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D&D 4E [4e] Paladin (feat) advice needed
- Thread starter EzekielRaiden
- Start date
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
Oh you'll get no disagreement with me on the above (as I'm certain you know)!
However, I'm not so much interested about the playstyle/edition debates on these boards. I'm trying to sort out the machinery at work within the 4e advocate base that makes one group (of which the four of us most recently posting belong) stridently appreciate 4e's noncombat conflict resolution mechanics and the other group stridently abhor them.
I look at posts on these boards by the second group and I look at posts on RPG.net in the "Let's Read" thread under present discussion and there are a few distinct similarities in lines of dissent (of which you, I, and several others have gone to great lengths to combat). The reasoning always implies things like:
1) GMs having no idea how to dynamically change the situation as a result of a resolved action (paying heed to neither explicit stakes nor narrative trajectory).
2) Lack of usage (and understanding) of the (utterly mandatory) technique of Fail Forward.
3) GM having no idea how to frame a particular PC into a conflict-charged situation that they have to address RIGHT NOW.
4) Fundamental breakdowns at the play procedure level (things like initiative being used in a gamist fashion rather than as intended - if used at all - which is as sort of tacit social contract for spotlight passing...and then weird things arising from this like "passing turns?")
5) Various breakdowns at the social contract level.
There are other aspects of it, but those hit most of the relevant notes. Does the "groomed on heavy metaplot, GM-force-laden, sim-ish AD&D 2e" cause some of this? Or the 3.x "rule for every interaction with extremely discrete action resolution" serial world exploration (rather than discrete scenes?) cause some of this? Combination of both?
Maybe. Though even if the answer is "probably" or even "yes", my musings still persist, I think. Why can someone groomed on those conceits and play procedures not pivot from that framework to another (if that is indeed what is happening here)? Perhaps the answer of why someone who appreciates Gygaxian D&D or OD&D can pivot to discrete, abstract scene resolution, with attendant action declaration/resolution which is coherent with the framework (propelled by explicit stakes, drama logic as a principle, and Fail Forward as a technique) is because there is some fundamental overlap between the two approaches to play.
Whatever the reason, some sort of cognitive dissonance within the 4e advocate camp is still...going...on (much to my chagrin). Meanwhile this brand new 4e GM (who is an old school GM) has immediately grasped 4e SCs conceptually and is using all the same language and comparisons that several of us have used to explain them over the last several years, citing the same systems, their resolution machinery and philosophical underpinnings. I mean remember all of these people saying "WHAT YOU GUYS ARE SAYING ISN'T IN THE DMG". And we said "uhhhh...yes it is...it is just written this way...but this is what they mean." Now he is doing the same thing, out of nowhere, with seemingly no exposure to all the many words we've spilled on the matter over the last several years.
I find that very interesting
Yes, its interesting. Of course you could call me one of those old school DMs too, in a manner of speaking. I mean I cut my teeth DMing OD&D/Holmes Basic, and SURELY back then we had no notion of narrativist devices (we were 14 or less, we had few notions, period). I did relish the IDEA of 2e, the concept that story was primary, and really got into the early games of that ilk, though they were rare. I think there's just a lot of us that were always cut out for a more narrativist and story-driven style of play, who are/were 'old school' in some sense simply because that was the only school there was once upon a time. If we evolved to a different state, its because we could, and if I'd started playing with 4e I'm sure I'd still be about the same now, because it fit me well, not really because I grew up with something like it.
Thanks, that makes your particular point clearer.
Also, I hadn't thought of the way that 3E also pushes away from "fail forward" and towards discrete/granular/non-scene resolution.
I think there is some sort of affinity between OSR/Gygaxian dungeon-crawling play and 4e/indie play, though of course they're not the same. Just to give one example, they understand the relationship between ingame passage of time and metagame pacing/regulation of action. Look at the role of the turn in classic D&D - it's a game device then projected onto the fiction, not vice versa. The skill challenge also need to project the "turn" onto the fiction, rather than vice versa. I think this tends to cause the 2nd ed AD&D sim-ish GM or the 3E pseudo-fiction-driven GM's brain tend to fry!
Monsters, and an understanding of the role of monsters as a challenge rather than an extrapolation from fictional ecology, might be another example.
