Doing it wrong Part 1: Taking the dragon out of the dungeon

pemerton said:

The posts on emotion are interesting. They show that when I said "emotional engagement" upthread I was speaking too broadly, because @Libramarian has clearly identified emotional engagement that (I think) is not related "story now". @JamesonCourage may have also, but I'm less confident of my grasp of the emotions involvedin JC's game.

[SNIP]

Once the bear had been tamed, the player of one of the PCs said "I feel really good about not having killed that bear."

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The second part of the quote does happen in my game, but it's usually after the session or in a lull after the situation is over, and that's not the kind of emotion I'm talking about. I think you might grasp the general thing I go for, though, as you did mention "and so isn't just the emotional response to vicariously experiencing the PCs' situations", which is basically what I go for.

I try to get my players to step into the shoes of their character, and then I want them immersed enough that they can feel the emotions that the character should be feeling (obviously to a lesser, safer degree). I love the emotional reaction I can get at times. The feelings of helplessness, sadness, pity, pure joy, happiness, triumph. I can bring them all out with my group, and it's very fulfilling. When speaking for an NPC, and having my voice break at just the right time, and watching them honestly react to the emotion I'm simulating... it's addicting.

But, it's also productive, in my view, as a person. And I know people might disagree with that, but one of my very good friends (and a player in my games) has problems feeling any real strong degree of empathy. He can feel sympathy, but it's hard for him to wrap his head around empathy a lot of the time. And he's a very kind, good guy, too. But I do think that the game is good for helping him with that, as he gets to "play" someone else and feel their emotions. And I think since he started playing in my games, about nine years ago, it's improved. He's also older, and that might help. I don't know.

I just know that this type of emotional involvement in necessary, and that overloading meta mechanics can blunt it. Mind you, I use a couple different meta mechanics in my RPG, so I'm not philosophically against them. I think they can enhance what I've been talking about. But the emotion I want to bring out is much less based on an "artistic/aesthetic sense" and much more in the empathy sense I mentioned.

Anyways, hopefully that's at least a little enlightening, if nothing else. I'm not trying to convince anyone to swap styles or anything. As always, play what you like

@pemerton

Where I'm coming from is I read a description of pulp adventure fiction that said it's as if the protagonist is meant to be as invisible as possible in order to be a "window" into the adventure for the readers -- and I immediately thought: that's what the PCs in my D&D game are often like, and in fact when the game is the most fun. It's one of the reasons that I feel that Appendix N is important, not just for the trivia of knowing where certain D&D elements come from, but because it describes the kind of fantasy fiction that D&D* does well out of the box (you're less likely to be disappointed in the fiction D&D produces if you have a Conan story in mind rather than say, Hamlet).

* I mean classic D&D; I know you feel that 4e has important innovations that make it more suitable for other fantasy modes. Happily for me I really like pulp and weird fiction (although it is clearly true that the best stuff is the stuff that pushes the envelope with respect to the protagonist being merely a window into the adventure -- I'm thinking of Conan and Elric, who not only have interesting, flawed personalities, but whose thoughts and desires are certainly important to the civilization vs. barbarism theme going on in both).

pemerton said:

Here is another stab at it, but I don't know if it's any better: the emotional response in "story now" play is engendered by the thematic elements/issues put into focus by the game; and so isn't just the emotional response to vicariously experiencing the PCs' situations (although that should be there too, in an RPG) but is also a personal, non-vicarious response to the events of the game - the way the events unfolded and resolved meant something in an artisitc/aesthetic sense.

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Yeah, this makes sense to me...although thinking about it, it seem like a pretty tricky balance to have a theme that is really emotionally engaging (i.e. not arrived at in a simplistic or overly deliberate way) but also really clear, so everyone gets it and knows that everyone else gets it. Then again I can see how your example of the player sparing the bear would be narrativism.

Out of curiosity, what sort of narrativistic coordination do you do with your players pre-game?

Libramarian said:

Out of curiosity, what sort of narrativistic coordination do you do with your players pre-game?

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I can't speak for @pemerton on that but I think I can throw a little bit of insight into how its done generally and specifically how it might be done in 4e. I wrote on this in another thread and people were none-too-keen and felt it was "player entitlement gaming" or something.

