Player Control, OR "How the game has changed over the years, and why I don't like it"

[MrMyth]

Can I hold you guys to this the next time a "Say Yes" discussion comes up, and it is claimed that it doesn't mean a DM can't say No to knocking a snake prone, playing a Warforged Ninja in a PotC setting, etc.?

Neither "Say Yes" nor "Say No" should be the default.

The default should be: "Say what you think will make a better game".

Well, I think you may be mistaking the difference between a default and an asbolute. The concept behind "Say Yes" is a reminder to the DM to carefully consider whether there is a good reason to prevent a PC from attemping something interesting or playing an unexpected role.

That said... yeah, I'm mostly in agreement. Reasons to approve or disapprove of a choice will change from one DM to the next, one game to the next, there shouldn't be any set absolute one must adhere to.

And I don't think that is what the "Say Yes" advice is intended to be - it is simply a reminder to think twice before making such decisions, and make sure that whatever your reasoning (preserving integrity of the setting, internal consistency of the combat, avoiding setting precedents for unbalanced stunts in the future, etc) does intend weigh in stronger than approving something that would provide a more entertaining experience for the player.

Now, ever since 3.0, I've been hearing how WotC-D&D is more transparent than TSR-D&D, thus making things easier to judge. It seems that each new version is more transparent than the last.

One would think that, if this were true, it would be easier to tinker with WotC-D&D than TSR-D&D.

But, over and over again, WotC-D&D advocates say that tinkering with even such a small thing as whether or not a snake can be knocked prone is going to somehow throw the game off kilter.

Well, for myself, I think such claims are silly. But I also don't see them crop up all that often. Is it possible you are misreading some similar concepts as that sort of argument?

Being able to knock snakes prone, by default, isn't really an issue of balance within 4E, but one of philosophy. 'Avoid removing PC capabilities without good reason.'

It isn't that the game breaks down if the polearm wielding fighter can no longer trip snakes. It is that one player might feel sidelined if he's built to flip enemies over and take advantage of their weakness, and suddenly they have entire adventures in which everything is immune to his core function.

The other claim that I often see, which might tie into this, is that while it won't disrupt the balance, it does set the stage for a lot of nit-picking. You rule that snakes can't be knocked prone, and one PC instead now wants to argue that they should instead always count as being prone, just that they don't suffer the normal penalties for being prone. This means that his feat, Headsman's Chop - which gives damage bonuses when using an axe or heavy blade to attack someone while prone - would still apply, even if the snake didn't grant combat advantage or have difficulties with moving.

His argument may even make sense - one imagines someone with such a skill would be perfectly able to put it to good use against your standard snake slithering along the ground - but then you open up the situation to even more discussion. Can the snake turn off this 'counts as prone' shtick if it coils up? Does that reduce its reach when it does so?

You end up getting into a lot of minutia. I don't think any of it - pretty much any decision made at any point in this process - is likely to unbalance the game. But it will slow it down, and once you set the precedent of letting what makes sense override what is written in the rules, you risk everyone having a different opinion for how 'what makes sense' should actually work in game terms, and Knights of the Dinner Style arguing following from there.

Now, I'm not saying every rules call will lead to such antics, nor that one should avoid making a call just for fear of player disagreement. But I think it is one of the reasons offered for trying to adhere to a strict rules system in order to ensure shared expectations by everyone at the table. And that this sort of point is put forward more often than claims that the slightest adjustment to some critter's abilities in 4E will somehow result in catastrophic damage to the balance of the game system.

 

[Thasmodious]

Here's an area where I'm confused, and maybe someone can help me.

Ever since 1e, there's been a general idea of "understand the rules before you tinker with them". AFAICT, that is only made explicit in 1e.

I think that's just good basic GMing advice anyway. I know people often tell those new to Savage Worlds to play it before changing it. The system and presentation lends itself to tinkering so well that most new GMs to the system already have tons of ideas to tinker and modify before they even get to play it. And while it is highly customizable, there are core mechanics that can easily get out of whack if you mess with certain things without accounting for the interaction.

