailed rules for fighting with greatswords, only to find out when he talked to someone knowledgeable on the subject that his theories were simply wrong. Likewise, who's to say that jabbing your spear at a Kobold is going to prove advantageous? A lot of things could happen. A character who's a real expert on using a spear (Maybe Using say Polearm Momentum to depict this) might well be expert enough to guarantee the result you describe. Other characters? Not so much. For instance what stops the player of the Kobold (the DM presumably) from describing his action as grabbing your spear and moving inside your reach to gut you with a nasty uppercut?

Nor does it seem to me that using powers precludes or inhibits one from using them in creative ways. It seems to me that the powers simply give you a baseline of things the player understands his character is good at. He can still undertake other actions. I'd also say that hit points are a big thing here. The example of grabbing your opponent's sword arm illustrates this. You're simply not going to neutralize a skilled and determined (IE non-minion opponent with substantial hit points) THAT easily. Again, the DM would be perfectly reasonable to describe the response "Your opponent skillfully shifts the sword to her other hand, jabbing at your face!"

I'm coming to understand that people have certain ideas about the style of description being used at a table. Yes, it is more colorful to describe your attacks in detail. In a sense this comes back to the earlier "immersion" thing. Colorful descriptive language is not RP. Ryan's actors can no more improve a bad plot than a player describing a creative use of his sword is RPing his character better than the player of the other character who's dwarf unleashes a daily because he hates orcs even if it isn't the most clever thing he could do.

Mostly I just don't see this hypothesized decoupling thing at all. That gets really at the heart of LostSoul's position. I guess we probably talked this through a few threads ago though  

Anyway, carry on...


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## LostSoul (May 27, 2011)

pemerton said:


> LostSoul, I think your description of the 4e variant is, perhaps, a little sparse - because of your footnotes in your first description, it's a bit hard to tell how much of the original narative is essential to the resolution and how much colour - for example, why does Martial Awareness cause the hairs to rise on the back of the neck when a successful roll is made, but Passive Perception not? And presumably the grappling hook can appear out of nowhere, Kronos be a wily mage and so on in regular 4e. The spider climb would also give a bonus to resist being pulled off the wall in 4e, because it would mean that the climbing target doesn't grant combat advantage.
> 
> The main thing that I can see in your hack description that clearly wouldn't come into play in regular 4e would be the description of the grabbing of the sword hand.




The narrative is important to resolution because it determines stats used, modifiers, the DC rolled against, and what happens as a result of success.  None of that is pre-set, it's all determined by the description of the action.  Powers tend to do what they do but the description of the action is important because it can net you modifiers to that roll and future ones, in addition to changing the fictional situation, allowing you to do something you may not have been able to before.  

Narration isn't exactly _essential_, you can still just say "I attack" and we're good to go.  Since it's a challenge-based game, smart play requires describing what you're doing and taking advantage of the details of the game world.

In 4E the situation would have played out generally the same, but I think that, for me, the picture in my head of what was going on wouldn't be as vivid.

Martial Awareness is used over a general Perception skill because there's no general Perception skill.  It adds a little colour to what's going on.  Martial Awareness is both narrower and broader than Perception; you couldn't use it to catch the card-shark sneaking an ace from his sleeve, since it doesn't have to do with danger and violence, but you can use it for Insight-related tasks, such as realizing that someone is planning to stab you in the face.  Someone with the background skill "Gambler" would be able to spot that card, but not have a clue that someone's lurking in ambush, and would probably know when a card game is going to turn ugly.

Um... so!  The colour is important to resolution because without the colour of Martial Awareness I don't know if there's a conflict or not.



pemerton said:


> I also agree with your comment about earlier outcomes affecting subsequent resolutions - in 4e this tends to be confined to the imposition of conditions or to the resolution of forced movement, which is not all that fine grained.




Agreed.


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## LostSoul (May 27, 2011)

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Yet 4e is blessed with an excellent system in this regard, almost too good.




Yes, very much so!



AbdulAlhazred said:


> However I'd just like to point out one thing. RPGs are fairly abstract. Remember the post about the guy with all the detailed rules for fighting with greatswords, only to find out when he talked to someone knowledgeable on the subject that his theories were simply wrong. Likewise, who's to say that jabbing your spear at a Kobold is going to prove advantageous? A lot of things could happen. A character who's a real expert on using a spear (Maybe Using say Polearm Momentum to depict this) might well be expert enough to guarantee the result you describe. Other characters? Not so much. For instance what stops the player of the Kobold (the DM presumably) from describing his action as grabbing your spear and moving inside your reach to gut you with a nasty uppercut?




Somewhere upthread I mentioned something about aesthetic preferences.  I think this is where the come into play.  Maybe you want hyper-realism; maybe you want more of a swords & sorcery vibe, or a high-fantasy one.  That preference should determine if poking the spear at the kobold is advantageous or not.

It's possible that poking the spear could be a bad move!  Kobolds are shifty, so he takes advantage of your reach and slides in and stabs you in the gut!  +2 to his attack roll.

I think in D&D the DM is in the best position to make this call, but that's only for a specific style of play.  There are other ways to determine if that kobold should get an advantage or not - in FATE, he could use his Shifty trait for a +2 bonus; the DM doesn't have to be the one who makes the judgement call there.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> Nor does it seem to me that using powers precludes or inhibits one from using them in creative ways. It seems to me that the powers simply give you a baseline of things the player understands his character is good at. He can still undertake other actions. I'd also say that hit points are a big thing here. The example of grabbing your opponent's sword arm illustrates this. You're simply not going to neutralize a skilled and determined (IE non-minion opponent with substantial hit points) THAT easily. Again, the DM would be perfectly reasonable to describe the response "Your opponent skillfully shifts the sword to her other hand, jabbing at your face!"




Definitely not!  

What happened was that the NPC spent that round casting _Sleep_ and Dhalia spent that round forcing the NPC's sword hand to her throat; even though she missed, in my judgement as DM I don't think swapping hands would have been possible because of the position of the sword after Dhalia's action.  (Even if the NPC had a hand free - one hand was stuck via _Spider Climb_ to the tower wall so she wouldn't fall to her death.  Oh yeah, and casting spells doesn't require gestures, though sometimes they help.)



AbdulAlhazred said:


> I'm coming to understand that people have certain ideas about the style of description being used at a table. Yes, it is more colorful to describe your attacks in detail. In a sense this comes back to the earlier "immersion" thing. Colorful descriptive language is not RP. Ryan's actors can no more improve a bad plot than a player describing a creative use of his sword is RPing his character better than the player of the other character who's dwarf unleashes a daily because he hates orcs even if it isn't the most clever thing he could do.
> 
> Mostly I just don't see this hypothesized decoupling thing at all. That gets really at the heart of LostSoul's position. I guess we probably talked this through a few threads ago though




Yeah, I'm understanding other people's positions more and more as we talk about this.  One thing that happens to me is that I easily shift back into my default assumptions about play, which are biased by my own desires.  That's why we go over this so often and I don't "get it"; it can be hard for me to grasp that different point of view, especially when I'm focused on something else and some time has passed.


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## AbdulAlhazred (May 27, 2011)

LostSoul said:


> Yes, very much so!
> 
> 
> 
> ...




I suppose it could partly be a genre convention, yeah. I hadn't really thought too much about that kind of thing in those terms, but it could definitely help set the mood of the story depending on the kind of results you'd get. 



> I think in D&D the DM is in the best position to make this call, but that's only for a specific style of play.  There are other ways to determine if that kobold should get an advantage or not - in FATE, he could use his Shifty trait for a +2 bonus; the DM doesn't have to be the one who makes the judgement call there.




Right, it could be up to the players and mediated with story mechanics. Oddly I prefer either way of doing it, lol. I think the more action focused type of mechanics like 4e can be more hard edged, and a more FATE-like style tends more towards the dramatic (or even silly at times, but we like silly).



> Definitely not!
> 
> What happened was that the NPC spent that round casting _Sleep_ and Dhalia spent that round forcing the NPC's sword hand to her throat; even though she missed, in my judgement as DM I don't think swapping hands would have been possible because of the position of the sword after Dhalia's action.  (Even if the NPC had a hand free - one hand was stuck via _Spider Climb_ to the tower wall so she wouldn't fall to her death.  Oh yeah, and casting spells doesn't require gestures, though sometimes they help.)




Right, I see it as just a style difference. My answer would be "well, I'm no close combat expert, so I'll just use the mechanics as an inspiration for whatever happens next" (but a player can for example use page 42 or maybe a specific power to create a situation). So, I'd assume the NPC can get free, at least potentially, enough to say switch hands, the description of the action will come out OK. I think there's room to use either technique.



> Yeah, I'm understanding other people's positions more and more as we talk about this.  One thing that happens to me is that I easily shift back into my default assumptions about play, which are biased by my own desires.  That's why we go over this so often and I don't "get it"; it can be hard for me to grasp that different point of view, especially when I'm focused on something else and some time has passed.




Oh, it is a common condition, lol. We all tend to stick to our habitual ways of working these things out and thinking about them. I think though with playing 4e pretty much straight for 3 years I'm getting restless. Going to work on a Lovecraftian/reincarnation/time travel mini-campaign with 4 co-DMs, lol. BRP isn't exactly a 'story telling' system, but it is a little looser than 4e, and it will be good to just get away from the whole forensic analysis of 4e and WotC that has been going on for the last 3 years too, lol.


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## pemerton (May 27, 2011)

Imaro said:


> doing something sub-optimal... even if it is expressive of the character... is more likely to hurt not just you, but the group as well



My contention - and it's based primarily in my own experience, which may well be atypical - is that 4e lends itself to building a PC, and then playing that PC, in such a way that being expressive of the character is _not_ suboptimal.

A simple example is the AC rules, that guarantee that ACs are in a pretty narrow range compared to earlier editions (where a starting MU might have AC 10 - 50%+ chance for NPCs/monsters to hit - while a starting fighter have AC as low as 2, meaning a 20% or less chance for monsters to hit). This means that choices by players as to the sorts of risks to which they expose their PCs are less constrained by considerations of "will this kill me" and more open to considerations of "what would it be like to try this?!".

Page 42 damage expressions, which aim at keeping the damage from stunts on a par with encounter powers, are a similar example.

So what I see in 4e is things like the drow sorcerer from time to time taking the front line (especially if the dwarf polearm fighter is in poor health or down) while muttering to himself about the unreliability of dwarves. Of course the sorcerer isn't a defender, and so can't do this for a whole combat, but he has sufficient resources (a range of defensive and aggressive close bursts) and the AC and hit points that mean this is not the death sentence that it would be in RM, RQ or classic D&D.

My experience with issues like focus-fire vs failures of coordination, choices as to who to heal, and the like are similar - the system seems to me to be very tolerant of player choices, meaning that an interesting range of options is available without the mechanics pushing always in a single direction.



Imaro said:


> When you make the claim that play of combat can be very expressive of the character could you please give an example of this?



I posted some upthread - the conflict between the chaos sorcerer and the imp Twitch, the ranger taking control of the Behemoth, and the tiefling paladin charging through the wall of a burning house to rescue the dwarf fighter.

Another example that come out in the play of my game is the contrast between the dwarf fighter and the tiefling paladin - the first the party anchor, a polearm melee controller who can hold the frontline against a huge number of foes (about 7, at one stage, in the combat described in my earlier post), the second a servant of the Raven Queen and much more of a lone wolf in combat, moving about to lock down and potentially pick off indiviual foes that he regards as to great a threat for anyone else in the party to handle.

The chaos sorcerer and the tome wizard, despite both being multi-target arcane casters who use a range of damage types and exercise quite a degree of control, also play very differently in ways that are expressive of their personality - brash, quick, brutal vs cautious, deliberate, sometimes subtle.

Very obviously this is not great literature (hence my reference to Marvel Comics above!). But it's not nothing, either. And it's supported by and expressed via the mechanics in a way that I find quite different from classic D&D, RM, RQ etc.


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## pemerton (May 27, 2011)

LostSoul said:


> The narrative is important to resolution because it determines stats used, modifiers, the DC rolled against, and what happens as a result of success.  None of that is pre-set, it's all determined by the description of the action.  Powers tend to do what they do but the description of the action is important because it can net you modifiers to that roll and future ones, in addition to changing the fictional situation, allowing you to do something you may not have been able to before.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The colour is important to resolution because without the colour of Martial Awareness I don't know if there's a conflict or not.



Makes sense.

Your descriptions make me think back to the conflict between Jett the sorcerer and Twitch the imp:

Jett the drow chaos sorcerer, finding himself surrounded by bugbear assassins, summons the winds of change, pushing the bugbears away and flying to the top of a nearby building [the fly and push are part of the spell; the fact that it is a wind spell is colour that didn't affect resolution]. Landing on the roof, he sees that the building is on fire. He focuses on the chaotic energy coursing through him to repel the heat and flame [uses a paragon path feature to change his resistance from acid to fire] and makes his way along the beams beneath the thatch so that he can aid his comrades in the battle raging on the other side of the house [Acrobatics check to avoid falling off the roof or through the thatch].

As Jett blasts the hobgoblins below with psychic energy [using Chaos Bolt] he is shocked to see his old nemesis, the imp Twitch, appear from nowhere next to him. "Have you mastered the chaos yet, Jett?" taunts Twitch as his stinging tail pierces Jett's side [I place a token to represent the imp, and his attack from combat advantage beats Jett's AC]. At the same moment, Tillen - Jett's paladin ally fighting hobgoblins down below - calls out words of support to Jett (I can't remember exactly what, but something like "I can help if you want") and a beam of light strikes Twitch - his stinger does not go all the way in, though the poison still starts coursing through Jett's veins [Ray of Reprisal meaning half damage, though full ongoing poison damage - the fact that I had described Twitch's attack as a stinger in the side makes no difference to the resolution of Ray of Reprisal].

etc, etc  - Twitch turns invisible again, flies off, comes back and tries again but Jett thwarts him by using some sort of defensive interrupt. Twitch then escapes invisible with 5 hp lef.​
I've tried to indicate in square brackets where the colour mattered to resoultion, and where not. There are obvious limitations on 4e's richness, and some of the colour in my account is _mere_ colour, but by no means all of it. At the time it didn't feel like a boardgame, and writing it up has not made me feel differently.


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## LostSoul (May 27, 2011)

Thanks for that account of play, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION].  I think that can provide good evidence that what *I* am looking for in terms of fictional content in action declaration doesn't mean that others need that same level of detail in order to include fictional positioning into action resolution - and that 4E doesn't necessarily need that level to provide a vivid account of play.

This whole discussion has been enlightening, because I now see that what I think is a necessary level of fictional material is a personal preference, not a required element of play.  That ties into what [MENTION=27583]yeloson[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6674918]andy3k[/MENTION] were saying about fictional positioning in their own 4E games.


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## LostSoul (May 27, 2011)

pemerton said:


> My contention - and it's based primarily in my own experience, which may well be atypical - is that 4e lends itself to building a PC, and then playing that PC, in such a way that being expressive of the character is _not_ suboptimal.
> 
> <snip snip>
> 
> Very obviously this is not great literature (hence my reference to Marvel Comics above!). But it's not nothing, either. And it's supported by and expressed via the mechanics in a way that I find quite different from classic D&D, RM, RQ etc.




This is my point of view as well.  I think that 4E is especially well-suited (in terms of D&D) to deliver the type of play that pemerton is looking for.  The choice of powers, when one uses said powers, how those interact with the other powers - there's a lot of fertile ground for that kind of play.

I am not so interested in that kind of play at the moment with 4E - I want more "challenge-based" play, where the players are expected to step on up to the challenge that the game provides; but I can see how the selection of powers and when to use them provides that kind of choice to players during the game.

Personally I think that the new "monster math" has enabled that sort of play even more; I'd like to hear more from [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] about that.


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## Neonchameleon (May 27, 2011)

pemerton said:


> What I feel is missing here, based on my own experience, is that unlike many combat-focused fantasy RPGs 4e allows the player to signficiantly dictate _tactical soundness_ by choices made both in PC building and in play, with the result that the play of combat can be very expressive of the character of the PC.
> 
> If others find it _more_ constraining in this respect than in other versions of D&D or other classic fanatsy RPGs, that's quite interesting, and quite a different experience from mine.




Indeed.  There are characters I've played in 4e that use tactics that in earlier editions or by other characters would be utterly insane.  My Bravura Warlord springs to mind.  He quite intentionally leaves himself wide open for attacks (Brash Assault) to try to provoke the enemy into going off balance.  And has a charge that if he even messes it up slightly, the enemy gets a free melee basic attack.  But he's built that way and because they are _his_ tactics, when he does them (more carefully than it looks) he can get away with them whereas for another character this would be incredibly tactically unsound.  It expresses his character and approach every bit as much as my mage's hiding and controlling the battlefield does.  (Or my Malediction Invoker's dislike of casting her powerful spells...)


