[WotC's recent insanity] I think I've Figured It Out

[Neonchameleon]

Are you really serious? Is this really an online phenomenon for adolescents? You may be right, but seeing my step kids online, I find this very difficult to believe. "Roleplaying" of the sort you describe would be the last thing they would do online. To be honest, it's hard for me to picture today's teenagers actually doing what you describe. This is the first I've heard of this so I may not be as common as you think.

You can mark that one down as confirmed. Start with sixwordstories.livejournal.com (not good - just damn big). Yes, two thirds of the characters being roleplayed there at least are from films or TV. Your point?

MrMyth, to me (not necessarily mattcolville) the key is in published scenarios and actual play.

Considering what a cliché it has become to aver that D&D back in the day was nothing but fighting, I reckon it's a really bad sign when old-time D&Ders find your game to be not much but a wargame.

Why? Because of the massive irony-factor involved? When D&D has since 1974 been slapped onto a minatures wargame.

"Encounter" now effectively means a game in itself, and in my experience it's not much of a game except with the fighting rules that are plainly the centerpiece.

Encounter means scene. Start from that premise and things fall into place. And I for one find the skill challenge rules excellent - near the sweet spot of providing me as DM enough to resolve things without being constraining or meaning I need to disrupt the scene to look things up.

The answer is not "more rules" or "fewer rules". The answer is actually to want something other than a Checkers/Magic TG hybrid with wargame "fluff".

And 4e to me is the first edition to provide that without heading hard down the simulationist rabbit hole and in the direction of GURPS Vehicles (why not just use a CAD package?) The DC setting in 3e makes me want to tear my hair out as a DM. And let's not get into 2e's mess of NWPs.

See, if that were what WotC and their fans wanted, then that is what they would do.

What they actually do is line up one hour-long (or longer) combat game after another, with an occasional random Dice Challenge where other folks might put problem solving and conversations with NPCs.

Really? That's what some do. But not often what happens at my tables.

In short, every single thing you say 4e doesn't do it does for me.

I don't remember an AC bonus by level in 3e, except as a variant in a supplement. In 4e, the sum of reciprocal chances to hit seems to stay about the same, so a bonus for me is a penalty for you.

But that's not the only measure of power. (And a bonus is always the flip side of a penalty). Yes, there's a quantitative jump in 4e at each level. But there's a qualitative leap in older editions - each new spell level (i.e. every other level) makes you massively more effective.

My impression is that the Powers system has a similar effect, more pronounced than Feats in 3e.

And less pronounced than spell levels. Which is why the fighter drops off the radar as an effective class fast. There's a reason in 3e every two levels is a doubling of power by the EL system and in 4e it's every four levels.

Above all, the recovery of resources between "encounters" means that attrition is not the factor it used to be.

You're thinking of 2e not 3e. Wands of Cure Light Wounds delt with a lot - leaving just daily resources as the attrition system. 4e limits healing.

If memory serves, h.p. recovery in 3e -- both innate and magical, the latter depending on caster level -- got a level bonus. However, both resources were still basically on the old daily time scale.

Until you got rich enough to afford Wands of Cure Light Wounds. (A wand of CLW cost 750gp and stored 50*5.5 = 275hp). At that point (4th level or so) only very poor parties with extremely stingy DMs needed to worry about time healing.

If something does not earn x.p., then neither does it require them! My fighter can also be a lover, a scholar, a gentleman, a philanthropist and an intriguer regardless.

And here is the flipside of the castle/follower rules. Because that hard codes things.

Truer words were ne'er spoken!

The selling point of DnD (the king of paper and pencil games) is that ANYTHING can happen. ANYTHING.

And that's because if the STORY.

But 4E removed the story and just left the action seens.

Bollocks! 4e, with skill challenges, has more non-combat support than any previous edition, along with a DMG pushing them hard. Now if you're talking about 4e modules, you have a point...

A game outside of skirmish-level combat.

D&D has rules for stuff out of combat, but those rules are mostly disconnected elements floating off on their own.

Yeah, this is why I can't stand AD&D. For that matter the combat rules are too disconnected to suit me.