Now, ever since 3.0, I've been hearing how WotC-D&D is more transparent than TSR-D&D, thus making things easier to judge. It seems that each new version is more transparent than the last.

True. 3e was the first to put the math of the system right in the DMG. They showed you the numbers they and adventure writers used to create balanced encounters, expected level of item strength from PCs, etc.

One would think that, if this were true, it would be easier to tinker with WotC-D&D than TSR-D&D.

I don't think one necessarily leads to the other. A tightly cohesive system even with all the math exposed might well be harder to tinker with than a looser system.

But, over and over again, WotC-D&D advocates say that tinkering with even such a small thing as whether or not a snake can be knocked prone is going to somehow throw the game off kilter.

I don't think anyone in this thread has said that, I certainly don't think so. I just don't think the DM should get in the habit of trying to nullify PC abilities when it suits his fancy or his sensibilities, at least not without player input and that with such a small issue of whether or not a snake can be proned, it's probably better to just stick with the collectively understood rules and move on, in most cases. It's not going to ruin an evening if the DM decides this can't be done, but it's going to ruin an evening either if you just don't fret over it in the first place AND the game will move on without argument or distraction.

If WotC-D&D is really so transparent, shouldn't the DM know the consequences before making the call, and be able to adapt to them far more easily than with any version of TSR-D&D?

It's not about the consequences in this example, it's about negating the players actions. It won't throw off game balance or bring the whole system to its knees or anything. The issue is whether or not making a nod to a perceived, argument prone realism by the DM in a system as abstract as 4e is something that should be done (and that's not even the actual issue addressed by the OP )

Yet every version of TSR-D&D expected tinkering, and worked as well -- or better! -- with tinkering as without. In a very real way, 4e is D&D because it is Gygax's rules + someone's tinkering.

Mostly true. I don't think Red Box was quite as welcoming to tinker with as it was a more cohesive system. But with 1e, you could do literally anything, since the designers took the same approach when designing subsystems. Let's have this one use d12s, they do get used enough! This class will have a skill table! We'll account for weapon speed, but not individual armor types! We'll use a percentile dice random table here and a hard and fast rule there! No two groups I've ever played with played 1e the same way. That's what built my hankering for house rules to this day.

[old man voice] back in my day ... and we LIKED it!

Personally, I'd like to see one of these two memes die:

(1) WotC-D&D is more transparent than TSR-D&D, thus making it easier for a DM to judge what will happen as the result of any change, or

(2) WotC-D&D falls to pieces the minute you rule a snake can't be knocked prone.

I'm thinking both are actually incorrect.

1) is somewhat true and somewhat not. It would be more accurate to say that with transparency you know better what can or can't be tinkered with. Let me put it this way, in what way is showing the math behind the system, that was already there, is a bad or counter-productive thing? It doesn't lead to some perfect gaming nirvana, but more knowledge is generally a net gain.
2) Don't think anyone is saying that.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Personally, I'd like to see one of these two memes die:

(1) WotC-D&D is more transparent than TSR-D&D, thus making it easier for a DM to judge what will happen as the result of any change, or

(2) WotC-D&D falls to pieces the minute you rule a snake can't be knocked prone.

I mostly agree with NeoChameleon on the second one. I'll add to what he said that the other concern is that a lot of the rules of the type "don't let a snake be knocked prone" are a combination of not understanding the spirit of 4E (or not liking it) with trained habits from previous versions of tweaking little things all the time. There is a sense in which talking about it is useful for getting the spirit of the rule, but actually doing the tinkering is just so bloody unnecessary. I'm aware of this because I love tinkering for its own sake, sometimes to the frustration of the players in our group. They roll their eyes and say, "Here he goes changing the rules again." Mainly they just like to give me a hard time, though, even if it is the first rule change in a year. But there was a time when it was real frustation, felt as "just leave it alone, already!"

On the first one, I think 4E is far more transparent, and this makes it easier for a person to effectively house rule--provided that the person has grokked the transparency and is willing to put away preconceptions from earlier editions. I also think this makes it easier for the willing to fully grok the spirit and the mechanics of 4E.

