What Edition to use? (Forked Thread: When did I stop being WotC's target audience?)

[MichaelSomething]

Forked from: When did I stop being WotC's target audience?

Because by not providing me many rules for what my character is outside of combat, they have effectively made me (and everyone else at the table) disinclined to do many things other than combat.

It's like the "you can Roleplay Monopoly!" counter-argument. Sure, you can role-play during Monopoly, but the game doesn't really care if you do, it doesn't advocate it, and so if you do, you're kind of going against what the rules declare is the *point* of the game (to take all the moneys).

You can be a haiku-spouting fighter in 4e, but the game doesn't care if you do, it doesn't advocate it, and so if you do, it seems to be against what the rules concentrate on (to beat up the goblins and get their XP).

I want a game that *cares* about the fact that my fighter can spout haikus, and that does so without me having to add anything.

As far as editions of D&D go, 3e fits that need a lot better than 4e, because 4e doesn't really care about me unless I'm beating faces in (and then it seems to care WAY TOO MUCH about some very fiddly bits, but that's more of a rant about grid-based minis combat than about the wrought iron fence made of tigers).

From post 625 on, this very long topic has gotten into poetry. This leads me to ask the following question:

Suppose your adventuring party came into a situation like this...

You follow the map into a room filled with dog-eared scripts, elaborate costumes, and a palpable aura of pretension. You see a Drama Giant asleep in a corner of the room. You try to tiptoe through the room but get tripped up by a pair of giant maracas. The ensuing clatter wakes the Giant, who scowls at you.
"Interloper, I challenge you to a poetry competition!"

Beating the Giant in poetry would lead to a good result, like allowing you to past to the next room. Losing would lead to a bad result, like getting kicked out. My question is which edition would you want to do this in?

If your doing this in 4th Edition, two words will come to mind: skill challenge. A skill challenge would be a great way to resolve this and many other things. However, there are also flaws to this. For one, the skill challenge system can be considered to have problems. Past threads have examined this at length. The other thing would be which skills to use? With the way skills have been condensed in 4th Edition, it appears that Diplomacy is the skill that you would roll for performing. It works but it just doesn't jive (that's a word I never imagine I use) very well with me.

For 3rd Edition, it's as simple as opposed Perform (Oratory) rolls! The monster, being a Drama Giant, would have 10 to 15 hit dice since all giants have hit dice in that range. You would also have to include a charisma bonus between 1 and 4. If it were to max out the skill, it could have as high as a +22 to its check! That's an extreme case of course. More likely it would be around a +11. Barring lucky rolls, what PC could match that? A few characters may go "And you all laughed at me for maxing out Perform (poetry)!" but I think they may be the exception. How many characters do you know that have that skill maxed out?

I never played 1st, 2nd, or any other of the older systems. However, thanks to lurking around here I'm willing to take a guess how this would play out. There's only one way to do this old school: Have the players recite poetry then and there. Depending on the players, they may either proclaim, "This is the best encounter ever!" or they may stare coldly into your eyes with a sense of WTF! This depends on if the DM can guess if the players would enjoy such a thing. If he thinks yes when he's wrong then that may lead to problems.


Of course, what edition your using isn't the only factor affecting if the game can be fun or not. A good DM will allow other ways to bypass the Drama Giant. For example, and adventurer may have a Poetry Journal "liberated" from one of the other giants. The poetry in it may be soo bad, it may cause the Drama Giant to jump out of the window (with a flourish) and into the moat to escape. Or you could just kill it and take its stuff

 

[Fallen Seraph]

If your doing this in 4th Edition, two words will come to mind: skill challenge. A skill challenge would be a great way to resolve this and many other things. However, there are also flaws to this. For one, the skill challenge system can be considered to have problems. Past threads have examined this at length. The other thing would be which skills to use? With the way skills have been condensed in 4th Edition, it appears that Diplomacy is the skill that you would roll for performing. It works but it just doesn't jive (that's a word I never imagine I use) very well with me.

Well for me in 4e (which is the D&D I play). I would go about this using my custom manner for this.

Essentially the skill-challenge aspect would be the background/in-game information gathered, etc. When it comes to social skill-challenges.

So the players would actually recite the actual poetry and me as the Giant would as well.

But the players would also roll to determine some things.
-Recite a poem, then roll to see how well their character was able to perform it, (diplomacy)
-Insight see what the Giant thought of it (give hints, information or misinformation if done badly).
-Bluff would be done to give players time to come up with a new poem, or intimidate, etc.

So basically while it would be actually roleplayed and acted out in-game things that determine how much it actually helps is somewhat determined by the dice.

