Why I think you should try 4e (renamed)

[ST]

I have to admit I've never understood "The rules must properly simulate activities for DM solo-play". If there aren't characters in a scene, it fundamentally never happened. The DM can totally introduce past scenes, off-camera, even I suppose a hypothetical Demon Minion tripping and breaking his own neck somewhere, but it doesn't actually happen in the imagined game world until the DM tells the group that it happened. Before that, it's just game prep. So I just don't see the need for the rules to fulfill that purpose. It's not a part of play.

I do understand that some people prefer symmetric/PC-neutral game designs, where you could run all that stuff without any players present and it'd work out the way you'd want it to. I'm not denigrating that preference. I just don't see that not fulfilling that preference is a design flaw.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

I consider that a very contrived example or a very naive one...
You stumble into a hex with a troll in a sandbox game with a good sandbox DM*, the DM will consider what the prevailing situation in the area is. Do the trolls influence the environment around them? Do the PCs find carcasses? Tracks? Remnant of unfortunates who ran across the trolls?

When you are doing setting driven DMing, the monsters in the hex aren't the only thing present in the environment, and the terrain is more than just something to complicate your power uses.

Funnily enough in my 3.x Age of Worms game, right at first level where the group is trekking to get to some rumoured treasure cave, they see a huge dollop of faeces, smack bang in a clearing by the river. It's pretty fresh, but the scout botches her check. The wizard spots a disturbance in the distance - birds flying everywhere. Scout gets a re-roll when the group hears a strange bellow off in the distance. Ah yes, the mating calling card of the troll - let's get as far away from the river as possible guys [1st level party encounter with Troll averted.]

It was just funny how you guys used the troll example.

However, I will say that the 4E skill challenges system (when done right) can simulate this play well - effectively, that was what I doing back then in 3E. However, in terms of game philosophy, I still think there are some pretty big conflicts between 4E ideals and traditional sandbox gaming.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[Gothmog]

I consider that a very contrived example or a very naive one, and illustrates that you missed my point about combat not being the only option. You simply assume that the players stumble into the trolls and get into a combat. That's really back to my take on an undesirable situation or poor sandbox DMing: combat is the only option.

You stumble into a hex with a troll in a sandbox game with a good sandbox DM*, the DM will consider what the prevailing situation in the area is. Do the trolls influence the environment around them? Do the PCs find carcasses? Tracks? Remnant of unfortunates who ran across the trolls?

When you are doing setting driven DMing, the monsters in the hex aren't the only thing present in the environment, and the terrain is more than just something to complicate your power uses.

If this really was the players' fault (e.g., as you said, they assume they can parley with trolls and ignore warnings), then that might serve as a harsh lesson. One that rolling up the new characters should help hammer home.**

But trolls surprising players without warning in a sandbox game? That simply wouldn't happen were I to run. Trolls are not stealth hunters; they are used to ruling by brute force.

* - And really, you could write a DMG to educate would be good sandbox DMs.

** - In BD&D, rolling a new character might be pretty quick. In 3.5, I might contrive to let them live with some major consequence, e.g., they wake up naked hanging over the stew.

I have to agree, I enjoy the sandbox-style play you're talking about here, and its become the de facto way I run my games. And you know what? Absolutely NOTHING prevents you from running this kind of game using 4e. In fact, I've been doing it for over a year now with no hitches.

Probably only about half the encounters my group runs into end up in straight-out combats. Often there is some other aspect involved as well- subterfuge, negotiations, intimidation, or running away! While many of 4e's character abilities are combat-focused, that has been true in every version of D&D (even 3.x), and people still roleplay and solve problems without being forced into combat.

I tend to populate the world with people/creatures/places/etc that make sense for their locations first and foremost, and the PCs can go where they choose. The world is NOT in any way a series of level-appropriate encounters for the group of PCs. Usually the adventures I give them are things they can handle, but when the PCs have been told there are ogres in the nearby forest and they go there anyway as level 2 PCs, they found a warband of 8 to 12 ogres, complete with a bad-ass leader type and a shaman. They were warned. (That also ended with them being subdued and captured, which then lead to a daring escape where they also saved the cousin of a local noble and made an ally!). Likewise, the party heard about a group of goblins making trouble for a town they had helped early in their careers, and when they went back as 7th level PCs, they found level 1-4 goblins causing the troubles, and trounced them handlily.

I've also used weather and terrain hazards as they explore, and the group has survived flash floods, losing their food and supplies during a blizzard in the winter, and accidentally getting in the middle of a conflict between some elves and shifters that was a long-standing fued. In those cases, we've used skill challenges, and they work beautifully, despite what the critics online say. Success was in no way guaranteed, and we RP through the situation until such time as a skill check is needed, and only then do the dice come out.