But "easy to understand" is not a synonym for "easy to do". There are several ways in which earlier versions are easier to house rule, once you gained that understanding. Exhibit A: Make a new class. It's pretty tough to understand everything you'd need to understand in 3.5 (limiting ourselves to only WotC classes just for sake of discussion), in order to make a good, balanced class. But once you more or less got it, making the class is easy. Once you did a few classes, it becomes real easy. 4E is the opposite. It is far easier to understand what goes into a class, but harder to make a good new one.

There is also the cost/benefit trade off, already referred to by "bloody unnecessary". In say, 1st ed. AD&D you can make a new class with significantly flawed understanding, and it still may come out ok. Everything is already so out of whack that throwing another class in isn't going to mess things up too badly, maybe even with new dedicated mechanics. And if it does, you can just change it again. And you can expect your audience to do the same, if you want to publish. All the real understanding will come from time and playtest anyway. So best to get to it.

The standards for a "good" class are raised in 3E, which means you might not live up to them, but if you do, you are more likely to get something worth having. In 4E, they raised the bar again. The transparency helps you navigate the new standards, but it doesn't solve all problems.

 

[Fifth Element]

But, over and over again, WotC-D&D advocates say that tinkering with even such a small thing as whether or not a snake can be knocked prone is going to somehow throw the game off kilter.

Actually no; anti-snake-proners may have argued that allowing a snake to be knocked prone would throw the game off kilter, but I haven't seen the claim above.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I think that's just good basic GMing advice anyway.

No disagreement here!

True. 3e was the first to put the math of the system right in the DMG. They showed you the numbers they and adventure writers used to create balanced encounters, expected level of item strength from PCs, etc.

Disagreement here!

The 1e DMG put the numbers used to determine XP, and how the XP were then used to calculate monster level, right there in the DMG. I would be hard pressed to tell you where you can find the data in 3e to actually determine what a creature's CR should be.

Can you tell me where to find that in the 3e DMG? Anywhere in 3e?

I don't think one necessarily leads to the other. A tightly cohesive system even with all the math exposed might well be harder to tinker with than a looser system.

I'm not sure I agree with that.....Unless the "tightly cohesive" system also has math which is unnecessarily complex. If I can clearly see that the needed outcome is "4" and I am changing "2+2", then I know that the change must either result in "4" (1+1+2, for example) or that I need to alter the needed outcome as well. The more transparent the system, the easier this should be.

For example, if I know that not allowing X is going to make the fighters miss 1/3 more often, I could presumably adjust hit points to allow the fight to stay the same overall. Or I could leave hit points to make the fight harder. Or lower AC. Etc.

I don't think anyone in this thread has said that, I certainly don't think so. I just don't think the DM should get in the habit of trying to nullify PC abilities when it suits his fancy or his sensibilities, at least not without player input and that with such a small issue of whether or not a snake can be proned, it's probably better to just stick with the collectively understood rules and move on, in most cases. It's not going to ruin an evening if the DM decides this can't be done, but it's going to ruin an evening either if you just don't fret over it in the first place AND the game will move on without argument or distraction.

(1) It is a matter of preference whether or not the rules of the game or the rules of the game world take precedence. If the former, then certainly just stick with the collectively understood game rules, and knock your snake prone. If the latter, then certainly just stick with the collectively understood game world rules, and don't allow your snake to be knocked prone (should that be the case).

(2) Neither the first nor the second cases requires fretting, argument, or distraction, insofar as all parties have the same preference. If not, either the first or the second case can cause fretting, argument, or distraction.

(3) Therefore, neither "Just go with the RAW" or "Just change the RAW" is a perfect solution....or objectively superior to the other.

There is no "one true way"/"one size fits all" solution here.

And that, IMHO, is fine.


RC

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I'm not sure I agree with that.....Unless the "tightly cohesive" system also has math which is unnecessarily complex. If I can clearly see that the needed outcome is "4" and I am changing "2+2", then I know that the change must either result in "4" (1+1+2, for example) or that I need to alter the needed outcome as well. The more transparent the system, the easier this should be.