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## Balesir (May 27, 2011)

P1NBACK said:


> Balesir, your definition completely defies and contradicts your earlier statements and statements within your most recent post.
> 
> You say you need "free will" and you "decide what they wish to do".
> 
> This is impossible in most boardgames (especially Monopoly), without house rules.



I think you misunderstood the scope I was including with my description of "role".  Let me try to paint it clearly:

Can you, personally, fly by flapping your arms?  I know I can't - it's physically impossible, in this world, for me to do so.  And yet I retain at least the illusion that I possess free will.  Likewise for a "character" in "Monopolyworld".  The physics of their setting both allow them to do and prevent them from doing things in ways that are quite alien to us, living in the "real" world.  That does not mean that they "lack free will" - just that the ways in which they may use it within the "physics" of the world they inhabit are different (and very much more restricted!) than those available to us.

Such a world would be very challenging to play "immersively" - but that does not prevent it being possible to roleplay.  The contradiction you claim is not there, I'm afraid.



Imaro said:


> Not when it's based around interacting with them on an optimal tactical level as opossed to an organic or narrative level.



Does this not assume that the tactical "level" is distinct from the "narrative" one?  In D&D I am sceptical that this should normally be the case.  I know that, had I (in my younger days  ) taken up "adventuring" as a career, I would absolutely have wanted to get myself schooled in "optimal tactics"; I think it's only reasonable to assume that most D&D characters will focus on it, to some extent, too.  Even though this describes a limitation on the characters played, I think that is already implicit, in that the characters played are automatically assumed to be "adventurers", or "Heroes".  In other words, the focus on tactics is tied to the game "fiction" through the assumed topic of both characters and in-game activities.



LostSoul said:


> That is food for thought!  I think you and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] are right - it is a matter of degrees.  I don't care about how much and what kind of food or drink a PC consumed before the fight, even though I know that would have an effect on its outcome.  (I might add a -2 penalty if the character is drunk, but that's about it.)  Thinking about it, that fine detail of actions is a personal preference of mine; it's probably why I've always preferred Palladium Fantasy's combat system over D&D's.  (Yes, seriously!  )



I think it's a very reasonable personal preference, if a little limiting - it certainly does not seem uncommon.  It is as well to remember that it is a preference, though, not a universal requirement 



LostSoul said:


> Here's the same thing, but in 4E's general rules:
> 
> [sblock=Regular 4E]I draw the map and tell players that it's 120' to the ground.  I make the Stealth check for the NPC against the Passive Perception, and fail.  The PCs notice the invisible NPC.
> 
> ...



I would probably see Dhalia using "Come and Get It" to pull the assassin to her, and as a fighter her OA would stop them moving away if it hit in any case (and would be entirely consistent with "holding a sword to her throat" as hit points are not representative of physical damage, at least until the target is bloodied).  But, yeah - basically, what you said .


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## SkidAce (May 27, 2011)

LostSoul said:


> Yeah, I'm understanding other people's positions more and more as we talk about this.  One thing that happens to me is that I easily shift back into my default assumptions about play, which are biased by my own desires.  That's why we go over this so often and I don't "get it"; it can be hard for me to grasp that different point of view, especially when I'm focused on something else and some time has passed.




Somebody please xp LostSoul for this wisdom as I must spread more around etc.


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## Imaro (May 27, 2011)

pemerton said:


> My contention - and it's based primarily in my own experience, which may well be atypical - is that 4e lends itself to building a PC, and then playing that PC, in such a way that being expressive of the character is _not_ suboptimal.




See I don't find this true... it is pretty common knowledge that the ranger is objectively a better striker than the warlock thus to play a warlock is to choose to play a sub-optimal striker... now that's not to say one can't have fun playing a warlock or survive with one but it is a sub-optimal choice for doing it's designated role as opposed to a ranger.



pemerton said:


> A simple example is the AC rules, that guarantee that ACs are in a pretty narrow range compared to earlier editions (where a starting MU might have AC 10 - 50%+ chance for NPCs/monsters to hit - while a starting fighter have AC as low as 2, meaning a 20% or less chance for monsters to hit). This means that choices by players as to the sorts of risks to which they expose their PCs are less constrained by considerations of "will this kill me" and more open to considerations of "what would it be like to try this?!".




Hmmm, I could see a case for this but is this really why the math was made this way or is this an emergent property of the fact that the game was made to have less swinginess and more accurate tools for designing appropriate challenge levels for tactical combat? I would say it's an emergent property because this type of stuff isn't discussed in the core rules for 4e. It's great that this is possible but is this the default expectation for how the game is suppose to be played? 

Also, as a side note, I think you are discounting the vast difference in HP's that still exsist as well as healing surges... One good hit on a Striker can mean more than half his HP's are gone and he's bloodied while the same hit doesn't bloody a defender.



pemerton said:


> Page 42 damage expressions, which aim at keeping the damage from stunts on a par with encounter powers, are a similar example.




But this is still ultimately determined by the DM... not the rules. The DM picks the damage expression, DC, etc. and thus he decides whether the action to perform stunts, the damage from stunts, and conditions (which there aren't really good guidelines for on page 42) are worse, better or equal to encounter powers. I feel that the DM decision mode is further reinforced by the fact that this table isn't mentioned or noted in the PHB.



pemerton said:


> So what I see in 4e is things like the drow sorcerer from time to time taking the front line (especially if the dwarf polearm fighter is in poor health or down) while muttering to himself about the unreliability of dwarves. Of course the sorcerer isn't a defender, and so can't do this for a whole combat, but he has sufficient resources (a range of defensive and aggressive close bursts) and the AC and hit points that mean this is not the death sentence that it would be in RM, RQ or classic D&D.




Well couldn't anyone who finds a way to increase his AC in previous editions do this (and the HP thing works itself out once a level or two are under a character's belt), and again I still think the disparity in hp's and healing surges still place pretty big restrictions on certain classes being able to take these types of out-of-role actions, unless it's theri secondary role and well then it's not so much you're making thematic decisions for your character as much as you are fulfilling the role you were given in the game.



pemerton said:


> My experience with issues like focus-fire vs failures of coordination, choices as to who to heal, and the like are similar - the system seems to me to be very tolerant of player choices, meaning that an interesting range of options is available without the mechanics pushing always in a single direction.




See I tend to find the opposite in the games I've experienced... when a striker goes rushing up to hold the line, even for a moment or two... they often get clobbered... when a Wizard tries to do massive damage... well he usually doesn't have a spell that's going to allow him to do that. And focused fire is the way to go. Now there are exceptions like the godking fighter of 4e who, with the right choices can reach almost optimal striker levels of damage output and have the fortitude and defensive powers of the defender role... In fact I'd say his only weakness is the number of skills he gets... but I think he's the exception in 4e not the rule.



pemerton said:


> I posted some upthread - the conflict between the chaos sorcerer and the imp Twitch, the ranger taking control of the Behemoth, and the tiefling paladin charging through the wall of a burning house to rescue the dwarf fighter.
> 
> 
> Another example that come out in the play of my game is the contrast between the dwarf fighter and the tiefling paladin - the first the party anchor, a polearm melee controller who can hold the frontline against a huge number of foes (about 7, at one stage, in the combat described in my earlier post), the second a servant of the Raven Queen and much more of a lone wolf in combat, moving about to lock down and potentially pick off indiviual foes that he regards as to great a threat for anyone else in the party to handle.





Ok, focused fire was used on the controller on the dinosaur (good tactics and it works!!)... On the other hand the sorcerer (Striker) has to be saved by the paladin because he tries to go head to head with a creature... The fighter is knocked unconscious because he gets isolated...and has to be saved by the paladin... this almost makes me wonder how much better they might be if the Paladin weren't off being a lone wolf.




pemerton said:


> The chaos sorcerer and the tome wizard, despite both being multi-target arcane casters who use a range of damage types and exercise quite a degree of control, also play very differently in ways that are expressive of their personality - brash, quick, brutal vs cautious, deliberate, sometimes subtle.




But this can be done in any system and I'm still not seeing how 4e as opposed to many other systems facilitates any of this better.



pemerton said:


> Very obviously this is not great literature (hence my reference to Marvel Comics above!). But it's not nothing, either. And it's supported by and expressed via the mechanics in a way that I find quite different from classic D&D, RM, RQ etc.




I'm not saying this can't be done by a creative DM with 4e (though in turn I would argue that it cold be done in virtually any edition by a creative DM)... what I do think is that it wasn't designed with this specific style of gameplay as it's driver.


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## AbdulAlhazred (May 27, 2011)

Imaro said:


> See I don't find this true... it is pretty common knowledge that the ranger is objectively a better striker than the warlock thus to play a warlock is to choose to play a sub-optimal striker... now that's not to say one can't have fun playing a warlock or survive with one but it is a sub-optimal choice for doing it's designated role as opposed to a ranger.




I think it is quite a bit less clear-cut than this. Rangers are highly effective. OTOH if I am well versed in playing a Warlock, my tactical proclivities favor the sort of play that the Warlock excels at, and the Warlock fits better into the particular party then the Warlock is a perfectly good choice. I'd also say that it heavily depends on the level you're playing at. During low heroic tier a Ranger will most likely outperform any Warlock most of the time. OTOH at mid-paragon and higher that becomes less and less true. A well-built high level Warlock is NASTY. Not to say high level Ranger isn't, but the relative strengths of the two classes do change a good bit. It is hard to make entirely general statements about which class is better.

That isn't to say all classes are made equal of course. That would be an ideal for 4e in theory, but it will never be achieved. You just have to accept that small variations will exist and decide what is important to you. 



> Hmmm, I could see a case for this but is this really why the math was made this way or is this an emergent property of the fact that the game was made to have less swinginess and more accurate tools for designing appropriate challenge levels for tactical combat? I would say it's an emergent property because this type of stuff isn't discussed in the core rules for 4e. It's great that this is possible but is this the default expectation for how the game is suppose to be played?
> 
> Also, as a side note, I think you are discounting the vast difference in HP's that still exsist as well as healing surges... One good hit on a Striker can mean more than half his HP's are gone and he's bloodied while the same hit doesn't bloody a defender.




Eh, still, it is MUCH more possible for any arbitrary character to manage in a situation not conducive to its main role than in say AD&D.



> But this is still ultimately determined by the DM... not the rules. The DM picks the damage expression, DC, etc. and thus he decides whether the action to perform stunts, the damage from stunts, and conditions (which there aren't really good guidelines for on page 42) are worse, better or equal to encounter powers. I feel that the DM decision mode is further reinforced by the fact that this table isn't mentioned or noted in the PHB.




It might be good if it was called out more explicitly in the PHB, yes. 



> Well couldn't anyone who finds a way to increase his AC in previous editions do this (and the HP thing works itself out once a level or two are under a character's belt), and again I still think the disparity in hp's and healing surges still place pretty big restrictions on certain classes being able to take these types of out-of-role actions, unless it's theri secondary role and well then it's not so much you're making thematic decisions for your character as much as you are fulfilling the role you were given in the game.




Well, consider the 1e AD&D Magic User. He's got d4 hit points. Even at 6th level that means average 15 hit points. He's WELL within the range of single hit kill by any melee monster even close to his level. What his AC will be at that point is hard to say, it will depend heavily on the treasure received. He could be anywhere from AC 10 to AC 4. Most likely he's still far from the fighter's AC, which at that point is unlikely to be worse than 4 and is probably below that. As a level 6 MU I wouldn't in any circumstances risk moving into melee range. I MIGHT survive a round or two of it, with luck. 

OTOH the 4e wizard will have an AC that is probably only a couple points off from the fighter. He will have a bunch less hit points, but he's still certain to survive a couple of hits, has effective attacks he can use from close range (or really really should), etc. And this is true from level 1. It may not have been an outright design goal for 4e that was stated up front, but I suspect it was a welcome effect of the design and encouraged the devs to go in that direction.



> I'm not saying this can't be done by a creative DM with 4e (though in turn I would argue that it cold be done in virtually any edition by a creative DM)... what I do think is that it wasn't designed with this specific style of gameplay as it's driver.




It is hard to say, but simply by making the game less swingy you get that effect and I'm thinking this was pretty obvious to the 4e devs when they designed the game. I can hardly imagine they never noticed this effect. 

Honestly the type of game you're in is going to make a big difference in how much you feel you have to optimize and what you can risk doing. There's a pretty good chunk of variability in 4e play. If you play with a whole slew of tactical optimizers and the DM is throwing tons of super tough combat encounters at you, then you probably want to optimize, may not want to play a concept that is a bit lower down on the optimization scale, and might not take so many risks. In most casual games though? You can afford to do pretty much what you feel like and not worry about it. In AD&D? You better play to type, Magic Users DO NOT get caught in melee, and fighters better be expecting to stand on the front lines and take most of the hits. 4e seems more flexible this way to me.


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## Raven Crowking (May 27, 2011)

pemerton said:


> My contention - and it's based primarily in my own experience, which may well be atypical - is that 4e lends itself to building a PC, and then playing that PC, in such a way that being expressive of the character is _not_ suboptimal.




I was wondering why there were no optimization threads for 4e.

Now, I guess, I know.


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## Neonchameleon (May 27, 2011)

Imaro said:


> See I don't find this true... it is pretty common knowledge that the ranger is objectively a better striker than the warlock thus to play a warlock is to choose to play a sub-optimal striker... now that's not to say one can't have fun playing a warlock or survive with one but it is a sub-optimal choice for doing it's designated role as opposed to a ranger.




Questionable - although rangers certainly do more damage. But missing the point. The point is that the Powers system opens up tactics - for instance the almost insane behaviour of the Bravura Warlord or the isolate and pound strategy of the Avenger. 



> Well couldn't anyone who finds a way to increase his AC in previous editions do this




The HP disparity was _much_ greater - one hit kills. In 4e wizards get 4hp/level, and fighters get six (I think). Around 50% more hp to the fighter. In 1e, wizards get d4hp per level and fighters get d10 - or over twice the hit points. If the wizard's trying to hold the line, things have gone pear shaped. And badly so. But he won't be brushed aside in quite the way he would in earlier editions, going down to one hit. It's a move of last resort rather than utterly suicidal.

Edit: And I think Pmerton meant sub-par rather than suboptimal.  It's hard to accidently make a useless character in 4e at heroic.  This wasn't true in older editions.


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## P1NBACK (May 27, 2011)

pemerton said:


> P1NBACK, I don't think you're edition warring but I do disagree with some of your characterisation of 4e.




I think I'm generalizing, and that's being taken out of context as if every single rule in 4E falls under the category I am describing. That's not necessarily the case. I'm talking about a general design shift from previous editions (and other RPGs in general) in 4E. 

The difference between a 4E fireball and earlier editions lies not in the "description" but in the implications in 4E that a fireball is a "power" that transcends the fiction, whereas in earlier editions, a fireball is a real fiery object being summoned that could potentially wreck equipment, etc. 

Earlier editions relied heavily on the description of the actions. We described, then applied rules. 4E is largely the opposite. We apply rules, then describe (and that's why there are arguments I describe below about fiction vs. rules). 

That's a generalized statement about how some people play 4E. As has been pointed out, anyone can house rule 4E or play it however they want. I can change the rules of Monopoly to fit any sort of imagined play I want. 

But, we see this sort of mentality all the time, especially on this forum, where people will advise DMs against "nerfing" powers because of the fiction. Why is that? 

I think it's largely to do with a disconnect between _some _of the mechanics and the fiction actually happening in the game and a general play and design ethos found in 4E.


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## Raven Crowking (May 27, 2011)

Neonchameleon said:


> Edit: And I think Pmerton meant sub-par rather than suboptimal.  It's hard to accidently make a useless character in 4e at heroic.  This wasn't true in older editions.




Sorry, but I've already seen threads in which the opposite is claimed.....that not building a character the "right" way makes him useless to the party.

In addition, the existence of optimization threads is a strong indication that some builds are more powerful than others.  In which case, it should be obvious that some are also "sub-par".

As to whether  a character is "useless" or not....well, that is highly dependent upon the context, isn't it?  I will agree that 4e put a far greater emphasis on a single context (grid-based combat) than any other edition, and that combat consumes such a large amount of play time that a character not optimized for combat is going to seem subpar, but I have run games for and played many non-combat-optimized characters in previous editions, and I have yet to see one that was useless.

YMMV.