So I can say definitively that the only thing prventing folks from using 4e for sandbox style play is themselves, and their own preconceptions. The system works just fine for it.

 

[Jack99]

I consider that a very contrived example or a very naive one, and illustrates that you missed my point about combat not being the only option. You simply assume that the players stumble into the trolls and get into a combat. That's really back to my take on an undesirable situation or poor sandbox DMing: combat is the only option.

You stumble into a hex with a troll in a sandbox game with a good sandbox DM*, the DM will consider what the prevailing situation in the area is. Do the trolls influence the environment around them? Do the PCs find carcasses? Tracks? Remnant of unfortunates who ran across the trolls?

When you are doing setting driven DMing, the monsters in the hex aren't the only thing present in the environment, and the terrain is more than just something to complicate your power uses.

If this really was the players' fault (e.g., as you said, they assume they can parley with trolls and ignore warnings), then that might serve as a harsh lesson. One that rolling up the new characters should help hammer home.**

But trolls surprising players without warning in a sandbox game? That simply wouldn't happen were I to run. Trolls are not stealth hunters; they are used to ruling by brute force.

* - And really, you could write a DMG to educate would be good sandbox DMs.

** - In BD&D, rolling a new character might be pretty quick. In 3.5, I might contrive to let them live with some major consequence, e.g., they wake up naked hanging over the stew.

So basically what you are saying is that a good sandbox DM always warns the players when they have ventured into dangerous territory? Which I already did via a NPC - In my book, and last I checked, in Gary's, one warning was more than enough. What you are doing is trying to save their asses instead of letting them face the consequences of their actions. Despite your attitude, nowhere in troll lore does it state that they leave carcasses laying around everywhere where they hunt. In fact, one might be tempted to say just the opposite. Trolls devour everything and leave nothing behind. Besides, the troll was just one example. It could easily have been a stealthier monster (a lurker!).

Anyway, I am gonna drop this debate with you, since instead of learning something, you are more interested in questioning my DM-skills.

Cheers

 

[Storm-Bringer]

This seems, well, false.

What you are saying is that a normal monster has three dimensions: Defences (AC, Dex, what have you), Damage, and Hit Points. Minions don't have that last dimension. Their hit points are essentially undefined. If you hit, they are dispatched, if you miss, they aren't. Powers with a miss component don't trigger on minions, so it's pass/fail.

This is the same as saying a cube has height, width and depth. Except these cubes over here are missing that last component. So we have flat cubes with only height and width. But they are still cubes! They are just flat cubes the party can kick over easily so they feel heroic.

A Skill Challenge is a series of related Skill Checks used in conjunction to resolve a specific conflict or achieve a goal.

Which is exactly what combat with minions is: achieving a goal, in this case an out of game goal to make the players feel like big damn heroes.

You are probably used to thinking of skill challenges with defined numbers plugged in rather than variables. You just have to plug the numbers in on the fly with minions. The equation looks like this, in skill challenge terms:

(Number of minions) successes before (minion damage divided by PC hit points) failures.

So, 10 minions that do 5 damage vs the PC with 30hp:

10 successes before 6 failures.

If the PC can achieve 10 successes, that is, dispatch 10 minions, before those ten minions can deliver 30pts of damage, the PC succeeds. It's like any other skill challenge. The applicable skills are whatever attacks the player uses, the DC is whatever defence applies for that attack. Str vs AC, Dex vs AC, Int vs Will, etc.

The player has the opportunity to 'reset' some of their failures (getting hit by the minions) with healing surges. Other than that, it is the exact same system as a skill challenge. In fact, the healing surges only serve to decrease the number of failures before the challenge is over, so it really doesn't change it drastically.

A Minion is a monster that has near party level to-hit and defenses but effectively 1 HP. Not quite a glass cannon, more like a glass handgun.

Well, as above, if we consider a monster (or 'suitable opponent') to have those three dimensions, and minions are lacking in one of those dimensions, you can hardly say it is a 'monster'. Like our flat cubes in the previous example, it doesn't really make sense to call them 'monsters'.

Interestingly, the depth of our flat cubes isn't precisely gone, it's simply undefined. It could be near infinite, in fact. For example, Blast of Cold does 6d6 and immobilizes the target on a hit, or half damage and slowed on a miss. Unless the target is a minion, in which case, it does no damage, but the minion is slowed, save ends. The other kobolds in the encounter, who may have an actual number of hit points (say, 12-15) could all very well be dead, but the minions fight on after a miss. In this case, the minions have more hit points than the regular opponents.

