Game Fundamentals - The Illusion of Accomplishment

[Celebrim]

Keep in mind that the tactical richness of 1e meant that most players had to mull for a minute or two (at least!) prior to deciding exactly what to do!

Not at my table you didn't. I picked up on something from 'Tomb of Horrors' and ran with it. If you started hesistating, I started counting to six. If you couldn't figure out what you wanted to do by then and state it clearly, then you lost your turn. I still do that. It takes alot of the dithering, page flipping, and so forth out of the metagame that gets in the way of the fun.

Since people have commented on this tactical richness so often, and so often said that WotC-D&D pales in comparison, it makes sense for them to argue that turns take longer in 1e.

I waffle back and forth over which edition had the most tactical richness. Certainly 4e has tried the hardness to make tactical richness the center-peice of its play experience (with some success), but I'm inclined to think that they all have something or the other going for them. Compared to 1e, I think both 3e and 4e suffer from tactical illusionism, where in you are making somewhat complex tactical choices but this complexity serves to mask the fact that - unless the DM is good at creating tactical puzzles - you are doing pretty much the same thing over and over. In 1e, this problem happened alot as well, but when it did you were under no illusions about it and it was pretty obvious that the DM wasn't using his creativity well. But 1e did do alot of things with weapon vs. AC, simultaneous movement, weapon length, facing, and so forth that I miss in new editions but which I don't want to port into their already complicated frameworks.

You're probably also forgetting how long it takes to roll 1d20 in 1e. In 1e, rolling 1d20 is a labour-intensive effort, often requiring a great deal of thought and effort.

No, but sometimes tracking down the d20 when it fell on the floor required a great deal of effort.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Not at my table you didn't.

That's okay; you picked up on my point in your reply to Hussar.

The claim has been made again and again that all you did was make an attack roll in 1e. How it takes 15 minutes under those same circumstances to get to your next turn is beyond me. I played 1e with groups numbering up to 12-20 PCs at a time without doing so.


RC

 

[Starfox]

[...]it took 3e and then 4e to realize that engaging players ALL THE TIME is a good idea. You have to actively pay attention to the combat or you'll miss out on actions.

While it is not a bad thing to introduce interrupts that let you act in another players/creature's turn, its not the holy grail of gaming either. Because each possible interrupt (even those that never actually happen) involves decision making, and each decision takes time. Which makes for a very slow game. While a player turn rarely took more than 30 seconds in 1e, it is not unusual for a single player's turn to take as much as 5 minutes in 4E - leading to 15 minute rounds. And having to wait 15 minutes between rounds is a disaster. In our Mutants and Masterminds game, there are no opportunity actions, and that alone has shaved perhaps half the time off how long each player's turn takes.

To digress: this is not the only reason gameplay is slow in 4E. Another reason is that a player's turn now consists of three actions - minor, move, standard, each of which involves separate choices, can be substituted for each other, and can be used for complex actions like attacks or trigger reactions from other actors on the board. On top of that, you can spend action points for more actions.

 

[jmucchiello]

You're looking at this from a purely DM's perspective. The DM might get to roll AOO's in 1e, but the players almost never will. Very, very few mechanics exist that allow me to actively do anything on another player's turn in 1e or 2e. Even 3e is pretty limited this way. Certainly pre-4e, no other player is going to impel me to take an action on his turn.

We had rules for all of this in 2e pre-Player Options: Combat and Tactics. Our circle of DMs liked tactical options and made allowances for stuff to take place out of turn. We used stuff like the segment rules for how long it takes to cast a spell, swing a two-handed sword or quaff a potion. It was all in the book and we used it. When people talk about pre-3e combat being strictly stand face-to-face and slug it out I shake my head. Not at our tables. Our DMs were also heaving influenced by S2: White Plume Mountain so we also always had interesting terrain long before 4e made it "cool".

 

[Tuft]

While it is not a bad thing to introduce interrupts that let you act in another players/creature's turn, its not the holy grail of gaming either. Because each possible interrupt (even those that never actually happen) involves decision making, and each decision takes time. Which makes for a very slow game. While a player turn rarely took more than 30 seconds in 1e, it is not unusual for a single player's turn to take as much as 5 minutes in 4E - leading to 15 minute rounds. And having to wait 15 minutes between rounds is a disaster. In our Mutants and Masterminds game, there are no opportunity actions, and that alone has shaved perhaps half the time off how long each player's turn takes.

