D&D 5E Legend Lore says 'story not rules' (3/4)

[Libramarian]

By that logic we should just get rid of turn based combat entirely because it makes no sense from a narrative standpoint.

I would agree with that.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

No matter how you accomplish it, the more you make the rules elegant and clear (natural language, keywords, or other means), the less room you leave for players or DMs to pull stupid game-lawyer tricks with pieces of the rules. Whereas longer rules with lot of specifics make such play easy. Some people find such play the point of RPGs, and consider it clever. I and most people I play with find it banal. There really isn't any compromise a system can do that will satisfy both groups. You might as well try to write a science fiction game that rigorously avoided space travel or a horror game that totally avoided fear--maybe possible if you twist the concept enough, but rather pointless.

Yeah, it seems clever for a while, but the 20th time you see someone pulling the same trick with an AD&D spell loophole it is just like "yawn, did that back 78, try harder." What I see in 4e is generally more focus on the narrative where there really aren't the number of munchkin type things going on or the repetition of the same tactics and items again and again. You CAN have players sticking to powers, but as soon as I push my 4e players they're working out some clever narrative solution and I'm just slapping the easy-to-apply general rules. THEN if it doesn't give quite the right result, I just rule on it.

Late to the DQ party, but I did want to say I read that every year or so, and still think it had some great ideas buried under a ton of too fiddly mechanics. In particular, the way it had the intersection of magic, skills (professions + a few separate skills) + weapon use + abilities being mostly orthogonal gives a wide range of possibilities for characters with relatively little material.

In particular, I think it had the right idea about having major, thematic packages (like "thief") that weren't exclusive to a narrow class, but did have some separate pieces that could then be used in other areas--such as "spy".

Yeah, my memory grows dim, we must have been playing DQ in the early 80's. I remember my necromancer character, but I don't recall how the class mechanics in general were arranged. I remember my PC couldn't do squat with weapons, and it took several months of play before his spells did more damage to the enemy than to himself, lol. I seem to recall a lot of the fighter types dying from critical misses too. Exactly how you got specific skills has fled my brain. I seem to recall that basically everything was roughly a 'skill', but I think the mechanics for say a spell and rowing a boat, and swinging a sword were all a BIT different. I suspect not a LOT different from 4e in a general sense, except you could combine different stuff more easily. Similar to what I remember of RM too, where you had a class but all it really did was control which skills you got for half price and again everything was basically a skill.

EDIT: For some reason, I can't see the intervening 14 posts between mine and #280.

I think this just illustrates that there is more than one way to approach the issue, and it seems to come down to a matter of preference. Some seem to prefer that the story should flow from what the rules say are happening, while others would prefer the rules are only there to support whatever story it is you want to tell.

I personally approach 'story not rules' to mean that there should be a few, general rules that can cover a lot of ground, and you apply them when you think they make sense (which should be up to the table to determine). I find that less intrusive than rules that are overly specific, and thus prefer a 4e-style approach.

This is one of those areas where I don't feel that Next is being designed with my interests in mind and would require substantial reworking to make it "work," unless they want to get really general and just have a mechanic for gaining advantage or forcing enemies into disadvantage. That would be about as simple as it gets; you wouldn't need to go to a 3.x style exhaustive list of conditions, but it might not satisfy those who don't want to constantly have to "make up" what is happening in the fiction to represent advantage/disadvantage.

I felt 4e got the list of conditions about right, but like many other things it got right, that doesn't seem to matter to the design team of Next...

Yeah, I think 4e got them about right. 3e was a horrible mess with like 40 different conditions that were usually far too specific. It was like "hmmm, would drinking 5 shots in 3 minutes make you nauseated, ill, confused, or all three..." Everything before 3e was in some ways worse. You had to just write a whole miniature subsystem for anything that had any sort of lingering effect. Often there would be 3 spells that do virtually the same thing and had entirely different rules for it.

