D&D 4E 4e and reality

[P1NBACK]

Hit points/healing. Standing around on the battlemap. In both these cases, 4e has taken disassociated mechanics and reassociated them.

I disagree with this. But, I'll drop it because after reading the rest of your post, I think you and I are on exactly the same page. You're just missing the 10+ pages previous to this last bit.

I'm not. I'm pointing out that if you run skill challenges as presented they aren't disassociated. And if you run them as dice rolling excercises then you can do the same in Dogs in the Vineyard. It's just 4e will have its combat left, which will still be playable. But Dogs won't have anything left.

Dogs uses the same resolution system for combat, talking, etc... Yes. But, by playing the game alone, you're required to create fiction. If you're not creating fiction, you're not rolling dice.

Nice recommendation, thanks.

Np!

If minis have no bearing on the fiction we are imagining, then We Are Doing It Wrong. Because the minis show at a glance the physical proximity we have to each other, allow far more specified (as opposed to unspecified) complexity in the setup and to be clearly and unambiguously be visualising the same situation and elements. Which of course feeds into the fiction we are imagining.

I completely agree.

I'm commenting on people who disagree.

Yes. This, however, has no resemblance to the 4e I know. 4e is much more integrated into the immediate physical game world than most other RPGs.

In 4e I find myself interacting with the terrain (and hence an integral part of the game world) far more than in any other edition of D&D. Or GURPS. Or... This is because with all the push and forced movement I bring camp fires into play as hot things by forcing people into them rather than have them just there. It matters whether a camp fire that was burning earlier in the night was doused or was left to burn down to embers.

Agreed.

If in 4e I am on a 5 foot wide bridge without handropes and am trying to make it to the far side past someone else, I expect us to try to throw each other off almost as a matter of course. If playing 3e I'd be impressed to see a bull rush (not that it would help unless the bridge wasn't straight) or gust of wind. And so the actual terrain would mostly be there for backdrop. In 3e if we know it's there, it doesn't matter whether something is a pit trap, an area with poisoned spikes sticking out of it, or anything else. It's just a hazard square that everyone is going to avoid. In 4e fights get centred around such things. And it absolutely matters which one the combatants are trying to drive each other into.

This happened in my 3E games too. Terrain mattered. This is not unique to 4E. But, yeah. I agree with your sentiment.

If anything I'd call DiTV more disassociated than 4e here. In 4e I use the pre-existing world as represented by the battlemat and minis (i.e. the fiction) to gain the benefit (i.e. the mechanical benefits) and the effect of what I do then flows into the fiction which then justifies the mechanics. In DiTV we jump straight to the mechanics being justified by the fiction. Rather than the fiction first feeding into the mechanics and then being justified by the fiction.

Again. Disagree here. But, I like your thoughts. I like how you're using the battlemat and minis to represent fiction. The thing is, most people aren't doing that. They want the battlemat to remain mechanical. They want "Grab" not to mean actually grabbing something, but to be "Attack Red" which imposes "Condition Blue".

Read up thread and you'll see what I mean.

I believe you and I play the same way.

That's stylistic. First, I'd be very unhappy with someone who said "I shoot him in the face". Or "I trip him." (At least until the dice are rolled.) Pure godmoding.

Not at all. Not in Dogs... Have you actually played Dogs or just read it?

In Dogs, your "intent" is, "I shoot him in the face..." because that's what I'm trying to do. In fact, Dogs wants you to bring out those big guns because they have super-potential to change your character because they are super prone to fallout (that's why all guns get +1d4 dice). Remember, low dice cause problems for you.

The "effect" is what we determine later, when you decide to See or Take the Blow.

So, it'd play out like this:

Player 1: I shoot him in the face! (pushes forward 2 dice, a 6 and a 1 for 7 total).
Player 2: Well, I can't beat a 7 with two dice, I have to use 3. So, I use my 5, 1, and 1 to "Take the Blow". However, I still have dice, so I'm not out of the fight. "The gun goes off with a loud bang and smoke... Jebediah grabs his ear and screams, 'Holy crap! You just blew my ear off!'" (that's 3 d10 fallout dice to set aside [which could kill me later at the end of the conflict]).

