D&D 5E With Respect to the Door and Expectations....The REAL Reason 5e Can't Unite the Base

[Mallus]

I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that a big part of the difference is timing of when the elements are considered. That is, even a complex build done before play starts, and reconciled into a single number (i.e. a particular skill check) is not considered an impediment to immersion, because it happens away from the table.

Sounds reasonable... but my 3e/Pathfinder sessions always seem to involve a lot of system-oriented stuff --like checking our enormous character spreadsheets, which were, in fact, enormous Excel sheets.

That's the main issue of process-simulation in a nutshell--balancing fidelity to process with mechanics that "disappear into the background" and thus allow immersion.

My blind spot here is seeing how process-simulation leads to immersion at all. I experience the strongest sense of character immersion when playing out social scenes in character, without rules or (die) rolls.

The words I'm speaking, my character is speaking. When I say "I", I'm referring my character; "Mallus D'Argentum", "Eastwood West", "Kelis" or, god help me, "Sir Yatagan Fracas". Nothing is being simulated (because nothing needs to be). I am them.

But as soon as my character has to do something that requires simulating, I'm forced to consider the rules-layer of the game. At that point, I am no longer them. I'll switch my attention to the rules-layer, and the more complex the rules are, the more time I need to spend 'crunching the numbers' --which was considerable for my 13th level Pathfinder PC, Kelis-- the more time I'll need to spend outside of my character's perspective.

 

[Balesir]

Games with meta-mechanics can drive outcomes closer to what the player/group/DM wants than games without, but typically I don't care about the narrative as a narrative. For me narratives are put together after the fact -- session play is more a game of exploration. I want to see how my character's actions based upon his understanding of the situation affect the world.

Interesting. My favourite system for this kind of play (currently) is HârnMaster, but I find the "character advancement" even in that (and it's a "roll to increase a skill if you use it" system, similar to RuneQuest's) can obscure and even disrupt the "dreaming" ideal of character and game world exploration. Do you have any similar issues with experience points and level advancement? Do you generally have (or prefer) any houserules for those elements?

Runequest goes to an almost ridiculous amount of trouble to excise such decisions during play, to the extent that some people felt like various versions over-simplified certain mechanics to reduce them to their barest essentials. This is the root about the various disagreements about how precise and fiddly tracking "usage of a skill" for later XP gain can get.

As I just mentioned, I find a similar issue crops up with HârnMaster; the "mission" to pump up ones own character via the ways provided by the system can conflict with the "core mission" of a game aimed at exploring a game world and the characters in it. Glorantha, like Hârn, is a deeply detailed world that cries out to be explored and understood at a deeper level; that some folk want to pursue that objective without interference from "powergaming" makes perfect sense, to me.

 

[Emerikol]

Or unless people say "because things exist in the game that I don't want I consider it to be a bad game that breaks my enjoyment if anyone takes them." I think you were saying that several pages ago.

This is a lie. Get it LIE. And I've called people out on this several times. Either produce a quote in context that says - D&D 5e cannot contain a mechanic X even if I would be able to remove it. I have said if I can't remove it for my games then it is problematic. That is miles different.

No it didn't. It reallocated who had the focus - away from the mages. It simulates heroic fantasy - rather than being either a hacked tabletop wargame or a simulation of D&D.

Your talking about games that WOTC dreams sales wise of returning to one day. 4e's greatest claim to fame was creating a cottage industry of 3e clones.

Simulationist is not the same as Process-Sim. And D&D has always sucked at process-sim anyway.

I'm not going to get into terms with you. I am a simulationist in the GNS sense. I dislike 4e and its because I'm a simulationist that I dislike it. I also hate plot coupons especially and 4e is full of those.

Because it's an incoherent concept that only appeals to people who don't understand 4e and who want to make out that D&D is simulationist. The correlation in my experience appears to be near 100% between people praising 3.X for simulationism and those who think 4e is dissasociated.

The earlier editions could be played either way. 4e could be played one way. Thus they lost a lot of players who no longer had a way to play in the style they prefer.

In short you are making up terms. Process-sim is simulating the process.

In my experience the core problem people have with so-called dissassociated mechanics is that it actually makes them think about what is actually happening. Rather than just rolling or just describing independently of the rules of the game, never mind what the rules actually say is happening.