For example, if I know that not allowing X is going to make the fighters miss 1/3 more often, I could presumably adjust hit points to allow the fight to stay the same overall. Or I could leave hit points to make the fight harder. Or lower AC. Etc.

If complexity of a given part was the only factor, you might be right. However, were that true, "cohesion" wouldn't even be an important concept. It is true that complexity, especially unnecessary complexiity, is a barrier to understanding and change, but it is not the only barrier.

Red Box D&D and 3E are very loosely coupled. The are so loosely coupled, that the cohesion is only in that they are both D&D, and what expectations people bring with that, setting material, etc. Mechanically, they aren't coupled at all. There is nothing you can do mechanically in either system that will affect the other, mechanically, one iota. This is true no matter how much complexity you add or remove from either system, even to ridiculous extremes.

In 3E, the d20 is tightly coupled to the mechanics. It is embedded throughout the rules system. But conceptually, it is very simple. Can you replace the d20 with 3d6, or d8+d12, or 2d10? Sure you can. Takes less than a minute to write a house rule as such. There isn't even any math. The ramifications are subtle and far-reaching.

For some in-between examples, the cleric is more tightly coupled to 1E than it is to 4E. In 4E, if you want to do a cleric, how you do it is probably tightly coupled to the leader role.

 

[Thasmodious]

I'm not sure I agree with that.....Unless the "tightly cohesive" system also has math which is unnecessarily complex. If I can clearly see that the needed outcome is "4" and I am changing "2+2", then I know that the change must either result in "4" (1+1+2, for example) or that I need to alter the needed outcome as well. The more transparent the system, the easier this should be.

Right, you are more well informed because of the transparency, but the tinkering may still be quite complex. Easier than if that transparency wasn't there but less easy than a system designed with tinkering in mind. If the change you want to make mucks the basic math that runs through the whole system, it can be quite complex, requiring numerous adjustments to a number of other elements of the system to maintain balanced interplay of the core mechanics. Transparency makes the results of your tinkering more, well, transparent, which is good, but it can also show you what probably shouldn't be tinkered with at all because the ramifications are too big. Which is my point about a tighter system being less malleable than a looser system (which, I don't think is a controversial statement).

(1) It is a matter of preference whether or not the rules of the game or the rules of the game world take precedence. If the former, then certainly just stick with the collectively understood game rules, and knock your snake prone. If the latter, then certainly just stick with the collectively understood game world rules, and don't allow your snake to be knocked prone (should that be the case).

The point some of us have been arguing falls under what is collectively understood or not. The game system rules are generally understood to be the shared framework of the game and the GM should communicate changes to those core rules that all can read and understand, as those can modify how players interact with the world and build their characters. The issue comes up when it's not collectively understood.

You are playing in a game where your powers are used on a regular basis without modification. That's the collective understanding. Then some wonky corner case shows up (blinding a bat, proning a snake, etc) and the DM THEN declares "you can't do that, it doesn't make sense to ME". That's my objection. I don't think of the people arguing on my "side" in this thread would object if, at the beginning of the game, the DM announced, "by the way, you can't prone cubes, oozes and snakes cause that's silly to me" or "in my game, the rules of the game world supersede the game rules". Players could make informed decisions about powers that might put them in questionable corner cases, then. It's arbitrarily and uncollectively changing the understood social contract that I object to.

 

[Raven Crowking]

You are playing in a game where your powers are used on a regular basis without modification. That's the collective understanding.

The collective understanding of whom?

You are playing in a game where the DM is allowed to adjudicate the use of your powers, or anything else in the game. That's the collective understanding from where I sit. It has been since Holmes. AFAICT, the 4e rulebooks explicitly support that collective understanding.

Then some wonky corner case shows up (blinding a bat, proning a snake, etc) and no one at the table blinks when it is adjudicate. Indeed, the DM seldom has to declare "you can't do that, it doesn't make sense to ME" because the players automatically self-adjudicate out of creating those wonky corner cases in the first place.

It's arbitrarily and uncollectively changing the understood social contract that I object to. Moreover, while I am fine with you arbitrarily and uncollectively changing the understood social contract for your group, I very much challenge the notion that you -- or WotC -- or anyone else -- can do so for the rest of us.

