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cancelled 5e announcement at Gencon??? Anyone know anything about this?
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5662855" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>I agree with VB's point here.</p><p></p><p>In the game I describred upthread - in which the PCs teleported 1000 miles to work everyday, and then teleported back home once they started running low on spell points, "home" was the imperial palace in The Great Kingdom.</p><p></p><p>There are ways to introduce time pressure, or constraints on resting, into such a game - NPCs waiting to ambush the PCs as they fly outside the castle's teleport wards read to teleport home; or functionaries in the palace waiting to send them on a different mission as soon as they telport back - but as VB points out, at a certain point this becomes contrived. The PCs are of a level - both mechanically, and within the social and political context of the gamewolrd - that there just aren't that many NPCs who can challenge them, and there aren't that many functionaries who are brave enough to tell them what to do.</p><p></p><p>The game would simply have been less inane if the PCs' access to their spells was regulated in some other fashion than "rest for 8 hours to get spell points that you can exhaust in a minute or two of action". (The caster vs martial issue didn't matter in this particular game, because all the PCs were casters - whether pure or "semi".)</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Uncertainty is not sufficient. Rational players will make expected utility calculations. As well as uncertainty, then, there must be a sufficiently high degree of risk - demanding support cast <em>whom the PCs can't afford to ignore</em>, short term goals <em>that may be completely lost if not resolved right now</em>, etc. Sometimes this becomes contrived.</p><p></p><p>There is also the issue that, in a system like D&D or Rolemaster, a high level spell caster who is not casting spells - whether because s/he has none left, or she is saving them for later - is operating at only a very modest fraction of his or her capability. In a game in which some of the PCs are not spellcasters, perhaps this is where those non-casters get the time to shine. In a game with all spellcasters - such as the one I described above - it just means that nothing is happening!</p><p></p><p>I mean, it doesn't <em>add much</em> to a high fantasy game to contrive situations in which an archmage rescues a cat from a tree by climbing a ladder rather than levitating up or teleporting the cat down. Or to put it another way - my main problem with the 15-minute day in Rolemaster is aesthetic, not balance (although balance is also an issue) - and it is not a solution to post aesthetically unappealing alternatives, like archmages climbing ladders and being bossed around by functionaries whom they could incinerate at will.</p><p></p><p>I think I posted something similar to this upthread. To cure the 15-minute adventuring day by raising the stakes presupposes that the players (i) care about the stakes, and (ii) have the mechanical capacity to respond.</p><p></p><p>But if (i) obtains, then as VB points out problems arise - if the players really are invested in saving the princess, are you as GM really going to kill her offscreen in order to "punish" your players for nova-ing their spellcasters? In a certain sort of sandbox approach, that might be tenable. But there are a number of other approaches for which it is not - for which there is an expectation that, if the players care about it, then their PCs will be part of it.</p><p></p><p>As for (ii), that goes to the point I made earlier - to what extent is the player of a spellcaster expected to play well below maximum capacity <em>now</em>, in order to avoid the need for rest <em>later</em>. There are any number of answers to this question, reflecting a wide range of playstyles and approaches to the game. In my view, though, there is certainly a tension in both wanting a player to by highly emotinally invested in a scene, <em>and</em> expecting the player to play his/her PC well below capacity in that scene. I'm not saying that there aren't ways of managing or even dissolving that tension - but, again, these will vary widely across playstyles, and even the social dynamics of particular groups.</p><p></p><p>And then what? Rinse and repeat? That might be one possible approach to play, but hardly the only one that is, in principle, coherent and viable.</p><p></p><p>This isn't true at all. HeroWars/Quest permits meaningful choice in character building, but it doesn't reward system mastery. Because the dimension of meaning is not mechanical victory, but rather the thematic content of play.</p><p></p><p>In my view Rolemaster also aims at this - that character building will be rewarded not in a mechanicaly better or worse PC, but rather by shaping the PC that one wants to play - although it probably is not as successful as is HeroWars/Quest.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>What you describe here makes sense for me in relation to AD&D play.</p><p></p><p>But in 3E even low level casters can easily make wands and scrolls. Wands will tend to ensure they don't run out of spells. And scrolls will tend to ensure that they have ready access to a much wider range of spells than those memorised.