But here's a personal puzzle: I'm not good at dungeon-crawling either as GM or player; and I got into RM via Oriental Adventures AD&D, which is relatively heavy sim by D&D standards. So how did I stumble more-or-less self-guided onto "no myth"-ish, scene framing/GM-frames-thematic-challenge-style play?
My guess is that it's the only way to go if you like story and don't like railroading.
What I didn't work out on my own was "fail forward"; nor how to jettison some of the mechanical systems (esp healing, some dimensions of spell recovery, etc) that can get in the way of scene-framing. (And I think one appeal of BW to me is that it brings these things back in within the context of a scene-framing game!)
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
Eh, the thread has served its original purpose for the time being--and can't serve it again for at least another few weeks, since (at best) we'll be levelling up to 3 in a couple sessions. I don't mind a solid side-convo in the meantime.
Though I do have to say that...we should be careful about assuming that Keehnelf has zero exposure to these ideas. After he expressed some personal struggles with Skill Challenges in the Actual Play thread, I collected together a set of links with various advice and suggestions about how to run skill challenges. I do not know what, if anything, he read from those links, but it seems unlikely to me that he read nothing at all.
Also, it feels really weird talking about him in the third person when I know he's aware of these threads. Not that that is any reason for anyone to stop discussing it; it's an interesting line of discussion. I guess it's just a misplaced feeling of "talking behind his back" where he could in fact actually see/hear it.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
He's obviously welcome to participate
Anyway, I don't think we're discussing him in a "you know, that Keehnelf guy..." sort of way. His style and professed experience and attitudes just seem to shed a bit different light onto this whole question about how 'old school' works and what really are the roots of these different styles of game. I'm trying to remember carefully what we played and how we played it back in the old old days, and where it went from there. I recall playing and running a bastardized D&D that was basically Holmes Basic extrapolated forward via OD&D plus the Monster Manual when that appeared, and then largely replaced with the PHB when that came out (at which point we still had to use a lot of OD&D mechanics, as the DMG came out a full 2 years after the MM). All of these books, at the time, seemed to profess the same kind of play. We pretty much followed in the mold of Gygax, AFAICT. There wasn't really a goal of RP to any really great extent. It was a game of treasure seeking and reward, played in a 'troupe play' kind of style.
We also played Boot Hill, which was just a silly sort of shoot-em-up thing, nobody survived for more than 2 sessions, so RP and narrative were non-existent. Gamma World/Met. Alpha was pretty similar, although I seem to recall that game as encouraging a bit more interest in the characters (they were incredibly goofy, so it was amusing to actually try to RP what your 8 legged dog monster character with 3 laser pistols thought of sentient trees).
Traveller was the really the only significant thing I remember running that was at all outside the basic scheme of old D&D. That game did encourage some amount of emergent story since your character had a bit of history from the generation process, plus there wasn't any advancement, so you really HAD to work on story (and items weren't much of a thing in that game either really). The system isn't much help though, its as purely simulationist as anything going. Maybe it served the same purpose for me that RM served for Pemerton. I'm pretty sure I hankered for some narrativist "story game" mechanics to go with that system, but we knew nothing of such things in 1977.
There was also Bushido, which I only ever played. Terrible mechanics, but with a real emphasis on RP. I think that was really the first game where we truly realized there was something else beyond just the idea of an RPG as a better or worse simulationist experience.
There was an intermediate stage of games that came out in the early 80's. Top Secret, Marvel Super Heroes, Gangster, Call of Cthulhu, and then finally Paranoia! fell into that group. They're games that WANT story, but still lack real story building mechanics. Their material is about stories, the designers simply had no language in which to express that. I ran a CoC game a couple years ago, and it was painful. I finally just had to ditch the rules, they simply get in the way. Back in the mid-80's though it seemed the epitome of RPG design excellence, both quite realistic in terms of its mechanics, and yet very thematic in the sense that PCs were just pretty much monster food.
I think the first game that I actually experienced with genuine narrative mechanics was Toon. Even that game still doesn't QUITE reach the level of giving out plot coupons though. Players are allowed to do ANYTHING, even break the rules, if it 'works' narratively, but there isn't an actual mechanical regulation of that side of the game.
