Elephant in the room: rogue and fighter dailies.

[pemerton]

decapitation as you've presented it (can't happen before 0 hp) and something like tripping, is that decapitation necessarily represents a result - that particular fight is over. When things like trip, etc, are given as options, they represent options to get to the finish of the fight; that is, they can happen before the target hits 0 hp, and don't necessarily signal the end of the fight.

The reason we have (martial) fighting maneuvers in the game is to bring a shared context to the details of the to and fro of a fight: this is how hard it is to disarm someone (say), this is what it means when someone is tripped. So when they're presented as options for a fight, the idea is that it changes the fight in a way we find engaging. What I'm saying is that when these maneuvers are presented like that, using a daily mechanic to implement them feels false to me.

Fair enough. I personally don't get it, though.

 

[pemerton]

Burning Wheel looks like a trad game with stuff added on top, but I think the procedures of play really end up shifting the focus onto the added on stuff.

Sounds plausible - sort of what I'm hoping for.

Excellent game for running GMless once everyone has bought into the procedures.

Intriguing. Who takes responsibility for scene framing when you run it GMless?

 

[nnms]

Intriguing. Who takes responsibility for scene framing when you run it GMless?

Lots of different ways to handle this.

Take turns going around in a circle. Or you can frame one, but can't frame another until everyone else has a go.

Anyone who "loses" in a scene gets to frame the next one.

Motion & Seconded like in a formal meeting.

I'd recommend giving The Gift a try with scene framing alternating between any dwarf player and then any elf player. Someone may need to moderate until things get going. Expect this to end violently and quickly.

 

[pemerton]

I'd recommend giving The Gift a try with scene framing alternating between any dwarf player and then any elf player. Someone may need to moderate until things get going. Expect this to end violently and quickly.

Thanks - I'll keep that in mind!

 

[Hypersmurf]

How about instead the DM describes the room when the players enter it and if the players decide to cut the chandalier rope, it falls and then we figure out what happens?

How about instead the DM describes the room when the players enter it and if the players decide to pull hard on the rug, we figure out what happens?

How about we then use the resolution system to determine if the grab and throw actually worked and apply those results?

You're answering different questions.

I'm answering the question "How can the Come And Get It Power be narrated to justify why the sorcerer is now in melee range of the scary fighter?"

You're answering "How can we mechanically resolve an action to drop a chandelier on a sorcerer?"

I'm saying that if the game mechanics tell us "The sorcerer ends your action in this square", then we don't need to consult a different rules subsystem to determine whether I was able to grab him and how far I managed to throw him. We already know that he ended up in this square - the power says so. So we know the answer to how far I threw him - far enough to land in that square. We know whether I was able to grab him - obviously I could, since I managed to throw him.

We could tell the same story using an unarmed touch attack, a grapple check, and some sort of strength check. But in 4E, we can tell that story with Come And Get It.

How about we don't necessitate the creation of situation elements as needed to explain things (be they rugs or ropes)?

One of my favourite GMs has a stock answer to the question "Is there, like, a rope I can swing on?"

"There's always a rope."

But apart from that - as a GM, I love it when players interact with the environment, rather than just moving across a flat floor to hit something with a sword. Whether I supplied the environmental elements or they do, it makes for a more cinematic experience.

So what's the negative to there being a rug in the room that I hadn't prepared in advance?

Or maybe the entire fight was story-boarded in advance and all the participants practiced it with the choreographer to get the results the writers/director/producer wanted beforehand.

Well, of course it was. But an identical scene could result from a 4E Ranger using Split The Tree against a pair of opponents.

Is it a bad thing if a D&D combat ends up producing similar visuals to an action movie?

-Hyp.

 

[Hussar]

The instant you succeed at a task in one system that is impossible in another because you're out of your daily, you've produced a different result.

No, you haven't. Unless you are playing two systems at the same time, you will still never notice the difference. You cannot succeed at a task in one system that is impossible in another because you cannot play two systems at the same time.

 

[Herschel]

At the same time, if martial maneuvers are all wrapped up in disassociated mechanics, this limits roleplaying. Specifically, it limits your capacity to react as your character would react to situations that present themselves. You have to alter the world in order to trip someone. You can't make the attempt in any other way, even though your character should be able to. And, thus, you can't roleplay your character.

