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Community
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D&D Older Editions
4e needs a Definitive Guide
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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6413324" data-attributes="member: 82106"><p>Clearly when there are very detailed rules in ANY given area of an RPG the average GM/player basically seems to assume (at least these days) that said game will be very circumscribed. If we haven't heard 1000 times that 4e "only allows what is in the rules" in some form or other I'm a rubber duck.</p><p></p><p>Except of course that oddly created the opposite effect. By actually covering one set of common situations that would come up they didn't create an exemplar of how to apply the rules, they just created one more specific rule subsystem that handled those few cases and apparently begged for more. What needed to happen was there needed to be a chapter called "what is beyond the rules, how narrative drives your story" that pounded out about 50 examples of ways you could utilize the different rules elements contextually in your narrative. Clearly whatever imagination it was that sparked the days of early D&D LONGGGGG since fled away from the vast bulk of the community at some point and has to be awakened very explicitly if it is to be relied on.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Yeah, it wasn't any more present in earlier editions except sporadically. </p><p></p><p>Honestly, here's the difference. The 1e rules (as an example) are really so fragmentary and incomplete that they cannot serve as an all-encompassing guide to making rulings in a game. They can serve to rule on the things that they cover, a lot of common situations. They DO give 'advice' on a lot of other situations, and on DMing generally, and it is all very much based in narrative. The 'rules' as such are just little raisins floating in a narrative pudding. So people MUST focus on the narrative needs of the game. The DM's experience is one of being continually faced with situations that are either wholly unique or at least different enough from past situations to require some sort of ruling, and since there is nothing approaching the unified check sort of d20 system of 3e or 4e its always 'wing it'. </p><p></p><p>If you run 4e (and 3.5 too pretty much) you have a different situation where there are universal mechanics and you CAN stick pretty much to 'the book' in combat at least and something will keep happening, you can go to 'board-game mode'. You can just make it clear that you're only going to apply rules and not ever extrapolate and your job gets very easy and the game is skirmish combat with some sort of varying quality of dialog in-between. Its a terrible way to run a game (unless your players love to play just nothing but minis and don't really RP much). The thing is its the lazy way so it is the most common way. </p><p></p><p>So, we can clearly see where different experiences come from. I learned the brutally difficult art of running an OD&D game from scratch, with barely even any time as a player and at age 12. It GOT easy, of course it got easy after years, but it was still hard. So when I come along and start running 4e I just laugh and think to myself "great, this is easy, it takes me 5 minutes to make an encounter and I have keywords and page 42 and whatever for in-game when someone pulls out the stops" and it works and there's no 'board game' in sight because I'm WAY into my narrative that I know have a huge amount of time for and rules aren't going to get in my way. But then there's I guess some other guy that just always really wanted a rule for everything if he could find one, and now he can....</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 6413324, member: 82106"] Clearly when there are very detailed rules in ANY given area of an RPG the average GM/player basically seems to assume (at least these days) that said game will be very circumscribed. If we haven't heard 1000 times that 4e "only allows what is in the rules" in some form or other I'm a rubber duck. Except of course that oddly created the opposite effect. By actually covering one set of common situations that would come up they didn't create an exemplar of how to apply the rules, they just created one more specific rule subsystem that handled those few cases and apparently begged for more. What needed to happen was there needed to be a chapter called "what is beyond the rules, how narrative drives your story" that pounded out about 50 examples of ways you could utilize the different rules elements contextually in your narrative. Clearly whatever imagination it was that sparked the days of early D&D LONGGGGG since fled away from the vast bulk of the community at some point and has to be awakened very explicitly if it is to be relied on. Yeah, it wasn't any more present in earlier editions except sporadically. Honestly, here's the difference. The 1e rules (as an example) are really so fragmentary and incomplete that they cannot serve as an all-encompassing guide to making rulings in a game. They can serve to rule on the things that they cover, a lot of common situations. They DO give 'advice' on a lot of other situations, and on DMing generally, and it is all very much based in narrative. The 'rules' as such are just little raisins floating in a narrative pudding. So people MUST focus on the narrative needs of the game. The DM's experience is one of being continually faced with situations that are either wholly unique or at least different enough from past situations to require some sort of ruling, and since there is nothing approaching the unified check sort of d20 system of 3e or 4e its always 'wing it'. If you run 4e (and 3.5 too pretty much) you have a different situation where there are universal mechanics and you CAN stick pretty much to 'the book' in combat at least and something will keep happening, you can go to 'board-game mode'. You can just make it clear that you're only going to apply rules and not ever extrapolate and your job gets very easy and the game is skirmish combat with some sort of varying quality of dialog in-between. Its a terrible way to run a game (unless your players love to play just nothing but minis and don't really RP much). The thing is its the lazy way so it is the most common way. So, we can clearly see where different experiences come from. I learned the brutally difficult art of running an OD&D game from scratch, with barely even any time as a player and at age 12. It GOT easy, of course it got easy after years, but it was still hard. So when I come along and start running 4e I just laugh and think to myself "great, this is easy, it takes me 5 minutes to make an encounter and I have keywords and page 42 and whatever for in-game when someone pulls out the stops" and it works and there's no 'board game' in sight because I'm WAY into my narrative that I know have a huge amount of time for and rules aren't going to get in my way. But then there's I guess some other guy that just always really wanted a rule for everything if he could find one, and now he can.... [/QUOTE]
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