Old School : Tucker's Kobolds and Trained Jellies

[TheFindus]

There are some writer/designers on the Zeitgeist team that I have a lot of respect for. Ryan Nock is a great writer. But if he thinks that Zeitgeist is better designed than Tomb of Horrors, then I'll just shake my head and walk away. Sure, Gary had the easier time because he got there first, but seriously, is there a designer out there that doesn't wish he could write something as evocative, memorable, and enduring as Tomb of Horrors?

I don't know if Mr. Nock thinks this, but when talking about ToH, I do. There is a lot of room to write something very harsh about ToH, IMO, but since it is futile to discuss overall taste, all that is left is to say that we could not disagree more.

 

[TheFindus]

I love Tomb of Horrors and I haven't read Zeitgeist. But a lot of Tomb of Horrors is IMO awful design. There are instant death traps with no clues and no way to figure them out other than experimentation that insta-kills.

Thank you for writing this. I agree completely about the awful design. But because of that, I really cannot say I love this module.

That doesn't stop me from adoring it and what it did to inspire me. But dang, it sure doesn't play fair. I'd certainly define it as an adversarial module (particularly because that's exactly what it was written for, to kill cocky players.)

That's consistent with Gygax's style. When he ran a OD&D game for the ENW moderators the year before he passed away, my elf used a listening cone to avoid ear seekers. Gary chuckled. "My players spent all their time listening at doors and it ruined the fun. I added ear seekers to teach them a lesson. It worked." His smile was wonderful.

Old-school play makes a difference between the experience of the player and the experience of the character. And adventures were designed that way. In G1-3 and D1-3, for example, it explicitly stated that the adventures "are designed for play only by players of above-average ability who have characters of high level". That is why the problem with "cocky" players arises, because you can "perform" really well, over the top, really, in an adventure for low level characters if you are a very experienced player, knowing all the mysteries of the 10' pole and dropping sand everywhere to look for traps, etc. Or having to use a listening cone. Because being an experienced player and really does make a huge difference.
What bothers me is that there seem to be people who hail this stuff as an outstanding roleplaying experience but claim that 4E is rather "gamist" and less creative.
I say that responding to your post while assuming that you are not one of those, though.

 

[Harlekin]

So how do you handle hit points? Your PC knows he has multiple minor wounds but he can still fight as good as ever, but the player knows he has only 10 hp left?

Can high level fighters ignore being targeted by simple crossbowmen?

 

[TheFindus]

The reason folks are arguing with you is that Tomb of Horrors is an outlier in old-school gaming. It was written as a one-shot scenario designed to test players who boasted their characters could "beat any challenge". It doesn't reflect most of the gaming that people were doing.

You keep focusing on ToH while we're trying to say "hey, look at all this other stuff we did!"

That people are arguing about what somebody writes on boards like this is the purpose of boards like this.
And the aspect that ToH differentiates between being an experienced player playing an experiened character seems to be one of the main characteristics of old-school-play. As I have mentioned in another post, the same view on how the game works in adventures G1-3 and D1-3.
So, while adverserial gamemastering might be only a part of playing ToH, all other aspects of how to play the game and adventure design remain.
Based on my anecdotal evidence, only a few players who play that way are still around. Especially here in Germany. The reason being that most people stopped liking this style. In fact, the many people I play with will not touch this with a 10' pole. The question is, since this is the part of ENWorld dealing with the next edition of DnD, who will WotC cater to?
And forgive me for asking them to cater to my taste, not old-school. After all, old-schoolers can and will ask them to cater to theirs.

 

[TheFindus]

Put yet another way: I want the decisions I make as a player to parallel those the character would make, where feasible. I don't want a mechanical incentive to do one thing, when to the character another choice should be superior (I know the Double-Spin-Kick, so of course I use it now there's a chance), or a strategic concern that the character doesn't have (no, better save the Double-Spin-Kick for the BBEG). Resource management should happen in-game.

I think this sums up very nicely why a lot of people have so many problems with 4E. While there never was a problem to assume that spellcasters in a vancian system can do certain things only once per day and then have to rest for 8 hours, daily martial powers will not convince this crowd.

