Holy Bovine
First Post
Wow. That is...really cool. Any source books (i.e non-RPG) on that off the top of your head? I recognize the name Orpheus but only because it was in a Sandman comic years ago.
D&D 4E 4e and reality
Wow. That is...really cool. Any source books (i.e non-RPG) on that off the top of your head? I recognize the name Orpheus but only because it was in a Sandman comic years ago.
Saeviomagy
Adventurer
When I say "simulationism" I mean what Ron Edwards calls "purist for system" simulationism. Paradigms are Rolemaster, Runequest and Classic Traveller. The idea is that the game mechanics are a model of the causal processes of the gameworld. This is the logic that gives us the 3E grapple rules. It is also the logic that can't cope with powers like "Come and Get It".
When I say "playability" I mean reasonably low search-and-handling time. A notorious difficulty with purist-for-system simulation is that it increases search-and-handling time ("rules bloat", "Chartmaster" and similar pejoratives are often used).
My personal view is that 4e is a gamist/narrativist hybrid (not the first - Ron Edwards points to Marvel Super Heroes and Tunnels and Trolls as early examples of the genre). It therefore has some lurking incoherence - for example, the idea of treasure as a reward for overcoming encounters is gamist, but the idea of guaranteed treasure based on wish lists as a de facto component of the character build mechanics is more narrativist. My suspicion is that each table drifts to one or the other approaches in actual play.
An example of a lurking incoherence that is perhaps less easily drifted in either direction is skill challenges. Approached in a more-or-less narrativist fashion, my experience is they work well (I draw on the Hero Wars/Quest, Maelstrom Storytelling, Burning Wheel and Dying Earth rulebooks to help me design and adjudicate them). From what people post on these forums, they work less well for gamists, as there is often not enough constraint on skill selection to pose a genuine challenge for the players (this is often parodied as "you just use your best skill").
My own feeling is that this sort of response to the game is a result of approaching it with (purist for system) simulationist priorities. From the narrativist point of view, the case-by-case descriptions are a strength - they let the players take control of a fairly abstract toolset and tell the stories with their PCs that they want to tell. And from the gamist point of view, as you go on to say in your post, this isn't an issue that undermines the practicalities of play.
I want to add that the above paragraph is not a criticism at all, just an attempt at diagnosis. If I had simulationist priorities - that is, if I wanted the play of the game to directly and without need for active effort on my part to lead me into an exploration and imaginary experience of the gameworld - then I wouldn't play 4e. Because, as you say, the need for the players to be active in their descriptions undermines this possibility.
But I don't agree that this devalues the story. There are other, non-simulationist ways of valuing story -for example, by actively creating it (rather than discovering it simply by applying the rules). And this is what the 4e mechanics tend to facilitate.
eamon
Explorer
Exactly - which is why the game should be run as makes sense and not as the rules say.
Unfortunately, this isn't true at all. The rules are presented as more sacrosant in 4e. When various conditions don't make sense you're encouraged to follow the rules not common sense. When in previous editions it was considered normal that odd "powers" might not work as expected (say, trip on a gelatinous cube) or at all, now players are encouraged to feel entitled for their powers to work as written.
I'd put it the opposite way around: It is IMHO not a great idea to toss in new fluff for reasons of 'rules-objectivity' but that has to do with the fact that when the fluff is consistently re-written than CAN and usually DOES have implications for believability and fun.
Wherever the problem comes from, it's 4e that I'm playing and want to fix. As long as the idea that rules have primacy over fluff is held valid, this nonsense will stay.
eamon
Explorer
But by not even trying, 4e fails at a much more noticeable level. We don't need perfection - we just need reasonable consistency and believability.
Majoru Oakheart
Adventurer
I'll explain where it came from. In my old combination 1e/2e game, rules changed every couple of seconds based on DM whim. We were playing 6 or 7 D&D games at the same time with 6 or 7 DMs. We'd vote each week to see what game we'd play. Often playing 2 or 3 different games each session.
What that experience told me is that "common sense" isn't nearly as common as we'd like to think. One DM thought that if you could grab someone then they'd be completely unable to attack until they could get out. He felt the best rule to simulate this was the person with the highest strength won. This meant that anyone with an 18 strength pretty much could say "I grab him" and disable any enemy. It was better than attacking enemies by far. Since he would let someone instantly slay anyone being held. After all, you could just cut their necks. Seemed to be common sense to him.
That's just one example, but each game was filled with interesting rules like that as each DM's interpretation of what was realistic ran wild creating house rules. It was nearly impossible to keep track of them all since they were all just verbal rules that the DM expected everyone to remember...after all, they were all common sense anyways. It lets to many occasions where you'd go to grab someone expecting to succeed without a roll and you'd realize after you said it, that this was the DM that felt grabbing people was about positioning and required people make Dex checks or fall flat on their faces while you were playing your 18 Str, 6 Dex fighter. The DM never let you take it back, of course. After all, you can't say you are going to do something and then take it back simply because you are going to fail. Your character didn't know that.