I'm not seeing the similarity (and my threshold for similarity is pretty low )

Hopefully, I have provided examples to make the similarity clearer.

If you want to see Minions as motile traps you're certainly welcome to. But you're straining to draw a parallel that's not terribly instructive.

It's quite instructive, in fact. If you disable the trap, no more damage, but it doesn't have hit points per se. Well, it generally didn't in previous versions. Currently, with traps having the equivalent of hit points, they are more akin to monsters than minions are.

Do you have a counter-observation to offer? One that might lead to a discussion? Or are just pointing out that I'm not omniscient (I'm married, I know that already...)?

Sure, I will use your structure to do so:

The reality in an RPG is ultimately the backdrop for exploring a world and engaging in a role. Most, if not all, role-playing is essentially of this type.

It's only 'telling a story' in the broadest sense of relating what happened to other people after the sequence of events is completed. At the time they are in play, the characters are not telling a story, they are creating a story. The narrative, that is, the sequence of events and their larger meaning, comes after the events have been resolved for good or for ill. You can't tell a story while you are creating it, however, as the events are not yet fixed; you don't know what happens next, so you can't know how that relates to what happened before, and certainly not how it will affect what happens after that.

 

[Rechan]

And the minion concept is a basic trope of said genre. Did people not think it was well, a failing, of D&D nt to be able to model one of those most common tropes in fantasy fiction?

I know this is late in the thread, but it also captures another genre convention.

The Inverse Ninja Law + The Big Monster.

The protagonists encounter Monster X. The first time they fight Monster X, Monster X is hard to kill. It's a bastard on legs. Maybe it has a weak point that's difficult to hit, or a tough hide, or is just durable.

Later, there's suddenly a ton of Monster X's. But the protagonists mow through them. Not only that, but the protagonists never miss when they're faced with a large number of Monster X's.

 

[Rechan]

It's not as if 1st level D&D 3E Commoners were without chance of knocking out a common Kobold with just one hit.

Not to mention 3e 1st level commoners could be taken out by a cat.

As I said earlier, this type of abstraction is indicative of a change in the type of role-playing game D&D is. It's moved towards a game in which the world exists only in relation to the PCs, as opposed to what it has traditionally been, a game in which the PCs interact with a world that functions independent of them (be that at an abstracted level).

The abstraction is also relevant to another change.

Previous editions treated 1st level PCs like characters from Night of the Living Dead; average joes dumped in the middle of danger, and have to scrap to survive. Granted, the average joes are fighting rats and 1/2 HD monsters, not hordes of infectious zombies, but the situation is just as lethal. They drop like flies. (as someone once said, you kept dieing until you made it to 2nd level with someone, and you felt accomplished).

4e assumes, narrative, that PCs ARE DIFFERENT. They are not NPCs who just strolled off a farm and picked up a sword. They are more potent than NPCs. PCs are more like Ash at the beginning of Army of Darkness, or Buffy in the first season of said show; competent, capable, and being awesome by virtue of being the title character, but they have to work to win. Single zombie-demons aren't the threat, the named villains are the real challenge.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

For me, fighting paper tigers doesn't feel heroic. I now know that anything that goes down on one hit was a minion, and was just there to be a minor nuisance. And if I've wasted anything other than an At-Will to kill it? Argh.

I much prefer fighting enemies who actually make sense in the world, and don't just exist as a cinematic concept. AFAIC, the character I'm role-playing is heroic by dint of his actions in a dangerous world, and its much more heroic to actually fight something with teeth, that fights back, that can take a hit and change tactics and come back for more.

Just popping dangerous looking balloons doesn't do it for me.

Did you ever fight low level monsters in 3E? They are just paper. Nothing Tiger to it. Most of the time, they won't even be able to touch you.

Did you ever fight Minions in 4E? They are not paper tigers. They kill you if you ignore them or treat them as if they were no threat. Just like any other monster of their level. It's just that you get 4 of them instead of 1 of them pitted against you. Fighting through a horde of Orc Minions can be a spectacularly rewarding experience, because bodies are dropping left and right. But... they can actually overpower you.

 

[Hairfoot]

Not to mention 3e 1st level commoners could be taken out by a cat.

That's an overused and redundant example. I've never seen a single group that didn't recognise the silliness of that and rule it out. That's a far cry from the current model of "if it's in the rules it must be essential to the maths, so we can't take it out".

 

[Rechan]

Hairfoot, perhaps you missed the winking smiley, but I wasn't trying to make a serious point.