D&D 4E Brainstorming a "Phil. of 4e 101" resource

On the philosophical topic, there's a quote from Wizards Presents: Races and Classes that's stuck with me: "The new system [4E] is not overly concerned with simulating interactions between monsters and nonplayer characters when the PCs are not on stage."

Theorems we can derive from that design principle:

1. Mechanics should be applied primarily to things that matter to the ongoing game.
2. Things that matter are things that involve the PCs.

There may be certain design sympathies in this regard and others between 4E and the late, lamented SAGA Rules System (the card-based engine that drove Dragonlance: Fifth Age and the Marvel Super Heroes Adventure Game).

Matthew L. Martin said:

On the philosophical topic, there's a quote from Wizards Presents: Races and Classes that's stuck with me: "The new system [4E] is not overly concerned with simulating interactions between monsters and nonplayer characters when the PCs are not on stage."

Theorems we can derive from that design principle:

1. Mechanics should be applied primarily to things that matter to the ongoing game.
2. Things that matter are things that involve the PCs.

There may be certain design sympathies in this regard and others between 4E and the late, lamented SAGA Rules System (the card-based engine that drove Dragonlance: Fifth Age and the Marvel Super Heroes Adventure Game).

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Yeah, 4e's intent there is to produce story, not some kind of wargame-esque simulation game. The GM chooses what happens when the NPC orcs and the NPC elves fight a battle with each other. If the PCs aren't actually there in middle of it determining the outcome then it turns out however his conception of plot dictates, and if he wants to toss a d6 and declare 'low its orcs, high its elves' that's perfectly OK, but there's no necessity to have elaborate mechanics involved or rules subsystems written for it. If the PCs ARE involved, then 4e has already dealt with that, there's an SC or a whole adventure full of SCs/combat encounters/whatever in which the fate of the conflict is held in the balance and determined by the choices they make.

Personally, even in a few cases where the PCs had allies helping them in some larger fight, I never made checks for NPC-vs-NPC conflicts of any sort. At most I just allocated some damage to figures on each side and described what happened as necessary. In general the PCs are the big heroes, it all focuses on them anyway, if an NPC matters it is in the sense of needing help, providing some resource, etc.

I guess the principle could be:

The PCs are the center of the action - the game revolves around them and describes the results of their interactions with the rest of the world.

AbdulAlhazred said:

Yeah, 4e's intent there is to produce story, not some kind of wargame-esque simulation game. The GM chooses what happens when the NPC orcs and the NPC elves fight a battle with each other. If the PCs aren't actually there in middle of it determining the outcome then it turns out however his conception of plot dictates, and if he wants to toss a d6 and declare 'low its orcs, high its elves' that's perfectly OK, but there's no necessity to have elaborate mechanics involved or rules subsystems written for it. If the PCs ARE involved, then 4e has already dealt with that, there's an SC or a whole adventure full of SCs/combat encounters/whatever in which the fate of the conflict is held in the balance and determined by the choices they make.

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Yup. It would have helped me a lot if the 4e DMG had included this advice! I ran one 4e campaign where I used BECMI War Machine for the mass battles, which worked brilliant in 1e-3e but was very unsatisfying and anticlimactic in 4e. I've generally managed to stick to your advice in my current 4e campaign (now level 25!) but it's always a temptation to go for procedural resolution, when 4e works best on drama.

Just a quick thought while I have a few moments. Any 4e Philosophy should canvass the below:

What is it that makes 4e combat unique?

Unlike all other editions of D&D before and after it, the combat engine was designed with a very specific/focused intent with respect to theme/genre emulation. That intent is to consistently and reliably achieve two tropes:

1) The classic action/adventure trope of over-the-top swashbuckling which ranges all over the field of battle. For this you need dynamic participants, dynamic teamwork, and a dynamic/interactive battlefield. 4e checks all three boxes.

