I'm really not a fan of Moorcock, so I didn't think about him. But on reflection I'd have to say that Moorcock is largely outside my personal preferences or even my personal definition of Sword and Sorcery. I'm more inclined towards "Swords Against Wizardry" (as a concept as well as a title), where he's more Sword/Sorcery, in that there's way too much Sorcery in the Sword.
Well seeing as how Moorcock is a known influence on D&D since 1e... and many of his works are widely regarded as sword and sorcery... I don't know if constructing your own definition of s&s and then claiming D&D doesn't model s&s well because of the magic items, makes sense.
Well seeing as how Moorcock is a known influence on D&D since 1e... and many of his works are widely regarded as sword and sorcery... I don't know if constructing your own definition of s&s and then claiming D&D doesn't model s&s well because of the magic items, makes sense.
Since he's the only one I hate and the only one with those kind of items, I'm prepared to call him an outlier. Leiber and Howard and their imitators (a) are far more common; and (b) have retained far more popularity. People who didn't play 1e have actually read them and enjoyed it.
It's not my fault that the creators of D&D based so much of their game on literary outliers like Moorcock and Vance who were already unpopular when I started playing in the late '80s and have only gotten less popular since.
People coming into the game now tend to find Moorcockian and Vancian tropes extremely off-putting, IME. I sympathize, because I actually read some of those books back in the say and I still found it off-putting in the game. Obviously, YMMV, but I find the faster D&D runs away from Moorcock and Vance, the more fun it is and the easier it is to get new players to buy into the game logic (to finally bring this aside somewhere close to back on topic).
Since he's the only one I hate and the only one with those kind of items, I'm prepared to call him an outlier. Leiber and Howard and their imitators (a) are far more common; and (b) have retained far more popularity. People who didn't play 1e have actually read them and enjoyed it.
It's not my fault that the creators of D&D based so much of their game on literary outliers like Moorcock and Vance who were already unpopular when I started playing in the late '80s and have only gotten less popular since.
People coming into the game now tend to find Moorcockian and Vancian tropes extremely off-putting, IME. I sympathize, because I actually read some of those books back in the say and I still found it off-putting in the game. Obviously, YMMV, but I find the faster D&D runs away from Moorcock and Vance, the more fun it is and the easier it is to get new players to buy into the game logic (to finally bring this aside somewhere close to back on topic).
Say What???? ... Moorcock was unpopular in the 80's?? Vance I'll agree with... but you may be letting your own biases color your perceptions when it comes to Moorcock. But whatever man... if you say so.
Also, what Moorcockian "tropes", specifically, were/are so unpopular? If we are speaking of powerful magical weapons... well then I'd argue that more new gamers love getting powerful magic items... as opposed to Conan's grab up the closest rusty sword then toss it method. But YMMV of course.
Martial Power, Eternal Defender, and Horizon Walker. Just two examples pulled from the top of my head.
Other examples that are more 'heroic' tier:
You can make any broken object work for a day after only ten minutes of work.
You can predict the weather with 100% accuracy in a 50 mile radius.
You can ward a campsite against intruders, and discriminate against friend and foe in doing so.
You can protect your friends against extreme temperatures.
You can gain concealment in the open.
Again, this is stuff that's the perview of spells and magic... but... it's also allowed with the martial power source.
Martial power is not 'what normal people can do'. Not even at level 1.
[MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]:
I don't disagree... but at the same time, at level 1 the game assumes a level of confidence that is needed to be a hero.
So, at level 1, you're grabbing swarms of rats... at level 11, you're grabbing swarms of ratkings... at level 21, you're grabbing swarms of demonfire ratkings, and at level 30 you're grabbing Rodentamortipyre, the Immortal Ratking Demon Lord and his Host of Verminous Flame.
The progression isn't from 'suck' to 'competant' it's from 'competant' to 'megaheroic.'
The idea is never to say 'No, that's stupid' when a character wants to do something superheroic... the idea is to say 'Yes, make some rolls.' Whether he describes how he does it before or after the roll is irrelevant.
Of course, you could just say 'No, that's stupid.' But your player of a martial character is right and justified if he complains you never say that to the wizard when he tries to get creative within the rules. 'But you let him use scorching burst to light a torch!' 'He's a wizard, he does magic. It's what they do.'
If you let your paladins be Joan of Arc, or Charlemagne, and you let your wizards be Merlin or Gandalf or Circe, and you let your druids be the Morrigan... then you better let your fighters be Perseus or Leonidas or Achilles or Beowulf or Izanazi or Batman.