Much of this is done in character creation but it might go on during the week just chatting with pals now and again. As an example:

A friend wants to play an enormously successful naval veteran (with a glorious history of pirate hunting) who lost all of his crew in a skirmish with pirates, fought valiantly against overwhelming odds but was ultimately taken prisoner, lost his precious cargo and ship, and lived as captive in the awful conditions of the ship's hold for a few months until the pirates' bartered a suitable ransom for him. After a tribunal, he got off but was decommissioned as a naval officer, stripped of rank, but given a deed to a nice out of the way piece of property to live out his days. Unsurprisingly, he was a tortured soul. He crawled inside of a bottle for the next 2 years of his life and spent his days moving from tavern to tavern, city to city, gambling, wenching, and boozing himself to oblivion.

So. We discuss all of the potential thematic elements of this character beforehand and how we can make them manifest in the game. We outline (roughly) the aim for his future;

- a story of redemption...but wrought in a ruthless, borderline nihilist, way
- kill every pirate involved (the God of Justice sponsors him without him even knowing it.)
- locate the precious cargo that he lost and give it back to the ivory tower beaurocrats that he protected with his blood and the lives of his men...who stripped him of all of his honor and dignity and gave little to the fallen mens' families.
- he becomes a secret benefactor (his adventuring spoils) for the families of all of his fallen men which he arranges through a proxy.

So now I know the thematic and crunchy elements of his character. We discuss how we will accomplish the above directives, from the color to the minor and major quests for him and how milestones will be awarded. Now we both know, explicitly what we expect from each other and the metagame carrots are out in the open, completely transparent. Together we build his character;

- class (Rogue)
- multi-class (Avenger)
- theme and background (Mariner)
- thematic feat and power assemblage to fit his background and his single-minded mission
- paragon path (Relentless Slayer - a mechanically altered hybrid of the Avenger paragon path + Rogue path)

Now, when the opening scene of the game comes about (two of the pirates who captured him enter a dockside tavern in a cutthroat port town that he has been staking out), I know that a ruthless, Jack Boweresque scene is going to unfold...and off we go.

I do the same with the rest of the players and, in total, we discuss precisely the type of game that we want to play;

- genre conventions/tropes and all the expectations therein
- over-arcing campaign theme
- explicitly discuss meta-game tools, props and transparency
- all other relevant social contract stuff (making characters that make some sense together; a coherent whole with some overlap in theme/interest).

As play unfolds throughout the campaign, we will individually revisit these things, confirm we're on the same page and eyeball a future. Nothing too specific, just a direction so I know what they want and so my scene-framing, the adversity I put them under, and the thematic buttons I push manifest transparently and our expectations of each other are met.

Yup. That's about it. That's too much for most folks (clearly, given the visceral reaction in the other thread)...but that is how I do it and I expect pemerton is not too terribly far from that.

Manbearcat said:

A friend wants to play an enormously successful naval veteran (with a glorious history of pirate hunting) who lost all of his crew in a skirmish with pirates, fought valiantly against overwhelming odds but was ultimately taken prisoner, lost his precious cargo and ship, and lived as captive in the awful conditions of the ship's hold for a few months until the pirates' bartered a suitable ransom for him. After a tribunal, he got off but was decommissioned as a naval officer, stripped of rank, but given a deed to a nice out of the way piece of property to live out his days. Unsurprisingly, he was a tortured soul. He crawled inside of a bottle for the next 2 years of his life and spent his days moving from tavern to tavern, city to city, gambling, wenching, and boozing himself to oblivion.

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What level is this character? Sounds like he'd already be paragon level, having survived all that.

For a first-level character, I'd want a MUCH simpler background.

@Starfox

We did indeed start this game at the beginning of the Paragon Tier (level 11) and have played it through level 20. However, I'm not a zero to hero DM and neither are my players. We typically don't play Luke fresh out of nerf-herding school to intergalactic star-fighter. My table doesn't have an issue with a 1st level character being expressed by someone with some heft to his prior career. We deal with levels as a meta-game construct to measure and pace an adventuring career, not a 1:1 world-building tool.

