innerdude
Legend
Okay, I just ran across this quote from Ydars in the "How to make 4e Modules Better" thread:
On the one hand, you have a player basically telling his GM, "I want context. Encounters have meaning by creating context."
And on the other hand, you have one of the designers of 4e who seems to be saying, "Context is meaningless until the moment a PC walks into the room and an encounter starts. There's no reason to try and 'build up' fancy monsters and abilities, and spend precious GM time creating all of these fantastic traits for something that spends a grand total of 20 minutes (or less) in use at the game table."
When it comes down to it, the core issue is the value of GM prep time. The player wants more prep time to contextualize encounters; the GM wants to spend as little time as possible while still providing active, satisfying encounters.
It seems very similar to something I heard in a marketing class once, when the professor quipped, "You can manufacture something cheaply, you manufacture something quickly, and you can manufacture something of high quality--but the catch is, you can ever only do two of the three."
In other words, the two earlier quotes seem to be saying, "You can have high context, character-driven satisfying encounters, you can have truly engaging combat encounters, and you can have very little GM prep time--but you can only ever have two of the three."
Thoughts?
Now here's the thing: how does this sentiment--largely echoed in critiques of WotC's 4e adventure modules in numerous circles--square with the following quote by WotC designer David Noonan? (You can find the quote here.)"I want to see something where I can't see the 'role' the NPC is meant to play; I want to see them written with some integrity and reality. Otherwise they are just sock puppets who are meant to be killed.
I want locations and encounters that are not there 'just to advance the story' but are there instead to make the world seem to live and breath.
Combat is a part of stories and fiction solely there to provide drama, but endless slogs with monsters and NPCs I don't care about have zero drama.
The monsters need to have names, to be foreshadowed and should not just be there to die. It all just makes no sense otherwise."
And I'm wondering what to make of these two seemingly diametrically opposed ideas.[talking about 4e monster design] "We wanted our presentation of monsters to reflect how they’re actually used in D&D gameplay. A typical monster has a lifespan of five rounds. That means it basically does five things, ever, period, the end . . . Too often, we designers want to give our intelligent, high-level monsters a bunch of spell-like abilities—if not a bunch of actual spellcaster levels. Giving a monster detect thoughts or telekinesis, for example, makes us feel like those monsters are magically in the minds of their minions and are making objects float across the room all the time. But they aren’t! Until the moment they interact with the PCs, they’re in a state of stasis. And five rounds later, they’re done."
On the one hand, you have a player basically telling his GM, "I want context. Encounters have meaning by creating context."
And on the other hand, you have one of the designers of 4e who seems to be saying, "Context is meaningless until the moment a PC walks into the room and an encounter starts. There's no reason to try and 'build up' fancy monsters and abilities, and spend precious GM time creating all of these fantastic traits for something that spends a grand total of 20 minutes (or less) in use at the game table."
When it comes down to it, the core issue is the value of GM prep time. The player wants more prep time to contextualize encounters; the GM wants to spend as little time as possible while still providing active, satisfying encounters.
It seems very similar to something I heard in a marketing class once, when the professor quipped, "You can manufacture something cheaply, you manufacture something quickly, and you can manufacture something of high quality--but the catch is, you can ever only do two of the three."
In other words, the two earlier quotes seem to be saying, "You can have high context, character-driven satisfying encounters, you can have truly engaging combat encounters, and you can have very little GM prep time--but you can only ever have two of the three."
Thoughts?