This is pure bunk though based on the fact we aren't tied to those martial maneuvers, they are just staples of our tool box that do things like trip. And how is a maneuver that has a trip effect any more diassociated than saying "I step on his toe while swinging at his head, causing him to overbalance in defense and fall"?

I can describe the maneuver exactly like that or any number of ways because the given flavor text of a maneuver is not the power itself but one possible narration of it.

 

[nnms]

No, you haven't. Unless you are playing two systems at the same time, you will still never notice the difference. You cannot succeed at a task in one system that is impossible in another because you cannot play two systems at the same time.

I don't need to play them simultaneously to know that when I do a trip attack for a second time in an encounter and succeed to know that would have been impossible had we been using a different system that limited me to one trip per fight.

 

[nnms]

You're answering different questions.

I'm trying to illustrate that your explanations represent a totally different approach to the game than the one those opposed to dailies and encounter powers are advocating. This is the crux of the disagreement.

People don't want to have them in their game because they want a particular mode of play where you describe what you do and then, as needed, use the system to resolve things. This then creates a new described situation in an endless circuit of description-reaction-redescription. It works quite well and has been around in one form or another since 1967.

If I need to start adding in description after the fact to justify things, then I've left that mode of play. The chandelier or the carpet should have been part of the description from the beginning. It's not appropriate when everyone is making decisions based on the description to suddenly change it.

People who want this sort of mode are telling you that encounter and daily powers can necessitate the type of play they don't like. The creation of situation changing details as an after-the-fact description is exactly the type of thing that ruins the experience for people wanting this type of play.

When someone wanting this type of play talks about a mechanic as dissociated, telling them they're just seeing it wrong because you can re-associate it after the fact is 100% useless and all it does is demonstrate that you don't understand their position.

I'm answering the question "How can the Come And Get It Power be narrated to justify why the sorcerer is now in melee range of the scary fighter?"

And if you have to change the situation retroactively to explain it, it's incompatible with a type of game where you make decisions based on the described situation.

But apart from that - as a GM, I love it when players interact with the environment, rather than just moving across a flat floor to hit something with a sword. Whether I supplied the environmental elements or they do, it makes for a more cinematic experience.

Absolutely. In a very traditional game though, it's simply not the job of anyone to create environmental elements on the fly, but to describe the situation in advance so relevant decisions can be made about it. You may not need to describe the rope, but at least mention the chandelier as then the people involved can infer that pre-electric chandeliers were lowered to be lit and that there is going to be a rope somewhere.

So what's the negative to there being a rug in the room that I hadn't prepared in advance?

No one can make decisions about the rug if they don't see it as part of the ongoing shared story.

They can't see it as something they can interact with and:

• animate it with magic to wrap up the enemy
• decide to pull on it to knock people over
• light it on fire
• realize it may be hiding a pit trap
• etc

I am all for games where all of the participants have situation & plot authority. Games like Fate where you can spend a meta resource and declare the carpet or the chandalier is there. I run a GMless Fate game where everyone can make free declarations all the time. Works great.

But I don't want it in my D&D as a default that I have to excise. It should be a modular aspect (so should the complete restoration of AEDU to 5E). When it comes to fantasy party/troupe based gaming, I like the earliest modes of play. The kind that gave birth to Runequest and Rolemaster and were a very common approach to OD&D.

Is it a bad thing if a D&D combat ends up producing similar visuals to an action movie?

Not at all. Unless the people playing it don't want it to emulate an action movie in terms of genre. I'm not a big fan of the action movie aesthetic.

Perfect place for modularity.

It's a shame WotC didn't come out of the gate swinging with modularity. It's what they hyped as bringing all the editions together.

I'm also not surprised that Justin Alexander's statement of something being 'not role-playing' caused everyone to get up in arms about his approach. He wasn't trying to invalidate other people's play, he was just trying to get really specific about how the act of playing an individual role and making decisions based on that is really important to a certain mode of play.

 

[Obryn]

What system is this, again, where someone can't trip multiple times an encounter?

I understand that "trip" is being used as a token for "any sort of spectacular stunt," but for the record, "tripping" is as well-supported in 4e as it was in 1e. (Not to the point of defined rules, as there were in 3e, but fully possible in the system.)

We're really talking about, for example, "Hit everyone adjacent to you for triple damage, and slow them 1/day."

Anyway! Carry on!

-O