After the 20th or 30th character you lose simply because of a difference in what you considered common sense or realistic and what your DM thought, you get frustrated and you begin to say "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if I knew what worked and what didn't in advance and I could choose what I was going to do with a good chance that I succeed?"
Especially considering how many arguments broke out at our tables regarding what was realistic. You know how many times I had to listen to "There's no way you could accomplish that, it's completely unrealistic!"/"I don't know what you are talking about. I can do that in real life easily. Here, I'll get up and show you how I'd do that" arguments? Too many to count. "I can jump 20 feet no problem", "If I was strong enough I could pick up a house, it doesn't matter how big it is, just how strong I am", "Fire doesn't move at that speed, there should be more than enough time to get out of the house before we are on fire", "I should be able to cast a spell even if I'm tied up, my HANDS are free", "It's magical fire, of course it can burn underwater!", "An entire cavern falling on someone's head should kill them instantly, I don't care HOW many hitpoints they have", and so on and so forth.
And 3e came out and promised that would change. Instead of each DM making up their own rules, there would be a standard set of rules that all DMs would use. And, especially in our group, we were really happy to finally have a reference point and rules that wouldn't change. Plus, it gave us reason to say no to people. If there was a feat that said you could do something...then obviously you can't do it without the feat. It wouldn't be fair to the people who spent a feat on it.
It also started encouraging game balance. In our old games, we considered game balance...but it was a losing battle. For every kit you banned because it was way too powerful, there were 10 more that were just as bad. But even the worst balanced options in 3e were WAY more balanced than most of the stuff in 2e. The designers posted saying that they'd never balance a role playing disadvantage with a combat advantage. They encouraged the concept of absolute game balance. If a fighter can do 20 damage with a sword, the wizard shouldn't be doing instant death just because he cast a spell. I mean, it makes sense "realistically" that a wizard could just turn someone to stone. But was that fair to the player of the fighter simply because he likes the visual of his character using a sword?
And as soon as you start to go down that road, it begins to make more sense to get rid of "realism" to replace it with balance. You really can't have both. Realism encourages imbalance by its very nature.
This is true and it is exactly how rules should work. Consistency is one of the best aspects about 4E and creatures lacking huge lists of immunities is equally as good. Where you want a creature to be resistant to something, just give it a power and that's really all that has to be done. I much prefer the consistency in how conditions in 4E function.
In general, most things should actually work on absolutely everything and exceptions should be exceptions - not the norm. Otherwise mechanical balance heavily breaks down and you might as well not bother with certain conditions (like prone) if a huge chunk of everything is immune to it.
[URL="http://www.enworld.org/forum/members/majoru-oakheart.html" said:
I agree, the best thing about 4E is how consistent the game is. I don't need to rewrite the game to handle different things constantly. A monster that is immune to something like forced movement is unique and special, not something the PCs run into every 5 seconds.
Plane Sailing
Astral Admin - Mwahahaha!
I've often seen this kind of statement, but it doesn't really make any sense - it seems to be saying that because there is a fantasy world, you shouldn't care about believability.
Believability at one level includes that on earth gravity works by default, that people can't walk through walls and so on. Fantasy allows for circumstances to bypass the standard believability rules.
Agreed that striving for reality at all times is a bit fruitless, but that is true whether you are playing D&D or playing a spy game or a WW2 game which attempts to be soundly based in reality.
The issue is that a gaming group needs to find a level of believability which they are comfortable with.
(for myself, I find that D&D up to 3.5e is the limit of believability for me. 4e stretches things too far, and as a result I don't play or run it. But that's just me).
Cheers
eamon
Explorer
It is and I agree! It's just that I don't want to sacrifice fluff consistency for rules consistency. I like the limited amount of arbitrary workaround abilities (i.e. why does this thing have truesight again?). But I don't like it when the fluff becomes inconsistent - and is actively suggested to be OK to be made inconsistent ("just think of some explanation") - at the cost of what would have been a rather minor immunity.
How often is it important to grab a swarm? How often is it important to trip an ooze? There's nothing wrong with banning those occurences by means of immunities - or when you forget to, to suggest the rules should be ignored rather than the fluff in odd cases.
Immunities and other wholesale changes are particularly bad when they pervade the system for little reason (*ahem* solo's...). When used in moderation to support the description and narrative, they're fine.
You don't need 3e's approach of deriving as much as possible from first principles to have consistency. You can have a simple game and a believable game. That's what we can aim for - we don't need to willfully discard any believability just because we can't achieve perfect believability, especially since there's so little to be gained and so much to lose by giving it up.
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