Libramarian said:

you're less likely to be disappointed in the fiction D&D produces if you have a Conan story in mind rather than say, Hamlet).

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Yep! I think the relationship of classic D&D to LotR, Arthurian romance etc is a bit more ambivalent.

Libramarian said:

I read a description of pulp adventure fiction that said it's as if the protagonist is meant to be as invisible as possible in order to be a "window" into the adventure for the readers

<snip>

it is clearly true that the best stuff is the stuff that pushes the envelope with respect to the protagonist being merely a window into the adventure -- I'm thinking of Conan and Elric, who not only have interesting, flawed personalities, but whose thoughts and desires are certainly important to the civilization vs. barbarism theme going on in both

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I agree that Conan, as a protagonist, is not quite a transparent window. When I read Conan (which is really the only pulp I know - a bit of HPL also) the personality of Conan (and, I'm guessing, at least aspects of REH's personality) come through.

I actually used one of the opening passages from Queen of the Black Coast in a seminar the other day (the bit where Conan explains how "upon seeing that they were all mad" he drew his sword and killed the judge), to illustrate a point about the cultural groundedness of bureaucratic legal systems. So I agree that the critque of civilisation comes through (at least in the better stories).

Libramarian said:

it seem like a pretty tricky balance to have a theme that is really emotionally engaging (i.e. not arrived at in a simplistic or overly deliberate way) but also really clear, so everyone gets it and knows that everyone else gets it.

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Agreed. I think that's why my game hews pretty close to classic fantasy tropes and the themes that those support (honour, loyalty, vengeance, mercy, justice, injustice etc).

I just got the 20th anniversary edition of Over the Edge, and while it's an interesting system that (on paper, at least) lives up to the hype, I think it would be more challenging - the material is less romantic and more modern/ironic/"real", and possible responses and interpretations could be more varies and contentious!

Libramarian said:

Out of curiosity, what sort of narrativistic coordination do you do with your players pre-game?

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I've known all the members of my group for a long time (15 years+) and knew most of them as friends before RPGing with them. So there aren't so many surprises in our responses. I think that makes coordination easier.

For my current (4e) game, I gave two directions: (i) your PC must have a reason to be ready to fight goblins; (ii) your PC must have a loyalty to someone/something coming out of his/her background. For most of the PCs, one or the other of these elements has ended up being the main thematic starting point, on which other things have developed through play.

I can imagine that for a group who weren't so close knit, more prep/co-ordination might be required.

pemerton said:

I actually used one of the opening passages from Queen of the Black Coast in a seminar the other day (the bit where Conan explains how "upon seeing that they were all mad" he drew his sword and killed the judge), to illustrate a point about the cultural groundedness of bureaucratic legal systems. So I agree that the critque of civilisation comes through (at least in the better stories).

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This is awesome That's one of the best Conan stories. There's also the scene in that story where Conan is talking about Crom and the other Hyperborean gods and Conan says "Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content." I love that. That's a pretty sophisticated wraparound response to relativism. It's too bad some people today can't even get into a story like this because it has some parts that are racially insensitive (or rather, racially over-sensitive...).
[MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]
Thanks for the in-depth response. But yeah, that would be way too much pre-game prep for me and my players. They would just give me a blank look and wouldn't want to do it, and I think even for me as DM I wouldn't want to do that just because I'd like to be more surprised about where the game is going to go than that. We have a pretty low level of genre-consciousness during play, and I think I like that. I kind of want to be a fly on the wall during one of your games to see what the resulting play is like.

A question for you if you don't mind -- imagine playing 4e without doing any of that pre-game. The players make their characters in a basically gamist way, just trying to build a strong playing piece. They have some vague, sort of daydreams about their character concept and what they want to do in the game but they don't really verbalize any of this. The DM runs a sandbox-y adventure with some random encounters and a dungeoncrawl. Do you think 4e is worse at this than earlier editions? If not, how much of the anti-4e sentiment does that explain?

Libramarian said:

I kind of want to be a fly on the wall during one of your games to see what the resulting play is like.