Notice how I HAVE to describe taking the blow based on the original fiction? I have to describe how I take the blow from being shot in the face? The fiction is supremely important because it directly ties into what I can say next.

I can't react without cancelling your action to some extent. Second, if you tried to duck a leg sweep and I was DMing I'd just ask if you were sure about that (and if you were I'd give a 2 point penalty). If you tried to duck a polearm in Dogs in the Vineyard I'd again ask if you were sure about that. And throw an additional "free" d4 onto the attack roll.

Yeah. I would never do that. I'd just let the dice speak for themselves and have the player decide to invoke traits for more dice and justify it in the fiction (like you have to do to get more dice in Dogs...).

But there's nothing inherent in Dogs preventing non-sensical counters. Just the play expectations which you don't seem to be forcing onto 4e but do onto DiTV. Special pleading all the way.

I don't understand this statement. Care to elaborate?

That is utterly irrelevant. Very few characters have grab powers other than the basic grab attack. And anyone who tries to use the core grab attack on the swarm deserves their darwin award (grappling a swarm is not normally wise). The only Homeric Grapplers are the Brawler Fighters. It's pulp, not supers here.

You don't think one man grabbing a gargantuan swarm of humanoids (like say, a mob of 25 humans or so) is of "super human" ability? This is what we're talking about here. People here are advocating this.

That's not "pulp" - that's super human.

I'm not aware that Tolkein ever had a gargantuan swarm of humanoids. And certainly didn't have a grappler. But think, for instance, of the Death of Smaug for using your big trick wherever you can.

Sure he did. A great example (from the movie) is when the party is traveling in the dwarven ruins and they get swarmed by the horde (a gargantuan swarm) and only make it out because the Balrog roars. Now... Imagine Aragorn "grabbing" that swarm....

There are times when "I roll nature" is fine. Monster knowledge. As a DM, my answer is always "What are you doing?" Same as it would be in DiTV. "I roll spirit + guns". "Yes, but what are you doing?"

I agree. This is what I've been saying for 10 pages. "Awesome. What are you doing? How do you do that? What do you say? How do you intimidate him? etc..."

We are at a fundamental agreement. You're arguing with me because you're taking me out of context (which is based on this entire thread).

Me as DM. "What do you say?"

Exactly.

Advocating that that's (a) the way I find most fun and (b) is the method indicated by the rule books is fine. Claiming that people don't do this despite it being coded into the rules makes the rules disassociated is a completely different matter.

I don't think you know what I'm saying when it comes to disassociated mechanics. But, I'm glad we agree on the fiction aspect of it all.

Sometimes it is. "I roll perception. What do I see?" is absolutely fine (I'd have used passives there, myself). As is "I roll history/nature/dungeoneering. What do I know about that?"

Agreed. But, this is why I don't have players roll for knowledge checks most of the time. I just give them the information.

However, some people wish to take this further. I've been in a group that did so. That they do isn't part of 4e; it's actually against the rules as written (see quotes above). But 4e is a big enough and rich enough game that you can play it multiple ways and have a fun game. Not because the mechanics are, as you claim, disassociated. They are explicitely not. But because they can be unhooked and are still strong enough to stand up.

I'm not saying all 4E mechanics are disassociated. I think you're misinterpreting me.

Like I said, we're at a fundamental agreement. And, that to me suffices for the point of this thread.

 

[P1NBACK]

Nice recommendation, thanks.

From this blog, there's a comment by Vincent about Monopoly and roleplaying (which is funny, because we've talked about it). Here's what he says:

I guess somebody was going to say that.

Maybe my best answer is:

Playing Monopoly, no arrows come rightward out of the fiction. Imagine whatever you want, nobody else cares.

When we talk about the imaginary stuff in the game re: rules, we aren't talking about what I'm imagining in my own personal head anyway. We're talking about the shared fiction, which means that it's communicated and agreed to. Kasparov might be thinking about a kingdom or his laundry, I'm pretty sure he's not saying it all out loud and trying to get his opponent to buy into it.

