A reason why 4E is not as popular as it could have been

[pawsplay]

has the same use it has outside of skill challenges that it does in 3E.

I could list uses of each skill that we use on a regular basis outside of skill challenges if you wish. But I suspect you don't care.

What does Bluff do in 4e, outside of skill challenges?

 

[Stormonu]

Planescape has a faction especially for you: Xaositect.

Nah, he'd be more apt to be a Sensate.

 

[LostSoul]

Obviously, you can play "narrativist" games that do not substantially simulate any genre, and you can play genre games that do not care about the thematics of the source material.... but if you construct a game that is faithful to the storytelling tropes of the original, it both simulates the original poetics and allows exploration within the same field of options as the original.

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying...

Imagine playing Star Wars. I as a player do not believe that "anger leads to hate". I believe that anger is a natural part of the human experience; it should be expressed and dealt with instead of fought against/repressed.

If the game's rules say that any expression of anger is going to turn my PC to the Dark Side, this is going to hurt my nar priorities. If the game instead promotes this as a question to be answered by the players, then it's going to work towards my nar priorities.

Seems pretty simple to me.

 

[pawsplay]

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying...

Imagine playing Star Wars. I as a player do not believe that "anger leads to hate". I believe that anger is a natural part of the human experience; it should be expressed and dealt with instead of fought against/repressed.

If the game's rules say that any expression of anger is going to turn my PC to the Dark Side, this is going to hurt my nar priorities. If the game instead promotes this as a question to be answered by the players, then it's going to work towards my nar priorities.

Seems pretty simple to me.

And if you reject the idea that "anger leads to hate," you are no longer playing Star Wars.

 

[Imaro]

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying...

Imagine playing Star Wars. I as a player do not believe that "anger leads to hate". I believe that anger is a natural part of the human experience; it should be expressed and dealt with instead of fought against/repressed.

If the game's rules say that any expression of anger is going to turn my PC to the Dark Side, this is going to hurt my nar priorities. If the game instead promotes this as a question to be answered by the players, then it's going to work towards my nar priorities.

Seems pretty simple to me.

I don't think it's that simple though... If any expression of anger is going to turn your PC to the Dark Side and you're PC believes that anger is a natural part of the human experience... how does that stop you from exploring that theory... I mean it would seem that all you are positing is that the Dark Side itself is actually a natural part of the human experience (The funny thing is that some force users in the Star Wars universe do use this logic to justify or validate their experimentation and use of the Dark Side).

 

[Neonchameleon]

It is not the same thing. It is just true that in 3e, an orc warrior 1 or an orc fighter 12 has certain capabilities, and you can imagine how you will fare against an orc war 1 or an orc fighter 12.

I know my DM doesn't tell me in advance the stats of the orc.

It is also true that if you have a +12 Bluff bonus, you are very reliable at bluffing people without well-developed Sense Motive skills.

4e skill challenges really change the situation. The difficulty is going to be determined by how many checks are required, and the DCs required.

Stop right there. As has been pointed out repeatedly a skill challenge is not the same thing as a skill check. A skill check remains what it was - single point pass/fail with a simple action. A skill challenge can be as long as an entire scene. To just bluff someone under the 4e rules requires a simple bluff skill roll at the DC of the target creature's passive insight. (Source: New DMG scren as it's what is to hand).

You cannot just think, "Well, my high Bluff character is going to be successful at bluffing people who are fairly naive" because in 4e, the DC is going to scale to the PCs, and the real difficulty is based on how many components the GM wants to throw at you.

Again. not so. The DC is going to scale to what you are attempting. And it is assumed that what you are attempting is a challenge of about your level. As for how many components the DM throws at you, that depends on what you are trying to do.

What does Bluff do in 4e, outside of skill challenges?

Everything it did in 3e outside of skill challenges. That hasn't changed. Skill challenges are for complex plans that require more than just bluffing.

 

[pemerton]

And if you reject the idea that "anger leads to hate," you are no longer playing Star Wars.

This is a fairly narrow definition of "playing a genre", then.

I want a game that lets this sort of question to be posed and explored, perhaps resolved, as part of play. I don't want the answer presupposed. Mechanics like punitive alignment, personality (at least in many forms), sanity (at least in some forms), "dark side points", etc are part of what supports high concept play but is (in my view) an obstacle to narrativist play.

What does Bluff do in 4e, outside of skill challenges?

Well, one thing it does is let you keep secret from your comrades that the spiders escaped from the skull only because you pulled the gems out of the eye socket.

And other stuff like that.

 

[pemerton]

there is more than one path to immortality and any class can choose any path... so there is choice in BECMI.