The combat rules, on the other hand, form a self-contained, tactically interesting, carefully built mini-game. That's why 4E feels so combat-focused, despite having arguably more rules support for noncombat situations than any previous edition--it's not the absolute level of support, but the contrast between the combat rules and the rest of the system.

But this is how I like both. When things matter to the milimetre with imminent danger of death things are nailed down. When there's longer to play with, things are looser.

Skill challenges were an attempt to develop social and exploration encounters in the same way, but as written they fall pretty flat. There are very seldom any meaningful choices to be made in a by-the-book skill challenge.

The ones in modules suck.

You pick the best skill you can find an excuse to use, and then it's all up to the dice.

And are rolling against hard DCs at best. If you're playing the situation I'll be handing out easy DCs.

When skill challenges work, it's usually because the DM either a) took the basic framework and built an ad hoc mini-game on top of it,

Which is precisely what skill challenges are meant for

or b) successfully concealed from the players that a skill challenge was going on at all. In both cases, the DM is doing the heavy lifting.

Yes, it's a rope and pulley system. In older editions I don't even have to do that. I need to construct my own framework for any complex action.

The rules are providing about as much entertainment as BECMI's rules provide for a duel between two vanilla fighters.

The rules are providing what I need. Resolution mechanics that match the PCs abilities and then fade into the background.

What I would like to see is an effort to build a more substantial framework for social, exploration, and other types of noncombat encounters. I'm not asking for anything as heavy or mechanically rigid as the combat rules, mind you. Social encounters in particular need a lightweight approach to keep the rules from bogging down the roleplaying. But I would still like to have a system which offers meaningful choices between the various skills, and which actively helps the DM construct engaging noncombat scenarios.

A Big Book Of Illustrated Skill Challenges would be sweet. The guidance on how to use them sucks. Which is very different from nto finding them extremely useful.

 

[MrMyth]

MrMyth, to me (not necessarily mattcolville) the key is in published scenarios and actual play.

Now, that I can't really argue with. There are some solid 4E adventures and scenarios, but many of them are really poorly done. But it has also been commented on that those written this way are often counter to the actual advice given in the DMGs - I don't think that is a failing of the system itself, as much as the adventure writers.

What they actually do is line up one hour-long (or longer) combat game after another, with an occasional random Dice Challenge where other folks might put problem solving and conversations with NPCs.

This is so true. It describes 4E to a T. Except for the fact that the combats will often take well over an hour.

Well, it doesn't describe my 4E game, or the 4E game as presented in the rulebooks themselves. I can't claim to speak on behalf of 4E adventures, though, so there may be some that fall into this sort of description.

I think part of the problem here, though, is skill challenges (the 'random Dice Challenge' mentioned above). On the one hand, we've got concerns such as those of Ariosto, where having rules for this sort of thing means it replaces problem solving and NPC interaction. At the same time, we've got Dausuul who is specifically looking for a rules system for these non-combat encounters. Which we do have in the form of skill challenges - except they are a lot harder to balance and run than actual combat encounters. And that's half the problem.

But even if they got skill challenges perfectly right, we still see this disconnect here, where what one side is looking for is completely counter to what others are looking for. And some of that could be addressed by having optional rules for one approach or the other, so DMs can choose whatever works for them. And we've seen bits and pieces of that, in the form of rules for quest XP, or later, the guidelines for giving out XP based on RP accomplishment alone.

But even then, a lot of this seems to focus on wanting WotC to 'encourage' certain approaches or styles of play, and figuring out how to accomplish that can be very hard to actually pin down - how do you present something for PCs to 'want'? By having actual rules for strongholds? Or just by having adventures where PCs have opportunities to gain titles or land?

Anyway, I may be coming across as Devil's Advocate here, but both the elements mentioned thus far (better scenarios, and a more robust framework for non-combat scenes) are ideas I can get behind. At the same time, I still see complaints ("4E removed the story") that don't seem actually rooted in 4E itself, but instead simply in someone's vague perception of 4E that has little to no actual connection to the game itself.

 

[Mallus]

Well, it doesn't describe my 4E game, or the 4E game as presented in the rulebooks themselves.

Mine either. Our campaign is a story-heavy, characterization-heavy, and god knows in-character dialog-heavy sandbox, in which the PC's enact one crackpot plan (crackplot?) after another in search of fame, fortune and violence.

