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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6057862" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>I find this a little hard to follow - are you talking about mechanics (PC build and action resolution being the main ones), story elements (what Dispater or Demogorgon may or may not be willing to agree to, for example), both, or something else that I'm missing?</p><p></p><p>I think it's fairly obvious that at a certain point many fantasy RPGers wanted to use fantasy RPGs to achieve a Dragonlance-ish heroic fantasy experience rather than a classic D&D dungeon crawling experience (whether in Tomb of Horrors and Hidden Shrine Advanced Squad Leader mode, or White Plume Mountain and Ghost Tower of Inverness freeform wackiness mode). In response to this, 2nd ed offered settings but no mechanics to support them. I think it is apparent that 2nd ed AD&D needs more jury-rigging of its PC build and action resolution mechanics if it is to work than (say) 4e does. The 2nd ed rulebooks come right out and tell the GM to suspend the mechanics for the sake of the story (in my own view the worst GMing advice of all time, but many people seem to like it).</p><p></p><p>From my (slightly distant) point of view 3E seems to have offered PC build rules and a veneer of action resolution to support heroic fantasy play - creating a superficial impression that "anything is possible" - but in the realisation suffers from numerous problems, most notoriously the dominance of AD&D-style "creative spellcasting" over other avenues of action resolution.</p><p></p><p>4e, on the other hand, is the first version of D&D designed <em>to deliver a heroic fantasy story simply in virtue of following its mechanics</em>. That is part of the indie-ness of 4e, and its relationship to "story now" gaming.</p><p></p><p>There is a question as to whether it succeeds at this or not. Some people find it fails because the combat is grindy rather than heroic. Others aren't interested in its particular flavour of heroic fantasy (typically because they find it too gonzo). But whether or not it succeeds or fails, it is clear about what is attemting. And it is something different from any other version of D&D.</p><p></p><p>Of course, for those who don't <em>want</em> the action resolution rules, in and of themselves, to deliver story via their application, the whole 4e project will be unwanted. These would be the same sorts of players who think that The Riddle of Steel would be great if not for its Spiritual Attributes mechanics, who can't see what The Burning Wheel offers that Runequest doesn't (after all, both a class-and-level-less, low(ish)-magic, skill-based games where combat is gritty and PC advancement is based on either doing or training), and who think that it's silly that a PC might perform with mechanical advantage in a particular situation just because the player of that PC is more invested in that situation.</p><p></p><p>But for those who like 4e and what it attempts, even if they disagree on how successful it has ultimately been, it makes no sense to regard it as a virtue that the GM has to house rule and fiat basic features of the system. If the whole point of the system is to deliver story by play, how is it anything but a failure for the GM to have to fiat it - GMs have been delivering stories by fiat ever since the first group suffered through someone's crappy railroad.</p><p></p><p>Story elements, on the other hand, are a completely different matter from mechanics. It's of the essence of a system like D&D that the content of the story - and hence the ultmate status of story elements like Demogorgon and Dispater - is not settled until actually produced via play. So a 4e GM who fiats the resolution engine in order to proudce outcomes that keep the fiction in conformity with canon and metaplot has (in my view) fundamentally misunderstood what the game is for.</p><p></p><p>Hence my puzzlement at, and objection to, the response to Chris Perkins's game that I posted upthread. In a 4e game, <em>no one knows</em> how paranoid Dispater really is, and how that will affect his behaviour, until the skill challenge has been played out. It turns out that, in Perkins's game, Dispater wasn't as unwilling to make deals as someone who had only read the backstory might think. That's "story now" for you!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 6057862, member: 42582"] I find this a little hard to follow - are you talking about mechanics (PC build and action resolution being the main ones), story elements (what Dispater or Demogorgon may or may not be willing to agree to, for example), both, or something else that I'm missing? I think it's fairly obvious that at a certain point many fantasy RPGers wanted to use fantasy RPGs to achieve a Dragonlance-ish heroic fantasy experience rather than a classic D&D dungeon crawling experience (whether in Tomb of Horrors and Hidden Shrine Advanced Squad Leader mode, or White Plume Mountain and Ghost Tower of Inverness freeform wackiness mode). In response to this, 2nd ed offered settings but no mechanics to support them. I think it is apparent that 2nd ed AD&D needs more jury-rigging of its PC build and action resolution mechanics if it is to work than (say) 4e does. The 2nd ed rulebooks come right out and tell the GM to suspend the mechanics for the sake of the story (in my own view the worst GMing advice of all time, but many people seem to like it). From my (slightly distant) point of view 3E seems to have offered PC build rules and a veneer of action resolution to support heroic fantasy play - creating a superficial impression that "anything is possible" - but in the realisation suffers from numerous problems, most notoriously the dominance of AD&D-style "creative spellcasting" over other avenues of action resolution. 4e, on the other hand, is the first version of D&D designed [I]to deliver a heroic fantasy story simply in virtue of following its mechanics[/i]. That is part of the indie-ness of 4e, and its relationship to "story now" gaming. There is a question as to whether it succeeds at this or not. Some people find it fails because the combat is grindy rather than heroic. Others aren't interested in its particular flavour of heroic fantasy (typically because they find it too gonzo). But whether or not it succeeds or fails, it is clear about what is attemting. And it is something different from any other version of D&D. Of course, for those who don't [I]want[/I] the action resolution rules, in and of themselves, to deliver story via their application, the whole 4e project will be unwanted. These would be the same sorts of players who think that The Riddle of Steel would be great if not for its Spiritual Attributes mechanics, who can't see what The Burning Wheel offers that Runequest doesn't (after all, both a class-and-level-less, low(ish)-magic, skill-based games where combat is gritty and PC advancement is based on either doing or training), and who think that it's silly that a PC might perform with mechanical advantage in a particular situation just because the player of that PC is more invested in that situation. But for those who like 4e and what it attempts, even if they disagree on how successful it has ultimately been, it makes no sense to regard it as a virtue that the GM has to house rule and fiat basic features of the system. If the whole point of the system is to deliver story by play, how is it anything but a failure for the GM to have to fiat it - GMs have been delivering stories by fiat ever since the first group suffered through someone's crappy railroad. Story elements, on the other hand, are a completely different matter from mechanics. It's of the essence of a system like D&D that the content of the story - and hence the ultmate status of story elements like Demogorgon and Dispater - is not settled until actually produced via play. So a 4e GM who fiats the resolution engine in order to proudce outcomes that keep the fiction in conformity with canon and metaplot has (in my view) fundamentally misunderstood what the game is for. Hence my puzzlement at, and objection to, the response to Chris Perkins's game that I posted upthread. In a 4e game, [I]no one knows[/I] how paranoid Dispater really is, and how that will affect his behaviour, until the skill challenge has been played out. It turns out that, in Perkins's game, Dispater wasn't as unwilling to make deals as someone who had only read the backstory might think. That's "story now" for you! [/QUOTE]
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