But the player doesn't get to decide whether or not they achieve their goal.

if there is a quest to become an ED then the DM will design that as well, though the fact of the matter is that this is not even required as it is in BECMI so a PC can just pick a "destiny" at a certain level

And the GM has to make that fit into the world.

It is (in part) about whether the player is following the GM's hooks, or the GM following the player's hooks. 4e has more of the latter than any earlier version of D&D. That is part of the difference.

I mean I keep seeing you state opinions about how much better 4e is for this but they are not backed up by the reality of the games.

Well, the reality of 4e is that it is non-simulationist in both character building, action resolution and encounter design. And for the reasons I gave upthread in post 246, this makes a difference to pacing, to the way players engage the challenges of the game, and so on. And heroquesting is an example of the sort of game that benefits from this - whereas simulationist mechanics, where the ingame reality rather than metagame considerations dictate pacing, and challenge levels, and where intervention in the past in order to change the future is either a matter of GM fiat or else mecanically spelled-out rituals, don't support this so well.

Again if you were arguing that Heroquest or Legends of Anglerre did this better I would totally agree with you

4e resembles Heroquest in the relevant respects. Like a HQ player, a 4e player gets to dictate to the GM what is relevant (by choosing Paragon Path and Epic Destiny) just as a HQ player does by chooing relationships and the like. Like a HQ player, a 4e player gets to choose how to engage situations, and thereby help frame them thematically in the game, via skill challenge mechanics.

So again there is no higher meaning to good or evil they are not true forces (as they are in most myths and legends) in the world but instead are just a matter of... perception of and physical reaction to... one's choices and actions.

It's about what the players at the table make of it. This is what mythic play is about, in my view - to engage the game table.

I'm curious as to why you even think Planescape would in some way hinder this

Because of the alignment rules - the GM gets to decide whether or not I'm evil, for example. Because of the lack of myth and history. Because of the metaplot. Look at Dead Gods, for example. As I read that module, there is no expectation that the players, via their PCs, will engage with the backstory and use that to change the gameworld. To me, at least, it reads just like a railroad.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Any sufficiently developed "narrativist" game will create a self-consistent reality which simulates other games played with the same system. In other words, sim. If you move away from mechanistic resolutions, you might be able to more narrativist, but there would be nothing stopping you from going freeform simulation, instead. Ron likes to say that the agendas exist in play, in player priorites, but that flies in the face of "system matters." If system matters, I find it difficult to imagine a counter-argument to what I am saying.

I can see that 4e went for more abstraction, more "storytelling" in some aspects, but it remains the game that simulates itself, the game of winning the game that it is, the narrative of what happens when you play the game that is 4e. 4e has its faults, but it does not lack congruence between its narrative tropes, its creation of the imaginary world, and in-game player rewards. I think the reason some people like 4e is that they like where it leads them; it is a "three color" system, completely "abashed" if not incoherent. But it definitely works on its own terms.

I think a reason a lot of people don't like 4e is that it so clearly communicates what they think you are going to be doing with it, and a lot of people don't want to do that.

There is some truth to this. OTOH, the reason I like 4E is twofold, and I think the other half not listed above is where your analysis falls short:

1. I like where 4E is going.
2. I like traveling with it to that destination.

Whereas, with 3E I also like where it is going. The journey itself, not so much. (And the prep even less, but it would be possible to build a game with a 3E sensibility that used some of the 4E strategies for reducing prep, though you'd have to make some compromises between the two.)

Furthermore, it is precisely the mechanical "sim" side of things where that divergence occurs for me. To pick just one example out of many, 3E multiple attacks versus 4E more rapidly scaling damage. Both mechanical methods kill the monsters more or less equally fast (allowing, of course, for changes in save or die spells and other system changes). Multiple attacks says that if you attack 3 times, you made three physical attacks, each with its own damage. This opens up certain options in the sim space. Scaling damage says that if you do the damage of three physical attacks, you may or may not have made that many physical attacks. This opens up a different set of options in the (little "n", not Forge-version) narrative space.

The fighter goes into the dungeon, kills the orc, takes the pie, and goes home happy. In both 3E and 4E, same D&D result; same D&D genre. Not the same experience, at all.

Or to put it another way, what you said was true at the macro level. Every roleplaying game simulates something at the macro level. But when people discuss simulation in games, they usually mean the micro level, or at a minimum how the micro sim feeds into the macro sim and vice versa.

 

[Imaro]

But the player doesn't get to decide whether or not they achieve their goal.

The player does not choose whether they attain their goal of an ED or not... not unless they now get to dictate to the DM that they will live to reach the appropriate level to choose one. Otherwise choosing a pre-made and pre-packaged destiny is no different and probably less flexible than moving up into epic levels in 3.5 or choosing a sphere/path to immortality.