(I'll admit, the combat scenes do take a rather long time.)

These conversations tend to follow a similar pattern: critics of the recent edition compare idealized, "best-of" examples of old-school play...

"D&D used to be an intellectual knife-fight between large, bearded Renaissance men. Whose interests and acumen were as expansive as their waistlines."

...with shallow caricatures of contemporary play...

"Now D&D is just a board game with all role-playing/problem-solving replaced by Yahtzee, played by scrawny, dumb video game addicts with the attention spans of caffeinated fruit flies."

Now does that seem fair? Or, better yet, even remotely accurate?

Plenty of old-school campaigns were dumb and combat-focused, just as plenty of new-school ones are smart and varied. And vice-versa.

 

[Korgoth]

These conversations tend to follow a similar pattern: critics of the recent edition compare idealized, "best-of" examples of old-school play...

"D&D used to be an intellectual knife-fight between large, bearded Renaissance men. Whose interests and acumen were as expansive as their waistlines."

...with shallow caricatures of contemporary play...

"Now D&D is just a board game with all role-playing/problem-solving replaced by Yahtzee, played by scrawny, dumb video game addicts with the attention spans of caffeinated fruit flies."

Now does that seem fair? Or, better yet, even remotely accurate?

It sure seems that way sometimes.

 

[Mallus]

It sure seems that way sometimes.

Not to me. But maybe I'm just lucky to game with the people I do. Or I'm more objective. Perhaps a bit of both?

Don't get me wrong, I love the core of old-school play: DM-adjudicated role-playing/puzzle-solving occurring largely outside the purview of a formal rule system. Which I why I bring a heaping dollop of that to my 3e and 4e campaigns.

But I'm deeply suspicious of any attempt to characterize old-school play as "smarter" because so much of occurred outside the purview of formal rules. Sure, a DM created puzzles and posed challenging situations and the players solved them using their own wits. But did that make the puzzles or their solutions "smart"? What if the puzzles where inane, and the player-proposed solutions equally so? This describes a fair amount of the play I participated in back in the AD&D era.

Describing old-school play in such a rosy light seems, at best, a little self-congratulatory, and at worst, like a circle jerk.

"How do I know I'm smart? Well, all my friends tell me I am. And I tell them the same thing."

 

[Korgoth]

Not to me. But maybe I'm just lucky to game with the people I do. Or I'm more objective. Perhaps a bit of both?

Don't get me wrong, I love the core of old-school play: DM-adjudicated role-playing/puzzle-solving occurring largely outside the purview of a formal rule system. Which I why I bring a heaping dollop of that to my 3e and 4e campaigns.

But I'm deeply suspicious of any attempt to characterize old-school play as "smarter" because so much of occurred outside the purview of formal rules. Sure, a DM created puzzles and posed challenging situations and the players solved them using their own wits. But did that make the puzzles or their solutions "smart"? What if the puzzles where inane, and the player-proposed solutions equally so? This describes a fair amount of the play I participated in back in the AD&D era.

Describing old-school play in such a rosy light seems, at best, a little self-congratulatory, and at worst, like a circle jerk.

"How do I know I'm smart? Well, all my friends tell me I am. And I tell them the same thing."

Fair enough. I'm just comparing some of my old school experiences with my experience playing at Encounters. And the contrast is so close to your caricature it's remarkable.

On the other hand, that's choosing some of my best old school experiences with my worst experience playing D&D ever, so I see your point.

But I'll never, ever like "roll to see it" mechanics, or social mechanics in any rpg. And even my best 4E experiences have been of plodding combats punctuated by mini-games of D20 Farkle.

So I acknowledge that your caricature is in fact a caricature, but that doesn't make it entirely inapposite.

 

[Ariosto]

I dont see how-Great Cleave...

Well, in old (TSR) D&D, a 20th-level fighter gets 20 attacks per round vs. normal men.

(Dave Arneson also suggested a provision like your "Cleave".)

Make for one helluva intimidate check.

In old D&D, it's called "morale".

 

[BryonD]

Mine either. Our campaign is a story-heavy, characterization-heavy, and god knows in-character dialog-heavy sandbox, in which the PC's enact one crackpot plan (crackplot?) after another in search of fame, fortune and violence.