I keep repeating and you keep not listening. That is the common theme I see across those who don't understand dissociative mechanics.

If as a player I say - I swing my sword and then I roll to see if my sword hits then that is very correlative. I could also say that I attack the enemy oer the course of one minute seeking for a key opening and stab when the chance arises. In either case my player is thinking exactly what my character is thinking.

On the other hand - if as a player I say - right now at this moment is when I am going to find an opening in the enemies defenses so I can make my special thrusting attack - then that is dissociative. If I have a finite number of manuevers that are finite for game balance reasons and in reality are finite in the fictional world then I have issue. I can't cast fireball over and over because there is an IN WORLD limitation on the number of times a fireball can be cast. Its not the player deciding that the wizard can cast fireball because the planets are aligned. The player AND the character both know once the fireball is cast it's gone. In the martial examples, the character NEVER knows that he can't do the martial trick again. It's a player decision.

So for me I need a game that at least offers a mode of play that is without plot coupons. Note I said a mode of play. It doesn't have to be the entire game. If half the classes use plot coupons and half don't then I can play with the half that don't. Same for the other side I'm assuming.

But if you are insistent on shoving your design philosophy down my throat, which is exactly what the 4e designers tried to do, then my money is going to a competitor and your game will be a failure. I on the other hand, am trying to be reasonable and say - why can't be include options for all. But if that isn't possible, I think the larger playerbase can be found in pre-4e than 4e. And not just because of Pathfinder.

 

[Emerikol]

Interesting. My favourite system for this kind of play (currently) is HârnMaster, but I find the "character advancement" even in that (and it's a "roll to increase a skill if you use it" system, similar to RuneQuest's) can obscure and even disrupt the "dreaming" ideal of character and game world exploration. Do you have any similar issues with experience points and level advancement? Do you generally have (or prefer) any houserules for those elements?

I find level advancement and xp as something we handle outside the game. Characters do not think about it at all. We aren't playing when we are writing xp down on our character sheets. I as DM hand it out after the campaign has stopped. So it's not really a problem. Stopping and starting the campaign and shifting focus from character to player constantly is much harder to deal with.

It is assumed during most down time that the PCs are training/studying their professions. In real life, we tend to advance in jumps. We plateau for a while and then we have a breakthrough. As we get to higher levels those break throughs become less frequent.

As I just mentioned, I find a similar issue crops up with HârnMaster; the "mission" to pump up ones own character via the ways provided by the system can conflict with the "core mission" of a game aimed at exploring a game world and the characters in it. Glorantha, like Hârn, is a deeply detailed world that cries out to be explored and understood at a deeper level; that some folk want to pursue that objective without interference from "powergaming" makes perfect sense, to me.

I haven't played those games so can't comment.

 

[Mallus]

In either case my player is thinking exactly what my character is thinking.

Your character is thinking whatever you declare they are thinking.

If you decide their thoughts are at odds with your own, it's not a system issue (though perhaps you could take it up with your therapist! ).

 

[Nagol]

Interesting. My favourite system for this kind of play (currently) is HârnMaster, but I find the "character advancement" even in that (and it's a "roll to increase a skill if you use it" system, similar to RuneQuest's) can obscure and even disrupt the "dreaming" ideal of character and game world exploration. Do you have any similar issues with experience points and level advancement? Do you generally have (or prefer) any houserules for those elements?

Yeah I find the whole "Terrific! I hit with the great axe. I drop it and pull out my bastard sword. I still need to get a check there!" is a wee bit... stupid as a game mechanic.

Pendragon is a compromise -- you only get to check for one increase each winter so there is less incentive to try to maximise successful skill use every adventure. So long as you get one success before the snows hit, you're golden. The one issue with that system is it limits character growth quite heavily.

For leveled games, I prefer older D&D where there were very limited choices for advancement. I found the 3.X version with multiclassing of prestige classes and base classes, feats, et al. to generate massive options that usually have limited value for any particular character, but it takes a shedload of time to dig through.

As I just mentioned, I find a similar issue crops up with HârnMaster; the "mission" to pump up ones own character via the ways provided by the system can conflict with the "core mission" of a game aimed at exploring a game world and the characters in it. Glorantha, like Hârn, is a deeply detailed world that cries out to be explored and understood at a deeper level; that some folk want to pursue that objective without interference from "powergaming" makes perfect sense, to me.