RC


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## Imaro (May 27, 2011)

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think it is quite a bit less clear-cut than this. Rangers are highly effective. OTOH if I am well versed in playing a Warlock, my tactical proclivities favor the sort of play that the Warlock excels at, and the Warlock fits better into the particular party then the Warlock is a perfectly good choice. I'd also say that it heavily depends on the level you're playing at. During low heroic tier a Ranger will most likely outperform any Warlock most of the time. OTOH at mid-paragon and higher that becomes less and less true. A well-built high level Warlock is NASTY. Not to say high level Ranger isn't, but the relative strengths of the two classes do change a good bit. It is hard to make entirely general statements about which class is better.
> 
> That isn't to say all classes are made equal of course. That would be an ideal for 4e in theory, but it will never be achieved. You just have to accept that small variations will exist and decide what is important to you.




My post was just to highlight that there are more optimal and less optimal choices in 4e. 





AbdulAlhazred said:


> Eh, still, it is MUCH more possible for any arbitrary character to manage in a situation not conducive to its main role than in say AD&D.




Is it... even with the wider range of spells available to casters?





AbdulAlhazred said:


> It might be good if it was called out more explicitly in the PHB, yes.




I think even more importantly if that was a design goal it would have been. 





AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, consider the 1e AD&D Magic User. He's got d4 hit points. Even at 6th level that means average 15 hit points. He's WELL within the range of single hit kill by any melee monster even close to his level. What his AC will be at that point is hard to say, it will depend heavily on the treasure received. He could be anywhere from AC 10 to AC 4. Most likely he's still far from the fighter's AC, which at that point is unlikely to be worse than 4 and is probably below that. As a level 6 MU I wouldn't in any circumstances risk moving into melee range. I MIGHT survive a round or two of it, with luck.




Again, what about the spells available to him? 



AbdulAlhazred said:


> OTOH the 4e wizard will have an AC that is probably only a couple points off from the fighter. He will have a bunch less hit points, but he's still certain to survive a couple of hits, has effective attacks he can use from close range (or really really should), etc. And this is true from level 1. It may not have been an outright design goal for 4e that was stated up front, but I suspect it was a welcome effect of the design and encouraged the devs to go in that direction.




Again I question whether a wizard or cleric in previous editons with access to the wider range of spells and a little creativity could not, aleit in a less direct manner do the same thing. 




AbdulAlhazred said:


> It is hard to say, but simply by making the game less swingy you get that effect and I'm thinking this was pretty obvious to the 4e devs when they designed the game. I can hardly imagine they never noticed this effect.
> 
> Honestly the type of game you're in is going to make a big difference in how much you feel you have to optimize and what you can risk doing. There's a pretty good chunk of variability in 4e play. If you play with a whole slew of tactical optimizers and the DM is throwing tons of super tough combat encounters at you, then you probably want to optimize, may not want to play a concept that is a bit lower down on the optimization scale, and might not take so many risks. In most casual games though? You can afford to do pretty much what you feel like and not worry about it. In AD&D? You better play to type, Magic Users DO NOT get caught in melee, and fighters better be expecting to stand on the front lines and take most of the hits. 4e seems more flexible this way to me.




Yes, but again in games like Heroquest and Legends of Anglerre which pretty much epitomize the type of play permeton is speaking too... optimization and tactics aren't a consideration in the same way they are in a 4e game.


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## Imaro (May 27, 2011)

Neonchameleon said:


> Questionable - although rangers certainly do more damage. But missing the point. The point is that the Powers system opens up tactics - for instance the almost insane behaviour of the Bravura Warlord or the isolate and pound strategy of the Avenger.




I think you're missing what is being discussed... I'm not arguing against the tactical nature of powers... but instead asking, how is this any different than say building a trip fighter and claiming his tripiness is the result of his wild flailing "style" in 3e or describing and trying such maneuvers in earlier D&D under the DM's judgement and claiming the same thing? In fact it seems 4e's style is pretty limited to the type of builds available... as opposed to 3.x's mix and match building blocks or earlier editions DM fiat system. 





Neonchameleon said:


> The HP disparity was _much_ greater - one hit kills. In 4e wizards get 4hp/level, and fighters get six (I think). Around 50% more hp to the fighter. In 1e, wizards get d4hp per level and fighters get d10 - or over twice the hit points. If the wizard's trying to hold the line, things have gone pear shaped. And badly so. But he won't be brushed aside in quite the way he would in earlier editions, going down to one hit. It's a move of last resort rather than utterly suicidal.
> 
> Edit: And I think Pmerton meant sub-par rather than suboptimal. It's hard to accidently make a useless character in 4e at heroic. This wasn't true in older editions.




I think I stated upthread that the Wwizard of previous editions also had a much larger bag of tricks to employ in order to accomplish something like this as well... or is the only answer to "holding the line" run up and get whacked...

EDIT: On a sidenote in a skill challenge  heavy game the Fighter class is definitely sub-par... of course he more than makes up for it in combat.


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## AbdulAlhazred (May 27, 2011)

Imaro said:


> I think I stated upthread that the Wwizard of previous editions also had a much larger bag of tricks to employ in order to accomplish something like this as well... or is the only answer to "holding the line" run up and get whacked...




The thing is in AD&D it would be hugely dependent on what the wizard has available for items and what spell selection he happens to have. At 7th level he MIGHT gain access to Stoneskin, which would make standing in the front line for a round or two pretty viable. He could have say Bracers of AC4, which would help a lot, as would a Cloak of Displacement for example. Having an item that allowed some kind of close in attack (or at least a spell like say Burning Hands) helps too. So, yes, there are ways for an AD&D wizard to improve his survivability and utility in that situation. Most of them really depend on the DM cooperating though. I guess you could also sort of count Monster Summoning I (again a level 4 spell, so 7th level caster). The thing is, there are also a lot better general spells you'd want that are 4th level. Stoneskin is pretty primo since you don't actually have to burn a slot to have the effect, but I'd bet that most AD&D wizards aren't going to pick up Monster Summoning I on the off chance they need to have blockers. 



> EDIT: On a sidenote in a skill challenge  heavy game the Fighter class is definitely sub-par... of course he more than makes up for it in combat.




It depends heavily on the context. An SC which centers on durability and survival and/or athletic prowess will go well for the fighter. Lots of fighters can also pretty easily pick up another nice specialty either using a background element, a skill power, and/or one feat. Sneaky fighter (dex based build, quite effective). Perceptive fighter (wis based build, also quite effective). Just getting access to one more skill really makes a big difference.


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## UngeheuerLich (May 27, 2011)

Raven Crowking said:


> Sorry, but I've already seen threads in which the opposite is claimed.....that not building a character the "right" way makes him useless to the party.
> 
> In addition, the existence of optimization threads is a strong indication that some builds are more powerful than others.  In which case, it should be obvious that some are also "sub-par".
> 
> ...



But those, that claim that characters with 16s in its main stat are useless are fools. Even when you do less than optimal damage, you are still contributing to the narrative and in combat and you perform well enough... if you however define yourself by how much damage you actually deal, it is a different matter...

4e´s system in combat is robust enough to be usasble with suboptimal, optimal and subpar characters... you really can´t do a lot wrong, except when you are deliberately trying to be subpar...

Mathematical analysises are nice and well... and when you read something like: "the warlord heals much more than the cleric by making the monsters dead faster" my roleplayer heart rebels...

if you want to play a character that actually heals... a lot... you are not doing anything wrong... the cleric does well enough, except when you are in a "how fast can we go through the dungeon" challenge... and not in a real game.

I would never ever play in any edition with such players... player that bend rules and optimize to "win" D&D are not contributing to a game i like to play.


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## Raven Crowking (May 27, 2011)

UngeheuerLich said:


> But those, that claim that characters with 16s in its main stat are useless are fools.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I would never ever play in any edition with such players... player that bend rules and optimize to "win" D&D are not contributing to a game i like to play.




Perhaps, but, if so, the point carries to all other editions as well.

I've never met a useless character.  The more variety as to what occurs in a game session, the greater chance for a character to shine in that session, no matter what his build.

IMHO, YMMV.


RC


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## Imaro (May 27, 2011)

AbdulAlhazred said:


> The thing is in AD&D it would be hugely dependent on what the wizard has available for items and what spell selection he happens to have. At 7th level he MIGHT gain access to Stoneskin, which would make standing in the front line for a round or two pretty viable. He could have say Bracers of AC4, which would help a lot, as would a Cloak of Displacement for example. Having an item that allowed some kind of close in attack (or at least a spell like say Burning Hands) helps too. So, yes, there are ways for an AD&D wizard to improve his survivability and utility in that situation. Most of them really depend on the DM cooperating though. I guess you could also sort of count Monster Summoning I (again a level 4 spell, so 7th level caster). The thing is, there are also a lot better general spells you'd want that are 4th level. Stoneskin is pretty primo since you don't actually have to burn a slot to have the effect, but I'd bet that most AD&D wizards aren't going to pick up Monster Summoning I on the off chance they need to have blockers.




My experience was that monster summoning(s) were quite the popular spells specifically because they were so diverse in application, and it's not like the Wizard can last more than 1 or 2 rounds of holding the line in 4e by getting hit... that said, so you agree it was possible in earlier editions?? 





AbdulAlhazred said:


> It depends heavily on the context. An SC which centers on durability and survival and/or athletic prowess will go well for the fighter. Lots of fighters can also pretty easily pick up another nice specialty either using a background element, a skill power, and/or one feat. Sneaky fighter (dex based build, quite effective). Perceptive fighter (wis based build, also quite effective). Just getting access to one more skill really makes a big difference.




No it doesn't... If I had said... in a skill challenge the Fighter is sub-par you would have a point, but I said in a skill challenge heavy game, which I would assume has an equal distribution of skill use throughout the game and not just endurance...encdurance...endurance...athletics the fighter is sub-par, and he is. Feat taxes to fix it only stress my point when the Rogue gets 2x as many starting skills.


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## UngeheuerLich (May 27, 2011)

Exactly...

one of my favourite 3.x characters was a bard with an array of 8,9,10,13,14,15 in the same group as the 18,17,16,some other high values blade singer...

and oh man were there sessions were he could shine... even in combat, his songs doubled the archer´s (the only really optimized character) damage output by a) making his iterative attacks hit and by increasing his damage just enough to allow single hit kills...

The great thing was that everyone knew, that this character pulled his (considerable) weight easily... and when he died at level 13, no one even thought about not raising him immediately...

You know, maybe this is what mike mearls wanted to say: you dont even need to be able to do a lot mechanically... you just need a character, a concept and trying to play him in the best possible way... and if it is compensating mechanical incompetence by beeing clever, so be it...


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## AbdulAlhazred (May 27, 2011)

UngeheuerLich said:


> But those, that claim that characters with 16s in its main stat are useless are fools. Even when you do less than optimal damage, you are still contributing to the narrative and in combat and you perform well enough... if you however define yourself by how much damage you actually deal, it is a different matter...
> 
> 4e´s system in combat is robust enough to be usasble with suboptimal, optimal and subpar characters... you really can´t do a lot wrong, except when you are deliberately trying to be subpar...
> 
> ...




I think it goes deeper than that. A 16 prime stat is not 'suboptimal'. You can't make that kind of generalization. It certainly could be suboptimal for certain builds, it could be highly optimal for others. Beyond that it costs a LOT more points to jack a stat beyond 16. Those points have to come from somewhere. A less highly focused stat allocation means you have overall better stats. Those better numbers are obviously going into other stats, presumably useful ones. It is even hard to say that any stat is really useless to any given character. It may or may not be highly useful in the narrow context of primary combat optimization, but there ARE compensating rewards. 

The character may perform well in a wider range of combat situations and have less severe weaknesses in worst-case scenarios. This last is something that optimization generally overlooks, worst case situations are the ones you really need to worry about. It is nice to be able to curb stomp the encounters that you're good at, but if you die hard in the bad scenarios sooner or later your luck will run out. It won't help you at all that you breezed through the first 5 encounters if you're useless in the 6th one and die. Thus often a less focused character actually works better in practice because he'll make it through whatever the DM throws at him. The super focused character ends up laid out.

So, really the dimensions of what is 'optimal' are hard to define.


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## UngeheuerLich (May 28, 2011)

That is exactly the point. 

But if you browse a bit you see a lot of threads, where any objection like yours is feeding the flames.
Optimizers in 4e also don´t take anything different than DPR into their calculations... which is foolish IMHO.
Senseless application of mathematics is just stupid. After applying a mathematical model to a real problem you have to reality check... usually "optimizers" forget that...


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## malraux (May 28, 2011)

Herschel said:


> If you feel that having a lot of the tricks codified for you ahead of time limits your creativity then it generally means either:
> 
> A: The powers encompass enough of what you want to do you don't need to look elsewhere. That's good game design.
> or
> ...




In my experience, it's not A or B, but an unnoticed false dilemma fallacy.  Unless you specifically think about it, its hard to remember that which your power cards represent many of your options, they don't represent all of them.  It's not creativity lacking, its just that you get used to the cards in front of you and don't always see another option.  Its fallacious, but it's still there.

Now I dunno if 4e is particularly worse about this than anything else.


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## pemerton (May 28, 2011)

P1NBACK said:


> The difference between a 4E fireball and earlier editions lies not in the "description" but in the implications in 4E that a fireball is a "power" that transcends the fiction, whereas in earlier editions, a fireball is a real fiery object being summoned that could potentially wreck equipment, etc.



I think this is a very good point. I'm not sure I agree - part of the mechanics of a 4e fireball is its *fire *descriptor and its *fire *damage, which I think are clearly, and by the rules, relevant to the fiction (see eg the discussion of the vulnerability of objects to fire somewhere around p 60 of the DMG).

But I agree that there is a tendency to treat descriptors as purely mechanical notions, M:TG style. I don't see any support for this in the rulebooks (cf the aforementioned passage in the DMG, plus related stuff like the immunity of objects to psychic damage). I think it has an external cause.



P1NBACK said:


> But, we see this sort of mentality all the time, especially on this forum, where people will advise DMs against "nerfing" powers because of the fiction. Why is that?
> 
> I think it's largely to do with a disconnect between _some _of the mechanics and the fiction actually happening in the game and a general play and design ethos found in 4E.



My answer isn't necessarily at odds with your answer - so perhaps we're both right. I think it's to do with a certain conception of what the player is entitled to achieve, in the game, in virtue of having chosen certain powers, and a reluctance to build a fiction that coherently accomodates that - a certain laziness, if you like, of ignoring the fiction rather than working with it. I think this probably has the same external cause.

It's hard for me to describe the external cause non-pejoratively, but I think it's to do with a certain view of what RPGing is about - a pretty hardcore and non-Gygaxian gamism. And my view is that if you changed 4e to change the way in which fictional positioning interacts with the mechanics, you wouldn't get all these people suddenly playing fictionally rich RPGs - they'd either drift back to what they're doing now, or find another game/passtime. After all, whatever the authors intended, plenty of people played AD&D and Basic D&D, or for that matter RQ and RM, with less attention to fictional position in combat then occurs in the play of 4e.


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## pemerton (May 28, 2011)

Imaro said:


> I tend to find the opposite in the games I've experienced... when a striker goes rushing up to hold the line, even for a moment or two... they often get clobbered... when a Wizard tries to do massive damage... well he usually doesn't have a spell that's going to allow him to do that. And focused fire is the way to go
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Ok, focused fire was used on the controller on the dinosaur (good tactics and it works!!)... On the other hand the sorcerer (Striker) has to be saved by the paladin because he tries to go head to head with a creature... The fighter is knocked unconscious because he gets isolated...and has to be saved by the paladin... this almost makes me wonder how much better they might be if the Paladin weren't off being a lone wolf



Well, the party still survived a 17th level encounter with 5 eleventh level PCs who started out split into two groups about 20 squares apart (although at full strength daily wise, including the wizard's Arcane Gate which was used to join the two groups together). Admittedly it was 17th level on numbers and not levels of foes - there were a few 10/11th level elites but then a bunch of hangers on of various levels from 9 up. (The monsters were from a range of sources, but the non-MM3/MV ones had their damage upped by me in accordance with the new guidelines.)

At one stage it looked as if a PC retreat might have to be considered - there was a river next to the village that they could have escaped into - but taking control of the behemoth pretty much turned the tide.

Now it's possible my group is tactically very strong without even thinking about it - we've got a guy who did his masters in the mathematics of optimisation, and another guy who used to dominate the Melbourne PBM scene, and past members of our group have been Australian M:TG champions - but on the other hand the ranger in our group doesn't seem to get up the DPR numbers that I see bandied around on this forum, yet this doesn't appear to be doing any harm to the play of the game.

So I'm not really sure how the groups who angst about tactical optimality in the way you describe are approaching the game, but that doesn't seem to fit my experience at all, which is that the game is very forgiving and flexible in the sorts of tactical play it will support.