It really isn't, for example in a solo swarm or similar. Being useless for one or two monsters if okay, being useless in an entire encounter is a different thing.
Believe me, I can make challenging encounters in 4E and I feel I don't need to make a single character useless in any manner.
I guess ALL THE BUILDS IN THE GAME are worthless then. Obviously there is a serious flaw with this logic...
We're talking about situation X, which is what character Y does as their primary thing and so what happens is that character Y is useless in situation X. That's the entire point. Most builds in the game are not specific, but if you say, make a creature immune to marking then the fighter needs a way around that. If it just cannot be marked then it's not an interesting encounter - that's boring lazy design and should be avoided at all cost.
Instead the fighter should have to be in the area the creature guards, attack its master to draw the attention, suffer a more enraged creature's attacks (Heroslayer Hydra) or something else. Something interesting than saying "No that just doesn't work". One is interesting and fun, the other is boring and doesn't add to the encounter at all.
You're entirely correct, 4e has cut way back on the "it is immune to X just because we think that makes sense" thing.
At the games detriment as well. The sheer number and variety of creatures outright immune to poison for example. This doesn't mean I can't understand things like undead and many elementals being immune to poison, but it's not an interesting mechanic. MM3 showed me you could make something that should be immune, resistant to X and make a better, deeper and more interesting mechanic.
Would I run a Volcanic Dragon with 15 fire resistance (snore) or the same dragon with its current triggered power that deals its aura damage when hit by a fire attack? One of these mechanics is completely boring, the other makes a battle more exciting, interesting and highlights tactical choice. I know what I go with every time!
They're not just annoying badwrongfun either, there is actually a good reason to have them.
I never said there isn't a good reason to have them from a logical point of view: But I do agree from a game and fun point of view there is a fantastic reason not to have them. I would far prefer the concept that a grabbed swarm deals extra damage, has access to another power or does something interesting.
Saying "lawl it's immune" is boring.
They allow different monsters to be more unique and interesting.
I 100%, absolutely, completely and utterly disagree. I disagree so vehemently with this statement it's impossible to even give you the degree of magnitude as to how much I do.
Volcanic Dragons triggered action? Interesting.
Immunity to Fire? Totally boring.
Earthquake Dragons mark and knock prone aura? Interesting.
Immunity to Forced movement? Totally boring - but again it's so rare that in the odd encounter it's quite interesting.
On the other hand, sometimes I am okay with immunities like swarms.
Immunity to Forced movement from melee/ranged attacks = Interesting BECAUSE they are still vulnerable to bursts and blasts. It rewards tactical choices.
Immunity to Grab over a group of creatures? Absolutely boring and adds utterly nothing to the game. Where is the choice? Where is this adding to the tactical aspect of the encounter? All it does is start adding exception based design into the game for entire groups of monsters - leading to the same absurd problems we had with creatures like undead being immune to crits/sneak attacks and similar.
It is much more interesting if different monsters have different quirks. So big deal if swarms (a very rare monster type) can't usually be grabbed? It isn't even a blanket proscription.
Instead powers or similar that make some swarms interact with grabs are more interesting. They don't straight up make anything useless, but they do make it a tactical choice without making an entirely characters build useless.
The only time I agree with making something immune or immensely resistant is if it adds to the game. Solos being immune or very resistant to daze, dominate and stun for example. Lockdowns where it does nothing all combat makes it a boring, uninteresting encounter and a very lame "flop" when your BBEG doesn't inflict a single point of damage on the party.
Why does a swarm need to be immune to being grabbed to make a more interesting encounter. That's what you need to sell me on.
There is already a rule that you can't grab anything more than one size category larger than yourself anyway for instance, so this is hardly a big concern in that specific case.
Powers can let you grab creatures that are bigger than yourself - this is how the brawler fighter works.
It isn't really clear whether a phasing creature can or cannot simply escape a grab, but there's no reason to suppose it can since it actually can't move through your space either IIRC.
This isn't correct, a phasing creature can move through anything and that includes other creatures (so it can move through enemies spaces). Phasing is a very handy quality.
My point is that the basic default ways things work ARE the best. That doesn't mean you have to slavishly adhere to them every single minute.
That is 100% correct and I understand people who make things immune. My DMing style is absolutely different, if I make something immune I think "Can I instead make that a fun, interesting part of the encounter and tactically relevant?".
