Martial Practice : Blood Demand

AbdulAlhazred · Feb 24, 2017

Garthanos said:
I think where any of that can obviously seen as a evolving from 4e it might be worthwhile to share.... we have editor brains, here and mathematical brains, and creatives and so on...

Oh sure. I think it almost all is a riff on 4e. I didn't really build a game to get away from 4e so much as to simply refine the concepts further and incorporate a few additional ideas. I've never shared those notes, simply because they are entirely haphazard, but I don't have a problem doing so (much of it has been discussed here anyway though). The other aspect being that notes and game don't always track each other very well. I've written down a lot of ideas and then they ended up in a different (more) final form.

Tony Vargas · Feb 24, 2017

AbdulAlhazred said:
I think it has a severe downside as well though. By replacing the risk/reward ratio system of older D&D the game has lost its aspect of 'taking a gamble'. Even if you run a game as a sandbox, the players know what treasure they'll get. You don't have that sort of option anymore to say "well, you COULD go down the stairs to level 2, the treasures are bigger..." so to speak.

Maybe it's just that I'm an old-timer, but I've done exactly that in my 4e campaign. Presented options that were obviously higher-risk, but plausibly might be higher-reward. True, the item progression in my campaign has been a tad uneven as a result, with a huge score in late Heroic that yielded some Paragon-level gear, and not so much coming along through Paragon (the highest level PC in the group still has a +3 implement, because Pact Blades haven't dropped since then), then another couple of 'troves' on the Cusp of Epic, including some top-level stuff that a couple of PCs will be happy with for the rest of their careers.

Mostly a matter of DM style and comfort in stepping off the well-marked path.

AbdulAlhazred · Feb 24, 2017

Tony Vargas said:
Maybe it's just that I'm an old-timer, but I've done exactly that in my 4e campaign. Presented options that were obviously higher-risk, but plausibly might be higher-reward. True, the item progression in my campaign has been a tad uneven as a result, with a huge score in late Heroic that yielded some Paragon-level gear, and not so much coming along through Paragon (the highest level PC in the group still has a +3 implement, because Pact Blades haven't dropped since then), then another couple of 'troves' on the Cusp of Epic, including some top-level stuff that a couple of PCs will be happy with for the rest of their careers.

Mostly a matter of DM style and comfort in stepping off the well-marked path.

Yeah, obviously you can rework things, or play it fast and loose, and claw back some of that. Its a question though of how much the table will allow for. I've played with some players who were VERY militant about getting their treasure drops and wanting to get their choice of items. 90% of players don't worry about it, or maybe don't even read the DMG and know about parcels, but I still got the distinct impression there was a feeling of lack of real choice there.

I know one thing, its a HUGE contrast with say 1e, where a Staff of the Magi could drop on level 2 characters, or you could get a few copper pieces. Most games aren't quite that crazy, but there was still a real sense that getting a good item was a SCORE, not just some checkbox that was mandated by being level 3 or whatever.

Garthanos · Feb 24, 2017

AbdulAlhazred said:
but there was still a real sense that getting a good item was a SCORE, not just some checkbox that was mandated by being level 3 or whatever.

As a DM in 1e I had the sense that there really wasnt any good guidelines about what might be appropriate to level ... and we had DMs hand all the spell books of level X to magic users... sigh

Garthanos · Feb 24, 2017

I suppose discussing the item economy is relevant for GMTs too.. it is pretty much the thing which enables them to integrate

AbdulAlhazred · Feb 24, 2017

Garthanos said:
I suppose discussing the item economy is relevant for GMTs too.. it is pretty much the thing which enables them to integrate

Well, if you approach them in a "this is a resource" way, vs "this is a reward" way. You can easily hand out GMT as a 'treasure'. Its not quite as simple, narratively, as the old item drop from days of yore, but it need not be exceptionally harder than that either. You find some odd material or whatnot that is of interest to some 'Grand Master', it won't take a lot of effort for that to result in some training.