Perhaps my experience is just very atypical. Or maybe as a GM I push the game in a different direction - a GM who wouldn't let an 11th level paladin push through the wall of a burning cottage would have made a big difference in this particular encounter, for example. Likewise a GM who played the monsters as maximally optimised at all times - whereas I tend to play them to maximise the dynamism and interest of the encounter (again, more like a superhero comic or martial arts movie).



Imaro said:


> My post was just to highlight that there are more optimal and less optimal choices in 4e.





Neonchameleon said:


> I think Pmerton meant sub-par rather than suboptimal.



My point was that 4e lets you build a character whose tactics would be suboptimal in the real world, and suboptimal in a semi-realistic squad tactics game, but aren't suboptimal in 4e because of the way the PC has been built. This is part of what I have in mind when I compare it to 4-colour superhero comics - a world in which archers and fist fighters can be more valuable combatants than modern soldiers. 4e is like this.



Imaro said:


> in games like Heroquest and Legends of Anglerre which pretty much epitomize the type of play permeton is speaking too... optimization and tactics aren't a consideration in the same way they are in a 4e game.



This is true. But I see the tactical/build element of 4e as a technique (in Forge terms) rather than central to the creative agenda. It allows various sorts of expression that a game like HeroQuest wouldn't, but that oldstyle RPGers enjoy (out of habit, if nothing else). But they're a means to an end. What's interesting is not winning per se - that the PCs will win is pretty much built into the mechanics - nor just the pleasure of a cooperative tactical game (a sort of group solitaire), but the _how_ and _why_ of winning, which the tactical stuff helps spell out iin the course of play.



Imaro said:


> I do think is that it wasn't designed with this specific style of gameplay as it's driver.



I don't know, but it seems to me to be well suited to it. And probably better suited to it than to classic gamist-via-skillful exploration play of a Gygaxian kind, given the suggested guidelines on awarding XP and treasure, and on scaling encounters.



Raven Crowking said:


> I was wondering why there were no optimization threads for 4e.



I'm not entirely sure how those threads are relevant. I certainly don't accept that they show I'm mistaken in my interpretation of my own play experiences, or of the rulebooks that have helped produce them.



Raven Crowking said:


> Perhaps, but, if so, the point carries to all other editions as well.



Not in my experience, because of the different implications of their action resolution mechanics, as well as the way those mechanics connect with the PC-build mechanics.

A game in which a single hit can reduce a PC from full health to dead, for example - such as Rolemaster, or any pre-4e version of D&D at low-to-mid levels (depending on class) - won't support the sort of play that I am getting out of 4e. In my view, that's why those games are often associated with GM fudging to mitigate unlucky rolls.


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## Raven Crowking (May 28, 2011)

pemerton said:


> I'm not entirely sure how those threads are relevant.




If it is possible to optimize a character, perforce, some characters must fall below that level of optimization.  Moreover, it implies that there are tips and tricks to share to enable that optimization; it doesn't "just happen".

Therefore (1) there are optimal and sub-optimal characters, and (2) without knowing what you're doing, optimal characters don't just happen.  Therefore, any statement that players game X do not create sub-optimal characters, due to the nature of game X alone, is manifestly false.



> I certainly don't accept that they show I'm mistaken in my interpretation of my own play experiences, or of the rulebooks that have helped produce them.




And well I know it!  Even when you are swayed by an argument, you seem more conservative than I.  

Conversely, when an argument has demonstrated that I am wrong, I accept my error, admit it, and change my mind.  Most recently, this occurred when it was demonstrated that the Skill Challenge mechanic could be used to produce effects that I would be happy with in-game.....even if the vast majority of examples I've seen leave me utterly cold.

So, I don't expect you to start a "Raven Crowking is Right" parade; I just want to provide you the opportunity to see where I am coming from, if that is an opportunity you want!

Obviously, you know your own play experiences better than anyone else.  Equally obviously, though, they are not universal, and it is possible to produce sub-optimal characters in 4e, by accident, simply because you don't grasp how to optimize a character.  Or those threads would not exist, or be extremely barren if they did.



> Not in my experience, because of the different implications of their action resolution mechanics, as well as the way those mechanics connect with the PC-build mechanics.
> 
> A game in which a single hit can reduce a PC from full health to dead, for example - such as Rolemaster, or any pre-4e version of D&D at low-to-mid levels (depending on class) - won't support the sort of play that I am getting out of 4e. In my view, that's why those games are often associated with GM fudging to mitigate unlucky rolls.




I'm not sure how that is relevant at all.

If you only want X from a game, then characters who are good primarily at not-X might seem useless to you.  Granted.  But, that doesn't make a character "useless" in any objective sense.  If a game is designed to do more than X, then it is going to produce a greater variety of characters, and characters that shine at more than just X.

You can say, game X "won't support the sort of play that I am getting out of 4e" -- but if you are honest, you should also then agree to the obvious corollary -- that 4e won't support the sort of play that some others are getting out of X.

Different games support different things, with differing levels of success.  That out to be obvious, and non-controversial.  Nor should pointing that out be considered "edition warring" or, worse yet, supporting "bad rules".

(And I know that the quotes in that last paragraph are not yours, pemerton, nor your general opinion AFAICT....but they are representative of some others in this thread.)


RC


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## Votan (May 28, 2011)

Raven Crowking said:


> I was wondering why there were no optimization threads for 4e.
> 
> Now, I guess, I know.




I am not sure you are completely correct:

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And it seems to be every active.  My (agonizing) experience with 4E has been that you can build a suboptimal character very easily by accident and, since they never die, you suffer through these design mistakes for a long, long time.

My warlord experience (by misreading commander's strike) was miserable beyond words and took forever to address.  If you mess up ability scores (a fun looking rogue design) it is even worse.


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## Scribble (May 28, 2011)

There's been "optimizing" and power gaming in pretty much every edition. 

What I like about the current one is it doesn't seem to throw things drastically out of whack if one member of your group loves to power game, and another just wants to lazily build a semi random character.

Best of both worlds, and makes my life as a DM that much easier.


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## Raven Crowking (May 28, 2011)

And yet, see the post right above yours.


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## Scribble (May 28, 2011)

Raven Crowking said:


> And yet, see the post right above yours.




What about it?


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## pemerton (May 29, 2011)

Raven Crowking said:


> If it is possible to optimize a character, perforce, some characters must fall below that level of optimization.  Moreover, it implies that there are tips and tricks to share to enable that optimization; it doesn't "just happen".





Raven Crowking said:


> If you only want X from a game, then characters who are good primarily at not-X might seem useless to you.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Different games support different things, with differing levels of success.  That out to be obvious, and non-controversial.



The second paragraph here I regard as non-controversial. But answering the question of what range of Xs a given game suppots I regard as quite controversial - my views about what 4e supports, for example (a certain sort of conflict-via-combat driven thematic play, using traditional fantasy tropes) seems to draw only limited agreement. (Imaro, for example, has consistently disagreed with it over many months and many threads now.)

My views about what 2nd ed AD&D supports are equally controversial - consistent with the Forge critique of that edition, I think it best supports psuedo-thematic railroading, but it's an edition with many advocates on this board.

But anyway, I think the second paragraph I've quoted pushes somewhat against the first, because optimisation is relevant to some goal of play for which the mechanics are being deployed (and the 4e DMG has a brief discussion of this). So, for example, the wizard in my game is a Tome mage whose feats include Skill Training (Dungeoneering), Deep Sage (a situational bonus to Dungeoneering plus speak, read and write Deep Speech = 4e's version of Undercommon) and two Arcane Familiar feats, and who has a starting 20/14 WIS split but has taken an Invoker (= WIS-based) Paragon Path. And one feature of that path is to give the PC yet another WIS-based power (a Cleric at-will an encounter power). This is a PC that would never pass muster on the Char Ops board, but who plays a crucial role in driving my game, because of his relationship to the worship of the Raven Queen, Erathis, Ioun and Vecna, and of his gradually growing collection of Rod-of-7-parts bit.

I don't think that DPR is the be-all and end-all of RPGing, or of 4e RPGing. And more controversially (like I said, settling the relevant values of X is not easy) I think that nothing in the rulebooks for 4e suggest otherwise. (That said, I haven't read the Players' Strategy Guide. It may have a different tone from the other books that talk about PC-build and encounter design.)



Votan said:


> My (agonizing) experience with 4E has been that you can build a suboptimal character very easily by accident and, since they never die, you suffer through these design mistakes for a long, long time.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> If you mess up ability scores (a fun looking rogue design) it is even worse.





Raven Crowking said:


> without knowing what you're doing, optimal characters don't just happen.  Therefore, any statement that players game X do not create sub-optimal characters, due to the nature of game X alone, is manifestly false.



I think I may have been unclear. What I was saying in reply to Imaro was the point I reiteratd above - that 4e is forgiving of what would be, in the real world, _suboptimal tactical play_. That is, differently from Imaro's experience, I have found that 4e supports a very flexible and varied approach to play, both across PCs and for any given PC (thus, the abilit of the sorcerer on occasion to hold the front line when the dwarf fighter falters).

It is true that it is possible to build a PC who won't play in the way that one hoped (which seems to be Votan's point). This is where a group's basic tactical game playing experience may be relevant - my players are mostly pretty good at seeing the implications, for play, of a particular build choice. GM accommodation is also important, in my view. The *Power books for 4e emphasise that GMs may wish to be accommodating of their players when they want to rebuild to include new options/elements. I go further, and all my players have rebuilt their PCs in the early levels to better achieve the goas they were looking for (three re-stattings, one rebuild as hybrid, one PC change to shift from half-elf warlock to drow sorcerer).

This is another area where goals of play matter. For those playing in a certain sort of gamist way, making players live through the in-play consequences of accidental design choices is important. But in the way I prefer to play, it's an unnecessary burden.


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## LostSoul (May 29, 2011)

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] - with the new monster math, do you still think that is the case? edit: "that 4e is forgiving of what would be, in the real world, suboptimal tactical play."

I think there are sub-optimal characters and _invalid_ characters.  If I decided to play a Fighter with 8 STR that would be an invalid character.  I can't really make decisions because none of my choices are going to matter; I'm going to fail no matter what choices I make.  However, I think that even with 14 STR my PC would still be valid, even if sub-optimal.  (The big question is how the other people in my group would judge my choice.)

I'm not sure if that's true with the new math for monster damage.  The game seems a lot more challenging now than it was when it was first released.


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## Imaro (May 29, 2011)

pemerton said:


> The second paragraph here I regard as non-controversial. But answering the question of what range of Xs a given game suppots I regard as quite controversial - my views about what 4e supports, for example (a certain sort of conflict-via-combat driven thematic play, using traditional fantasy tropes) seems to draw only limited agreement. (Imaro, for example, has consistently disagreed with it over many months and many threads now.)




Yes, because I have seen no practical or objective proof that you're interpretation of the type of play the 4e rules push/support are anything but... you're interpretation... especially when the adventures, guides, etc. don't push or stress this way of playing.



pemerton said:


> I don't think that DPR is the be-all and end-all of RPGing, or of 4e RPGing. And more controversially (like I said, settling the relevant values of X is not easy) I think that nothing in the rulebooks for 4e suggest otherwise. (That said, I haven't read the Players' Strategy Guide. It may have a different tone from the other books that talk about PC-build and encounter design.)




They don't think DPR is the end all and be all on the char op boards either (this would actually be kinda stupid for leaders or controllers to be judged on) but at the same time... it is what a striker as laid out in the PHB is suppose to be contributing to the party... mainly damage.  

As to the Player's Strategy Guide (along with most of the adventures, stuff published in Dragon and Dungeon, published skill challenges, etc.) it does not seem to, in it's implementation by the developers of the game, support this idea of "conflict-via-combat driven thematic play, using traditional fantasy tropes" as 4e's play goal. They seem to very much support gamist challenge play. 



pemerton said:


> I think I may have been unclear. What I was saying in reply to Imaro was the point I reiteratd above - that 4e is forgiving of what would be, in the real world, _suboptimal tactical play_. That is, differently from Imaro's experience, I have found that 4e supports a very flexible and varied approach to play, both across PCs and for any given PC (thus, the abilit of the sorcerer on occasion to hold the front line when the dwarf fighter falters).





I think many players who faced Irontooth, and died, would disagree about how forgiving 4e is to suboptimal tactical play. Again, IMO this is nothing more than an imergent property of whether the DM decides to play in an optimal or suboptimal manner in D&D against his players.


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## pemerton (May 29, 2011)

LostSoul said:


> I think there are sub-optimal characters and _invalid_ characters.  If I decided to play a Fighter with 8 STR that would be an invalid character.  I can't really make decisions because none of my choices are going to matter; I'm going to fail no matter what choices I make.  However, I think that even with 14 STR my PC would still be valid, even if sub-optimal.  (The big question is how the other people in my group would judge my choice.)
> 
> I'm not sure if that's true with the new math for monster damage.  The game seems a lot more challenging now than it was when it was first released.



I agree that STR 8 on a fighter is invalid in your sense.

I think 14 would be marginal. The fighter in my game had starting strength 16 (but is a dwarf, and so still a good fighter), and also has serious DEX, CON and WIS (to support a polearm-axe build). He is paragon-pathed as a Warpriest, and was happy to be using a WIS that started at 15, but with the newest errata has got his Warpriest powers onto STR.

The wizard in my game is multi-class and paragon pathed as an Invoker, with starting stats of INT 20/WIS 14. But he has Action Surge (+3 to hit on action point) plus a reroll paragon path feature to support his WIS attacks.

On the other hand, we don't use the Expertise feats in my game and to date play hasn't suffered. So 14 together with Expertise would strike me as perhaps viable. I think that that sort of character would want to bring a lot of other stuff to the table, though - noticeably good skills, or good ways to get combat advantage, etc.



LostSoul said:


> with the new monster math, do you still think that is the case? edit: "that 4e is forgiving of what would be, in the real world, suboptimal tactical play."



In my view, yes - keeping in mind that the play in question may not be suboptimal given the way that a particular PC is built.

In the real world, for example, it is suboptimal to get hurt. One of the PCs in my game, though, is a dwarven fighter with Toughness and a Cloak of the Walking Wounded. He can second wind as a minor action, and likes to do so only after being bloodied (because the cloak then lets him spend two healing surges). This leads the PC to take risks and enter situations that, in the real world, would be stupid.

The same PC also has a daily, Brazen Assault, that has the effect of granting all enemies combat advantage while granting him Resist all 5. If he uses this daily, it has a further impact on what that PC can do, which can potentially lead to further deviations from real-world optimality.

The new monster maths, which is essentially +half level damage to all monsters, doesn't seem to me to have changed the dynamics all that much. It was introduced just at the point in my game where I can see how, without it, I would have been tempted to start using significantly higher level monsters.

Bottom line for me on optimality: if you try to build your PC radically against class/role lines (eg the STR 8 fighter, perhaps the 14 STR fighter unless there's a lot of other good stuff your PC is bringing to the table) then you'll be in trouble; and if you try and play your PC against your build then you'll be in trouble; BUT it's not hard to build a PC who has viable options in the game that would not be very viable in real life (Walking Wounded, Brazen Assault etc); AND it's not hard to build a PC who has an interesting and varied range of viable options (even the archer ranger in my game, who is the closest to a one-trick pony, can do stuff with Acrobatics, taking control of Behemoths etc - though the player did hybrid him to cleric once the rules for that came out, in what was dubbed "Operation: Give my PC more to do than Twin Strike!").

To me, the game doesn't seem to play in the relentless or monistic way that Imaro is describing. And if it's very different for my players, they haven't communicated that experience to me.


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## pemerton (May 29, 2011)

Imaro said:


> I have seen no practical or objective proof that you're interpretation of the type of play the 4e rules push/support are anything but... you're interpretation... especially when the adventures, guides, etc. don't push or stress this way of playing.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> They seem to very much support gamist challenge play.



The DMG doesn't seem to me to stress _any_ way of playing. It's reward rules, for example, don't seem to me to support gamism in any but the most low-key sense, that Balesir has described as "OK, you could handle it at _that_ level of complexity, but what about when we amp it all up a notch or two?"

And DMG2 seems to me to be aimed at supporting HeroQuest style play to quite a degree, given that it reproduces almost directly big chunks of the HeroQuest revised rulebook (on pacing, challenge design and some elements of action resolution).

The stuff on vignettes in DMG2, plus the sample campaign arcs in DMG2, Underdark, Plane Above etc also seem to me not especially aimed at gamist play. Certainly, they all sugggest strong thematic content and seem intended to leave the resolution of that content in the hands of the players. As models for campaigns, they don't look radically at odds from the approach I enjoy.



Imaro said:


> They don't think DPR is the end all and be all on the char op boards either (this would actually be kinda stupid for leaders or controllers to be judged on) but at the same time... it is what a striker as laid out in the PHB is suppose to be contributing to the party... mainly damage.



