This mentality needs to die

[Mark Chance]

Some more experienced players get trapped in the rules, thinking that the things defined by the rules are the only thing their character can do.

Or, worst of all, roleplayers of any experience get trapped into thinking their options are limited to the words printed on a few cards and a character sheet. Such a constrained range of possibilities is the antithesis of roleplaying gamery.

 

[Pseudopsyche]

The target entry for a Melee Basic Attack is "one creature" as well.

Ah, I sit corrected. I also see that later in the same encounter, we see a player use a power against one of the statues, although without any guidance from the DM.

Nevertheless, I still hypothesize that the DM didn't encourage power use because he saw the statues as objects not creatures, making it less clear how to adjudicate things like forced movement and status effects. That said, even if the at-will powers wouldn't have gained the PCs much, they could have benefitted from using their encounter powers to deal more damage.

 

[bagger245]

All I can say is wow. My experiences were pretty much the polar opposite. Regardless of edition.

IME, new players in a system, the first question they ask is, "I want to do X, how do I do that?" And they get told, roll this die, or spend that whatever. Most people are used to playing games. Games have rules. You don't suddenly start skipping squares in Monopoly because you feel like it - that would be cheating.

And, IME, most people come from that position. The rules of the game define what you can do. Different strokes I guess.

I think its due to coming to rpgs with a boardgame perspective, which I never did. What attracted me to rpgs is that the boundaries are broken. Monopoly confines you to move as much square as the dice shows. In rpgs, I want to travel to the next town, I just do. Now for combat, that is a different issue where codified rules and DM fiat clash for different editions of D&D.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Really? Honestly? When you first started playing RPG's. I mean, at your VERY FIRST SESSION, how much "thinking outside the box" did you do? How much did you go beyond the mechanics?

Assuming that there's an experienced GM, I have found exactly the opposite to be true: New players tend to learn the core mechanics of a game and then really latch onto the concept of "pretend to be your character". The experienced GM can take "I want to do X", translate it into game mechanics, and then tell them how to resolve it.

New players naturally tend towards immersive roleplaying.

Quoted for truth. When I started roleplaying it was all about 'pretending to be the character, and describing what I wanted to do in character'. It has been the same with everyone that I've ever seen introduced to role playing too.

Now, I've not tried introducing anyone new to 4e, but my group of very experienced gamers quickly fell into 'power card paralysis' with 4e. The example I watched in the video seems like the typical "new player wants to do something that seems sensible to him, but DM says 'no' and people get the clear impression that what they can do is down to what is on the cards in front of them".

Cheers

 

[Scribble]

I think that's the point others are trying to make. A new player just tells you what he wants to do. He doesn't know if it's possible, how difficult it is, what the risks are. He just thinks it is something his character would do. Some more experienced players get trapped in the rules, thinking that the things defined by the rules are the only thing their character can do.

I think at this point though it's 6 of one, 1/2 a dozen of the other...

I mean when a new player says "I want to do X" isn't he really just relying on the experienced player's better knowledge of the rules to provide for how X is done?

I wouldn't say he's really making that statement based on the fact that he can do "anything" but rather based on the idea that he doesn't really have a clue WHAT he can do in this game medium (as well as how well it will work.)

When a player becomes more experienced, he looks back to the rules, because he's looking for what's hopefully the most "tried and true" method.

I'd say the same is true in real life as well... There might be a million different ways to say, climb a mountain, but we generally seek the "best" way to go about it.


In my opinion, a good game has rules that cover "most" situations, without becoming overbearing, and a good guidance system to help the DM arbitrate those rare situations that come up outside of the "box" in a mostly fair and consistent manner.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

When a player becomes more experienced, he looks back to the rules, because he's looking for what's hopefully the most "tried and true" method.

I agree, that's why I said "some," not "most" or "all." A good balance can be struck between the tried-and-true method and still trying methods that aren't covered in the rules. For example, when there is no "best" method to deal with a situation you may want to look outside the codified rules.

Specific example:
[sblock]In 1E we were ambushed by a Wolfwere. Most of our weapons proved ineffective against the creature, except for the magic-user's magic staff. And his swings proved relatively ineffective against the creature's defenses. My character tried to help the magic-user by tackling the wolfwere. There weren't very good rules at that point for accomplishing a specific unarmed combat maneuver, but it was worth a shot compared to my fighter's only rules-codified action (i.e. attack).[/sblock]

 

[I'm A Banana]

Hahaha, I think the difference of experiences has basically made my case for me. Some people gravitate to the imagination side (which must have ambiguity), and some people gravitate to the mathematical/rules side (which is better served with the least possible ambiguity).