I've been inspired by MM3 creatures. Creatures like the Earthquake Dragon and the Volcanic Dragon caught my imagination. What do you honestly believe would be more fun to fight, the current earthquake dragon or "Just make him blanket immune to forced movement". I honestly cannot fathom the blanket immunity creature being anywhere near as fun, interesting and great an encounter. Now whenever I make a monster, an encounter or similar I just think "I hate immunities, how can I make something interesting?".
Of course I get a bit stuck, I don't really know how to make poison immunity feel interesting for undead for example. That is one thing I might in the end just let bygones by bygones. But I'll never allow that to creep into everything else. I'll never make oozes immune to prone (unless I can make it interesting), I'll never just decide to make a creature immune to grab (unless I can make it interesting) and so on. Like the groans and general eye rolling that occur whenever someone uses a poison power - just due to how prevalent the immunity is they're just about worthless.
So for instance the phasing creature can be grabbed and held because well you "can't phase through flesh"
In every single case, I fail to see how making a characters abilities useless is "fun". Unless it has immensely good justification, like Ogremochs immunity to forced movement or in the tomb of horrors (MAJOR SPOILER)
Acererak being immune to prone so that he can keep mobile and away from the PCs in his pillared hall environment
I can see the point. Blanket immunity on an entire group of creatures - however rare you want to argue they are - just doesn't seem to be adding to "fun". Solos I can see being exceptional and deserving of exceptional immunities to PCs powers. Mooks? Only if it is very rare and really well justified. Even so, immunity is boring. A new interesting way of interacting with the combat (Star of Ulban, dominating whoever dominates it or the Earthquake Dragons aura against forced movement) is far better - and easily more fun from my experience.
It isn't always the most fun for things to work like X just because X is RAW every single time.
I absolutely disagree immunities make anything more fun.
I absolutely believe that interesting power interactions - like the Earthquake dragon are a far superior model. I would personally give the swarm a power that interacted with being grabbed - not making it impossible but putting a twist on it.
It is MORE FUN if once in a while you run into "oops! Oh Crom, now what do I do!" here and there.
It's fun to be absolutely useless and contribute nothing to an hour long combat?
That's news to me.
Personally I think a forced movement based character fighting an earthquake dragon is going to have a more challenging, interesting and fun time, than that same character whose entire thing is useless against a tembo (immune to forced movement - albeit a solo). That's just the way I like to run games more now though. Less immunities in general and more interactions. Don't make something plain useless, put a spin on it that makes it detrimental without being useless or just not working. In no way am I saying this is wrong to do or "Badwrongfun", but I am vehemently against the idea because from a design point 4E gives far more options to make this interesting.
My view is that 4E is "high-concept" simulationism. "You play a Hero in a land filled with darkness and monsters; as a Hero, how will you react?" (Specifically, a priority placed on System + Situation.)
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To the OP:
Changing rules on the fly without prior warning can be tricky. Whatever justification behind the change, it sounds like the DM broke the social contract. One common way of handling house-ruling on the fly is "Okay, this time you can do it, but in the future be forewarned."
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My own view on the "realism / verisimilitude / believability" issue in 4E is that it's not really about any of those things. To use Forge terms, it's about Exploration; 4E is light on Colour. All that means (assuming I'm using the jargon correctly) is that the details of the imagined content doesn't have much of an effect on how the game plays out.
I'm going to use some examples from some games I played at a Con on the weekend.
1. Freemarket.
(I should say up-front that I jumped into the middle of an ongoing game when one of the other players had to go to an artist signing, so I could have been missing a lot. I did not create a PC. It's also a con game and things are different there. This shouldn't be seen as a critique of Freemarket as a game, only my experience in a conflict or two.)
Freemarket is a game set on a space station orbiting Saturn in the not-too-distant future (2050-2100 or so I'd guess). Technology has advanced to the point that material goods aren't important; even death isn't a big deal, since you come back from the vats. Memories are important; getting long-term memories carry some weight (I didn't really see this in play; con game).
Basically a post-scarcity economy. The real currency of the station (and the game) is social capital, called "Flow".
In our game, one PC had a run-in with the disco-loving Dr. Magnetic. The good Doctor was setting up a live disco show and we wanted to get into the action.
I decided that my PC hated disco (since I like disco in real life). We decided to make and release a viral video that would show how "disco is dead" and anyone who likes disco is a loser.
Some things jumped out at me during the conflict. First of all, the things that we had our characters doing didn't really matter. What mattered were the numbers on the character sheet. The actual actions of our characters in the fictional setting didn't have any impact on the outcome of the conflict.