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I'm not sure if it would look much different than your game, Bob's game, @pemerton 's game, or Sally's game. The only advantage that it provides for my table (with respect to our preferences/agenda) is coherency. We don't only know vaguely what we want out of play (conflicts & adversity, conventions & conceits, mood/tone, pacing), but we know with specificity. That helps us understand, empathize and play off of each other.

It mirrors the way I do most things in real life. I'm one of those (obnoxious) people that needs to know all of the angles, all of the potential outcomes, all of the answers before I commit to something. I have to think it out, unravel it in my mind, extrapolate the future and regress back to the beginning. Completely neurotic and averse to stones left unturned, avenues left unexamined. I often wish that I could purge myself of that mental structure (and I've tried to relax it) as it makes most moments (mundane and otherwise) of my life stretch out into hours...but its an affliction that is embedded too deeply in my neural network to be diffused.

In light of all of that, our games are quite spontaneous and filled with improv. If I were to put a pathetic analogy to it (and this is truly pathetic), I would say that if we were building a house, it would be akin to getting to know the architectural tastes, preferred floor and wall finishings (colors, textures and materials) of the 3 players and DM present and interfacing those with the available tools and materials, relevant building codes, zoning laws, HOA bylaws, property taxes. If we know the former as well as possible, and discuss how we can accommodate each other in our building project, we can then find out how best we can accomplish our task given the confines of the latter.

Truly a disgusting analogy and I should probably be beaten unmercifully for it, but there you have it. There are alternatives to the above but the one that scares me most (and the reason for the pro-active measures - overmeasures? - to protect against it) is "totally winging it" and the potential for resultant incoherency in creative agenda (genre, mood, pacing, PC stance and how the mechanical resolution toolset promotes or works against those things).

Finally, I've had the same 3 players for an awful long time and I've had plenty of wall-flowers (one of my 3 players is primarily a wall-flower but is great in that niche) and (willful) chemistry antagonists come and go in my group. We're at the point in our lives where we have a considerable amount of experience with "problem players" or "players that don't fit our table" and the element of "subtraction by addition" they produce. It has helped us understand each other such that our chemistry and creative agenda is synched making game prep a ridiculously easy (and minimalist) thing.

Libramarian said:

A question for you if you don't mind -- imagine playing 4e without doing any of that pre-game. The players make their characters in a basically gamist way, just trying to build a strong playing piece. They have some vague, sort of daydreams about their character concept and what they want to do in the game but they don't really verbalize any of this. The DM runs a sandbox-y adventure with some random encounters and a dungeoncrawl. Do you think 4e is worse at this than earlier editions? If not, how much of the anti-4e sentiment does that explain?

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I have done this. 4 month game with two players with a limited, but eclectic, experience (I believe some 1e D&D, Vampire, Classic Traveller, and Cthulu back in the day) and my normal 3. We just did a "fly by the seat of our pants" test drive of the system back in 2008. It was completely incoherent from two angles;

- Those new players (to be quite honest) didn't know what kind of game they wanted. They expected a game world rooted in simulatory, hard-core causal logic and PCs solely in actor stance (with no metagame). However, they also had this dissonant expectation of "on demand" genre logic (where they kind of drifted into the metagame...but otherwise were very hostile to it) for "cool" outcomes. When those "cool" outcomes couldn't be delivered "on demand" (because I was trying to give them a metagame neutral experience; random sandbox tables instead of my own metagamed objectives), one of them became passive-aggressively hostile (the worst and most immature kind). The other sort of drifted back and forth between "wall-flower disinterest" to excitedly engaged to quiet supporter of his passive-aggresively hostile friend. 12 sessions in (3 months), when myself and my 3 original players tried to drift it toward what I thought would help them achieve what seemed to be their "cool outcome" based interests (where I felt 4e was well suited - metagame intensive Gamist/Narrativist hybrid), holy moly was the pushback even worse. So, to keep score...they wanted the anarchic gamble of process based simulation but "on demand, cool outcome based results"...without engaging the metagame. I switched back after 2 sessions...played 2 more...and we all agreed to call it a day.