And the GM has to make that fit into the world.

It is (in part) about whether the player is following the GM's hooks, or the GM following the player's hooks. 4e has more of the latter than any earlier version of D&D. That is part of the difference.

I call bull on this... the number of player generated hooks is in no way dictated or facilitated any better in 4e than in any other edition. Ultimately it rests on the PC's. Now if you are talking about mechanical indicators then I would admit that BECMI has less than 4e because it has a lighter set of rules, but then I would argue 3.5 definitely has more mechanical indicators than 4e does(of course whether you think that 3.x's are better or worse is another story). Of course again, the number of mechanical indicators does not in fact correlate to the number of PC generated hooks and whether or not the DM sees fit to place them in his campaign.

Well, the reality of 4e is that it is non-simulationist in both character building, action resolution and encounter design. And for the reasons I gave upthread in post 246, this makes a difference to pacing, to the way players engage the challenges of the game, and so on. And heroquesting is an example of the sort of game that benefits from this - whereas simulationist mechanics, where the ingame reality rather than metagame considerations dictate pacing, and challenge levels, and where intervention in the past in order to change the future is either a matter of GM fiat or else mecanically spelled-out rituals, don't support this so well.

The metagame in 4e is gamist/tactical in nature though, based more off correct numbers and math than any type of narrative concerns... and IMO this fits about as well as simulationism when compared with the use of narrativism determining the pacing, challenges faced, etc.. Now I can understand if you enjoy gamist vs. simulationist mechanics better but claiming they objectively do this type of play better than simulationism and are on par with purposefully narrative rules, like HQ, seems quite a stretch.

4e resembles Heroquest in the relevant respects. Like a HQ player, a 4e player gets to dictate to the GM what is relevant (by choosing Paragon Path and Epic Destiny) just as a HQ player does by chooing relationships and the like. Like a HQ player, a 4e player gets to choose how to engage situations, and thereby help frame them thematically in the game, via skill challenge mechanics.

IMO... no it doesn't. To me the relevant respects are that a Character can totally personalize and define their attributes in HQ without being confined by the dictates of the designers...4e is nothing like that, it is a class based system (base, paragon, epic) with narrowly defined (by class), pre-packaged powers.

I also don't see how their chooice of what skill to use (which is something they have the power to decide in almost any edition of D&D) makes 4e better than any other edition at hero-questing.

It's about what the players at the table make of it. This is what mythic play is about, in my view - to engage the game table.

And you can do that irregardless of edition is my point. The hashing out at the table and exploration of what it means to be LG in any edition is about what the players and DM (because ultimately he is a part of the game as well and whether 4e or 3e or BECMI must facilitate this particular mode of play) make of it. The difference is once we as a group come to agreement on what these alignments mean we then also have mechanical consequences and rewards to back them up... Again in 4e it is hardly worth the effort as alignment affects nothing...even if the player wants it to... by the book it affects nothing about his character mechanically... while in HQ if Lawful Good is an attribute someone has decided upon he will work out what that means with the DM (as above) and it most certainly has concrete mechanical effects in game. And honestly if we are speaking to in-game consequences...4e is no better than any other edition since this is totally dependant upon the DM.

Because of the alignment rules - the GM gets to decide whether or not I'm evil, for example. Because of the lack of myth and history. Because of the metaplot. Look at Dead Gods, for example. As I read that module, there is no expectation that the players, via their PCs, will engage with the backstory and use that to change the gameworld. To me, at least, it reads just like a railroad.

"Alignment is a tool for developing your character's identity. It is not a straightjacket for restricting your character. Each alignment represents a broad range of personality types or personal philosophies, so two lawful good characters can still be quite different from each other. In addition few people are completetly consistent..."

The above is from the PHB, and while I know many people have come to view alignment as this almost boogey man like entity of restrictions and boxing in... that is not how it is actually presented in the 3.5 PHB or DMG. there are no penalties for changing your alignment, the game states that actions and not words should be an indicator of one's alignment (which seems in line with your idea of defining in-play), and it encourages the DM to be an arbitrater as opposed to a dictator when it comes to alignment even cautioning against the DM punishing or changing alignments for minor and infrequent transgressions. So again, I am not seeing how this type of game is harder to play out (if the group decides this is the type of play they want to go for) with 3.5 or BECMI vs. 4e.

Ok, last but not least... you're judging the whole of Planescape by one module. You realize this is like me judging the whole of the Nentir Vale's worth as a setting on KotS or even the Kobold Mansion adventure in the DMG... If you think that's fair, then so be it... and that's really all I'll say on that matter.