</p><p></p><p>Does either of you use any particular techniques to control the proliferation of wands and scrolls in your games?</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 5662855, member: 42582"] I agree with VB's point here. In the game I describred upthread - in which the PCs teleported 1000 miles to work everyday, and then teleported back home once they started running low on spell points, "home" was the imperial palace in The Great Kingdom. There are ways to introduce time pressure, or constraints on resting, into such a game - NPCs waiting to ambush the PCs as they fly outside the castle's teleport wards read to teleport home; or functionaries in the palace waiting to send them on a different mission as soon as they telport back - but as VB points out, at a certain point this becomes contrived. The PCs are of a level - both mechanically, and within the social and political context of the gamewolrd - that there just aren't that many NPCs who can challenge them, and there aren't that many functionaries who are brave enough to tell them what to do. The game would simply have been less inane if the PCs' access to their spells was regulated in some other fashion than "rest for 8 hours to get spell points that you can exhaust in a minute or two of action". (The caster vs martial issue didn't matter in this particular game, because all the PCs were casters - whether pure or "semi".) Uncertainty is not sufficient. Rational players will make expected utility calculations. As well as uncertainty, then, there must be a sufficiently high degree of risk - demanding support cast [I]whom the PCs can't afford to ignore[/I], short term goals [I]that may be completely lost if not resolved right now[/I], etc. Sometimes this becomes contrived. There is also the issue that, in a system like D&D or Rolemaster, a high level spell caster who is not casting spells - whether because s/he has none left, or she is saving them for later - is operating at only a very modest fraction of his or her capability. In a game in which some of the PCs are not spellcasters, perhaps this is where those non-casters get the time to shine. In a game with all spellcasters - such as the one I described above - it just means that nothing is happening! I mean, it doesn't [I]add much[/I] to a high fantasy game to contrive situations in which an archmage rescues a cat from a tree by climbing a ladder rather than levitating up or teleporting the cat down. Or to put it another way - my main problem with the 15-minute day in Rolemaster is aesthetic, not balance (although balance is also an issue) - and it is not a solution to post aesthetically unappealing alternatives, like archmages climbing ladders and being bossed around by functionaries whom they could incinerate at will. I think I posted something similar to this upthread. To cure the 15-minute adventuring day by raising the stakes presupposes that the players (i) care about the stakes, and (ii) have the mechanical capacity to respond. But if (i) obtains, then as VB points out problems arise - if the players really are invested in saving the princess, are you as GM really going to kill her offscreen in order to "punish" your players for nova-ing their spellcasters? In a certain sort of sandbox approach, that might be tenable. But there are a number of other approaches for which it is not - for which there is an expectation that, if the players care about it, then their PCs will be part of it. As for (ii), that goes to the point I made earlier - to what extent is the player of a spellcaster expected to play well below maximum capacity [I]now[/I], in order to avoid the need for rest [I]later[/I]. There are any number of answers to this question, reflecting a wide range of playstyles and approaches to the game. In my view, though, there is certainly a tension in both wanting a player to by highly emotinally invested in a scene, [I]and[/I] expecting the player to play his/her PC well below capacity in that scene. I'm not saying that there aren't ways of managing or even dissolving that tension - but, again, these will vary widely across playstyles, and even the social dynamics of particular groups. And then what? Rinse and repeat? That might be one possible approach to play, but hardly the only one that is, in principle, coherent and viable. This isn't true at all. HeroWars/Quest permits meaningful choice in character building, but it doesn't reward system mastery. Because the dimension of meaning is not mechanical victory, but rather the thematic content of play. In my view Rolemaster also aims at this - that character building will be rewarded not in a mechanicaly better or worse PC, but rather by shaping the PC that one wants to play - although it probably is not as successful as is HeroWars/Quest. What you describe here makes sense for me in relation to AD&D play. But in 3E even low level casters can easily make wands and scrolls. Wands will tend to ensure they don't run out of spells. And scrolls will tend to ensure that they have ready access to a much wider range of spells than those memorised. Does either of you use any particular techniques to control the proliferation of wands and scrolls in your games? [/QUOTE]
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