2) The classic heroic/romantic fantasy trope of The Rally. For this you need front-loaded monsters that can put the heroes on the ropes, heroes who are robust to that "team monster nova" because they can call upon resources of resolve/will/fortitude/inspiration which allows them to pull themselves/each other from the brink of defeat, heroes who possess the resources necessary to finish the rally with a decisive blow against the spent/fading team monster. 4e checks all three boxes.

Those are the narratives that 4e combat is predicated upon and tightly designed around. The PC roles, the specificity of the healing surge infrastructure, encounter powers, daily powers, the specific combat resolution mechanics (rampant forced movement, terrain features/hazards, stunting, shifting + the OA mechanics, stunting), the monster mechanics, the precision in the encounter budget system. These are all tightly synthesized to reliably bring about 1 and 2. Remove or perturb any one mechanical component and those 2 narratives either become unreliable or outright cease to exist.

So far, from what I can gather, the Philosophy of 4e entails these elements:
1. The PCs are not merely adventurers or heroes, but protagonists. They are the Venter of the story. A PC's death, unlike, say Moldvay B/X, has ramifications for the direction that the group-crafted story will take.
2. Encounters are action-driven, based on the actions of the protagonists. Using planning and strategem to end an encounter before it even begins (a la Sun Tzu) is possible, but the protagonists are men and women of action first (lies do not become them). They are, in other words, heroes in the classic sense.
3. The PCs work for glory rather than gold. While they are not restricted to the Good alignments, they are expected to advance the Cause of Good.
4. The environment(s) for encounters should weird, dangerous, exciting and manipulable.

As an aside, the tiers of play might be comparable to specific characters as well as complete stories.
Heroic: Bilbo Baggins. He is a protagonist hero that is just discovering his potential.
Paragon: Aragorn. He knows his potential, but his associates might not know or understand it.
Epic. Gandalf the White. He both knows his potential and purpose, and those around him do, as well. His compatriots find physical and psychological security by his presence.

I think point 1 is clearly true, yes. I'd say 2 is true to an extent, but I don't think the PCs HAVE to be 'good' or 'honorable'. I think the game is slanted that way, but you can be a dark hero or an anti-hero, or possibly even an evil bad guy driven purely by greed. So I'm not sure that point 3 is strictly true, though again the game is slanted that way.

In general it seems to me that the motives of the PCs and the plot they are advancing are pretty flexible. If players really want to play bad guys advancing an evil cause the game is perfectly capable of supporting that. Given the well-known pitfalls with RPing that kind of thing its MUCH more likely you'll have 'dark hero' types, a sort of Batman or Green Arrow type that works for good, but might walk in the shadows a lot. HoS, the Revenant, the general allowance for non-good/evil characters, much of the Warlock class in general, as well as a lot of other PP/ED and etc stuff all really cater to that pretty heavily.

Just a quick post (relates to my one above). D&D has historically promised that it supported the genre of Heroic/Romantic Fantasy on the tin and in the forewords. However, the system infrastructure, play procedures, and GMing principles never really supported it without heavy-handed use of GM force (eg you get coherent heroic/romantic fantasy spinning out of play only by the GM circumventing or abridging the action resolution mechanics and their authentic results - eg players propelling the game - while substituting - forcing - the GM's own preferred genre outcomes/metaplot). This, to me, is why 4e is so beloved by the people that enjoy it.

As I GM, I get to spend all of my mental overhead on creating conflicts/situations where I can focus on theme, scene dynamism, and interesting fallout because I know the math will hold up. I get to play the adversarial components "full bore". My prep is minimal given the simplicity of the Recharge mechanics, the monster math, and the SC framework. I get to "play to find out what happens". And what happens naturally, as a course of merely playing the game adeptly and allowing its momentum to gather, is these heroic/romantic fantasy tropes emerge.

Players get to play heroic/romantic characters with deep ties to the conflicts (via the game's mythic history, Quests, and the PC build resources at all tiers) who have the means (balanced, symmetrical resource scheduling, the Rally dynamic, and the recharge mechanics), the supporting system infrastructure (clear, robust resolution mechanics for combat and noncombat conflict resolution), and the understanding that the GMing tools/principles ensure that play will be as player-driven (and GM-forceless) as possible.