And just to head off the other half: of course the players can create house rules to make Monopoly into a roleplaying game. Whatever! I don't think it's especially controversial to observe that, as written, Monopoly ain't one. Lord I hope it's not.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Cutting a long story short, we are in fundamental agreement about what to do with 4e. Where we are in disagreement is about what 4e is. I am arguing that disassociating the mechanics in 4e, especially for skill challenges, is every bit as much houseruling as roleplaying in Cleudo. You are arguing that because you can disassociate the rules and still play the game the rules are fundamentally disassociated.

And re: Dogs, it's an ettiquette question. "I raise my gun, pointed at his face, and pull the trigger." Fine. "I draw and shoot, aiming for his face." Fine. "I shoot him in the face." If this gets reversed it will need a complete re-write, so not fine.

If, instead of throwing three dice to take the blow one dice with a 9 was used to reverse the blow the original "I shoot him in the face" wouldn't have worked at all and so would need revising. With "I raise my gun, pointed at his face, and pull the trigger." that isn't a problem. With "I shoot him in the face", it now never happened. The shot did not hit in the face. So it needs a redo. (That said, I'd expect it to proceed the way you outline - I just consider it poor form).

 

[P1NBACK]

Cutting a long story short, we are in fundamental agreement about what to do with 4e. Where we are in disagreement is about what 4e is. I am arguing that disassociating the mechanics in 4e, especially for skill challenges, is every bit as much houseruling as roleplaying in Cleudo. You are arguing that because you can disassociate the rules and still play the game the rules are fundamentally disassociated.

Maybe. I'm saying, "If you play the game, where fictional stuff doesn't matter - i.e. when you make a grab attack, it doesn't actually mean grabbing something, but imposing Condition Red - then that's playing the game like it's a boardgame."

You and I don't seem to do this. So, it's not an issue with us. However, some of 4E's rules, do disassociate from the fiction, and that can make it harder for the fiction to work - to use an example from Justin Alexander's article, the fighter's mark overriding the paladin's mark (Why do you think the new Knight class uses an aura instead of marking mechanic?).

And re: Dogs, it's an ettiquette question. "I raise my gun, pointed at his face, and pull the trigger." Fine. "I draw and shoot, aiming for his face." Fine. "I shoot him in the face." If this gets reversed it will need a complete re-write, so not fine.

Not at all. It's just matter of assuming that if your character takes an action (I shoot him in the face) and someone opposes that action (no way! I duck!) the intent isn't resolved until the dice say so.

The rules say specifically:

To Raise, say what your character does and put forward two of your dice.

When you Raise, have your character do something that his opponent can’t ignore.

Your Raise is both what your character does and the dice you’re using to back it up. Don’t put dice forward to Raise without describing your character’s action.

Then, in the examples given in the book:

“Forget this,” you say. “I punch you.”

I punch you. I shoot you. I stab you. I throw you down. I step on your face.

These are all acceptable raises. Fictional actions that your opponent can't ignore. It's up to your opponent to See, Reverse or Take, using their dice.

If they See (Block), they can describe how they block it.

No way! I sidestep his punch.

If they Reverse (Counter), they can describe that.

As his fist comes flying at me, I sidestep and use his own momentum to throw him to the ground.

If they take the blow, they describe how.

Oh. You caught me off guard. Your fist lands right in my jaw and a tooth goes flying.

It's pretty straightforward.

 

[Nytmare]

You can turn any game into an RPG. It might take some work to turn Scrabble into an RPG, but, I'm sure that someone, somewhere has done it.

Kingdom of Loathing Panel at DragonCon 2010 on Vimeo

 

[Neonchameleon]

I've probably been playing with Improv roleplayers a bit much There, "I shoot him in the face" would be an offer that should be accepted. Which would wreck the character - and that doesn't matter in Improv...

 

[pemerton]

You are arguing that because you can disassociate the rules and still play the game the rules are fundamentally disassociated.

From this blog, there's a comment by Vincent about Monopoly and roleplaying (which is funny, because we've talked about it). Here's what he says:

Playing Monopoly, no arrows come rightward out of the fiction. Imagine whatever you want, nobody else cares.

I'm saying, "If you play the game, where fictional stuff doesn't matter - i.e. when you make a grab attack, it doesn't actually mean grabbing something, but imposing Condition Red - then that's playing the game like it's a boardgame."