I never did play any of the WW games, Vampire, etc. They were considered to be silly and childish in our circles for whatever reason (and associated with LARP, which was considered a rather weird idea, even though most of us were perfectly happy to get involved in SCA sort of stuff, go figure). We really literally remained ignorant of any details of these early 90's story games at the time. Instead we went back to 2e and tried to force it to do what we wanted, lol. Personally I was stuck there, and too busy to DM or play much, until I grabbed a copy of 4e and all of a sudden I grasped a whole other set of possibilities. Odd, since 4e doesn't really QUITE have plot coupons, but it does somehow bridge between something like FATE and D&D.
Manbearcat
Legend
Manbearcat
Legend
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO...
This is potentially devastating to my developing hypothesis! Quick, go back, edit this post and destroy the evidence!
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
He'd have to be a true genius to have read a few posts and articles and gone from an old-school test-n-challenge DM to a narrative story-telling expert in one leap. I mean, I think after reading and DMing 4e for a year, and having read a LOT of what was said here and other places I went from being inclined to try to find ways to tell a story well to using actual narrative tools and theory, but I never could have done it in one leap. I still have a hard time at the table with some elements of it.
Manbearcat
Legend
Absolutely. Add to this the deep consideration for reward cycle inherent in both.
You've often pointed to the inspiration for your D&D pursuits as the Moldvay foreword and OA. Embedded in those you have:
1) The promise of tightly addressing premise/theme, that being of the romantic tropes/conceits of the fearless dragon-slaying warriors fulfilling prophecies or saving x (towns, princesses), Honor (capital H), and the organization of celestial interests.
2) A new reward cycle in Honor has a go at providing a thematic mini-game that incentivizes the perpetuation of romantic values and relationships (family) while de-incentivizing their violation or degradation (which ultimately leads to loss of character).
Even at 1984 (when I first started at the age of 7), I was considering reward cycle, how various play procedures, genre conceits, and pacing mechanisms pushed play toward or away from specific play dynamics. I used an Honor hack in borderline every game I played from the next year (OA came out in 85 I'm pretty sure) onward (for a long, long time).
While I didn't run Rolemaster, I would guess that our own ruminations were probably similar, hence formative, hence our gaming inclinations are so similar.
I think so. You need:
1) Explicit premise/theme.
2) A reward cycle and play procedures that engender behavior (from all participants, GMs and players alike) and perpetual content generation which is most likely to address premise or theme in an emergent fashion. Which leads to...
3) Malleable backstory shored up during play.
Fail Forward is interesting. By its very nature it does two very important things. It addresses premise/theme (from situation to situation by being "stakes and intent referential"). It has a self-contained reward cycle component to it. It engenders archetypal action declarations because failure answers a question decoupled from whether you are a buffoon or you are slick, whether you are bold or a coward. You won't get Paladins acting cowardly in systems that feature (properly deployed by deft GMs) Fail Forward. You won't get Rogues that more resemble court jesters than they do Sherlock Holmes. You'll get dynamic fallout that the character won't like, but it won't be fallout that says "you thought you were bold/slick?...nope, you're a coward/buffoon."
Add to that the fact that 3) above is inherently mandated (to one degree or another) for the technique to work at all.
Manbearcat
Legend
Truthfully, I don't know much of his background. I thought the thread fascinating because he was representing himself as an old school GM (which I easily qualify for having run games since '84 and with probably more hours of AD&D GMing than only an incredibly minute portion of the world's gaming population!) who had some measure of apathy or ambivalence to 4e until a very recent bout of intrigue. Did he have an edition warrior past? Was he an ardent member of the OSR? Neither? I was curious.
But perusing (very shallow-like) that thread, I see some analysis and invocation of indie games (PBtA games, Torchbearer, Cortex+, and I believe Fate?). So maybe he and I have a lot more in common if he likes those games too (he appears to have at least a passing understanding of them if not an outright interest). How will his position on 4e SCs spin out of that (if true)?
I just found it interesting and I'd like nothing more than for 4e to get a fair look (even a cult renaissance) after its "demise," which it sure as hell didn't get during its run. I've seen a lot of utterly unhinged peasants with pitchforks tribalism in my life. What 4e got was right up there with the best (worst) of it. I will never, ever, ever accept the appeasement line of the trolling/attack to defense ratio was anywhere near 50:50 in either frequency or virulence.