So in 4E, action resolution is a narrative process. Whereas those who criticize 4E want their way of world plausibility in the rules, 4E lets all players at the individual table create plausibility on their own for an individual situation. All the time.
Therefore, a character would not be able to do the "double-spin-kick" because the situation was not right, because she started on the left foot and not the right, because the opponent held his shield the wrong way, etc.
To me, this is just as convincing than clerics who have to prepare spells. Except one is written in the rulebook and therefore I do not question it, while I have to come up with a plausible answer for the other on a narrative level on my own. Now, how is that for creativity?

 

[Andor]

For someone who just admitted that he knows next to nothing about 4e, why do you insist on repeatedly referencing it?

Here's a test - find a single sentence in the 4e DMG about crafting a "4e style level appropriate balanced encounter".

How about... Pages 56-93? And 125-129?

I'm not completely ignorant of 4e. I own the base 3 books, I have read them. I have not kept up with 4e, because I have never once, since it came out, met a single person willing to run it. Aound here I know of several 3e games, and many more playing FFGs Warhammer 40k line of RPGs. No one that I know plays 4e.

I would be happy to actually give it a whirl, if offered the opportunity.

But please don't, for the love of literacy, pretend that 'balance' is not THE driving focus of 4e, at least as it was first printed.

"A standard encounter should challenge a typical group of characters but not overwhelm them. The characters should prevail if they haven't depleted their daily resources or had a streak of bad luck. An encounter that's the same level as the party, or one level higher, falls in this standard range of difficulty." 4e DMG pg 56.

They are explicitly telling you what playstyle they expect the GM to provide and have well thought out tools to allow him to craft provide it. Even traps and terrain are treated in this way.

"When the terrain requires a skill check or ability check, use the Difficulty Class by Level table (page 42) to set a DC that's appropriate to the characters' level."

Now, before someone puts words into my mouth, they are not saying that you CANNOT put in an unblanced encounter. And it would be obviously pointless if they did as WotC ninjas will not break down your door and shred your GMing license for puting in a level+5 encounter with no loot.

But it is utterly clear that 4e has, as an explicit and driving goal, a playstyle where PCs are always challenged, but in a sufficiently modest way that they can solve any given problem out of pocket. They are not expected to need to run, they are not expected to get a TPK because they hit a bad patch on the wandering monster table, they are not expected to find a wall they cannot climb. Nor do they find one that would be too easy.

A good GM will vary things up a bit, and 4e doesn't say they can't. But I think the expectation that PCs should be able to cope with any challange within the existing resources on their character sheets is a hinderance to creative or unusual use of resources or abilities to deal with problems in unexpected ways. Even the (excellent) section on terrain makes it clear that tactical use of terrain features is something that should be offered to the PCs rather than merely permitted.

The sole (and so very often cited) exception to this is page 42. And page 42 is fantastic, but it's kinda wierd even in it's coolness. For example if a 1st level rogue kicks an ogre into a brazier it might burn him for 2d6+4 damage, where as if a 15th level rogue does it it would inflict 3d6+6. Same fire, same ogre, different damage. Why? Because a higher level character did it, and it would seem unfair if she did too much less than a regular attack might make, so she does more damage than a 1st level character would do while performing that exact same maneuver.

You know... perhaps that's the word that's key. Balance is something that exists only between party members. Forget balance for a second. There is an expectation, which is stronger in 4e than is ealier editions, that life is supposed to be fair for the PCs. And to me a hero is someone who triumphs no matter how unfair life is.

This sense that the world is supposed to be fair for the PCs runs through 4e from the by level DCs to the loot by encounter tables.

Yes, 3e has treasure by level guidelines and ECL tables. I'm not pretending for a second that the "PC fairness expectation" is new to 4e. But it is a trend that has grown with each edition of D&D. In 1e no one would gasp with shock if they heard about a total party wipe due to an unlucky roll on the wandering monster table. By 3e, that would have seemed like a weird story.

What I'm asking in this thread is "Should the expectation of PC fairness peak in 4e or are we grognards idiots for thinking unfairness makes for a better game?"

 

[TheFindus]

So how do you handle hit points? Your PC knows he has multiple minor wounds but he can still fight as good as ever, but the player knows he has only 10 hp left?

Can high level fighters ignore being targeted by simple crossbowmen?