Well, my spin on this has been and remains that no system can stop roleplaying and anyone can roleplay anything in 4E that could be roleplayed in any other system.

But, when assessing the merits of one system over another, the equivalencies that players bring to the table are really irrelevant. It is the how the mechanics in the book integrate with the roleplay that define the quality.

And, for my desires (and clearly many people agree), the mechanics of 4E do a perfectly adequate job of supporting roleplay. But when choosing between adequate and awesome, the choice is easy.

That in no way whatsoever reduces the amount of roleplay that any individual group may be adding on top of their 4E mechanics. But, clearly there are highly significant differences in what some people demand of the mechanical side.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

Perhaps some will disagree, but the combat system is at the heart of all versions of D&D. It's the reason we all say "I kill them and take their stuff," not, "I persuade them to give up their stuff."

So as I think back to when 2e came out (really hazy memories), when 3e came out (much more clear) and now with 4e, what I experienced was at the beginning, the games were much more combat oriented. We were learning the new rules and since combat is the heart of the rules system, that was the initial focus. Over time we became experienced and comfortable with the combat rules and we expanded our game to have more depth. If for some reason we ever were dissatisfied with the combat rules of a new edition, the odds are we would have given up on it, and never having really pushed the game beyond those early combat-focused runsand would have limited opportunity to judge the merits of the game in greater depth.

 

[Ariosto]

(And a bonus is always the flip side of a penalty).

Not in the matter of mathematics that is actually relevant here.

In old D&D, I get a better chance to hit as I go up in levels (until that stops accruing). That has no effect whatsoever on anyone else's chance to hit. A monster with a 30% chance to hit has a 30% chance to hit whether it's taking a swipe at high-level me or lowly Frank the Factotum.

And less pronounced than spell levels.

Really? I'm not seeing that, but I'm no expert on fine points of WotC-D&D.

Maybe the designers have some insight, though.

The designers of 3e suggest a range of encounter levels mainly (65%) from equal to, to 4 higher than, party level; 5% 5+ higher ("overpowering"); and 30% lower ("easy").

The designers of 4e suggest 1/8 each at the extremes of just 1 level lower and 3 levels higher, and 3/4 at level +0 or +1.

On the one hand, we've got concerns such as those of Ariosto, where having rules for this sort of thing means it replaces problem solving and NPC interaction.

May I speak for myself, please?

Having rules for this sort of thing never in three decades was a problem I ever encountered until WotC-D&D. (I didn't play much 2e AD&D, and I have since heard of, and even from, people who made a problem of "non-weapon proficiencies" and the like.)

The rules were there, but not the problem. Not with original D&D or EPT, MA or GW. Not with Top Secret. Not with C&S or Land of the Rising Sun. Not with Traveller or Space Opera. Not with RuneQuest or Stormbringer or Call of Cthulhu or Ringworld. Not with The Fantasy Trip. Not with Villains & Vigilantes or Champions or Superworld. Not with The Mechanoid Invasion or Palladium Fantasy. Not with DragonQuest. Not with Rolemaster. Not with Stalking the Night Fantastic or Chill. Not with Gangbusters or Flashing Blades. Not with Bushido or Aftermath. Not with Twilight: 2000. Not with Lords of Creation or Powers & Perils. Not with Swords & Glory or Gardasiyal. Not with GURPS. Not with Prince Valiant or King Arthur Pendragon.

Not with any of the many other rules sets with which I played.

What I in fact wrote in that post was that 4e-ers, from what I have seen -- including, yes, the authors of the rulebooks, in the rulebooks -- have made it a series of wargame scenarios one after another. If memory serves, I very explicitly wrote that it's not a matter of "more rules" or "fewer rules" but rather of the method of play.

The method of play in 4e is pretty strange relative to what I was accustomed to, in the previous long tradition of "role-playing games".

It is immediately recognizable from experience with close-tactical wargames. "Here's the arena, now FIGHT!"

That kind of thing can be fun (although 4e is not what I would pick), but it's not what Dungeons & Dragons means or ever meant to me and my friends. It's not just the tail wagging the dog; it's the tail without the dog!