My favourite character advancement are games like Hero where the player is handed a small pool of points to assign for incremental increase in ability over a longer term. That way the character ambition can be modeled and prioritised away from the table and doesn't incent a particular set of mannerisms on the character to maximise the reward.

Mt secondary choice would be systems where improvement only come from in-game training though these games tend to be severely limit possibilities of training to timeframes outside the scope of campaign-play (like Classic Traveler taking 2 years of school per skill).

 

[Balesir]

I'm not going to get into terms with you. I am a simulationist in the GNS sense. I dislike 4e and its because I'm a simulationist that I dislike it. I also hate plot coupons especially and 4e is full of those.

OK, but GNS doesn't recognise such a thing as "a Simulationist person" - it's a playstyle; an agenda for what the player(s) want to be focussed on addressing during play. To cleave to just one specific agenda seems both unnecessary and limiting. Have you never tried any others?

I haven't played those games so can't comment.

Well, at least that explains why you keep trying to use D&D for Simulationist gaming.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Yeah I find the whole "Terrific! I hit with the great axe. I drop it and pull out my bastard sword. I still need to get a check there!" is a wee bit... stupid as a game mechanic.

...

My favourite character advancement are games like Hero where the player is handed a small pool of points to assign for incremental increase in ability over a longer term. That way the character ambition can be modeled and prioritised away from the table and doesn't incent a particular set of mannerisms on the character to maximise the reward.

I think the MRQ II solution is a decent compromise on this. You do the usual RQ thing of checking off skills as you use them meaningfully, but then at advancement time (out of game, after the adventure), you only get to pick a handful of these to advance. (The way this number is modified by Charisma is mechanicall off, if semi-plausible as a rationalization to punish Cha as a dump stat.)

Basically, "check mongering" past the first few skills only expands the range of choices, not the rate of advancement, which has obvious built in diminishing returns. This means that a player can pretty safely just do what makes sense and be assured that the choices will be there, but can't, as with unrestrained Hero, boost something that wasn't even touched on that adventure.

I'm sure that's not for everyone, but for me it just clicks. I can more or less forget about it and just do my thing. The check is just a reminder that, "Hey, I just did X," like recording hit point loss or a used arrow.

Edit: I think I'm remembering how that works correctly. It's been awhile, and I may be getting it confused with a house-ruled version. In any case, the way I've explained it above does work for me.

 

[Emerikol]

Your character is thinking whatever you declare they are thinking.

If you decide their thoughts are at odds with your own, it's not a system issue (though perhaps you could take it up with your therapist! ).

I know you intended it as humor but I'll clarify anyway. Some games force me to dissociate me as the player and my character. Of course anyone can choose at any time to dissociate. I do so at the end of every session right before I go home.

 

[Emerikol]

OK, but GNS doesn't recognise such a thing as "a Simulationist person" - it's a playstyle; an agenda for what the player(s) want to be focussed on addressing during play. To cleave to just one specific agenda seems both unnecessary and limiting. Have you never tried any others?

Well, at least that explains why you keep trying to use D&D for Simulationist gaming.

Well I meant that I derive the most pleasure from games with a strong simulationist element. I did not intend to imply that there are not narrativist and/or gamist elements to my gaming. Just that things to go against simulationist preferences tend to bother me. Thus I call myself a simulationist which I intended to mean as nothing more than tends that way.

I haven't looked at those games so forgive me if I'm off on this. But a game being abstract or not abstract has nothing to do with a game being simulationist or not. So 1e,2e, and 3e D&D were all able to be played in a simulationist style. Of course you could play them in other styles too. To me that is a good quality in a mainstream roleplaying game. The ability to be versatile playstyle wise. Because I theorize that there are approx the same number of people who favor one of the GNS styles.

So a game like Palladium for example. It strives (and fails in my book but heh) to represent more realistic combat. Does that make it more or less simulationist? We don't know. Realism is not the crux of this debate we are having.

I liked D&D all the way until 4e. 4e is the only edition that I actively disliked. I found that game eliminated the playstyle I liked from the game. It made assumptions about what is and isn't fun that I think were false for some people and true for others. But by forcing a single style, they drove off a lot of people with other styles.