 

[malraux]

Well, honestly, the Kingdom of Loathing engine for that sort of situation.

More seriously, I'd prefer 4e. I'll admit that skill challenges aren't great (yet), but there's at least some stuff in place. In 3e, it would likely either be auto-win if the party has a bard with the right preform skill, or auto-fail unless this were a crafted encounter to humor the one player who sunk all his skill points into a pointless preform skill. The non-weapon profiecncy type of skills from 2e likely would end up like 3e (though I don't have any play experience with them); that is an easy win if the party happened to have the right selection, almost impossible otherwise.

 

[CleverNickName]

Easy answer. My favorite edition, of course.

Seriously, though, I would make the characters play it out in-character, regardless of the edition. What fun would something called a "poetry competition" be, if it could be resolved by just another throw of the dice?

 

[Cadfan]

I wouldn't use rules to resolve that encounter anyways, so I might as well go with the edition I prefer for other reasons.

I probably wouldn't use that encounter at all, unless I was confident that I had someone in my group who could ad lib poetry. Rolling a d20 and adding Cha would be underwhelming. So I'd treat it the same way I treat puzzles- I don't put them in unless I'm absolutely sure the group can solve them.

 

[justanobody]

2nd edition Artistic Ability NWP. A poem is just a song without music. So take the competition to judges to see who drops the ball first like the riddle challenge posed to Bilbo from Gollum.

 

[Thasmodious]

I love using skill challenges for this sort of thing. Tying such a rich opportunity for a long encounter of roleplaying and strategy to a perform check just seems like such a waste to me. Building a challenge around it, with multiple skills, and the whole party involved is just fun.

I remember a 3e game a friend ran, online, with an all halfling group. It was a low magic, low power game that was just awesome, heavy RP, character development and story. Anyway, while we were all hanging out in the local inn, one of the PCs started playing for the crowd. The grumpy, mal adjusted local bard took offense and pretty soon a battle kicked off. It was a very dramatic scene and the DM did not want to end it with just a "make a perform check, highest roll wins." We ended up with a skill challenge of sorts even without the rules support for such a thing (running rather contrary to Midgets position that if the rules aren't there to do something, you won't do it). The NPC bard quickly tried to gain the advantage with Fascinate, my character, a cleric/wizard countered with a bless, which the DM rules could be used to counteract the effect of the other spell on the crowd while the PC bard played. Another character used diplomacy or bluff (I forget) to talk up the crowd, making supportive gestures, reacting emotionally to the songs, generally trying to encourage their involvement. More powerful magic became involved when the local big scary halfling witch intervened, being a fan of the NPC bards depressing music. It was a tense, varied scene with all party members engaged, something to gain and lose, and miles ahead of the mechanics of "roll perform". It was a skill challenge before skill challenges and that 4e builds around the idea of encounters like this is one of my favorite aspects of its development. Treating social situations like this as actual encounters provides a solid framework for building dynamic, interesting scenes.

BTW, if aren't exactly satisfied with the actual nuts and bolts of skill challenges right now, check out Stalker0's two tweaks. They are in his sig, the Obsidian system is a more involved skill challenge system and his other is some minor tweaks to the math.

 

[Snoweel]

If I ever played in a game where a situation like this occurred I would punch the DM in the brain.

Poetry competitions against Drama Giants aren't the kind of challenge that exists in the kinds of settings I want to play in.

They're certainly not the kind of negotiating encounters I have any interest in playing.

I would use 4e and just ignore the giant.

Failing that I would kill it and take its tights.

 

[Thasmodious]

If I ever played in a game where a situation like this occurred I would punch the DM in the brain.

Poetry competitions against Drama Giants aren't the kind of challenge that exists in the kinds of settings I want to play in.

They're certainly not the kind of negotiating encounters I have any interest in playing.

I would use 4e and just ignore the giant.

Failing that I would kill it and take its tights.

Whaaa!? I've already statted out the Drama Giant. Now I'm not going to post it on account of not wishing my frontal lobe bludgeoned.

 

[Korgoth]

There's only one way to do this old school: Have the players recite poetry then and there.

This.

If my players never learned how to declaim poetry extemporaneously then they're obviously not the rugged, self-sufficient polymaths that old school play demands and they deserve to lose their characters in a pointless combat. Ditto if they never bothered to learn about Fibonacci sequences, steam engines, Mandelbrot sets, chess, anagrams, Egyptian religion or basic electrical engineering.

Hey, if you never made anything of yourself in real life, why should I let your character live through my dungeon? Read a book!