Damage is what a striker contributes to a party _in combat._ But combat is not all of the game. And a striker can contribute satisfactory damage, and have a particular capacity to contribute damage, without necessarily contributing maximum possible damage.



Imaro said:


> I think many players who faced Irontooth, and died, would disagree about how forgiving 4e is to suboptimal tactical play.



I haven't run or played that encounter, although have heard that it is hard.



Imaro said:


> IMO this is nothing more than an imergent property of whether the DM decides to play in an optimal or suboptimal manner in D&D against his players.



I'm not sure what the force of the "nothing more" is. The way a GM builds and then adjudicates encounters has a pretty big impact on the play of the game. But the rules don't seem to me to encourage building encounters that are _nothing more_ than tests of endurance and tactics for the players. There's alot of flavour text, for example, in the Monster Manuals (even the first one, contrary to popular opinion). I like to put that text, plus more of my own, to work. In doing that I don't feel that I'm pushing against the system or disregarding any authorial directives.


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## Raven Crowking (May 29, 2011)

I remember well how some folks defended 4e as not being "easier" than earlier editions.

Strange how 4e is both not "easier" and at the same time "less forgiving of suboptimal play" (paraphrases mine).

Methinks the game may be either one or the other, but most probably neither.


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## Imaro (May 29, 2011)

pemerton said:


> The DMG doesn't seem to me to stress _any_ way of playing. It's reward rules, for example, don't seem to me to support gamism in any but the most low-key sense, that Balesir has described as "OK, you could handle it at _that_ level of complexity, but what about when we amp it all up a notch or two?"




Hoestly...I'm not sure what you mean here. Instead of parsing a single sentence out of a comment by Balesir, why not just state simply and concisely why you don't think the reward rules support gamism?



pemerton said:


> And DMG2 seems to me to be aimed at supporting HeroQuest style play to quite a degree, given that it reproduces almost directly big chunks of the HeroQuest revised rulebook (on pacing, challenge design and some elements of action resolution).
> 
> The stuff on vignettes in DMG2, plus the sample campaign arcs in DMG2, Underdark, Plane Above etc also seem to me not especially aimed at gamist play. Certainly, they all sugggest strong thematic content and seem intended to leave the resolution of that content in the hands of the players. As models for campaigns, they don't look radically at odds from the approach I enjoy.




First, I never said 4e was at odds with your playstyle... but I don't think it was designed with your playstyle as it's primary goal either. Again I think you are inferring your own take from what is in these books... The issue, IMO, is that Heroquest gives you specific mechanics to enforce it's pacing advice (Level of difficulty is directly dependant upon how well or bad your party has already done) and thematic concerns (You are literally limitless in creating any character as long as it is genre appropriate... 4e doesn't.... DC is based on level not story concerns...character creation is limited to the available combat builds/roles that have been developed, and so on.



pemerton said:


> Damage is what a striker contributes to a party _in combat._ But combat is not all of the game. And a striker can contribute satisfactory damage, and have a particular capacity to contribute damage, without necessarily contributing maximum possible damage.




Combat is definitely not all of the game, but we were talking about whether there were sub-optimal choices in game... the Ranger, does better damage than the Warlock and gets more skills than the Warlock... so again the Warlock seems a sub-optimal choice for in combat and outside combat as well when compared to the ranger.



pemerton said:


> I haven't run or played that encounter, although have heard that it is hard.




I think this speaks to a bigger issue I have with your ideas on 4e... they tend not to be supported in actual implementation of the game by the actual designers. Do majority of the modules from WotC center around "conflict-via-combat driven thematic play, using traditional fantasy tropes" or do they center around gamist challenge based play? I would argue it is gamist challenge based play.



pemerton said:


> I'm not sure what the force of the "nothing more" is. The way a GM builds and then adjudicates encounters has a pretty big impact on the play of the game. But the rules don't seem to me to encourage building encounters that are _nothing more_ than tests of endurance and tactics for the players. There's alot of flavour text, for example, in the Monster Manuals (even the first one, contrary to popular opinion). I like to put that text, plus more of my own, to work. In doing that I don't feel that I'm pushing against the system or disregarding any authorial directives.




Yes the DM's chosen method of designing encounters does have a big impact on the play of the game... like every edition of D&D. Where we disagree is that, IMO, the rules do stress building encounters as tests of tactics for the players. For the most part the DMG doesn't talk about designing an encounter in a thematic way it talks about designing it with the synergies of roles and monster powers in mind. So no... while it won't push against what you are doing, since you can select thematic monsters for your encounters with the appropriate roles and powers... 4e doesn't necessarily promote that particular playstyle over challenge based either, at least (IMO) no more than any other edition of D&D.


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## Imaro (May 29, 2011)

pemerton said:


> To me, the game doesn't seem to play in the relentless or monistic way that Imaro is describing. And if it's very different for my players, they haven't communicated that experience to me.




Please don't do this... don't substitute your assumptions for how I think the game plays for what I've really said.  I've said that 4e is, IMO, designed to be based around gamist play.  That is not to say it is relentless or monistic... as neither of those are a necessary quality of gamist based play.  

In fact while gamism may be it's primary or default playstyle, IMO... that doesn't mean I believe it can't work for a different playstyle such as yours with the right assumptions and decisons made in adventure and encounter design.


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## Raven Crowking (May 29, 2011)

Imaro said:


> I think this speaks to a bigger issue I have with your ideas on 4e... they tend not to be supported in actual implementation of the game by the actual designers. Do majority of the modules from WotC center around "conflict-via-combat driven thematic play, using traditional fantasy tropes" or do they center around gamist challenge based play? I would argue it is gamist challenge based play.




AFAICT, the WotC 4e modules couldn't be farther from pemerton's preferred playstyle if they were shoved in a rocket and sent to Mongo.  It is easier to find encounters in 1e where combat is not the optimal solution -- indeed, a whole module where combat is not the optimal solution -- than it is to find a 4e module where even a single _*encounter*_ is centred around "conflict-via-combat driven thematic play, using traditional fantasy tropes".

Of course, I could be wrong.  I haven't read every 4e modules.  I look forward to reading of all the examples I missed.


RC


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## UngainlyTitan (May 29, 2011)

Raven Crowking said:


> I remember well how some folks defended 4e as not being "easier" than earlier editions.
> 
> Strange how 4e is both not "easier" and at the same time "less forgiving of suboptimal play" (paraphrases mine).
> 
> Methinks the game may be either one or the other, but most probably neither.



 I beleive it is more a case that it is much easier to DM for these outcomes rather than anything intrinsic to the default mode of the RAW.


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## Raven Crowking (May 29, 2011)

ardoughter said:


> I beleive it is more a case that it is much easier to DM for these outcomes rather than anything intrinsic to the default mode of the RAW.




Nope.

Early in the 4e cycle, some pundits claimed that it seemed as though the game was easier for players; i.e., more forgiving of poor tactical decisions.  The reply was, in effect, Absolutely Not!

Now, it may be true that it is an easier tactical game for players, or it may be false, but it cannot be both.  I suspect that, like optimization, there is a perception that 4e is different than 3e here, but little actual reality.


RC


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## Imaro (May 29, 2011)

ardoughter said:


> I beleive it is more a case that it is much easier to DM for these outcomes rather than anything intrinsic to the default mode of the RAW.




I agree, which is why I think permeton's particular playstyle emerges either consciously or subconsciously through many of the choices he makes in running 4e. 

4e has a lever for setting the difficulty of a challenge... set it low and now all of a sudden, PC's aren't punished for sub-optimal builds and 4e is so much more forgiving and open to thematic play... set it at the high end of what they can handle and suddenly sub-optimal tactics and builds will get you killed with a quickness. 

Yet, IMO, default 4e just says hey this is the lever for creating the difficulty for your challenge based play, you decide the difficulty and the fluff for why it is that hard or easy. Whether that's... conflict-via-combat driven thematic play, using traditional fantasy tropes or optimal tactical play through a meatgrinder dungeon. The only thing 4e is supporting mechanically is the challenge.

Edit: I misworded above, I don't agree 4e is easier to DM for these outcomes... I think it gives a set of tools (with their own particular tradeoffs) that some people find easier to use in order to adjust the level of difficulty, just like others prefer Pathfinder/3.x's CR and EL... or even DM fiat.


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## Raven Crowking (May 29, 2011)

Imaro said:


> 4e has a lever for setting the difficulty of a challenge... set it low and now all of a sudden, PC's aren't punished for sub-optimal builds and 4e is so much more forgiving and open to thematic play... set it at the high end of what they can handle and suddenly sub-optimal tactics and builds will get you killed with a quickness.




Ah.

Now *that* makes sense.  IOW, just like any other edition of D&D.

RC


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## AbdulAlhazred (May 29, 2011)

Raven Crowking said:


> Ah.
> 
> Now *that* makes sense.  IOW, just like any other edition of D&D.
> 
> RC




Yeah, exactly. After 14 years of AD&D play in basically the same group you can bet that every scenario was deadly as heck and the players were always working to get past most of them. Same with 4e, you can dial it up to 11 if you want, and sure enough the 14 STR fighter will probably be sorely pressed, or you can play at what I believe is really more the default value for the game and people can build mostly whatever they want as long as it isn't obviously completely ridiculous like the 8 STR fighter. Again, no different from other editions.

All I think that does though is validate the point, the game wasn't designed to foster only extreme tactical play. In fact the standard guidelines for encounter difficulty distribution don't particularly lead to a setup where the combats are all so deadly that you need to optimize or even think about optimizing to a higher degree than would make sense to your average guy who relies on his sword to stay alive but also relies on other tricks when they're appropriate too, or has other dimensions to the character that don't contribute much/any to combat and require a resource or two to implement.


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## Imaro (May 30, 2011)

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Yeah, exactly. After 14 years of AD&D play in basically the same group you can bet that every scenario was deadly as heck and the players were always working to get past most of them. Same with 4e, you can dial it up to 11 if you want, and sure enough the 14 STR fighter will probably be sorely pressed, or you can play at what I believe is really more the default value for the game and people can build mostly whatever they want as long as it isn't obviously completely ridiculous like the 8 STR fighter. Again, no different from other editions.
> 
> All I think that does though is validate the point, the game wasn't designed to foster only extreme tactical play. In fact the standard guidelines for encounter difficulty distribution don't particularly lead to a setup where the combats are all so deadly that you need to optimize or even think about optimizing to a higher degree than would make sense to your average guy who relies on his sword to stay alive but also relies on other tricks when they're appropriate too, or has other dimensions to the character that don't contribute much/any to combat and require a resource or two to implement.




First, it's not an either/or question, but instead a queastion of to what degree the rules support certain playstyles as opposed to others.  The fact that they have created such a precise tool to estimate the level of challenges in the game is a tip off in and of itself.

Second, Before I engage in this conversation...could you define what you believe to be the default level as expressed in the 4e DMG... including distribution of endounter difficulty and levels of monster.


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## AbdulAlhazred (May 30, 2011)

Imaro said:


> First, it's not an either/or question, but instead a queastion of to what degree the rules support certain playstyles as opposed to others.  The fact that they have created such a precise tool to estimate the level of challenges in the game is a tip off in and of itself.
> 
> Second, Before I engage in this conversation...could you define what you believe to be the default level as expressed in the 4e DMG... including distribution of endounter difficulty and levels of monster.




Sure, few things are absolutes. Mostly I expect just differences in play styles and general approach emphasize different aspects of the system and lead to different conclusions.

Encounter mix is a whole section of DMG1 Chapter 6, pages 104-105. There is a good bit we can mine from this on the perception of play the authors had.

They discuss the mix of difficulties along 3 primary dimensions:

1) Complexity of the opposition, for instance a number of different monster types vs a wolf-pack with one type of monster.

2) Plot complexity, this would presumably amount to complexity of the encounter in terms of RP, where it could involve betrayal, revelations, secondary agendas, etc.

3) Terrain and other similar features.

They also talk about difficulty as a separate axis of encounter mix, with a set of pretty clear statements about what they expect to be easy, medium, and hard. Generally the ratings here would be found to be on the easy to trivial side for highly optimized groups, especially prior to the MM3 monster rehash. After the rehash they're more in line with what a fairly capable group is likely to find challenging, but you'd still probably have to up the general difficulty a level or so for such a group. My experience with our group is that the encounter mix suggested is now a pretty good tough mix for a group which makes reasonable character choices but is spending their resources more in a concept driven fashion than for combat optimization. They can take on the hardest suggested encounters in the mix, but generally they're going to find doing that often to make their characters feel like they're a bit weak. I tend to make sure the toughest encounters have substantial RP value and strategic thinking or non-combat means can be used to get a jump on them. If the group were hard-core tactical players then I'd emphasize those aspects more.

So, I think you can cater to a few styles of play, from chess-like optimizing super tactical play to much more plot driven and extemporaneous play with a much greater focus on the RP/plot aspects of the encounters.


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## pemerton (May 30, 2011)

Imaro said:


> Please don't do this... don't substitute your assumptions for how I think the game plays for what I've really said.  I've said that 4e is, IMO, designed to be based around gamist play.  That is not to say it is relentless or monistic... as neither of those are a necessary quality of gamist based play.



I didn't mean to wrongly attribute opinions to you - my reference to "relentless monism" wasn't meant to be a general characterisation of gamist play, but to the impression I had received from your descriptions upthread of the imperatives of a certain, seeminlgy narrow, optimisation in both build and play of 4e PCs. I thought that you yourself said something along the lines of 4e being very narrow in the range of viable play, and I thought your reference to Irontooth was meant to reinforce your point.

If I've misunderstood you, it's not deliberate.



Imaro said:


> I'm not sure what you mean here. Instead of parsing a single sentence out of a comment by Balesir, why not just state simply and concisely why you don't think the reward rules support gamism?



I'm not meaning to be obtuse - I thought that you'd participated in this discussion on other, earlier threads (the various ones Mercurius started a few months ago). I may have misremembered - those threads tend to blur into one big mass in my memory.

In 4e, XP is awarded for winning combat encounters (which the rules are strongly designed to support occurring), for participating in skill challenges (this is the Rules Compendium update), for completing quests (which, as per the DMG, are encouraged to be player-initiated), and for passing time in story-propelling roleplaying (as per the DMG 2).

The typical combat is known to take around an hour, thereby awarding XP of one level-appropriate monster per 12 minutes of play. The DMG 2 award is at the same amount of XP per 15 minutes of play. Skill challenges can be a bit varied in the time they take to resolve, but half-an-hour for a typical complexity 2 or 3 challenge (6 to 8 successes before 3 failures) is probably in the right ballpark. So that's about the same XP reward per 10 to 15 minutes of play.

What, then, earns XP in 4e? Basically, _playing the game_ - advancing the storyline - at a rate of about 4 to 5 monster's worth of XP per hour (which makes for a base progression rate, for a party of 5, of about one level per 10 hours of play). And the more that in advancing the storyline one achieves quests (which are encouraged to be player-defined), the more XP per unit time will be received.

This doesn't look to me much like AD&D-style gamism, where XP rewards are intended to be highly responsive to the details of player choices, and a reward for "skillful play". Rather, it looks to me as if XP awards in 4e are intended to produce level-gains, and a resulting change in colour (assuming a GM is using something like the standard monsters out of the published sources), that means that the campaign over all will tell some particular variant of "the story of D&D", where players start out dealing with kobolds and end up dealing with Tiamat.

This also fits, in my mind, with the logic of paragon paths and epic destinies, which seem pretty clearly not to be intended as rewards for good play, but rather as tools to be used in driving the story forward (eg Heroes of Shadow, page 14, under the heading "Epic Destiny": "After twenty levels of adventure, it's time for you to assume your epic destiny and shape your legend in the universe forevermore. . . your choice of destiny offers extraordinary abilities that represent your journey toward your ultimate fate as you define it.").

Now consider the 4e approach to treasure: it is based on paced, level-appropriate parcels, with items determined in accordance with player wishlists. That is, the game treats treasure gain as an aspect of character-building - it is not a reward for good play any more than gaining levels, feats and powers is a reward for good play.

The interaction of the encounter-building guidelines and the treasure guidelines further militates against AD&D-style gamism, because it militates against "placed encounters": because XP-by-level for monsters doubles every four levels, but treasure values quintuple every five levels, the treasure placed with an encounter will fall behind level-appropriateness far quicker than will the XP value of that encounter. In practice, then, to run the game as the DMG guidelines suggest, a GM has to adjust the treasure awards associated with a given encounter if the party will be of higher level than anticipated when they come to it, in order to ensure that treasure awards are keeping pace with XP awards.

Further features of the game that tell against gamist play is the advice on handling absent players and PC death - award XP even to PCs of absent players (very anti-Gygaxian!) and bring in new PCs at the party level (so PC death is not a mechanical penalty).

