The Paradigm of Pillars

[CleverNickName]

All of this talk about pillars, roles, themes, etc., does concern me a little, but not for the same reasons that the OP has mentioned.

My concern is that they are over-thinking the whole thing.

We have all played D&D, and we all love it. We have been in love with this game for years, decades even, long before words like "gamist" or "roles" started flying around. Now I can understand the need to attract new players, but I don't understand why they feel the need to break everything down into categories, or balance one group arbitrary things against another, or split it into percentages and graph them, and so on. These things were never an issue before; why are they now?

I'm concerned because it sounds like they are trying to write a completely new and different game, instead of giving us more of the same game we already love.

 

[Mattachine]

Well, Gary Gygax tells us that it is a game. That's why you get xp for gold. And why magic-users can't use swords.

Though EGG tells us that D&D is a game, many do not approach it that way, despite having dice in hand. Many people play D&D as cooperative storytelling, or imagine that they do.

For those folks, talks of pillars, silos, and all that draws back the curtain.

Many people want the Wizard of Oz, not the traveling salesman.

 

[dkyle]

These things were never an issue before; why are they now?

I've always had issues with this before. DnD's support for non-combat roleplaying has always been woefully anemic.

I'm glad to see an area with genuine attempts at innovation. If it's just going to be a clone of what came before, then what's the point of it? Just play what came before. Or any one of the dozen retroclones that already exist.

Many people want the Wizard of Oz, not the traveling salesman.

Seems like this is really an issue of how it's presented, in the actual game. The PHB could be entirely devoid of any talk of "pillars".

In discussion of game design, the curtain is inevitably pulled back, but discussion of the game's design isn't the same as playing it.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The pillars aren't as artificial as all that.

They actually arise out of the way that people actually play the game.

That is, this is just a recognition of what is happening anyway.

The roles were this, to a certain degree, too, but dealing only with combat is bound to leave out big chunks of the game.

Can you imagine a movie that was created in that sort of manner?

Three-act structure, buddy.

When my thief decides to hide from some orcs, sneak behind one, and backstab him, is he exploring (because he's scouting the area), is he roleplaying (because he's afraid to enter direct combat with them), or is he having a combat encounter (because he's sneak attacking them)? If we're fighting and I convince the guards to surrender, am I roleplaying (because I used a social skill) or am I having a combat encounter (because we were fighting)? If I use magic missile to break the lock on a prison cell, am I exploring (because we're in a prison cell) or am I having a combat encounter (because I used a combat ability and potentially used up a daily combat resource)?

All of the above, really.

But, note: nothing OTHER than all of the above. All of what you're doing is handled by one of the three pillars in some respect

Attempting to rigidly define them and shoehorn classes into one of the three pillars--and trying to balance them around this, no less!--cannot succeed.

There's nothing that says this is what they're actually doing, but I think your pronouncements of doom are based on one fundamental misconception:

Your campaign is not a special unique snowflake.

And tropes are tools.

 

[Ahnehnois]

When it comes to rules, more is not better.

A good set of rules describes what happens in the game, but does as little to dictate those events as possible. Certainly, this is an idealistic goal, but every time the rules ask you to think inside the box, it's a concession. Classes are already a concession. So are alignments and ability scores. But at least they have meaning within the game, and they help it play. Why should we concede to metagame contructs like these pillars (or roles, or tiers)? They add nothing and take away so much. Let's not have any backwards steps in game design.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

It would indeed be a problem if your fears come to pass, and it's something the designers should keep in mind.

However, I'm pretty sure they're aware of it.

 

[dkyle]

The pillars aren't as artificial as all that.

They actually arise out of the way that people actually play the game.

That is, this is just a recognition of what is happening anyway.

Exactly. I really don't see anything "artificial" about them. I think they clearly reflect the most common aspects of the situations characters find themselves in in D&D.

Three-act structure, buddy.

Also: Star Wars was explicitly written by George Lucas to follow a theory that all myths have essentially the same structure. It's actually really eerie once you see it.

 

[Tony Vargas]

This whole "pillars" paradigm is worrisome to me. It reminds me too much of "roles" in 4e, where a class is defined by a metagame concept and not how it exists within the game.

IRL, a species can be catetorized as a predator or scavenger or herbivore, for instance. That doesn't change what they are or what they can do. But if you were trying to create an abstract computer model of animal species, you might find it very helpful to have an individual species 'inherit' traits of a category like 'predator.'

You can attempt to break a game down into singular data points--Roleplaying, Exploration, and Combat.

The only worrisome thing I see in the 'Pillars Paradigm' is the tendency to label one of them 'Roleplaying' instead of 'Interaction.' RP is an activity that can take place to the extent the PCs desire it across the Pillars. Interaction is a broad grouping of challenges that are solved using socials skills and other abilities that can influence them. Roleplaying is something the players do, combat, exploration, and interaction are things their characters do.

The reason it fails is because it is an artificial form of game design. It excises the creative process in favor of a logical, analytical construction of ordered game mechanics producing a sterile result. ... I fear, this is what 5e is going to do with the paradigm of pillars: "This is an Exploration option. It should not increase your ability to explore by more than 1.75, which we have calculated by averaging the possible number of scenarios that it might apply and then dividing it by pi."

Game design is an abstract and artificial exercise, and experts can and should use some pretty deep math and theory if they want to do it really well. Games, especially RPGs, are very abstract by their nature. (LARPS, I suppose a bit less so.)

The above questions are rhetorical.

They are also /all/ completely bogus. In any situation in-game, you'll be somewhere, which you take as meaning it's exploration. There will be others you can talk to, if only your party members, which you're trying to imply will make it RP. There will be, if not other creatures you could resort to violence against, at least objects you could break. There will also be things that actually matter to overcoming the challenge, and they'll generally fit neatly into one of the 'Pillars.'

Attempting to rigidly define them and shoehorn classes into one of the three pillars--and trying to balance them around this, no less!--cannot succeed.

D&D already has drawn a pretty sharp line around combat, for instance, and doing so has only served to improve the game. Now, shoehorning classes into one of the three pillars /would/ be a terrible mistake. If the smoke you were blowing above were solid and all three pillars really were always relevant all the time, it would actually be OK to have classes that specialized exclusively in a pillar. Because that's flatly false, and D&D challenges really do tend to be either combat, exploration, or interaction - even if they can move quickly from one to the other, particularly when a non-combat challenge is failed, provoking a fight - and because campaigns can focus heavily on one pillar over the others, or on each pillar to varying and different degrees - no class can afford to be bad at any of the pillars.

 

[CleverNickName]

I've always had issues with this before. DnD's support for non-combat roleplaying has always been woefully anemic.

Has it really been, though? Until I started reading about the game on Internet forums, I had never heard anybody complain about it.

 

[dkyle]

Has it really been, though? Until I started reading about the game on Internet forums, I had never heard anybody complain about it.

Depends on your expectations, I suppose. I entered into DnD from a boardgames background, with an expectation of a small group tactical combat game with persistent characters and a bit of story to get from monsters-to-kill to monsters-to-kill. So the relative lack of non-combat mechanics didn't really bother me. Others have no problem with a "DM makes everything up" approach to RPGs, and played games much less focused on combat on that basis. But that's not me; mechanics are important to me.

It wasn't until I started playing indie games that I saw that you could legitimately have an RPG about something other than combat. Nowadays, I play DnD if I want a game about fighting monsters and taking their stuff. I play other systems if I want something else. It would be nice to have a DnD with real, solid support for that "something else".