HP in 4E are not physical wounds only, they are a form of will-to-survive, endurance, morale, etc.
Also, DnD has never been a game with a death spiral such as Rolemaster, for example. In any edition of DnD, every character could fight or cast spells just as well with full hp or one hp.
In my group, we roleplay different amounts of hp differently, though. Since I do not know the actual hp of the players (I do not seem to have the need for this with 4E: when PCs go down, they go down and the leader is responsible for healing - but that works really well and is always very dramatic), they narrate what the effects of the wounds are. In that way, the battlemind at the table with 10 hp left would describe a crossbow-bolt-hit that makes him lose 12 hp as more severe than with 70 hp.
When the PCs damage their opponents, I do the same thing. And opponents and players will behave differently on the battlefield when their hp are low. They flee or try to move in a different way, for example.
So no, with 10 hp left, "my" players do not ignore a crossbow-bolt.

If they are at full hp, it becomes a story issue. Damage in 4E scales nicely, but mechanically I doubt that a high level 4E fighter would be dropped to 0 hp by a single crossbow bolt. In my campaign, high level characters have the equipment, hp and what they stand for, powers and combat experience, so that their players can very plausibly narrate how a blow that would kill any other man is turned into just a small cut. As a GM, I can do that, too. But I think that problem, if you want to call it that, comes up in any edition of DnD. It is unrelated to 4E.
So I can see that it would depend on the story, on what the purpose of the crossbow-wielder in the story is and why he threatens the high level fighter. I guess, in edition of DnD, really, I would let the player decide how this scene should play out and wing it from there. In 4E, page 42 and saying "Yes!" help a lot here.
If there are several crossbowmen, say 5 or 6, then I guess they would be able to cause a lot of damage to the characters, because of the 4E damage scale. That would endanger 2 or 3 characters at the spot if targeted. I guess the players would roleplay accordingly. But you would have to take the story into account here as well, of course.

 

[Mattachine]

I thought Hussar was writing rhetorically.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

Comprehensive rules, by themselves, don't end up describing what a player can't do. Look at a system like Shadowrun. It's very comprehensive, but it's not difficult to figure out how to adjudicate a creative idea.

What causes the sense of limitation is exceptions based design, which was present in third edition and dominant in fourth. Martial powers are the ultimate form of this. Instead of created a unified maneuver mechanic that could be adapted to creative ideas, each maneuver was turned into a separate exception to the core rule of Attack Role versus AC. Moreover, many of these were turned into an individual limited resource, making it even more difficult for the DM to adjudicate.

For example, the rogue had an ability that was described and throwing stuff in an enemies eyes to gain an advantage. But because it was an encounter power that could only be used once, the rules thus implied that only someone who had that power could throw stuff in an opponent's eyes.

Obviously, that's ridiculous, and a good DM will work with players to be creative, but the rules, in this case, do get in the way.

Let's look at a counter example. Savage Worlds has what are called Tricks, which cover the wide array of dirty tricks one can use in combat. Some are based on a character's smarts, others on their agility, but they all use the same mechanic: an opposed roll to gain an advantage on the next action. Every character can make use of tricks. The GM can adjucate creative maneuvers easily, and character options can be tied to that unified mechanic. Thus, if a roguish character uses the "dirt in the eyes" trick a lot, he might get a bonus or special outcome to that particular maneuver.

The way 5E can appease the most people is to have a solid set of generic mechanics that class features build on, but that everyone can use. Classes can thus still have cool powers and creative people can still do creative things.

 

[TheFindus]

What I'm asking in this thread is "Should the expectation of PC fairness peak in 4e or are we grognards idiots for thinking unfairness makes for a better game?"

You put the question very bluntly. "Idiot" is such a strong word. But I think that "unfairness" does not make a better game, no.
Wandering monsters rolled out of a table with no connection to the story make a much lamer game to me. They serve no purpose at all. In my opinion, stuff like this makes for C movies, which are a waste of precious lifetime.
Also, a TPK is not something to be proud of unless it serves a story purpose. You know, the valiant heroes all die a meaningful death. But: "Oh, you all died because you could not climb the wall" serves no purpose. This is meaningless.
I have experienced two TPK in 25+ years of gaming and none of them are talked about in a funny or nostalgic way. Instead, everybody says: What a very crappy way to end this game (they say "scheisse" in german).
Over time, you connect with the character and want to tell the story you are playing to the end with him or her. In that way, TPK is like coitus interruptus.
DnD is heroic fantasy game. If I want to play a non-hero character, I play Harnmaster.

But you are right: This is THE difference in 4E game play (and I would say 3e as well). And the reason why 4E is in many ways awesome. The awesomeness should carry on to the next edition.