To digress: this is not the only reason gameplay is slow in 4E. Another reason is that a player's turn now consists of three actions - minor, move, standard, each of which involves separate choices, can be substituted for each other, and can be used for complex actions like attacks or trigger reactions from other actors on the board. On top of that, you can spend action points for more actions.

Exactly. A bunch of the most powerful buffs only lasts for a single turn, but in its entirety (such as e.g. the Pit Fighter's Extra Damage Action). Thus, you want to squeeze in as many attacks in that single round as possible: Normal standard action attack, action point standard action attack, normal minor action attack and converted-from-move minor action attack. Since (A) your buffs are per damage roll and (B) you want to maximize the chance of a crit, each of these four actions should preferably consist of as many separate attack rolls as possibly (bonus basic attacks are dandy for this). Also, since you converted your move into a minor action attack, you also prefer attack powers that includes movement, such as shifts, in the attack itself (e.g. Storm of Blows). Quite a lot of decisions need to be pondered during this, of course, in order to do all this in the optimal order.

Then, add a bunch of to-hit re-rolls from various sources (and the decisions needed to be made where to apply these re-rolls for best effect), and a bunch of damage dice re-rolls to this, as well as describing all status effects that gets applied, and marking up the minis with those.

Top this off with that the player (quite naturally) wants to cinematically describe each and everyone of these attack rolls in detail, as well as illuminate all on what makes every one of these powers so absolutely awesome, since that round is that character's shining moment...

(If you really want gravy on that, add a dash of occasional backtracking into all this, due to differing rules interpretations and situation interpretations between DM and player, such as whether a square is inside or outside the area of difficult ground, or whether a corner that is so very rounded on the map really gives cover or not - since this is an important round, such DM calls suddenly have extra impact... )

I ofter wonder if the so very disparate accounts of combat time simply depends on whether each group has discovered the minor action attacks or not...

 

[Garthanos]

Some Tactical Choices are built in to individual powers.. Weapon Masters Strike with 4 distinct and useful options based on weapon used with fast switch built in... very cool.

Good point about play time being influenced by descriptive aspects.
I let my players describe how they defend themselves as part of an unearthed arcana rule referbished (aka Players make all the rolls)... effectively Defenses and HP are treated as describable powers I initiate an attack against them by describing how it starts.,, they get to roll the defense and describe how there character did it...

This also breaks up turn order.

 

[Garthanos]

The impact of individual die rolls have decreased ... so tactical choices even lesser ones are more important or even if they only feel more important ... so the time to take turns has increased .... so the need for elements to help keep people focused has increased.

 

[Hussar]

That's okay; you picked up on my point in your reply to Hussar.

The claim has been made again and again that all you did was make an attack roll in 1e. How it takes 15 minutes under those same circumstances to get to your next turn is beyond me. I played 1e with groups numbering up to 12-20 PCs at a time without doing so.


RC

Sigh. I guessed it would have been obvious in context, but, I forgot where I was posting.

To be absolutely pedantically explicit:

1e and 2e - individual turns VERY fast since you few or no tactical options. Other than choosing a paricular spell, you had no choices. You swung your sword and passed the dice.

Thus, it appeals to the ego-gamer because the ego-gamer's turn comes up very often.

Although, thinking about it, you can see the extension of individual turns starting here. Fighters gain additional attacks at 1st level with weapon specs. More spells for casters. Various other individual effects.

3e - odd duck a bit. Vast tactical choices for almost every class. However, this tended to extend individual turns and sometimes led to analysis paralysis. How many threads are there on these boards of people instituting "shot clock" table rules to stop dithering. This is where the 15 minute round certainly can be seen at almost any level.

4e - again, loads of tactical choices - even at 1st level you have at a minimum 5 options in any given round. However, additional mechanics can force players to act out of turn, even on other player's turns. Thus, the ego gamer is again served because he's going more often.

Celebrim - a question, what edition/level played entire combats in 15 minutes? Even MerricB has longer combats than that.

The only edition that doesn't actually appeal to the twitch gamer is 3rd, since every other edition engages ACTIVE participation more often. Either by having very limited choices in combat - thus making individual turns very fast - or by granting additional actions to players from other players.

My point is, the twitch gamer has always been actively engaged by D&D. Yes, yes, I know your combats combined both incredible speed, smoothness of play and a multitude of tactical choices EVERY ROUND, but, for the rest of us mere mortals, we don't mind having mechanics that increase the amount of active participation during each round.

