Flavour First vs Game First - a comparison

[ProfessorCirno]

I agree strongly with just about everything Kamikaze stated. Except this.

I've got Diablo III comin' out soon.

Soon? More like in ten years

 

[LostSoul]

For me, 4e feels like a boardgame, a game whose gamist elements do not easily allow me to immerse myself in the "reality" of the RPing experience.

I find this point of view fascinating and frustrating. Why do I find 4e so much better at immersion, colour, and story than 3e?

It's not In a Wicked Age... or Sorcerer, but it grabs me.

All these conversations about whether or not martial class powers are magical exist bcause there is absolutely no in-game rationale for how they are supposed to work and every argument I have seen yet boils down to....don't think too much and have fun.

Here's mine: Describe them in whatever way makes the most sense to you at the time. Don't describe them the same way each time; you might describe a power working one way in one situation, and the same power working a different way in a different situation.

 

[GlaziusF]

In sacrificing everything on the altar of "game-first" you forget that the game itself is "story-first." Without Legolas and Conan, there never would have been a D&D.

Okay, here's the thing. Legolas? Written by one dude. Conan? Written by one dude. How many dudes are sitting down at your gaming table? HINT: it is more than one.

This is not to say that collaborative storytelling doesn't exist. Of course it does. It's called improv. But the problem with improv is that if you ever contradict someone else the whole thing just kind of trips over itself and falls into an open grave which is then filled in. There's a reason why most pure improv skits only last a couple of minutes, and why most improv is done in small teams: as the number of things said becomes arbitrarily large, the chances someone will contradict someone else approach 1.

You need a mechanic of conflict resolution more robust than "everyone always agrees with each other". That is the game. Or rather, the rules of the game. Which you implicitly agree to by sitting down to play it.

Actually, your argument seems to be fluff-and-crunch at its core because you specifically argue that starting from fluff gives you bad crunch, while starting from crunch gives you good crunch and can fudge the fluff. I'm arguing that crunch and fluff are two things that you need to get right, regardless of which one you start with.

Crunch and fluff as commonly used are not actually different from each other at all.

Here is the big secret of mathematics: numbers all represent ideas. If you walk into an amusement arcade and see on the wall a sign that says blue plastic tokens are worth 5 dowactoos and the yellow ones are worth 25 dowactoos, then you know a yellow token is worth 5 blue ones, even if you have no idea how to earn the tokens or what dowactoos are.

All mathematics really does is express and explore the abstract relationships between the ideas represented by numbers. So a mathematical formula is just a very compact way to communicate relationships between ideas.

So, "crunch" communicates ideas and relationships between them in a compact and sometimes abstract manner. "Fluff" also communicates ideas and relationships between them, in a verbose and still sometimes abstract manner. They are both ideas, just in different packaging, and it's disingenuous to say that a game "starts with fluff" or "starts with crunch". It starts with ideas.

There is, of course, bad crunch and bad fluff, and in both cases they are ideas so disparate that the effort it takes to tie them together on the part of the GM or the player isn't worth the payback. Rolling dice six times and consulting twelve tables to adjudicate a single sword swing, for example, or trying to define "lawful good" in such a way that the game doesn't become an exercise in "Paladin Says".

There is also unnecessary crunch and unnecessary fluff. The Dragon article full of new star warlock powers is unnecessary crunch. You can ignore it and it won't affect your game much, if at all. The flavor text for the new star warlock powers is unnecessary fluff. You can ignore it and it won't affect those powers much, if at all.

There is, however, a practical difference between crunch and fluff. People are much more apt at filling a perceived gap in fluff than they are a perceived gap in crunch. Just look at the scores of improv actors compared to the dismal showing on the improv math circuit. "What improv math circuit?" you may ask. Exactly. For this reason, a game with a lot of crunch and minimal fluff is preferable to a game with a lot of fluff and minimal crunch.

 

[GlaziusF]

By the way in my original post, I included hit point issues from 3E and 4E so as not to appear as if I was bashing one edition of the game over the other - I did not want some one to grab hold of them and start an edition war.

I focused on 4E specifically because its recovery mechanic is so drastically different from 3E. In 3E I agree the waters are a lot muddier with respect to what hit points actually represent. But in 4E there's less wiggle room, explcitly because:

Telling my I need to admit to the need to come up with a different story when my character is 1hp from being dead (that is 1hp from his negative bloodied value) was a little trite by the way. Perhaps you need to understand where a poster is coming from first before posting such comments.

Yes, 1 HP from negative bloodied a PC can roll a natural 20 on a death save and get back up. And if the PC has three more healing surges it can be running around and bodychecking orcs into the undergrowth in 5 minutes, like nothing ever happened. This is something that can and probably will happen according to the extant mechanics.

You have two options: either you don't accept that that much recovery can occur in that little time, or you don't accept that being 1 HP away from negative bloodied actually represents a fundamental injury that the PC cannot recover from in 5 minutes. As I understand things, you have chosen option 1 and I have chosen option 2, and the difference between option 1 and option 2 is that option 1 requires you to also not accept the rules.

I am wondering, what's so bad about option 2?