IMXP, new players latch onto the creative side of the game much quicker than the rules of the game, and the rules of the game, also IMXP, tend to be the factor that drives a lot of "casual people" away, because 900 pages of rules is friggin' intimidating, unless you dork out on that stuff like I'm sure a lot of us here at ENWorld do.

It leads me to believe the more creativity the game wants and encourages (and the more ambiguity it has), the better it will attract new players, who easily latch onto "game of make-believe," but might not be so eager for "game of mathematical chess with story."

But that's just my experience with newbies. And part of that might be because that's how I generally view the game.

Perhaps Chris comes down on the "address" over the "big house" side. It could be that his position as a designer sort of requires it. It's his JOB to help eliminate confusion and make rules easy to understand, it would make sense that he would be more comfortable with a rules-based exclusion than with an ambiguous solution.

 

[tuxgeo]

Re: Who is a good DM . . .

Well, I've seen a lot of praise for Chris Perkins (until this thread!); Kevin Kulp/Piratecat is universally praised by those he's GM'd for, and Mike Mearls sounds like he must be a pretty good GM too.

In reading some of the fairly recent "Confessions . . ." articles by Shelly Mazzanoble in Dragon magazine, I saw her make two references to this sort of thing within WotC itself. First, when she had to do her first DMing, she went straight to James Wyatt for advice (because his name is listed as the author of the DMG), and he replied that there were better DMs within the sound of his voice in the cubicles nearby. Second, she mentioned that she had a New DM (Chris Youngs?), and that was great, but everybody always really wanted to get to play in the (Iomandra?) campaign run by Chris Perkins.

 

[guivre]

Way back when I first played D&D, I was 11 and 2nd edition had just come out. The internet didn't exist, the only people I knew with any interest in D&D were me and my friends, and none of us had ever seen the game played before. We had NO idea what we were doing, we just thought the books looked cool.

I'm pretty sure we got like 95% of the rules completely wrong. The players just created characters using the character creation chapter in the PHB, and from there on out I (the DM) just sort of winged everything/pulled what I thought looked cool out of the books. I think at one point we invented a mechanic to use saving throws as a resolution mechanism in noncombat encounters (e.g. okay...so you're trying to talk this dude into helping you out, and he just failed his save vs. charm, so you succeeded! he's gonna help you).

Err, the Internet definitely existed when 2nd edition came out... it predates D&D. In fact IIRC 2nd edition and the opening of the Internet to commercial entities happened round about the same time. Something that was banned for quite a while.

Regardless, that's the way many people played as kids, and still do as adults, and there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with playing rules heavy either. There's a prevailing attitude that rules light is somehow qualitatively better, it's not.

The explanation for why Dark Fire wouldn't work makes me cringe too, but it's nothing more than a difference in styles... not in quality.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

When I first started playing, I didn't even know what the rules were. Then again, I was, like, 10, and the party was made of Link, Merlin, Aragorn, and some rogue who had a name with "Butts" in it.

Chris probably isn't a bad DM. Can't watch all those videos now, unfortunately. He just made a bad call. We all do it. And it wasn't a bad call because he wouldn't let them use the power, he just gave a bad reason for it. In of itself? Not a big deal.

The issue is what the bad call can become. When the call is "no, look at how specific these mechanics work," the new player is being shut down due to mechanics, and that becomes the focus.

I'm seeing an issue now in a SWSE game I'm in. One player is a jedi consular, but can't think outside the box at all and is always upset that he feels he can't contribute to anything outside of combat, which has me scratching my head, since he probably has the most things he can do outside of combat other then the scoundrel. But the issue is, he's not looking past his mechanics. He doesn't go "Can I try Use the Force to _____?" He says "Well I have Power X, Power Y, and Power Z, and I can't think of what to do with them :I"

Being or feeling caged in by mechanics is terrible, because it limits the very reason tabletop games are awesome - you aren't limited to pre-programmed scenarios, you can jump around on your own thing. In said SWSE game, we found ourselves aboard a ship run by a small time crime lord who used the Force to enslave others and then sell them. When we came across a group of servants wearing collars who came down to check up on the engine room, we decided that they were under mind control and that we'd disarm them and then free them. The GM later told us that planned for them to be just run of the mill enemies, but decided to go with our plan in spite of that. There weren't any mechanics for us to break them free of the mind control other then one or two very specific powers that were "sortas," but he let us give it a try anyways.

If all you're going to do is play strictly by the mechanics and never try doing your own thing, regardless of the edition? Just play a video game.

That's why this thread is such a big thing - the issue wasn't one of creativity, and it wasn't even an issue of them trying to use a power to do something they couldn't - the issue is the reason he gave, which was rule minutia to the goddamn max. I don't think this is an X Edition Only thing, but getting caught in rule minutia and closing the box around is a problem.