The only respect in which 4e supports gamist play, as far as I can see, is the sense that Balesir has articulated on this (I think) and other threads: as level increases, PC complexity increases, and so the game poses the very low-key challenge of "OK, you could handle things at that level of complexity, but what about now when we amp it all up?"

It could also be played as merely a skirmish game rather than a RPG, with the story elements as mere colour, but I don't see any explicit support for this in the rulebooks - although I gather in practice this sort of play might be common. But like I posted upthread (in reply to P1NBACK), I regard this as drifting from the written rules and guidelines, and therefore doubt that changing the rules and guidelines will discourage such drift (other than, perhaps, by encouraging such players to find a new skirmish game).



Raven Crowking said:


> I remember well how some folks defended 4e as not being "easier" than earlier editions.
> 
> Strange how 4e is both not "easier" and at the same time "less forgiving of suboptimal play" (paraphrases mine).



The paraphrase is a bit loose. My point is that 4e (i) allows players to build PCs who can succeed by adopting approaches that, in the real world, would be manifestly suboptimal (such as bringing a knife to a gun fight), and (ii) allows players to build PCs who are quite flexible and resilient in actual play, such that _there is no single optimal path for success_.

I think that classic AD&D tends to make (ii) true but (i) false.

I think that Rolemaster tends to make both (i) and (ii) false. My feeling, based on a lot less play experience, is that sim-heavy points-buy games like GURPS and HERO will tend in this direction also, although they may permit certain builds that allow for (i) (eg presumably in Champions it is possible to build Hawkeye or Green Arrow).

I haven't played enough 3E to have firm views, but my impression is that it tends to make (i) false, and that at least for martial PCs it tends to make (ii) false also. To the extent that, at mid-to-high levels, it strongly encourages buff-teleport-ambush style play, that tells against (ii) across the board.

I think these features of various rulessets are orthogonal to the question of whether play is easy or not. I don't think 4e tactical play is especially forgiving of inattentiveness, for example, and a player who tries to play a wizard as a defender without thinking hard about what's going on probably won't have much luck with it.

But a player whose wizard PC has access to Thunderwave (close blast with push), Wall of Fire (a whole lot of auto-damage) and Expeditious retreat (a whole lot of shift) - just to pick a few powers I'm familiar with from my own game - has a wide range of options open to him/her. There is no "single optimal path" in general, nor even for any given encounter, at least most of the time. This significant scope for player decision-making, which is pretty orthogonal to the question of success or failure (because the decision is across a rather open-ended range of viable choices), is what I find makes the game interesting.

But it doesn't follow that, because there is an open-ended range of viable choices, that there is not also a wide range of non-viable choices (the in-play analogues of LostSoul's example of an invalid choice for PC-building).

I've played with M:TG players who not only can't build a tournament-viable deck, but who can barely build a casual-play viable deck. And who when given a viable deck to play, are unable to play it. These sorts of people might have trouble with 4e, I guess. But the fact that 4e presupposes a certain minimal competence at a certain sort of tactical gameplay doesn't mean that this has to be the _point_ of play. As I've set out at some length earlier in this post, I don't think the game is particularly well-designed to support that sort of gamist play.

Like I said upthread, I see the tactics in 4e as a means, not an end. The fact that the game _includes_ this means is one reason why I'm GMing 4e and not HeroQuest.



Imaro said:


> 4e has a lever for setting the difficulty of a challenge... set it low and now all of a sudden, PC's aren't punished for sub-optimal builds and 4e is so much more forgiving and open to thematic play... set it at the high end of what they can handle and suddenly sub-optimal tactics and builds will get you killed with a quickness.



I think the issue of encounter difficulty - or, at least, numerical difficulty - is, again, somewhat orthogonal. The encounter I described upthread was, as I noted, a level 17 encounter. Here is the encounter roll:

Hobgoblin hand of Bane (10 elite soldier)
10 Hobgoblin warriors (9 minion soldier)
Hobgoblin beastmaster (7 controller (leader))
Spirehorn behemoth (9 elite brute)

Bugbear assassin (11 elite skirmisher)
Bugbear backstabber (9 skirmisher)
Bugbear strangler (10 controller)
Bugbear thug (10 brute)
Bugbear warrior (9 brute)

Tiefling heretic (10 artillery)
Tiefling occultist (12 controller)
Black Sun adept (10 elite controller (leader))
Twitch, imp (9 lurker)​
Like I noted earlier, the majority, but not all, of these enemies are below PC level (eleventh). But the 10th to 12th level NPCs on their own make up 5400 XP, which is a slightly overloaded 14th level encounter.

The monsters are from a range of sources - MM, MM3, MV, Dragon Magazine Archive, FRCG. Defences, hit points and to-hit were all adjusted by me to reflect level advancement plus MM3 norms. Damage, and in some cases powers, were also adjusted by me to reflect those same norms.

And as I noted upthread, we are an Expertise-free group.

The party in question includes an elf ranger-cleric (not optimised beyond the obvious choices for an archer ranger like Twin Strike, Biting Volley and Attacks on the Run, with Greatbow Focus and Lethal Hunter), a human tome wizard (not optimised as described upthread), a tiefling CHA paladin (not optimised - he uses a +2 khopesh with Turathi weapon training but spent the combat fighting with a recently-discovered +3 shortsword, in order to learn more about it), a dwarf polearm fighter (somewhat optimised with Come and Get It, Deadly Draw, Polearm Gamble, War Priest paragon path) and a drow chaos sorcerer (the only fully-optimised PC in the party - Accurate Implement, Implement Focus, Dual Implement, Staff of Ruin, multi-class Cutthroat for extra Stealth chances and an extra Rattling Interrupt, etc).

One thing that I enjoyed about the encounter was that, even though it was fairly obvious to me from the get go that it was quite challenging, and even though this became obvious to the players pretty early on also, as the full range of forces arrayed against them (other than Twitch) became clear, it didn't force play onto any single predictable path. Unexpected things, that help build the story of the campaign and the stories of the individual PCs, kept happening: the sorcerer went out to face the bugbears expecting backup from his friends, but then got more-or-less abandoned due to miscommunication and dithering, and then ended up on the roof of a burning building where he went toe-to-toe with Twitch; the dwarf held the line against the bulk of the non-bugbear forces for two or three rounds on his own, and didn't even become bloodied; the wizard ended up nearly trapped inside a building by his own wall of fire, fighting off a bugbear and hobgoblins with his Sceptre of Erathis (a rod made out of 2 of the 7 parts) until the paladin came to help him; the ranger made perhaps half his attacks without the benefit of hunter's quarry, due to the difficulties of moving his behemoth into close enough range to use quarry; and so on.



Imaro said:


> I don't agree 4e is easier to DM for these outcomes... I think it gives a set of tools (with their own particular tradeoffs) that some people find easier to use in order to adjust the level of difficulty, just like others prefer Pathfinder/3.x's CR and EL... or even DM fiat.



Well, in judging what sort of play a system supports better or worse I can only speak from my own experience. Here is what it tells me.

A system in which death from a single blow - particularly a single suprise blow - is a distinct possibility - see, eg, RM, RQ, Classic Traveller, Classic D&D vs all very low-level PCs and against many thieves and MUs even into mid-levels - probably wouldn't permit the encounter I've described above. The dwarf couldn't have done what he did. Twitch would probably have killed the sorcerer. And the wizard would probably have died when trapped by his own wall of fire.

A system in which monster size is hugely determinative of combat prowess (RM and RQ exhibit this to some degree) also would play differently, because taking control of the Behemoth would become the overwhelmingly important consideration in winning the encounter, rather than one of a number of interesting and viable options.

This is not just about levels of difficulty. It's about making variuos sorts of choices viable or non-viable. In general, the more a system creates pressure to optimise build and tactics along real-world rational lines (ie pressure _not_ to bring a knife to a gunfight) then the more likely it is to create single best paths of action, I think, and therefore to reduce the likelihood of the sort of play I am looking for.



Imaro said:


> Heroquest gives you specific mechanics to enforce it's pacing advice (Level of difficulty is directly dependant upon how well or bad your party has already done) and thematic concerns (You are literally limitless in creating any character as long as it is genre appropriate... 4e doesn't.... DC is based on level not story concerns...character creation is limited to the available combat builds/roles that have been developed, and so on.



I agree that 4e is not identical to HeroQuest. But I don't think it's as different in the respects that you point to as you do.

On pacing - because 4e makes it very easy to set encounter difficulty, and therefore pacing not only across encounters but within encounters, encounters can be set up and resolved in a way that is directly responsive to pacing concerns. Robin Laws even gives some advice on how to do this (cribbed directly from his work on HQ) in DMG 2.

On limits in PC creation - I think WotC's business model is to sell us long lists of options rather than to create PC-build mechanics that don't require lists. (This is why, despite all the debate about the place of feats in the game, I don't believe that they'll drop feats, or at least not until they come up with some other element that supports the production and sale of long lists of options.) But those lists are pretty long. They cover a wide range of typical and unusual fantasy tropes. _And the choices made from those lists affect the way that a PC plays._



Imaro said:


> I think this speaks to a bigger issue I have with your ideas on 4e... they tend not to be supported in actual implementation of the game by the actual designers.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> the rules do stress building encounters as tests of tactics for the players. For the most part the DMG doesn't talk about designing an encounter in a thematic way it talks about designing it with the synergies of roles and monster powers in mind.



I agree with the last clause of the last sentence. But it doesn't talk about using these features to create "test of tactics" for the players. It talks about using them to make encounters that are interesting. Similarly with respect to the discussion of circular paths in DMG 2.

Here are some quotes:

Dynamic monster groups combined with interesting terrain and other features make for lively combat encounters. (DMG p 52)

The key to designing interesting and varied groups of monsters for an encounter lies in the monster roles . . . (DMG p 54)

Building an encounter is a matter of choosing threats appropriate to the characters and combining them in interesting and challenging ways. (DMG p 56)

An encounter that occurs in a small, bare dungeon room is hard to make memorable, no matter what the monsters in it are doing. To maximize the fun for everyone around the table, follow these guidelines when crafting the chambers, caverns, or battlefields for your encounters. (DMG p 60 - directly underneath this passage is the heading "Interesting Areas")

. . . terrain provides the context for an encounter. A mob of goblin archers is easy to defeat when only empty terrain lies between it and the party. Take the same goblins, put them on the opposite side of a wide chasm, and the characters face a much tougher challenge. (DMG p 60)

You’ll find encounters more dynamic and exciting when everyone changes position on their turn. (DMG 2 p 56)​
The dominant motif here, for me, is _interest_ (liveliness, memorability). Challenge, where it is mentioned, seems to be envisaged as a means to that end.



Raven Crowking said:


> AFAICT, the WotC 4e modules couldn't be farther from pemerton's preferred playstyle if they were shoved in a rocket and sent to Mongo.  It is easier to find encounters in 1e where combat is not the optimal solution -- indeed, a whole module where combat is not the optimal solution -- than it is to find a 4e module where even a single _*encounter*_ is centred around "conflict-via-combat driven thematic play, using traditional fantasy tropes".
> 
> Of course, I could be wrong.  I haven't read every 4e modules.  I look forward to reading of all the examples I missed.





Imaro said:


> Do majority of the modules from WotC center around "conflict-via-combat driven thematic play, using traditional fantasy tropes" or do they center around gamist challenge based play? I would argue it is gamist challenge based play.



I've never made any secret of my view that the 4e modules are, on the whole, at odds with the advice and examples in the rulebooks. Just to give one example, the Well of Demons (part of H2 Thunderspire Labyrinth) has a great circular path which the encounters, as written, do not exploit at all. (Here I explain how I adjusted the map for the Chamber of Eyes, and the NPC/monster rollcall and behaviour for both the Chamber of Eyes and the Well of Demons, to make them into better encounters.)

But given that those modules don't even follow their own advice on designing encounter areas, the fact that they also have many boring story elements, plus a failure to successfully capitalise on their interesting story elements, I regard as evidence of little more than WotC's inability to produce a good module. (Contrast the campaign arcs in the Underdark and the Plane Above, which are full of good ideas about Torog, Erathis, Lolth, Tharizdun, journeying into deep myth (=heroquesting), etc, much of which I envisage becoming relevant as my game progresses into epic tier.)

WotC was equally capable of producing crappy modules in 3E. Bastion of Broken Souls is practically a poster child for a module that kills dead every interesting idea that it seems to want to enliven (an exiled god that does nothing but fight; an angel living gate who guards the only hope for humanity, who will do nothing but fight; a super-powerful dreamwitch who (from memory) will do nothing but fight; etc). I got a lot of good play out of Bastion of Broken Souls (in my second long-running RM campaign) but only by taking all its interesting story elements while completely ignoring its advice on how to use them. (As things turned out, the PCs befriended the exiled god and received significant assistance from him, they persuaded the angel to let herself be killed in order to open the gate, and they bargained with the dreamwitch in order to learn her secrets.)

Of the 4e modules I know, the one that comes closest to supporting my style of play is Heathen, which was in the first or second of the free Dungeon pdfs when 4e came out. It still has some obvious limitations, but at least has a serious go at linking theme, conflict-via-combat and fantasy tropes. Other modules that I have adapted in various degrees for my 4e game are Night's Dark Terror (for Moldvay/Cook D&D), Speaker in Dreams (for 3E) and Wonders out of Time (another d20 module). All offer varying degrees of interesting maps, scenarios and thematic material.


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## Balesir (May 30, 2011)

pemerton said:


> The only respect in which 4e supports gamist play, as far as I can see, is the sense that Balesir has articulated on this (I think) and other threads: as level increases, PC complexity increases, and so the game poses the very low-key challenge of "OK, you could handle things at that level of complexity, but what about now when we amp it all up?"



Not quite entirely what I said 

I originally said one other thing and I now can think of a third.  The original "extra gamist element" was the "step on up" aspects surrounding extended rests.  I think the capacity to have the players decide just how many encounters they will tackle before replenishing resources is an important "dare you" element - our run this weekend showed it off quite well.  Due to an enemy raid on the inn the party were resting in after an intentionally "stretched" day, one player character began the raid encounter with 1 hp and no healing surges. I (as DM) gave him a squad of (minion) guards that the townspeople had assigned to protect the sleeping heroes to play in the encounter (as well as his somewhat depleted character).  Upon realising that "hey, I am the same as them - I am a minion!" another player helpfully pointed out that, in fact, he was worse, since a miss never damages a minion...

The second aspect that I think supports a "gamist" style is the way in which 4E can _reward_ tactical play.  What I mean, here, is not the commonly quoted mirror of "you need good tactics or you die", but rather that good tactics can give rewarding moments - moments when the other players go "ooooh - neat!" or "oooh - that's gonna smart!"  The players in our game have got pretty good at creating "gotcha!" situations for monsters; the point of several "optimiser" builds I see is also to create impressive "nova" results.  The real "reward", here, I think is not so much the damage done in the encounter (although, obviously, that's nice, too), but the kudos gained from other players seeing the neat moves pulled off.  The explicit rules of 4E (as opposed to page 42) play to this particularly, I think, because the results are achieved not through persuasion (or even entertainment) of the DM, but through the simple logic of the game rules.  4E play in our group is replete with these "gotcha!" moments. Since the players (including the DM - the monsters can play the same game!) explicitly get kudos for tactical play, I recognise this absolutely as "gamist" support.


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## pemerton (May 31, 2011)

Balesir, that makes sense.



Balesir said:


> The second aspect that I think supports a "gamist" style is the way in which 4E can _reward_ tactical play.  What I mean, here, is not the commonly quoted mirror of "you need good tactics or you die"



Am I right in reading this as a degree of agreement with me as to what it is that 4e does _not_ seem to be particularly aimed at supporting?


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## Balesir (May 31, 2011)

pemerton said:


> Am I right in reading this as a degree of agreement with me as to what it is that 4e does _not_ seem to be particularly aimed at supporting?



I think so, yes.  I think 4E neither specifically supports nor fails to support "strategise or die" gaming; most RPGs could be used that way just by amping the encounter/conflict opposition strength and stakes to the very edge.  I think the need for "you need to be "1337" to survive" for gamist play is frequently, um, overstated.  For me, at least, it's far more about the inter-player kudos awards for neat plays and nasty "gotchas".  The challenge has to have a certain amount of, well, challenge, of course, to make the tactical plays worthwhile, but even when the deck is stacked to make TPK unlikely there can be challenge present.  I can see how this level of "challenge" could be used to generate space for "thematic" play as well as being an arena for tactical demonstrations.


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## MrMyth (May 31, 2011)

Raven Crowking said:


> In addition, the existence of optimization threads is a strong indication that some builds are more powerful than others. In which case, it should be obvious that some are also "sub-par".