HOWEVER I think there re more choices than "story flows from mechanics" and "mechanics describe story". They can be equal partners, and story always flows ultimately from the players and DM, and mechanics can be created as needed too. Those are all things that 4e is about. Its SIMPLE to make up a mechanic in play because you have DCs, and page 42, and powers, and much guidance about this, plus skill challenges etc. which all provide very HIGH LEVEL multi-use tools. You can make an SC be about anything, any action a PC takes can be understood as an application of page 42, etc. Likewise there's nothing wrong with either building a bit of story around the mechanics of a power (reflavoring or extrapolating into the narrative) nor is there really anything wrong with just changing mechanics of a specific situation to make a better narrative. IMHO all these things were anticipated to happen in 4e and it does them all reasonably well.

 

[Obryn]

Why model the fluff after the rules rather the other way around? Simply, because it makes for a better game that way. Because there is no rules in the game for "disrupting enemies without a distinct form" (and I am in no way implying there ever should be such a rule) the rule for knocking things prone works as a decent stand in. We can assume that if the character doing the proning knows something about knocking over people he probably also knows something about disrupting formless creatures because it's more fun that way.

I agree with all of the above. I want my rpgs to focus on being good games, first and foremost.

Also your last point is just silly. By that logic we should just get rid of turn based combat entirely because it makes no sense from a narrative standpoint.

Dungeon World does just that. Judging by my game last night, it works *splendidly*. Dunno if it would work for D&D, but for what DW is, it's perfect. It makes combat blend seamlessly into exploration and vice versa better than any edition of D&D, and it's largely thanks to having no initiative mechanics.

-O

 

[n00bdragon]

Dungeon World does just that. Judging by my game last night, it works *splendidly*. Dunno if it would work for D&D, but for what DW is, it's perfect. It makes combat blend seamlessly into exploration and vice versa better than any edition of D&D, and it's largely thanks to having no initiative mechanics.

-O

Now you have me curious. How does that not devolve into absolute chaos? How do you determine where people are standing when certain things occur?

 

[Obryn]

Now you have me curious. How does that not devolve into absolute chaos? How do you determine where people are standing when certain things occur?

DW is all about the narrative, which is more abstract even than early D&D. And it becomes clear (as much as it needs to) in context. Combat consists of the DM kind of moderating, and making "hard" or "soft" moves based on the players' rolls. Another thing - the DM never rolls dice, unless he chooses to roll monster damage (notably, never monster attacks).

The DM kind of "throws" the action back and forth between players and monsters, as befits the game fiction. The players' rolls and moves make it all run like a finely oiled machine. The DM has wide latitude in making encounters harder or easier on the fly, within limits, because of this.

If you want to check it out, the rules are online for free - though the $10 pdf/ebooks bundle is a great deal, with good notes and thematic art.

http://book.dwgazetteer.com/

But it can be confusing because it's so different. And i found this:
http://www.mediafire.com/?2qyqqkbhwdzot6d to be invaluable. It describes how combat works very well.

We're running it as an interlude from our 4e game, and I'm loving it. I'm adapting B4, and it's been working great.

-O

 

[Ratskinner]

Dungeon World does just that. Judging by my game last night, it works *splendidly*. Dunno if it would work for D&D, but for what DW is, it's perfect. It makes combat blend seamlessly into exploration and vice versa better than any edition of D&D, and it's largely thanks to having no initiative mechanics.

Chiming in on the awesome which is DW. The "work for D&D" part is the trick. On the one hand, it does. People run DW using (usually) old-school adventure modules all fairly regularly and on the fly (if their postings are to be believed.) Certainly the narrative it generates is along D&D's lines. On the other hand...it sure ain't D&D mechanically. I truly doubt it would get a good reception from the audience.

I dunno if you could "sneak" any DW concepts into a more traditional D&D....I haven't thought about it much.

 

[bogmad]

I don't know about that. I have no understanding of how an ooze actually works.