 

[Celebrim]

1e and 2e - individual turns VERY fast since you few or no tactical options.

First, I don't know how to say this nicely, so I'll just say it, but you clearly don't have a good idea what the word 'tactics' means. You seem to be using it as a synonym for mechanical options, which it isn't. Tactics are techniques for using personel, weapons and terrain in combination to achieve a military advantage.

Secondly, the relationship between tactical options and speed of turns is almost nonexistant. To give an example, chess offers dozens of options on each turn but it plays only as slowly as desired. You can play chess as a frantic game of blazing fast action or as a slow deliberate game, but the amount of choices available to you at each step are exactly the same regardless of how much of the clock you consume and the actual mechanical resolution occurs just as fast in either case.

Thirdly, in many ways 1e was the most open edition tactically because you weren't under mechanical constraints. The game was written by wargamers and for wargamers and was designed to encourage good squad level tactics. If you went into a skilled DM's game on the assumption that it was just roll the dice and pass your turn, you were going to die. Hopefully, you out grew that sort of thing by the time you were in high school. I got shocked out of that viewpoint by the DM who tutored me into the craft when he ran me in an encounter with some gnoll archers who ambushed us in a wooded setting. Each archer acted as an individual skirmisher. Moving away when attacked, taking cover behind the boles of trees, fleeing and trying to evade when chased, and generally making a nuisance of themselves. You chase down one group and take them down, that just let the ones behind you set up a skirmish line you had to advance back toward. An encounter that would have been relatively trivial in a stand up fight, turned into vicious memorable (and to a young player not used to playing the game tactically) both frustrating and very educational experience. To be skilled at 1e, you had to manipulate the terrain. Cover was very important, as was denying the foe the chance to surround you or attack your unshielded side. You needed to lure attackers into chokepoints to keep from being overwhelmed. If you didn't have a chokepoint, you needed to create one - like dropping flaming oil or casting a spell. You had to protect the casters, because there was no defensive casting or 5' steps, and the casting time of spells tended to create significant vunerable intervals. You needed to concentrate force, outflank foes, and so forth. Plus, there was support for grappling and the like if you wanted (and many widely used alternatives to the DMG system), and in many cases you had to make choices between something like a longsword (good for dodgy foes) and a military pick (good for armored foes). There were plenty of tactics and plenty of choices.

And that's not even getting into the question of the DM inspired by S2.

Celebrim - a question, what edition/level played entire combats in 15 minutes? Even MerricB has longer combats than that.

Any edition where you have a fairly straight forward melee can play that fast. You just don't dither. Combats might only last 2-3 rounds, and in that case you've got about a minute per player turn. I expect to get a proposition in the first 6-10 seconds of a players turn. In 1e I built individual attack tables for each of my PC's vs. AC, so they just reported a number and I crossreferenced it vs. target AC. That took another what, 10-15 seconds counting rolling damage and maybe 5-10 seconds for a quick, "The orcs screams in pain/drops to the floor/blocks your attack with his shield/snarls at you and presses the attack." Seriously, average 1e modules had like 40-50 combats built into them. If you were spending 15 minutes on each round, getting through one would have probably taken you like 9-10 sessions. Sure, there were longer much more complicated fights that took longer, mostly because of the poor DM trying to run 24 trolls or something like that (or the uberfight that develops in WG4!), but even then you weren't waiting long for your turn because of the other players but because you were fighting such an enormous number of foes. Fights versus 30 or more foes weren't uncommon, and often individual fights would turn into running battles as allied foes (combat encounters) started linking up to help each other.

 

[Hussar]

How is this tactical Celebrim? The DM set up a perfect situation in which to use a single tactic all fight long? Oh noes, the gnolls set up a skirmish line. Who cares? It's still, I move here, I roll my single attack, next. There's still no other actions being taken.

To me, tactical play isn't setting up the optimal situation and spamming one single option over and over again. Tactical play means that I have at least two choices beyond, do i roll a d20 at this guy or that guy.

But, we're to the point where we're talking at each other, and no longer to. I'll step out now.

-----

Thinking about your post, I admit some confusion. Apparently, average combats featured twenty, thirty combats regularly, but only lasted about four rounds and took fifteen minutes to resolve, YET, still contained vast tactical breadth and depth challenging individual players constantly to think and plan.

All at the same time.

Man, I gotta start playing this game that you guys play, cos it sure as heck doesn't look like any game I ever played.