 

[Fenes]

One point that wasn't mentioned so far: Mechanics influence fluff not just during the design phase, but also or even more so during the "Life" of a game. You can see that most clearly in MMOGs, but the PnP games are not too far behind.
No matter the mechanics present, the players tend to pick what combo of gear, powers and tactics works "best", which becomes the standard, and sets the flavor. In MMOGs, that's the "tank holds aggro, healer heals, DPS does damage and CC holds the monsters at bay while we kill them one by one" mantra. Usually complemented with specific builds. Anyone who wants to try something different is fighting an uphill battle, and generally won't have many takers when building a group.
In PnP games, that's usually not that much the case in individual and house ruled games, where people fiddle until they got the flavor they want, but in RAW games (cons, torunaments, living whatever) it's whatever works best according to the optimising boards.
So, mechanics generate their own flavor, even if the designers wanted something else - especially if there are not many "best" variations for character or party builds. If magic trumps swords for dealing damage, or vice versa, then that's what will be used by most, and the game will be flavored accordingly.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

There is, however, a practical difference between crunch and fluff. People are much more apt at filling a perceived gap in fluff than they are a perceived gap in crunch. Just look at the scores of improv actors compared to the dismal showing on the improv math circuit. "What improv math circuit?" you may ask. Exactly. For this reason, a game with a lot of crunch and minimal fluff is preferable to a game with a lot of fluff and minimal crunch.

I loled!

So, mechanics generate their own flavor, even if the designers wanted something else - especially if there are not many "best" variations for character or party builds. If magic trumps swords for dealing damage, or vice versa, then that's what will be used by most, and the game will be flavored accordingly.

Another example might be magic items rules - if you have ideas like "wealth by level" or "expected magical items" and "treasure per monster", you get a world with a lot of magical items. The rules don't seem to be based on any particular flavor concept (why does a CR 10 Giant have to carry more treasure then a CR 6 giant?), but it creates a world where a lot of magical items are lying around.

Sometimes it can be helpful to decouple fluff and crunch more strongly. Treasure Parcels don't imply that certain monsters carry around lot of stuff. It only implies what kind of treasure characters of a given level have, but the rules don't tell us where they will have gotten it from - loot? Gifts? Rewards?

Another example might be spells as found in the system. Every Cleric or Wizard is aware of the name of his spells and what they does exactly. This creates a world where magic is not "improvised" on the fly. Moreover, the fact that each of them are put into very discrete "slots" (instead of using a psi or mana point system, or a drain mechanic) probably means that characters in-game know exactly how powerful they are to each other. They can compare the number of spells they can cast, and possibly they are even aware of the levels of the respective spells. (A lot of experimenting among magicians might be able to discern the "slot per levels" and "extra spells by ability score" rules!)

Martial Encounter/Dailies are at a certain "tipping point" - you can interpret them literally (making martial powers very magic in feeling), or you can interpret them as metagame tools of players - meaning that characters don't have to be aware of these specific powers.
Of course, we use the "metagame" approach usually only for martial characters (if at all), but it might be interesting to consider using them for spellcasters, too!

 

[pemerton]

BTW, the quote The Little Raven was thinking about was the one in the first couple of pages where Gygax is saying that AD&D combat is not intended to be a simulation of historical combat -- that's it. Not "AD&D isn't intended to be a simulation" -- especially since it very obviously was given the content of the DMG.

Except for the saving throw rules, which make it clear that they aren't intended to be a simulations - using terminology that didn't exist when the 1st ed DMG was written, they're described as a fortune-in-the-middle mechanic.

Arguably, hit points are the same - 8 points of damage from a sword is sometimes a devastating blow (eg vs a kobold) and sometimes a mere threat that requires avoiding (eg vs an otherwise uninjured high-level PC or NPC) and sometimes a non-fatal hacking away of a chunk of flesh (eg vs a giant slug or a gelatinous cube). The mechanics don't simulate anything - rather, they set up the parameters within which the ingame events are narrated. (Compare this to a game like RM or RQ, in which 8 hits of damage always means the same thing, whichever target it is delivered to and however many hit points they started with and have remaining.)

Describe them in whatever way makes the most sense to you at the time.

Just like the 1st ed DMG says to do with saving throws and hit points!

Of course D&D 4e is very different from 1st ed AD&D. But the notion that D&D has always and only ever had simulationist mechanics is nonsense - this is purely an artifact of 3E. It was the non-simulationist character of these central AD&D mechanics that was one factor in driving people to games like RQ and RM, and which prompted simulationist alternatives within the D&D framework like vitality/wound points (which did not originate with Star Wars RPG but rather, as far as I know, with Roger Musson in an early White Dwarf article called "How to Lose Hit Points and Survive").

 

[pemerton]

I am wondering, what's so bad about option 2?

I just wanted to say that I've enjoyed you series of posts about hit points - sensible points well expressed.

 

[rounser]

For this reason, a game with a lot of crunch and minimal fluff is preferable to a game with a lot of fluff and minimal crunch.

If this were the case, the D&D IP would be worth little, d20 Modern would still be in print and a success, and the RPGs with the most elegant rules would draw the most players.

None of that is the case. What you've said there is the kind of academic game designer thinking that has got us into this mess. It also betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes D&D tick, IMO.

 

[pemerton]

What you've said there is the kind of academic game designer thinking that has got us into this mess.

What mess? And who is in it?