Simulationists, Black Boxes, and 4e

[Dausuul]

However, when the rules come into conflict with player expectations, that's where the problem lies. An immobilized character can't move, and CAN do anything else. This makes sense if, say, he's immobilized by a glue trap. But if he's being grappled/held, and does something which, intuitively, he shouldn't be able to do in that situation, you get arguments.

"OK, you've got the hobgoblin in your grip. He smashes you with his two-handed battleaxe. Take 12 points of damage."
"Wait, how does he swing it when I'm holding him?"
"Nothing in the rules says he can't."

(And here the argument starts. So, fine, I houserule that he can't. A week later, the grappling PC is himself grappled. He wants to attack the monster holding him. I say, "You can't." He says, "But I'm only using a tiny dagger! I should be able to!" So another house rule is made. And another, and another...and soon the "simple" rules become a complex hodge-podge of ad-hoc rulings. Or, you could just say, "Suck it down. The hobgoblin hits you. Who's next in the initiative?" but that has its own problems...)

Very true, and it's always a question--house-rule for verisimilitude, or gloss over the absurdity in the name of ease of play? There isn't one good answer; it depends on how sweeping the projected house-rule needs to be, how painful the absurdity under discussion is, how strongly the debating parties feel about it, and so forth.

(In this specific case, I'm cool with allowing the use of most big weapons while grappling. Have a look at medieval swordfighting manuals sometime, there are a lot of tricks for using a two-handed sword at close quarters. I could even see using a spear, as you smash the guy in the face with the haft or draw the edge of the spearhead across his throat. If you want to wield a pike while grappling, though, we might have problems.)

 

[Clawhound]

Alot happened for me when I finally understood the 3.X process. In 3rd, the monster design process never worked as it claimed.

1. Design your monster.
2. Compare it to other monsters.
3. Fudge abilities and bonuses until the monster works
4. Call it done.

Step 3 made all other steps meaningless. So many important numbers got fudged so often that you wound up with all this weird crap happening just so that the important numbers could be correct.

In 4e:

1. Fudge a monster to work for its level.
2. Call it done.

All 4th did was to cut out the "pretend you are designing a creature by the rules" part.

 

[Praeden]

Black box, white box, I'm the game with results.

See, to me it boiled down to the fact that the two editions went about design from opposite ends of the game. 3e said that it wanted to have an amazing number of options for world/monster/PC design. Then everything that is 3e as we know it was an emergent property of this design. The 15 minute adventure day, the 14 class 15th level PC, CoDzilla....

4e decided to design from the other end of things. There was a relatively specific output desired. Limiting the level of emergent properties was a design goal. They decided that at every level, they wanted a specific play feeling to be had. They wanted a certain amount of complexity, and didn't want further complexity to emerge. The the mechanics were designed to accomplish this. Some sacred cows were shoe horned into the system if they fit well enough, some were reconceptualized, and some were slaughtered. But it was output that mattered in the process.

In science this has become relatively standard practice for modeling systems. Create as simple a model as possible that accurately models a system, and don't worry about as much of the how and why as you do the what. Models =/= reality, but they have value in getting results.

Exception based design is just this process at a "fantasy system" level. "Reality" is the game fluff, the "model" is the game. Create a game that accurately models what your imagination wants, limit emergent properties (read excess complexities and game breaking combos) to a bare minimum. The result is that as a GM, your job is not to think "what can I create with these rules?" It is to think "I want this fluff in my campaign, what is the minimum number of game mechanics that I need to get this fluff."

As an interesting asside, Ebberon is the consumate front end design product in regards to world building, and is why it is the perfect 3e world. The design premise was "Given the full 3e ruleset, what is the logical world that would encompass all the emergent properties of that ruleset. Very interesting. The implied PoL setting in 4e takes the opposite approach. The premise is "Given that we want this sort of feeling in our game, what are the elements of worldbuilding that would have to be included to achieve that?" The design paradigms are opposite, and the feeling will be relatively opposite.

Which ruleset will appeal to which players? They both are toolboxes, but the toolboxes are designed to build different things. One is for creating emergent properties, and one is for output oriented design. Neither is superior, but I would say that those that prefer "D&Disms" are likely to like 3e, and those that have a specific design output in mind will prefer 4e. Either can be simulationist or not.

Eloquently put!

 

[ExploderWizard]

Alot happened for me when I finally understood the 3.X process. In 3rd, the monster design process never worked as it claimed.

1. Design your monster.
2. Compare it to other monsters.
3. Fudge abilities and bonuses until the monster works
4. Call it done.

Step 3 made all other steps meaningless. So many important numbers got fudged so often that you wound up with all this weird crap happening just so that the important numbers could be correct.

In 4e:

1. Fudge a monster to work for its level.
2. Call it done.

All 4th did was to cut out the "pretend you are designing a creature by the rules" part.