You absolutely have variance in power levels between characters in 4E, and the degree of difference has only grown since the start of the game. 

Despite this, however, 4E works hard to make it so that against an average opponent, the average character will be able to reasonably contribute in combat, and similarly, the average character will have several options for contributing in terms of mechanical skills outside of combat.

The optimized character is obviously better than this basic character, but rarely to a degree that they are not able to both be involved in the same combat. You may often have a situation where an optimized character does twice the damage of the non-optimized character. You will not often have a situation where the non-optimized character is _incapable _of hitting enemies that are trivial to the optimized character. 

This is in comparison to previous editions, where it was much easier to end up - either due to a poorly chosen build or poorly rolled stats - with a character who was in a completely different league from a truly optimized character. Or, in terms of skills, some classes have them in abundance while others could end up with virtually none. Now, this certainly wasn't a problem in every group - veteran players could assist new players in avoiding bad choices, and experienced players could accomplish many things with a character without the stats or skills ever coming into play. 

Nonetheless, 4E made a deliberate effort to ensure that every character had, by default, a certain level of combat effectiveness and a certain variety of non-combat skills, and made an effort at limiting the difference between non-optimized and optimized characters.

Pemerton said that he felt that 4E let him build a character focused on concept, and do so without feeling suboptimal. Perhaps a better word would be simply 'competent'. A PC who invests their various character resources into flavor and concept and fluff will still have a certain level of competence built in. 

This is even entirely outside from how player skill can impact effectiveness. As you note, you can easily have, in past editions, a character who is mechanically weak at combat, yet a creative player can find many ways to still contribute. That remains true. But at the same time, the player who doesn't want to find those other options and would like to just be able to help out directly in combat, even if they don't want to focus on it? 

4E supports that. Maybe not perfectly, but it is hard to deny that it was a deliberate design goal.


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## Imaro (May 31, 2011)

Balesir said:


> I think so, yes. I think 4E neither specifically supports nor fails to support "strategise or die" gaming; most RPGs could be used that way just by amping the encounter/conflict opposition strength and stakes to the very edge. I think the need for "you need to be "1337" to survive" for gamist play is frequently, um, overstated. For me, at least, it's far more about the inter-player kudos awards for neat plays and nasty "gotchas". The challenge has to have a certain amount of, well, challenge, of course, to make the tactical plays worthwhile, but even when the deck is stacked to make TPK unlikely there can be challenge present. I can see how this level of "challenge" could be used to generate space for "thematic" play as well as being an arena for tactical demonstrations.





Tell me this Balesir... why is encounter balance and player balance (in combat) so important for 4e?  I think gamist focused play benefits much more from a robustly balanced encounter design system than other games... I think Exalted, LoA, and Heroquest are all more focused on the type of thematic play that permerton speaks to... and none of them have a robustly balanced encounter design system (in fact they don't seem particularly concerned with balance in encounters, at all.).... this is one of the major features of 4e yet it, IMO, serves gamism more than anything else.


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## Neonchameleon (May 31, 2011)

Raven Crowking said:


> I remember well how some folks defended 4e as not being "easier" than earlier editions.
> 
> Strange how 4e is both not "easier" and at the same time "less forgiving of suboptimal play" (paraphrases mine).
> 
> Methinks the game may be either one or the other, but most probably neither.




Both is certainly possible.  Take the surprise rules.  In both games you get the majority of an extra round if you get surprise.  But how long a round is has changed.  In 1e it was a minute.  In 4e it's 6 seconds.  Which means that the force multiplier for getting surprise is much lower.  A back of the envelope estimates it's dropped from somewhere probably around 50% (i.e. you're half as strong again with surprise) to somewhere round 25% (i.e. you're 25% stronger).  But whatever the drop in impact it's significant.

This doesn't change that surprise is a very good thing to have - it's still a significant force multiplier.  And one that normally benefits the small, fast moving band of PCs more than the defenders.  Lowering the force multiplier given by something that works in the PC's favour makes the game harder.  But it also makes it more forgiving because the _PCs _have a better chance of survival when they are ambushed.

So lowering the impact of surprise makes things both more forgiving _and_ harder.


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## AbdulAlhazred (May 31, 2011)

Imaro said:


> Tell me this Balesir... why is encounter balance and player balance (in combat) so important for 4e?  I think gamist focused play benefits much more from a robustly balanced encounter design system than other games... I think Exalted, LoA, and Heroquest are all more focused on the type of thematic play that permerton speaks to... and none of them have a robustly balanced encounter design system (in fact they don't seem particularly concerned with balance in encounters, at all.).... this is one of the major features of 4e yet it, IMO, serves gamism more than anything else.




It is far more than a gamist consideration. Systematic imbalance directly impacts what you can do with the system at every level. In 3.5 you simply cannot construct a fighter that is a credible super heroic character at higher levels. The system SAYS you should be able to do this, but the option is simply non-existent. In point of fact said character has little to contribute to the party in any sense and will be largely ineffective aside from some very contrived situations. In 3.5 you could make "Hercules" or "Conan" but any garden variety spell caster will almost instantly make said character irrelevant in play. 

Contrast this to 4e where such character concepts are perfectly valid and function as intended. My 30th level barbarian is a genuine force to be reckoned with. This goes far beyond mere gamism.

Notice that in any of the three systems you cite the same issue exists. It may not be considered a problem if said systems are just straight up telling us that such concepts aren't valid or supported in that system, but they are still more limited in that respect than 4e is. Conversely if the genre those systems are intended to support actually supposes that my 'barbarian' should be irrelevant then they've got a perfectly valid reason for being designed the way they are. However I'd say that certainly this wasn't the case with 3.5. It is arguable with other systems and I'm not familiar enough with some of them to comment specifically.


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## Neonchameleon (May 31, 2011)

Imaro said:


> Tell me this Balesir... why is encounter balance and player balance (in combat) so important for 4e?




Because it makes things vastly easier to DM for a new DM.  And it allows much better narrative pacing than to have to be cautious with my monsters lest I accidently kill a PC.  Balance is information.  And 4e is the best game I have ever played for new DMs - partly because the information presented on what the bad guys can do and how to keep the story feeling hard but actually manageable is so good.

And add to that everything AbdulAlhazred just said.


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## Imaro (May 31, 2011)

AbdulAlhazred said:


> It is far more than a gamist consideration. Systematic imbalance directly impacts what you can do with the system at every level. In 3.5 you simply cannot construct a fighter that is a credible super heroic character at higher levels. The system SAYS you should be able to do this, but the option is simply non-existent. In point of fact said character has little to contribute to the party in any sense and will be largely ineffective aside from some very contrived situations. In 3.5 you could make "Hercules" or "Conan" but any garden variety spell caster will almost instantly make said character irrelevant in play.
> 
> Contrast this to 4e where such character concepts are perfectly valid and function as intended. My 30th level barbarian is a genuine force to be reckoned with. This goes far beyond mere gamism.
> 
> Notice that in any of the three systems you cite the same issue exists. It may not be considered a problem if said systems are just straight up telling us that such concepts aren't valid or supported in that system, but they are still more limited in that respect than 4e is. Conversely if the genre those systems are intended to support actually supposes that my 'barbarian' should be irrelevant then they've got a perfectly valid reason for being designed the way they are. However I'd say that certainly this wasn't the case with 3.5. It is arguable with other systems and I'm not familiar enough with some of them to comment specifically.




But again this mainly serves the combat encounter in 4e which centers around a gamist challenge... a Fighter is still imbalanced and a scrub when it comes to anything outside combat with his 3 skills.


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## Raven Crowking (May 31, 2011)

Neonchameleon said:


> So lowering the impact of surprise makes things both more forgiving _and_ harder.




Good post.

However, making some things easier and some things harder either (A) makes the game harder overall, (B) makes the game easier overall, or (C) is a net wash.


RC


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## AbdulAlhazred (May 31, 2011)

Imaro said:


> But again this mainly serves the combat encounter in 4e which centers around a gamist challenge... a Fighter is still imbalanced and a scrub when it comes to anything outside combat with his 3 skills.




It goes far beyond combat and right to the heart of my character concept. A 3.5 high level fighter running around thinking he's going to lord it over anything even approaching his level has got to be a darn fool. 

Now, a 4e fighter DOES start with 3 skills, not a design decision I would consider one of the best thought out in the history of 4e. OTOH the class skills lists in 4e are rather irrelevant since you can pick up any old skill you want simply by telling the DM you had a background element that made it relevant to your character. And given that all skills are broadly applicable almost any skill is potentially relevant in a wide range of situations.

Again, my 4e fighter works CONCEPTUALLY and in an RP sense because he does have equality with wizards, 'spell' using monsters, etc. Sure, the equality is in combat, but his whole concept is based around that. He's genuinely deadly and effective and he knows it. Likewise he could (also) be a renowned explorer, a respected leader, etc. 

One of the big issues that 4e actually addressed WRT 3.5 was PLOT power too. Notice that my fighter can easily have quite a bit of traction here over all levels. His 3.5 counterpart was also gimped on this front. Not only by a skill system that punished him horribly, but simply by the fact that again casters easily made trivial any pretense he had to using even the abilities he did have out of combat. 4e did a pretty decent job of opening up a lot of space for more interesting plots and storylines by reigning in the caster's ability to address practically every problem with magic. Once again we see that by providing a good balance between different classes the game is opened up a lot. There are many more valid choices and approaches to solving problems now and thus many more character concepts which actually work in play. It isn't perfect and the system did have to tone down magic in some respects to achieve it, which certainly removes a few options, but I think it was a logical and carefully considered design decision.


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## Neonchameleon (May 31, 2011)

Imaro said:


> But again this mainly serves the combat encounter in 4e which centers around a gamist challenge... a Fighter is still imbalanced and a scrub when it comes to anything outside combat with his 3 skills.




I'd hardly call three trained skills out of seventeen.  Sure he's not as effective as a thief (seven skills).  But there are three factors coming into play.  First that the skills are pretty broad and that the fighter has a wide ranging list (perception is almost invariably useful - and heal and streetwise are pretty good).  Second you only need one relevant trained skill to be useful.  And there are a number of ... specialist skills on the list (Thievery).  Third, unlike in 3.X you aren't a scrub at a skill you're untrained in.  Everyone gains ranks in all skills.  You're just weaker - it's no longer a case of "I hope the fighter doesn't even _try_ diplomacy with his +0".  If he's smart he'll be rolling at easy DCs and can pass those relatively often.  Good backup rather than lead - but good backup is not a scrub.


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## MrMyth (May 31, 2011)

Imaro said:


> But again this mainly serves the combat encounter in 4e which centers around a gamist challenge... a Fighter is still imbalanced and a scrub when it comes to anything outside combat with his 3 skills.




"Anything" outside of combat? That hasn't been my experience. Even aside from the many wilderness challenges in which the most common fighter skills - Athletics and Endurance - are applicable, most Fighters will have at least one other. Two of the remaining options - Intimidate and Streetwise - are likely relevant in many social skill challenges. 

The Fighter likely won't contribute as much as the Rogue. But they have been given much more ability to be involved in many, many scenarios.


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## AbdulAlhazred (May 31, 2011)

MrMyth said:


> "Anything" outside of combat? That hasn't been my experience. Even aside from the many wilderness challenges in which the most common fighter skills - Athletics and Endurance - are applicable, most Fighters will have at least one other. Two of the remaining options - Intimidate and Streetwise - are likely relevant in many social skill challenges.
> 
> The Fighter likely won't contribute as much as the Rogue. But they have been given much more ability to be involved in many, many scenarios.




Rogues and Rangers DO have a longer skill list than other classes. OTOH they also have a fairly significant number of mandatory skills. In the case of the rogue you're really not going to be able to function in your chosen profession without Thievery, Stealth, Perception, and probably Acrobatics. That does leave a decent number of open choices and they're certainly substantially better off than the Fighter, but it isn't quite as lopsided as it might seem. Similarly with the Ranger, they're pretty much going to have to train Nature/Dungeoneering and Perception at the very least (and IIRC both are locked in).  I think there's a pretty good consensus though that the Fighter should be getting 4 skills, which seems to be what all classes devised since PHB1 get. Not really sure why they've resisted updating this.


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## Imaro (May 31, 2011)

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Rogues and Rangers DO have a longer skill list than other classes. OTOH they also have a fairly significant number of mandatory skills. In the case of the rogue you're really not going to be able to function in your chosen profession without Thievery, Stealth, Perception, and probably Acrobatics. That does leave a decent number of open choices and they're certainly substantially better off than the Fighter, but it isn't quite as lopsided as it might seem. Similarly with the Ranger, they're pretty much going to have to train Nature/Dungeoneering and Perception at the very least (and IIRC both are locked in). I think there's a pretty good consensus though that the Fighter should be getting 4 skills, which seems to be what all classes devised since PHB1 get. Not really sure why they've resisted updating this.




Actually I would argue that it's out-of-combat options... until essentials took away the ritual caster feat... classes like the Wizard and Cleric didn't get as many skills as the Ranger and Rogue... but they got the ritual caster feat and some rituals for free as well to make up for out-of-combat options.  Only the Fighter and Barbarian (I believe) get less than 4 skills...


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## Crazy Jerome (May 31, 2011)

Neonchameleon said:


> Because it makes things vastly easier to DM for a new DM. And it allows much better narrative pacing than to have to be cautious with my monsters lest I accidently kill a PC. Balance is information. And 4e is the best game I have ever played for new DMs - partly because the information presented on what the bad guys can do and how to keep the story feeling hard but actually manageable is so good.
> 
> And add to that everything AbdulAlhazred just said.




Having just read the whole topic , let me second that and add to it.  There is really not much on this front that an experienced group couldn't eventually get with any version of D&D.  My group pretty much got to that point with 1E, for example, after several years play.  I could run low to mid level 3E that way, now.

But besides making it easier for beginners, the other aspect of that is how the balance changes over levels in earlier versions.  We didn't play high level 1E much--because it all changed, and we would have had to relearn how to manage it.  We had problems with high level 3E for the same reason.  Sure, if we kept at it long enough, we would have eventually come to some understanding of how to make it work for us.  

Thing is, though, that I don't want to do that, and neither does the group.  We want some system mastery competence to matter, but we don't want to spend a couple of years mastering it before we can settle down with telling stories with it.  And if I try to shield the players from the complexity, then that is just trading GM burnout issues for system mastery issues.

From a strictly personal preference, it is not simply "amount" of system master, either.  It is when and how it is introduced.  Fantasy Hero and Burning Wheel are *extremely* front-loaded, but once you get them, there isn't much else to learn.  To a lesser degree, RuneQuest is too.  (Setting mastery is the thing in RQ.)  D&D has traditionally added complexity as the game progressed.  4E fits that basic model, more or less, but it is more front-loaded, with less of a curve as it goes, than other versions of D&D, for the players, while being significantly less front-loaded and difficult overall for the GM.  

I don't really have much experience dealing with people who are incremental learners *by choice*.  In software development, as with many complex disciplines, we are forced to by the sheer immensity of the problem.  In games, including roleplaying games, everyone I knows wants to master the game options as quickly as possible, to then let whatever emergent gameplay is there to emerge.  I have no idea how widespread that attitude is, though.


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## Balesir (May 31, 2011)

Imaro said:


> Tell me this Balesir... why is encounter balance and player balance (in combat) so important for 4e?  I think gamist focused play benefits much more from a robustly balanced encounter design system than other games... I think Exalted, LoA, and Heroquest are all more focused on the type of thematic play that permerton speaks to... and none of them have a robustly balanced encounter design system (in fact they don't seem particularly concerned with balance in encounters, at all.).... this is one of the major features of 4e yet it, IMO, serves gamism more than anything else.



I'm not saying that 4E isn't gamist at its core - you may not have seen it all but *pemerton* and I had quite a discussion on this, and my position is still that 4E primarily supports a gamist agenda (and does so well).  But, nevertheless, *pemerton* has convinced me that the same "manoeuvre room" that 4E affords that allow long campaigns of functional gamist play can also be used to bring in thematic (i.e. narrativist) elements.

That is not to say that I don't think there are many better narrativist supporting games out there, but many people do seem to be attached to D&D for colour/nostalgia/mythology reasons.  As a result we get huge "edition wars" and impassioned tirades because, even though other games may do someone's preferred style far better than D&D ever did, they are wedded to D&D and now can't make it do what they want it to.

D&D is also far easier to find players for than other RPGs, for much the same reasons.

The end result, then, is that D&D 4E can support gamism - which was always D&d's "core competency" - and narrativism.  The only folk "out in the cold" are the simulationist guys.  That doesn't bother me - I found better places to scratch my sim itch long ago - but it does tear some folk up.  Sad, really, since any move that will really help them will, I'm pretty sure, really screw the game up for those served already by 4E.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> This goes far beyond mere gamism.



