Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
The Healing Paradox
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5959461" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>That's fair enough, but I think D&D's always left room for it. In AD&D, you thrust and parry for a minute, then you get in your hit. Did you strike well? Did your opponent accidently trip in a pot hole and drop his/her guard? The abstractness of D&D's resolution mechanics seems to leave this sort of thing open to narration in a way that it wouldn't be in (say) Runequest.</p><p></p><p>That's one reason why I think introducing fumble rules into D&D is something of a big deal. Because that's starting to make it definite that a bad d20 roll = bad swordsmanship, as opposed perhaps to simply bad luck.</p><p></p><p> [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION], Wandering Monsters are an interesting example. Because for them to work as you describe, the players really have to buy into the premise of the game as expressd by the XP-for-gp reward system: that the PCs are mercenary adventures looting the underworld. It is very easy, in classic D&D play, to (inadvertently) change this reward system. If you have players who enjoy the game because they want to play out the activities of <em>heroes</em> in the mythic underworld - and the game (I'm thinking now of Moldvay Basic) certainly doesn't discourage this, with its description of victory against the dragon tyrant in the foreword, and its modestly-stated preference for Lawful alignment - then the ostensible reward system of levelling up by collecting gold breaks down, and the real reward system becomes something more informal, like pleasure in playing out the heroic activities of the PCs, and then there is pressure (i) on the players to have their PCs tackle wandering monsters, who presumably are as wicked and nasty as the non-wandering ones, and (ii) on the GM, or perhaps the group as a whole, to bring the <em>formal </em>reward system into line with this new underlying premise (witness 2nd ed AD&D and later).</p><p></p><p>Reaction rolls are also interesting. As I posted on KM's FitM thread, these are frequently used to generate new fictional content. Consider a reaction roll of an innkeep when the PCs enter the inn.</p><p></p><p>On one approach, the GM already has worked out a personal history of the innkeeper, including that he hates mages, because 10 years ago the wizard's college forcibly conscripted the innkeeper's youngest son when he began to exhibit signs of "the gift". The PCs' party incudes an obvious wizard (robes, staff) and so the GM applies a penalty to the recation roll. No fortune in the midle here; it's at the end (although the players are probably unaward of much of the already-established fiction that informs the resolution).</p><p></p><p>But here's another way the same scene could go. The PCs walk into the inn. The GM has no notes on the inn or its keeper, and so rolls an unmodified reaction roll. The dice come up low - the innkeeer is unfriendly, even hostile! Why?, wonders the GM. And then invents a backstory to explain the innkeepers unfriendly reaction: ever since the wizard's college forcibly conscripted the innkeeper's youngest son - when he began to exhibit signs of "the gift" - the innkeeper has hated wizards and those who associate with them.</p><p></p><p>Often there is a unspoken assumption in discussions of GMing, world building etc that the first of these ways is the "right" way to play, and the second way, involving spontaneous creation of backstory by the GM, is a second-best. But I'm a big fan of a system that makes it easy to generate content spontaneously as in the second approach, in part because I think that this second approach helps resolve the question of how do we change the situation in ways that (i) are interesting and (ii) don't give rise to conflicts of interest. (As well as reaction rolls, I think something similar is at work in the successful adjudication of a 4e skill challenge - at least if the example of play in the Essentials book is meant to be taken as a guide - and also in the resolution of failed checks by reference to Intent in priority to Task in Burning Wheel.)</p><p></p><p> [MENTION=11300]Herremann the Wise[/MENTION] - I get the sense that you like the <em>aesthetic</em> of the wound/vitality split, but I'd be interested to hear you say a bit more about (i) what sort of play you see it pushing towards and underpinning, and (ii) why keep the <em>hit point</em> component at all (and eg if hp are sometimes luck, why can't I get lucky even if I'm surprised critted - or to put it another way, does a wound/vitality split create some pressure to decrease the metagame component even of the hp side?).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 5959461, member: 42582"] That's fair enough, but I think D&D's always left room for it. In AD&D, you thrust and parry for a minute, then you get in your hit. Did you strike well? Did your opponent accidently trip in a pot hole and drop his/her guard? The abstractness of D&D's resolution mechanics seems to leave this sort of thing open to narration in a way that it wouldn't be in (say) Runequest. That's one reason why I think introducing fumble rules into D&D is something of a big deal. Because that's starting to make it definite that a bad d20 roll = bad swordsmanship, as opposed perhaps to simply bad luck. [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION], Wandering Monsters are an interesting example. Because for them to work as you describe, the players really have to buy into the premise of the game as expressd by the XP-for-gp reward system: that the PCs are mercenary adventures looting the underworld. It is very easy, in classic D&D play, to (inadvertently) change this reward system. If you have players who enjoy the game because they want to play out the activities of [I]heroes[/I] in the mythic underworld - and the game (I'm thinking now of Moldvay Basic) certainly doesn't discourage this, with its description of victory against the dragon tyrant in the foreword, and its modestly-stated preference for Lawful alignment - then the ostensible reward system of levelling up by collecting gold breaks down, and the real reward system becomes something more informal, like pleasure in playing out the heroic activities of the PCs, and then there is pressure (i) on the players to have their PCs tackle wandering monsters, who presumably are as wicked and nasty as the non-wandering ones, and (ii) on the GM, or perhaps the group as a whole, to bring the [I]formal [/I]reward system into line with this new underlying premise (witness 2nd ed AD&D and later). Reaction rolls are also interesting. As I posted on KM's FitM thread, these are frequently used to generate new fictional content. Consider a reaction roll of an innkeep when the PCs enter the inn. On one approach, the GM already has worked out a personal history of the innkeeper, including that he hates mages, because 10 years ago the wizard's college forcibly conscripted the innkeeper's youngest son when he began to exhibit signs of "the gift". The PCs' party incudes an obvious wizard (robes, staff) and so the GM applies a penalty to the recation roll. No fortune in the midle here; it's at the end (although the players are probably unaward of much of the already-established fiction that informs the resolution). But here's another way the same scene could go. The PCs walk into the inn. The GM has no notes on the inn or its keeper, and so rolls an unmodified reaction roll. The dice come up low - the innkeeer is unfriendly, even hostile! Why?, wonders the GM. And then invents a backstory to explain the innkeepers unfriendly reaction: ever since the wizard's college forcibly conscripted the innkeeper's youngest son - when he began to exhibit signs of "the gift" - the innkeeper has hated wizards and those who associate with them. Often there is a unspoken assumption in discussions of GMing, world building etc that the first of these ways is the "right" way to play, and the second way, involving spontaneous creation of backstory by the GM, is a second-best. But I'm a big fan of a system that makes it easy to generate content spontaneously as in the second approach, in part because I think that this second approach helps resolve the question of how do we change the situation in ways that (i) are interesting and (ii) don't give rise to conflicts of interest. (As well as reaction rolls, I think something similar is at work in the successful adjudication of a 4e skill challenge - at least if the example of play in the Essentials book is meant to be taken as a guide - and also in the resolution of failed checks by reference to Intent in priority to Task in Burning Wheel.) [MENTION=11300]Herremann the Wise[/MENTION] - I get the sense that you like the [I]aesthetic[/I] of the wound/vitality split, but I'd be interested to hear you say a bit more about (i) what sort of play you see it pushing towards and underpinning, and (ii) why keep the [I]hit point[/I] component at all (and eg if hp are sometimes luck, why can't I get lucky even if I'm surprised critted - or to put it another way, does a wound/vitality split create some pressure to decrease the metagame component even of the hp side?). [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
The Healing Paradox
Top