Fudge. Call it done. This has been available to every GM from OD&D to present. I guess the question is-why do we need such a huge pile of rulebooks for this? Isn't the main agument for such detailed rules the " I shouldn't have to make it up" argument. If you make it all up at then end of the day anyhow these expensive books do what exactly?

 

[Lacyon]

Fudge. Call it done. This has been available to every GM from OD&D to present.

You left out the "to make it work for it's level" part. That's a pretty important part.

I guess the question is-why do we need such a huge pile of rulebooks for this?

Since we're explicitly talking about designing (read: making up) your own monsters, you don't. It does help to have a good set of guidelines for judging what kind of threat the monster will be to PCs however.

Isn't the main agument for such detailed rules the " I shouldn't have to make it up" argument. If you make it all up at then end of the day anyhow these expensive books do what exactly?

These expensive books give you a bunch of pregenerated monsters along with (hopefully accurate) assessments of their threat levels relative to PCs, along with guidelines about how to assess the threat levels of your own creations.

 

[Korgoth]

Good post, Blackeagle. You did a good job of formulating the difference between the design methods. I think that "black box" design is more old school, which is probably why I've warmed up to 4E so much.

The "simulationist" label has gotten thrown around a lot in some of the recent arguments about 4e (the recent minion thread for instance).

Oy. As an aside, I'm pretty conflicted about that thread. I started it because I was very skeptical of the Minion rules. When I'm iffy about something, I like to "give the works" (of skepticism) and see to what extent it survives. I got what I intended to out of that thread... I saw a number of different well-argued defenses of Minions (not all of which I found useful), and I ended up coming to a satisfactory conclusion about those rules. In the end, I have accepted the Minion rules and feel that they are consistent with the other 4E rules as well as the D&D legacy (which is pretty good, given how negative my initial reaction was).

However, the thread got kind of bloody at points. Which is a reasonable expectation for that kind of thing... but I really needed to give that rule its philosophical "trial by fire" because it threatened to be a deal-breaker for me. So I'm conflicted because I got what I wanted but at expense to others... it's like launching an invasion of the People's Republic of China just to get a plate of Mu Shu Chicken. "Millions died on both sides, but that really hit the spot."

It would be nice if there was a pull down menu when you started a thread where you could select "Disable Forge Terminology". I've never found it to make a discussion more clear. And the vaguer a discussion, the more potentially flamey it is.

 

[ExploderWizard]

These expensive books give you a bunch of pregenerated monsters along with (hopefully accurate) assessments of their threat levels relative to PCs, along with guidelines about how to assess the threat levels of your own creations.

Haha!!! This is always more fun in actual play. PC's are a fungible resource

Seriously, I do understand your reasoning.

 

[Dausuul]

It would be nice if there was a pull down menu when you started a thread where you could select "Disable Forge Terminology". I've never found it to make a discussion more clear. And the vaguer a discussion, the more potentially flamey it is.

Man, I am one hundred percent in favor of this. Maybe some kind of custom filter you can turn on, that filters out the words "simulationist," "gamist," "narrativist," and so forth.

 

[PrecociousApprentice]

Thats all well and good, but the issue is defining "results". Exception based design can be good for modeling some mechanics but it can also lead to some in game effects which may not be desirable.

I am curious what you think are negative aspects that are inherent to the game mechanics of 4e. I would hazard a guess that this is a rusult of using an "emergent properties" world building approach with an "exception based, outpout oriented" game system. Exception based means that anything that is not desirable is mutable, to give you predictabel results that are desirable. The coolest thing in my opinion is that the designers have actually thought about results this time. It sounds like the game will be transparent enough that we will be encouraged to engineer the outputs that we want, and not just be subject to the emergent properties that develope from the system. Previous editions were all about process, results were all left as emergent properties, and you were outside common design space if you wanted to change it.

For example: Different laws of the physical universe for NPC's vs. PC's. On paper this can be great for getting the results you want. The "fluff" that comes with it may not be so great.

The thing that must be kept in mind is that the NPCs do not measure output. They are output. Players measure output. The output is the action that comes from use of NPCs. NPCs have a different role in the game than PCs, and should have. Choose the output you want, design your game to achieve that, and don't let the system determine the fluff, let the fluff determine the system.

It it already a given that the PC's are special. Without any mechanical differences, PC's can sometimes act like they are "better" than everyone else in the world (Yes we all know they are but the actual character should not be so aware of this). If the rules of the universe explicitly state that yes, the PC's ARE in every way superior beings, then the result may be that NPC's are treated like dirt with actual bit of metagame justification.

The rules of the game are not the rules of the universe. The rules of the universe are whatever fluff you want. The rules of the game are there to enhance the play expereince and provide a framework for roleplaying. They allow you to create stories somewhat like the stories in literature, myth, legend, and movies. They are essentially all metagame. The rules of the universe are much more complicated than the simple rules in the PHB and DMG.

 

[LostSoul]

Yes we all know they are but the actual character should not be so aware of this.

The characters are only aware of what you want them to be aware of.

Think of it as a 1st-level player at-will power.