I think there may be two different issues here.

(1) I think 4e can be played in a dissasociated way that (for example) Basic D&D can't be. This creates a potential problem, of a standing temptation to dissasociate. LostSoul has posted about this before, and others have as well I'm' sure.

The solution I use is to located actions in the fiction in my own description of them (as GM), to encourage players to do the same, and to be as liberal as I can be in respect of p 42, skill challenges and other aspects of the game that feed directly off the fiction.

(2) What does one make of conditions like Grabbed or Prone that appear to not always fit the fiction? One way is the "Condition Blue, Condition Red" approach that P1NBACK is diagnosing. Another is to take the approach of suspending the rules in repsonse to the fiction (that some in this thread, including P1NBACK - if I'm reading properly - have advocated). A third, though, which is what I and (I think) Aegeri advocate is to allow the rules to apply, but to require some description of what's happening in the fiction. See (1) above for solutions to the question of how to make this count.

 

[Alex319]

Here's another way of thinking about this question.

The claim being made, by LostSoul and others, seems to be: "The details and description of the fiction should have an impact on action resolution. 4e (at least as written) fails to achieve this."

Let's consider a hypothetical game "D+D X". The D+D X combat system works like this in brief outline:

- Each monster type (and PC type) has an anatomical chart that lists different "hit locations" and where they are located relative to each other. Hit locations have different labels like "vital spot", "locomotion" (for legs and leg-like appendages), "manipulation" (for arms and arm-like appendages), and so on.

- Each turn, you choose from a different menu of attacks and stances, which are all listed on your character sheet (or on another player aid like cards). Each of these options gives you pluses and minuses to defenses against each hit location. For example, if you had a shield, you would choose where to hold the shield and that affects which hit locations get defense bonuses. Or you could choose a "low stance" that gives you plus to defense against your legs but minus to defense against your head. There might be multiple decisions, like where each limb is in relation to each other, what range you are from your enemy, etc. All of this is listed in the rules.

- Different powers only work against certain hit locations. For example, a "sneak attack" power would only work against a location labeled "vital spot." So when you use the power you would have to choose a hit location, and then modifiers would apply based on that hit location.

If you did this, this would allow you to directly implement most of the examples given without needing judgement calls. For instance, the example of "going low to the ground with your weight on your back leg to protect against trip" would actually be on one of the "stance cards" and you put that down. The examples about gelatinous cubes - "if the gelatinous cube gets hit and deforms, that might create a weakness that you could exploit" - would also be in the rules: the cube might have a special power that causes it to alter its hit location diagram under certain conditions. Similar systems could be set up for pretty much any other detail you would want. It would likely get very complex very quickly, but might be doable.

Anyway, here's the key question: Does D+D X satisfy the condition that "the details and description of the fiction have an impact on action resolution?"

One answer to that would be "No, because if you did that then all the decisions would just be 'mechanical', like which stance card to use. Players could easily play the game just looking at the modifiers and hit locations and not think about the fiction." The problem with this answer is that it seems to make the condition impossible to satisfy. The goal is to make the "details of the fiction" matter, but as soon as any such detail is incorporated into the rules, it is no longer a "detail of the fiction" and is now just a "mechanic."

Another answer would be "Yes." The thing about this answer is that 4e DOES do some of what D+D X does, just not all of it. True, some "details of the fiction" (like how you are holding your shield or the anatomy of the monster you are fighting) don't impact action resolution. However, there are lots of other "details of the fiction" (like how strong you are, which weapon you are using, where in the room the pit trap is) that do have an impact on action resolution. So the complaint isn't really "the details of the fiction don't matter" but is more like "the particular details that I'm interested in don't matter." Which is perfectly reasonable, but it also means it's subjective: the claim that "The details of the fiction matter more in (System A) then in (System B)" depends just as much on what the speaker is interested in than in any objective differences between A and B.