That's kind of my point. If I have a maneuver called "trip" then I know what it does, especially to a sentient humanoid with a clear form.
People in the game world can't relate to how an ooze necessarily works. Even if they are some sage or expert that does understand it, an ooze's very nature means that tactics that work against one creature type won't work against all of them.

Even if we have a bland non-descriptive "disadvantage" maneuver, there are simply more ways to disadvantage a humanoid than an ooze. A sentient humanoid has a MIND and it has a SHAPE. I can trip it; I can distract it; I can blind it; I can tie it up; I can directly control it's mind with magic; etc None of that is something that can technically be done to an ooze, so why should a specific mechanic like "trip" that says it does one thing to a humanoid suddenly be something different when fighting another creature type? I have to think something up for this exception that I'd never apply to a general case.

But I probably shouldn't try to argue this. Like other's have said, it speaks to a fundamental divide between player types. I got back into D&D with 4e, and still play it primarily, but don't like the homogenization of creature types.

I like some things having immunities; maybe that's why I'm harping too much on oozes.

 

[Obryn]

I dunno if you could "sneak" any DW concepts into a more traditional D&D....I haven't thought about it much.

Thinking about it ... I think the way the Dungeon World "Moves" work is essential to the initiative-free combat. Especially the 2-6 and 7-9 results, and how they create openings for the GM to make his own Moves in return.

Now, the other shared-narrative stuff is, IMO, just good collaborative world-building taken up a rather big notch. In the game I ran last night, one of my players was an Elf and one was a Dwarf. The Elf player decided that Elves in this world are primarily a subterranean race with weird joints to let them slide through narrow tunnels more easily. I thought it was great; very clever. I pressed the Dwarf on what dwarves are like, and we learned that they all live in and around volcanoes, both above and below ground.

Later on down the road, if there's fire or narrow caves, I'll need to remember these things because they're real parts of the game-world's fiction now. I stuck index cards with all the various notes, plot hooks, and PC details on a big whiteboard, and started a very concise map with The Lost City and Alaysian Desert in the middle; those are "real" too for the purposes of our game.

It was a good time.

-O

 

[bogmad]

We can assume that if the character doing the proning knows something about knocking over people he probably also knows something about disrupting formless creatures because it's more fun that way.

Also your last point is just silly. By that logic we should just get rid of turn based combat entirely because it makes no sense from a narrative standpoint.

What's fun is a bit subjective from player to player, admittedly. As for your latter point, I would concede that my point* wasn't entirely thought out. The best rule (for a BASIC system like basic D&D next at least) should make narrative sense, but also be simple. Turn based combat works better rather than more narratively consistent mechanics because it's simple to grasp. Still, a "knock down" maneuver should actually knock something down instead of solely "apply the disadvantaged condition."

Finding the sweet spot between broad and simple is where we all seem to differ. [See D'Karr's refutation of my earlier post citing the 3e fireball]


*"If it's easier to understand the effect of a rule than the narrative explanation of said rule, maybe it's not the best rule."

 

[Loonook]

Again the problem with the whole "story, not rules" is the players never have any idea what is what. Can they use oil flasks to burn up monsters by throwing them? Who knows, it is entirely up to the whim of today's DM. What happens when you hit an ooze with a cold spell? Does it freeze up? Does that hurt an ooze more, less, or the same as anyone else? This leads IME to players either gaming the DM, or always playing it safe, etc. There are some reasons for nailing things down. IMHO it is superior to just give blanket answers that work and then find the exceptions. The main obvious ones will be in the rules, like "ooze can't fall prone, instead it gets disadvantage" or they are so weird they come up in play and then at least the DM is only ruling on one very niche thing now and then, not half of everything the PCs can try to do.

When, unless you were trying to do something very corner case (flinging dozens of oil flasks through some simultaneous method) you don't really deal with much of this. Now you do have the ability, as a DM or group, to make some complex rules decisions... But this just seems like arguing for argument's sake.

Slainte,

-Loonook.