Whaddaya mean, "mere" gamism??? Let's not start up that whole style snobbishness stuff again, please


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## AbdulAlhazred (May 31, 2011)

Balesir said:


> I'm not saying that 4E isn't gamist at its core - you may not have seen it all but *pemerton* and I had quite a discussion on this, and my position is still that 4E primarily supports a gamist agenda (and does so well).  But, nevertheless, *pemerton* has convinced me that the same "manoeuvre room" that 4E affords that allow long campaigns of functional gamist play can also be used to bring in thematic (i.e. narrativist) elements.
> 
> That is not to say that I don't think there are many better narrativist supporting games out there, but many people do seem to be attached to D&D for colour/nostalgia/mythology reasons.  As a result we get huge "edition wars" and impassioned tirades because, even though other games may do someone's preferred style far better than D&D ever did, they are wedded to D&D and now can't make it do what they want it to.
> 
> ...




I think it caters well to a 'gamist' agenda. Honestly I'm not really particularly taken with the whole 'GNS' concept anyway. It perhaps captures some elements of trade offs in design, but I don't think it does much for how and why people PLAY. I think WotC's breakdown of player types is a much better guide to that.

That being said 4e is a fairly solid game. The tactical elements can be emphasized and you can play it pretty much as a skirmish game if you so desire. You can also blend in stronger RP elements and focus heavily on that aspect. Depending on how much the DM is inclined to factor story elements into action resolution you can get a pretty wide range of results. You can also play a very story-driven game out of combat and still have very gamey tactical fights. You generally can't do that with Storytelling systems, and while 3.5 isn't far off from 4e here overall it seems to me it just doesn't get out of your way as much away from combat encounters, and combat itself lacks the same sophistication. 3.5 did a reasonably good strategic game though, assuming you were a full caster. 4e so far seems to be going through an awkward phase there with item crafting and consumables being a little confused.


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## pemerton (Jun 1, 2011)

MrMyth, I agree with most of your post. I just wanted to respond to one part of it:



MrMyth said:


> Pemerton said that he felt that 4E let him build a character focused on concept, and do so without feeling suboptimal. Perhaps a better word would be simply 'competent'.



This isn't quite what I said.

What I said was that 4e supports _play decisions_ (ie decisions at the point of action resolution, not at the point of PC build) that would be suboptimal in the real world, but aren't necessarily suboptimal per the 4e rules. (Analogies would be bringing a knife to a gunfight - not viable in the real world, viable for some 4e PCs; or using archery against tanks - not viable in the real world, viable for Hawkeye, Green Arrow and some 4e PCs.)

I also said that, in any given situation, the typical 4e PC has a range of viable options available. The game is not monistic in that sense (which contrasts with the teleport-ambush style play that Rolemaster, and I believe mid-to-high level 3E, tend strongly to encourage).

The combination of these two factors means that, in my experience at least, 4e supports "theme through combat" play. (Non-RPG examples of "theme through combat", as I noted upthread, include 1970s Marvel Comics and the 1981 film Excalibur.) An example from the encounter I've talked about quite a bit upthread: the party ended up relieving pressure on the dwarf, who had been holding a good chunk of the NPC forces singlehandedly, by having the tiefling paladin charge to his rescue through the wall of a burning building. In the real world, almost any other way of relieving pressure on a comrade would be superior to this, and leaving it to the last minute like this would be disastrous. But 4e permits this sort of decision-making. It is in _this_ way that I regard it as very forgiving.

This is a different point from the idea that 4e supports suboptimal PCs built to express a theme rather than pursue tactical prowess. This further point is also true to at least some extent (the wizard in my group probably comes close to fitting this description, although a 20 starting INT does compensate for a multitude of other departures from tactical optimality). But it's not what I was saying.


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## pemerton (Jun 1, 2011)

Imaro said:


> why is encounter balance and player balance (in combat) so important for 4e?  I think gamist focused play benefits much more from a robustly balanced encounter design system than other games... I think Exalted, LoA, and Heroquest are all more focused on the type of thematic play that permerton speaks to... and none of them have a robustly balanced encounter design system (in fact they don't seem particularly concerned with balance in encounters, at all.)





Neonchameleon said:


> Because it makes things vastly easier to DM for a new DM.  And it allows much better narrative pacing





Imaro said:


> But again this mainly serves the combat encounter in 4e which centers around a gamist challenge



The last comment here tends to beg the question - you don't establish that 4e is primarily gamist by assuming that combat centres around gamism!

I agree with Neonchameleon but would go further - after GMing Rolemaster very regularly for nearly 20 years, I still find the balance and pacing support of 4e a huge benefit. Rolemaster has no encounter building guidelines (its monster levels are mechanically meaningless) and has incredibly swingy action resolution - mid-to-high level PCs have various resources (mostly spells) to cope with the more severe consequences of the swinginess, but they don't mitigate the effect of that swinginess on pacing.

So I find 4e's tools here very helpful even though I'm quite an experienced GM. And I don't really feel the force of Imaro's contrast with HeroQuest (I can't comment on Exalted or LoA) - HeroQuest also has pretty tight pacing guidelines built around action resolution difficulty numbers. (I have found that HeroQuest, Maelstrom Storytelling and to a lesser extent Burning Wheel have all been very helpful rulebooks for supporting my 4e GMing.)

And tools for controlling difficulty and pacing aren't just important for gamist play, as reflected by their incorporation into HeroQuest. They can also be helpful in theme-focused play, by allowing the stakes to be amped up or down in appropriate ways.



Balesir said:


> I think 4E neither specifically supports nor fails to support "strategise or die" gaming; most RPGs could be used that way just by amping the encounter/conflict opposition strength and stakes to the very edge.  I think the need for "you need to be "1337" to survive" for gamist play is frequently, um, overstated.  For me, at least, it's far more about the inter-player kudos awards for neat plays and nasty "gotchas".  The challenge has to have a certain amount of, well, challenge, of course, to make the tactical plays worthwhile, but even when the deck is stacked to make TPK unlikely there can be challenge present.



A very good post. I agree, and it makes a lot more sense of 4e's gamist potential than most of what I see put forward in relation to that.



Balesir said:


> pemerton[/B] has convinced me that the same "manoeuvre room" that 4E affords that allow long campaigns of functional gamist play can also be used to bring in thematic (i.e. narrativist) elements.
> 
> That is not to say that I don't think there are many better narrativist supporting games out there, but many people do seem to be attached to D&D for colour/nostalgia/mythology reasons.  As a result we get huge "edition wars" and impassioned tirades because, even though other games may do someone's preferred style far better than D&D ever did, they are wedded to D&D and now can't make it do what they want it to.
> 
> ...



More good stuff - keep it coming! (Eventually I'll be able to XP you for some of it.)

I agree about the issues people have with D&D, and also the likely unhappy consequences for those (like me) who like 4e of a swing back towards simulationism.

I think that classic D&D gamism was different in its payoff structure from the sort of gamism you describe in relation to 4e (and this is part of why it's taken me a while to see where you're coming from in talking about 4e's gamism). I think in classic D&D play ("dungeon crawling") there is a very heavy chassis of exploration - think Tomb of Horrors and White Plume Mountain as the most gonzo exemplars of this, and Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan as a slightly more naturalist version - with the gamism sitting on top of that, and consisting in using the information and lessons gained via exploration to "beat the dungeon". I think quite a bit of RM play also probably falls under this description.

The best characterisation I know of this sort of play, although I think he frames it in an unnecessarily pejorative context, comes from Ron Edwards:

This person prefers a role-playing game that combines Gamist potential with Simulationist hybrid support, such that a highly Explorative Situation can evolve, in-game and without effort, into a Challenge Situation. In other words, the social-level Step On Up "emerges" from the events in-play. . . His preferred venue for the Gamist moments of play is a small-scale scene or crisis embedded in a larger-scale Exploration that focuses on Setting and Character. In these scenes, he's all about the Crunch: Fortune systems should be easy to estimate, such that each instance of its use may be chosen and embedded in a matrix of strategizing. . . As for playing the character, it's Author Stance all the way. He likes to imagine what "his guy" thinks, but to direct "his guy" actions from a cool and clear Step On Up perspective. The degree of Author Stance is confined to in-game imaginative events alone and doesn't bleed over into Balance of Power issues regarding resolution at all.​
4e doesn't support this sort of play particularly well at all, in my view (which is why I get confused when some people say that 4e is all about the dungeon crawl) because it lacks the heavy explorative element (at least of setting if not character), and (as has been frequently discussed) it's action resolution mechanics tend to be orthogonal to much of the exploration, rather than reinforcing of it. I think that this difference of 4e from classic D&D is what helps explain why even traditional D&D gamists don't like 4e.

As to why I play D&D rather than something more obviously suited to my narrativist preferences, like HeroQuest: like I said upthread, I'm with a group that includes serious wargamers, M:TG champions, PbM winners etc. I'm the member of the group least into these sorts of games, but I still own 1000s of collectable gards (for ICE's and Decipher's LotR games). I'm the only member of the group who doesn't play computer games (on or offline) at all - most of the rest are pretty serious about them. In this group, tactically rich action resolution is a desirable technique - it gives us what we're looking for out of a game. It also supports those interplayer kudos awards that Balesir talks about. And it creates a particular sort of mechanical environment in which a certain sort of thematic material can be engaged with.

The preference for this sort of gameplay tends to rule out HeroQuest. Burning Wheel or The Riddle of Steel would probably be alternatives, but perhaps are a bit grittier than what my group is generally looking for - the whole history/myth element of gonzo fantasy, which 4e really emphasises both in the core rules and via books like Underdark and the Plane Above, is something my group enjoys. Hence 4e D&D.

For us, what keeps the game in RPing territory rather than skirmish territory is that these techniques are used in service of the sort of thematic play I've been talking about here (and on other threads, like the "Should this be fixed?" thread on General). It's by no means hardcore narrativism - it's pretty vanilla, and the thematic content is often not all that serious (the notion that narrativism has to be emotionally deep is one the I reject - it can be, but needn't be). Also, my other main point on this thread - about the forgiving character of 4e tactical play compared to real world tactics - means that any latent gamist pressure here needn't push away from engaging with the thematic material. We have one player in particular whose main interest probably is gamist rather than thematic -and who plays the archer-ranger/cleric - but because of the way the mechanics work his focus on Balesir-style play doesn't detract from the sort of play others are going for, and the way I set up encounters doesn't prevent him from engaging them in the Balesir style, mostly looking for kudos from his fellow players.

Based on my experience to date, then, I feel that 4e has struck a pretty nice balance in supporting my group's game, with basically no need to drift at all other than supplementing the tactical encounter build guidelines with thematic encounter/scenario build guidelines - but given that these are implicity in later books like Underdark and The Plane Above, I'm not even sure that this really counts as supplementation, let alone drfit.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Jun 1, 2011)

pemerton said:


> I think that classic D&D gamism was different in its payoff structure from the sort of gamism you describe in relation to 4e (and this is part of why it's taken me a while to see where you're coming from in talking about 4e's gamism). I think in classic D&D play ("dungeon crawling") there is a very heavy chassis of exploration - think Tomb of Horrors and White Plume Mountain as the most gonzo exemplars of this, and Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan as a slightly more naturalist version - with the gamism sitting on top of that, and consisting in using the information and lessons gained via exploration to "beat the dungeon". I think quite a bit of RM play also probably falls under this description.
> 
> 4e doesn't support this sort of play particularly well at all, in my view (which is why I get confused when some people say that 4e is all about the dungeon crawl) because it lacks the heavy explorative element (at least of setting if not character), and (as has been frequently discussed) it's action resolution mechanics tend to be orthogonal to much of the exploration, rather than reinforcing of it. I think that this difference of 4e from classic D&D is what helps explain why even traditional D&D gamists don't like 4e.




I'm curious about this. What, mechanically and/or thematically makes 4e less suitable for exploration play than say 1e AD&D? I can't say honestly that I've run what I would consider a dungeon crawl using 4e, so I'm curious. Thanks.


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## pemerton (Jun 1, 2011)

I think there are a few things.

4e PCs take too long to build to be easily replaceable. 4e combats take a lot longer than AD&D combats, and adding more combatants on the PC side tends to slow things down rather than speed them up. The treasure parcel system isn't especially well suited to a "loot as reward" rather than "items as PC build subsystem" approach. A lot of action resolution that in AD&D would be done via freeform player-GM negotiation is, in 4e, brought under the abmit of the skill mechanics.

I think it would be quite possible to do a 4e scenario that involved the party making its way through some sort of monster-infested labyrinth. And provided you structured the quest and skill challenge XP the right way, you could even do it in a way that promoted looting over combat, at least to an extent. But I don't think it would play much like classic D&D.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Jun 1, 2011)

pemerton said:


> I think there are a few things.
> 
> 4e PCs take too long to build to be easily replaceable. 4e combats take a lot longer than AD&D combats, and adding more combatants on the PC side tends to slow things down rather than speed them up. The treasure parcel system isn't especially well suited to a "loot as reward" rather than "items as PC build subsystem" approach. A lot of action resolution that in AD&D would be done via freeform player-GM negotiation is, in 4e, brought under the abmit of the skill mechanics.
> 
> I think it would be quite possible to do a 4e scenario that involved the party making its way through some sort of monster-infested labyrinth. And provided you structured the quest and skill challenge XP the right way, you could even do it in a way that promoted looting over combat, at least to an extent. But I don't think it would play much like classic D&D.




Yeah, I was kind of thinking maybe our concept of what such a game consists of is more shaped by past games than by requirements for a good fun experience.

Not sure why the 4e style of action resolution is less suitable, that's an interesting one to think about. Have to think about the nature of treasure more, I don't know what I think about that yet.

The 2 areas that spring to mind for me are the time commitment implicit in combat and the fact that 4e is designed to avoid 'gotcha' type mechanics like individually lethal traps.


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## Balesir (Jun 1, 2011)

pemerton said:


> Also, my other main point on this thread - about the forgiving character of 4e tactical play compared to real world tactics - means that any latent gamist pressure here needn't push away from engaging with the thematic material.



It's a bit of an aside, but I don't equate the desire for "real world tactics" with gamism (or even simulationism, in fact) at all. I see a sort of assumption that all RPGs should "make sense" from a real world perspective* quite a bit and I think it really relates to a need to have sufficient "reference points" for the game setting to be believable rather than any specific GNS agenda.  Different people have a different setting for "enough", but as long as there _is_ enough I'm not sure that the actual nature of the reference points matters that much (i.e. they can be a "real feeling" - or, at least, "familiar feeling" - location description, tactical landscape, character composition or whatever).

*: Apart from the spells.  And the divine stuff. And the spikey armour and the unfeasibly big weapons. And whatever the Romans did for us, presumably...


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## pemerton (Jun 1, 2011)

AbdulAlhazred said:


> YThe 2 areas that spring to mind for me are the time commitment implicit in combat and the fact that 4e is designed to avoid 'gotcha' type mechanics like individually lethal traps.



The combat point is an obvious one, yes. And your point about traps is a good one that I haven't thought of like that. It probably generalises to certain sorts of creatures as well. And also the way treasure is hidden.

EDIT: The "gotcha" stuff also relates back to my point about action resolution - it's not going to work the same way in a game with passive Perception rules, for example.


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## pemerton (Jun 1, 2011)

Balesir said:


> It's a bit of an aside, but I don't equate the desire for "real world tactics" with gamism (or even simulationism, in fact) at all.



Agreed. What I was trying to say is that _because_ pursuing the sort of gamist-kudos you referred to is possible in a variety of ways (because 4e, in my view, is not monistic in the tactics that it favouors), having a more gamist-oriented play tends not to disrupt other players seeing combat as a way to also express theme.

This is a difference, I think, from classic D&D, where if one player is pushing hard for tactical optimality, and another for thematic expression, there will tend to be a clash - because in classic D&D thematic expression in combat tends to undermine tactical optimality.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Jun 2, 2011)

pemerton said:


> Agreed. What I was trying to say is that _because_ pursuing the sort of gamist-kudos you referred to is possible in a variety of ways (because 4e, in my view, is not monistic in the tactics that it favouors), having a more gamist-oriented play tends not to disrupt other players seeing combat as a way to also express theme.
> 
> This is a difference, I think, from classic D&D, where if one player is pushing hard for tactical optimality, and another for thematic expression, there will tend to be a clash - because in classic D&D thematic expression in combat tends to undermine tactical optimality.




Yeah, in 4e you can express your thematic 'thing' in ways that are unlikely to be terribly bad tactics (or at least don't HAVE to be). In AD&D you had few ways to express the individual identity of your character, mechanically, so I do recall it would tend to run to strange hijinks or highly suboptimal equipment and etc selection. Hadn't quite thought of it that way before.


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