Garthanos · Feb 24, 2017

AbdulAlhazred said:
Well, if you approach them in a "this is a resource" way, vs "this is a reward" way. You can easily hand out GMT as a 'treasure'. Its not quite as simple, narratively, as the old item drop from days of yore, but it need not be exceptionally harder than that either. You find some odd material or whatnot that is of interest to some 'Grand Master', it won't take a lot of effort for that to result in some training.

having an expected wealth for me is valuable as a DM having a wishlist to help the character feel like themselves is useful as both a player and dm...

I would like to enable the relationship with items archetypes as a choice... GMTs enable a player to decide how many builtin bits vs tool flavor items so far so good... the other element is the idea of an item which itself grows, its entirely wingable. Making slots seem "important" is an I do not like bit. Give me types to properly limit stacking and be done with it.

Tony Vargas · Feb 25, 2017

AbdulAlhazred said:
Yeah, obviously you can rework things, or play it fast and loose, and claw back some of that.

The latter, I guess, aa i rarely ever even glance at the parcels...

a question though of how much the table will allow for. I've played with some players who were VERY militant about getting their treasure drops and wanting to get their choice of items.

I'm afraid I'm the worst example of that among the groups I've played 4e with. ::embarrassed::

So, ironically, not an issue I've had to deal with as a DM.

pemerton · Feb 25, 2017

AbdulAlhazred said:
Yits a HUGE contrast with say 1e, where a Staff of the Magi could drop on level 2 characters, or you could get a few copper pieces. Most games aren't quite that crazy, but there was still a real sense that getting a good item was a SCORE, not just some checkbox that was mandated by being level 3 or whatever.

AbdulAlhazred said:
By replacing the risk/reward ratio system of older D&D the game has lost its aspect of 'taking a gamble'. Even if you run a game as a sandbox, the players know what treasure they'll get. You don't have that sort of option anymore to say "well, you COULD go down the stairs to level 2, the treasures are bigger..." so to speak.

<snip>

Admittedly, gambling with your character is not always very compatible with developing the character and story; it can be though. I mean, many heroes take a big risk, its a part of the job, and its good if there's a big material reward there, something to signify that.

I agree that the contrast with AD&D is huge.

As you and [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] are discussing, you can probably depart (at the risk of player disgruntlement, I guess) - and I think [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] has departed too. And I in my (still fairly new) Dark Sun game we will be using inherent bonuses, which means probably treasure will be much more haphazard than in my main 4e game.

But there is another D&D tradition that has always had issues with the dungeoneering gamble approach: the sword gifted to the fighter by the hermit cleric in the Foreword to Moldvay Basic; the daisho of OA Samurai (and as best I remember it James Wyatt, in his 3E version of OA, essentially converted 3E's wealth-by-level guidelines into a system of treasure parcels for OA characters, to make the treasure system more consistent with the desired tropes); the elven cloaks gifted by Galadriel; etc.

The fact that 4e just went ahead and did this (even if under a misleading heading), rather than faffing around with some sort of halfway house like wealth-by-level guidelines, I thnk is just another sign of the delibereatness and the crispness of its design. It knows what it wants to do, and it just does it!

Tony Vargas · Feb 25, 2017

pemerton said:
The fact that 4e just went ahead and did this (even if under a misleading heading), rather than faffing around with some sort of halfway house like wealth-by-level guidelines, I thnk is just another sign of the delibereatness and the crispness of its design. It knows what it wants to do, and it just does it!

Sorry, don't see it. Parcels & wish-lists are just wealth/level, slightly obfuscated in a way that avoids giving as much of an advantage to characters built at-level over characters who leveled organically. (That's something I noticed in 3.x - if you played a character for a long time you picked up the items available, maybe sold stuff at half to commission what you wanted at full price. If you just brought in a character built at that level, you picked exactly the items you wanted to optimize your build.)

Martial Practice : Blood Demand

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