- They were definitely expecting 1e, extra-encounter, operational play. Balance and resource scheme at the encounter level made them both twitch horridly. Further, none of us were proficient or experienced enough with the 4e ruleset to leverage Rituals and Condition Tracks to help those extra-encounter, operational play interests along. And, given that we didn't really talk through the system or our agenda, we didn't get that done until the next campaign.


So, to answer your question; Yes, 4e is:

- worse than 1e in absolute fidelity to extra-encounter, operational play, ToH style dungeon crawling. Its doable at some levels (eg; you can work out the resource ablation angle but its done at different vectors with different pressure points). However, if talking through the tactile exploration of a room for secret doors/levers with a DM, flying thieves tethered by ropes, spiked doors to avoid random encounters built to stop resource refreshing, 10 ft poling corridors for pressure plates is the experience you're looking for, 4e is not good at it. It also doesn't support the swinginess of character creation, campaign altering effects based on one roll of the dice, or the "EUREKA" or "AHA" moments where one word or statement outright circumvents an obstacle/content/etc. However, contrary to popular though, it certainly can support the overall lethality of 1e play and do it with surgical precision (L + 3 or more as standard encounters/traps).

- worse than all the other editions at allowing totally unbound strategic play (specifically power plays driven by magic) dictate outcomes.

- worse than 3.x (but I do hold that they are not as far apart as folks think...again, different vectors and different build scheme decision-points and the willingness to refluff keywords) at PC archetype rendering in some areas. In some areas its better merely due to the relative functionality of the archetypes (eg 4e does it much better).

- worse than 3.x at strident adherence to granular process simulation (but I don't hold that 3.x is a good process simulator compared to systems built strictly for it).

- worse than all of the other editions at having a veneer and certain resolution tools that they are accustomed to (unification of resource schemes such that a meme is created that fighters are "casting spells", the arbiter of the adventuring day moving from HPs to Healing Surges, narrative mechanics that allow PCs to enter author and director stance to impose their vision upon the fiction, friendliness toward the metagame, a tactical depth that is unparalleled and profound enough such that by virtue of its potency it can convince folks that "4e is just a tactical skirmish game", saving throws changed, etc).

TL;DR. So, in total. Yes indeed. I absolutely believe that 4e is worse than earlier editions at certain things and those things + a heaping helping of "other stuff" explain the anti-4e sentiment.

Wow. Sorry for the long post. And Merry Christmas!

JamesonCourage said:

I want my players to feel like "they're there" (in my world) so that they'll engage on an emotional level. It's why I also like running player-driven games, rather than plot-based games. The immersion factor for my players in necessary for a strong emotional investment in the fiction that is produced. As always, play what you like

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I used to think this way. Until I took at look at actual fiction that does a good job involving people. Its not player/viewer driven at all. its story driven. If your story is good people will find a way to become part of it.

If however your story is "gee guys, make your own story" well... often players wind up looking at you like "what the hell are you here for then?"

I wanted to add a quick addendum to my post above because I think my reading comprehension may have been slightly off when I read it.

My purpose in syncing/coordinating expectations has more to do with the fickle, transient nature of human psychology than anything else. Its not entirely system or campaign neutral, but it mostly is. As I attempted to outline above, unfortunately, I think a great many folks don't even understand their own tastes and preferences and don't remember what took place in poignant moments the day before, let alone the week before. Those two players in my game wanted both a backdrop of purist for system, process based, causal logic simulation in their gameworld...and they wanted a (seemingly random) drift to story now, genre logic so they could have their "on demand" cool moments...but they wanted this without invoking the metagame and the outcome based results that it allows (and 4e support). He didn't want to use any thematic powers that provided what he was looking for. He balked at Fail Forward techniques and Fortune in the Middle fortune resolution. And somehow this was my fault as DM that it was impossible to pull off?

They didn't even understand how ridiculous those expectations were, why they were so, and how bad it is for a game to have that incoherent creative agenda. For those kinds of reasons, I do the prep and synching that I do. Its not really related to 4e. I do it in any game that I do that isn't a one-off and isn't flat horror/mystery.

I think 4e would be relatively fine without understanding the nuance of all of the archetype tastes as the thematic powers, class fluff and paragon path fluff tell a good story...but I still do it because we are human and the devil is in the details. Human perception is a funny thing.