---

However, it seems to me like there is another complaint being made, that is basically the inverse of the complaint above. That is that the problem isn't necessarily "There are details of the fiction that don't matter", but rather "There are things that are key to the mechanics that don't have any fictional counterpart." This is the basis behind things like the example about a fighter's mark overwriting the paladin's. My response to that complaint would be the following:

In order to satisfy the condition that "Every mechanic in the game has to have a fictional explanation," we first have to specify what kinds of 'explanations' are permissible.

If any self-consistent explanation is permissible, then (at least as I see it) it's usually trivial to come up with explanations of just about anything, for example:

Hit points and healing surges: Every living being is animated by a kind of "vital energy." Being hit drains this "vital energy", and the amount of vital energy a being has is a measurable physical quantity (kind of like how a cell phone can measure how much charge it has left). Healing surges are self-contained "bubbles" of vital energy that must be "released" into the main pool either over time (during a short rest) or by an external stimulus (a healing power).

Marking mechanics: The way marks work is that they put a quasi-magical "aura" over the target. There's only room around each target for one "aura", and a new aura "pushes out" the first one. The reason this works even for martial marks is that all marks, including martial ones, really are based on an underlying magic even if it's not immediately obvious (kind of like how all chemical reactions are based on the electromagnetic interaction of electrons in atoms, even though you wouldn't guess just by looking that, say, wood burning has anything to do with electricity)

Daily powers: Each power is an invisible "mini-aura" that orbits around the user. When a power is used, the mini-aura "breaks down" and the energy released is used to power the power. The aura takes a while to re-form though, and during this time it can't be used. As for why you can't use the energy from one power to power a different power: it's just there are different types of energy sources. (Kind of like how you can drink soda and put gasoline in your car's fuel tank, but it's not a good idea to drink gasoline or put soda into your car's fuel tank.)

However, one might object that the explanations above are too contrived, and that only explanations that fit with "common sense" or other prior knowledge ought to be considered. The problem with that is that there are lots of things in real life that would fail this test. For example, why don't cell phones work underground or in tunnels? The answer, of course, is that cell phones work by using "invisible rays" (i.e. electromagnetic radiation in whatever part of the spectrum cell phones use) to communicate with the cell phone tower, and if there is enough solid material in the way the signal will be blocked. But of course we don't actually see the "invisible rays," and the only reason it's part of our common knowledge is that we have technology which uses them. Suppose I lived in the 16th century and I was designing a game about "life 500 years in the future". Suppose that in that game there were communication devices similar to cell phones and I explained it with the "invisible rays" explanation. Of course back then the whole concept of "invisible rays that you can use for communication" wouldn't have existed, so it would sound just as contrived as my examples above. But of course that's actually the way it works in real life. My point is that just because something seems weird to us, to the people living in the world it would just be normal, and not weird at all. To me, imagining a world with "invisible auras" flying around everywhere and "vital energy" powering bodies is no more a fundamental problem than a world with "invisible electromagnetic waves" flying everywhere and "electrical energy" powering all sorts of devices.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

A third, though, which is what I and (I think) Aegeri advocate is to allow the rules to apply, but to require some description of what's happening in the fiction. See (1) above for solutions to the question of how to make this count.

OK, but what does "require" mean? I'd say the only definition of require that makes sense here is that if you cannot supply such a description then the action cannot take place. Sort of like "If you can't tell me how you grab the swarm then you can't grab it." I think that is what some of us are advocating. Now it is only a question of how persnickity the DM wants to be about that.

The "just use the RAW and don't go down that path" camp basically seems to be saying that it is in some fashion unfair to the players to tinker with their resources and could unbalance the game. The "fiction is paramount" camp says that a game which ignores the fiction is basically gussed up Monopoly.

Personally I think if you take anything to an extreme your game will probably suffer. The whole thrust of 4e seems to be to walk a line between the extremes to me. Exactly where that line falls is fairly arbitrary. Taking what Alex319 is saying above into account I think it is safe to say that no game is likely to ever be entirely satisfactory to either camp. Anything can be 'reduced to mere mechanics' and anything can be potentially explained away by some sufficiently clever interpretation of the rules. It all boils down to taste.

Personally in my actual play of RPGs I don't care much about all this theory.

 

[Old Gumphrey]

So. 20 page thread on grapple rules in 4e?

I'm just saying.