The game doesn't "stop" when that's going on. That's part of the game. Some of the best times I have had playing RPGs were when the other players and I were strategizing about how to overcome challenges.
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NOW LIVE! Into the Woods--new character species, eerie monsters, and haunting villains to populate the woodlands of your D&D games.
This mentality needs to die
- Thread starter WarlockLord
- Start date
I don't think that Rob was envisioning a situation like this, where the game stops while people debate which abilities they can actually use to overcome an obstacle. That's as bad as a newbie with a level 20 wizard in earlier editions.
If "3E's spellcasting characters" were the fun-model they were following, then it stands to reason that the end product would be PCs that play very much like older-edition wizards/sorcerers, i.e. their power selection/"spell list" is essentially their interface with the world. Beyond shooting off your powers to resolve a given situation, the only other mechanical options they gave us are: magic items (which are now just a subset of your power deck), and skill checks (which involve either a very vanilla d20 roll on a chart for a few set tasks; or else a process of free-associating a particular function out of the broadly defined skills, "Mother May I" negotiation with the DM, and page 42...). Rituals only count if we restrict the "obstacle" to something with a longer time frame, and in any case don't really change the "spellbook" nature of 4e PC abilities (i.e. if you know you have 5+ minutes to solve the problem, you go from flipping through your power deck to flipping through your list of known rituals).
I'd say this is a pretty unfair characterization. A generalized one that makes a lot of assumptions about one's DM as well. I think you'll find that most games do not involve any kind of Mother May I.
Jay
How is letting a power do something it can't do considered creative?
fuzzlewump
Explorer
I believe he's talking about the player's creativity, not the DM's creativity. Beyond that, not everyone is going to agree on what a power can and cannot do. In this case, I agree that Darkfire cannot be used to melt ice.
Always saying "yes" is just as bad as always saying "no" in my mind.
Hussar
Legend
Sorry if it wasn't clear. That was 3 hours in my campaign, not in the video.
The players in the game I play in (not DM) spent 3 hours doing four, maybe five rounds of combat.
Sigh.
filthgrinder
First Post
IF you got to the youtube channel, they have the first couple of episodes up with DM commentary. I think watching those and listening to Chris talk about the game and the playing circumstances really sheds a lot of light on the game, and some of the issues brought up in this thread.
First, he planned out an adventure 2 weeks in advance, when he was asked to scrap it by the marketing team and set it in Undermountain, the locale of the new D&D encounters program. So he had to rewrite the entire adventure on the plane ride and in his hotel room the day before. He also had to fly down to CA, so he could only bring a certain amount of stuff. They were playing in a weird area above a club, that was leaking with the heavy rains they were having. He specifically chose not to hide portions of the map, since he thought having the whole map out would look better on camera than covering up pieces with paper or other things. He also brought the wet erase map instead of dungeons tiles because it would be easier to travel with and set-up quickly.
I think the commentary tracks are really interesting to give the game a lot of context, and frame the choices that were made.
But people can still nitpick because they aren't playing the way someone else plays so they must be doing it wrong.
First, he planned out an adventure 2 weeks in advance, when he was asked to scrap it by the marketing team and set it in Undermountain, the locale of the new D&D encounters program. So he had to rewrite the entire adventure on the plane ride and in his hotel room the day before. He also had to fly down to CA, so he could only bring a certain amount of stuff. They were playing in a weird area above a club, that was leaking with the heavy rains they were having. He specifically chose not to hide portions of the map, since he thought having the whole map out would look better on camera than covering up pieces with paper or other things. He also brought the wet erase map instead of dungeons tiles because it would be easier to travel with and set-up quickly.
I think the commentary tracks are really interesting to give the game a lot of context, and frame the choices that were made.
But people can still nitpick because they aren't playing the way someone else plays so they must be doing it wrong.
Jack99
Adventurer
Were you guys stoned?
fuzzlewump
Explorer
I second this question.
3 hours sounds like you didn't spend 3 hours fighting, you spent an hour rolling dice and deciding actions and 2 hours on "whoa...dude..I have..like..hands.." Just kidding, but seriously, what was the hold up?