Second of all, was disco cool on the station at the time or not? That didn't matter either. Once again, the fictional situation on the setting didn't play into the conflict. It's possible that disco was already considered lame; no effect on how things turned out. On the other hand, everyone could have been into disco; once again, no effect on how the conflict played out.
When the fictional situation doesn't have any bearing on the rest of the game (in Freemarket, how you gain or lose social capital - Flow), you start to ignore it. It doesn't carry any weight so it gets cast aside.
2. Lacuna pt 2.
Interestingly enough, made by Jared Sorensen, one of the co-creators of Freemarket.
The fiction in this game was much more apparent. I don't want to say what happened in the game ("No one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to experience it for yourself"), but there was a lot more focus on the fictional situation.
The main mechanics that players deal with - heart rate - doesn't have much to do with the details of your action. The dice you roll aren't really connected. However, when you roll the dice is tightly linked to the fiction; the outcome of the roll changes the fiction; and I believe there are some non-transparent mechanics on the DM's side that are based on fictional causes.
Hmm, what I wrote is vague and lame. I would suggest playing Lacuna for yourself to see how it works, and try not to get frustrated with it. It's a very interesting game.
By Ron Edwards. Probably my favourite game. You play a sorcerer, a guy who summons demons. What's interesting about this game, in terms of this discussion, is how the rules are set and how colour influences those rules.
We spent a few hours coming up with a setting. A steampunk world, where sorcerers are mad scientists and explorers and revolutionaries. Based on this we came up with colour-based descriptions for the rules mechanics.
Humanity was "practical empathy". It might be nice to give a starving orphan a hug and listen to his problems; what's better, though, is to give him a job or a plate of meat and potatoes.
That meant that demons and sorcery were transgressions of that. We came up with specific details for the sorcery mechanics depending on the sorcerous tradition.
What that means is that you can't just say, "I Punish my demon" (Punish being a game mechanic); you have to say how you Punish. We defined Punish as being some kind of physical attack, whether it's burning pamphlets and books, taking the reactor out of your nuclear submarine, or just physically beating your beast/relic that you found on the Plateau of Leng.
Punish is a poor example because there is no application of the dice mechanics. So let's look at combat.
One of the PCs, Thomas Crappen (played by a 10-12 year old boy; his first experience with tabletop RPGs) had, as his demon, a steampunk cigar cutter that hungered for blood. Events had turned out that he ended up fighting one of his fellow chimney sweeps, a lad named "Fast" Freddy.
Fast Freddy's first action was to grab Thomas. Thomas' action was to get Mr. Cutter (the cigar cutter demon) out of his pocket and fling him into Thomas' face. Mr. Cutter's action was to start chomping away at Freddy.
What's interesting here is that, while the mechanics don't change, the details of the actions declared have a lot of relevance. It's not like you can say, "I roll my Stamina" and just deal damage. We wouldn't know what that damage means in the fiction. Is he hurt? Is he grabbed? Or what? What's more, we don't even know if you should be rolling Stamina, Will, or Cover - since all stats can be rolled for physical actions!
What we have to do is look at the fictional situation and determine how we are going to apply the mechanics. And the mechanics - how the dice turn out - need to look at the fictional situation, the description of the actions, so we can determine how to apply success and/or failure.
In this case, Freddy was successful in grabbing Thomas; this meant that Thomas could abort his action to try to slip out of Freddy's grasp and leave Mr. Cutter in his pocket (invalidating Mr. Cutter's action!), or he could suck it up and still try to get his action off. Thomas decided to continue with his action; Freddy had his "victory dice" over Thomas applied to his defence roll; Thomas still succeeded, and added his level of victory to Mr. Cutter's roll.
Mr. Cutter then chomped on Freddy and bit off one of his hands.
(One of the reasons Sorcerer is cool is that PCs don't have control over their demons. Mr. Cutter continued to chomp on Freddy, sating himself on Freddy's blood, while Thomas tried to disguise himself so the coppers banging on the door wouldn't recognize him. This required a Humanity check.)
At each decision/conflict point we are applying the same mechanics - there's no house ruling here - but the specifics of the fiction really matter in how things turn out. We can't avoid talking about the fiction when we roll dice. We can't just look at the numbers on the character sheet. We need to engage with the fiction.
... Moorcock was unpopular in the 80's?? Vance I'll agree with... but you may be letting your own biases color your perceptions when it comes to Moorcock. But whatever man... if you say so.