I say No.


RC

 

[LostSoul]

Which is more important - stopping the game to explain why the PC's power cannot knock the snake prone, probably prompting a rules discussion at the table ... or simply shrugging, adding in the modifiers and having the player explain how he's knocked the snake prone?

I think this is the crux of the issue. I don't think it's a minor element of system; I think it has huge effects on how one plays the game. How you want to deal with this will depend on a number of things, but the two most important are 1) why you are playing D&D and 2) how much attention you want to pay to the game world while playing.

There are a lot of combinations of the above. I don't see any problem with having the player explain what's happening in the game world unless you want to have challenge-based play.

Challenge-based play ("Step on Up"): You're playing to see if you, as a player, have the ability to succeed in the game.

Since the point of play is to succeed game, we have to put limits on how one achieves that goal. Otherwise there's no challenge. If the player can manipulate the game world in order to succeed, we have to put strict limits on the player's ability to do so.

We're talking about two ways to do this; I'm sure there are more. The first is the way 4E deals with it: allow the player to describe the outcome of his PC's action, but don't give that description any mechanical effect. The description of the action doesn't feed into the economy of the game. This maintains the challenge. We limit the methods the player has to achieve his goal ("success") to what the rules say his PC can do. By doing so, we give the player meaningful choices to make, because he's limited to a few choices that are balanced against each other.

This works well. The problem is that the description of the action doesn't have anything to do with why we are playing the game in the first place. Imagining the game world doesn't feed into our goals of play. There's no feedback loop.

The second way relies on someone to make judgement calls based on what's happening in the game world - "You can't knock the snake prone; if it was coiled to strike, you could, but it's not." This places the game world into the economy of the game; it has a mechanical effect. Imagining the game world feeds back into our goals for play; players can use their abilities to manipulate the game world in order to succeed.

This also works well. The problem is that you need to use a specific set of techniques or the game falls apart. If the player making the judgement calls has a bias in making his decisions - he wants player A to win instead of player B, or he wants situation X to occur in the game instead of situation Y - the game you're playing is one of social positioning and manipulation. This player needs to have the ability to make decent judgement calls, and that can be difficult.

Both methods can work. I think players have to determine what's important to them. Can you get a player who can make judgement calls that are consistent and without bias? Do you want to focus on the imagined game world, or is that not that important?

 

[Dannager]

The second way relies on someone to make judgement calls based on what's happening in the game world - "You can't knock the snake prone; if it was coiled to strike, you could, but it's not." This places the game world into the economy of the game; it has a mechanical effect. Imagining the game world feeds back into our goals for play; players can use their abilities to manipulate the game world in order to succeed.

This also works well. The problem is that you need to use a specific set of techniques or the game falls apart. If the player making the judgement calls has a bias in making his decisions - he wants player A to win instead of player B, or he wants situation X to occur in the game instead of situation Y - the game you're playing is one of social positioning and manipulation. This player needs to have the ability to make decent judgement calls, and that can be difficult.

This is a false dilemma. Goals of play are not exclusive to "winning the system" or "maintaining world consistency". Both can be significant goals, and those goals can be just two among many that the players at a game have.

You need to consider that perhaps you can have your cake and eat it, too. Obviously, telling a player who prides himself on system mastery that he can't knock the snake prone despite the rules explicitly allowing him to do so, he will be disappointed and will enjoy the game less. And, equally obviously, having no remotely plausible in-world explanation for an event would be equally disappointing to a player who is focused on developing a shared imaginary world.

The problem is that this thread is chock full of people who look at the snake situation and say to themselves, "I cannot immediately come up with an explanation for how a snake could be knocked prone (or some other equivalent effect), therefore such an explanation does not exist." The reality is that while you (the DM, typically) may not be able to envision what's happening to the snake, your players might! In fact, they could have a totally reasonable scenario already playing out in their heads! Just in this thread, we have examples of people offering excellent descriptions of how a snake can be affected by the prone condition, or how a dwarf can parry a giant's two-ton club.

We need to move away from:

"I cannot immediately come up with an explanation for how a snake could be knocked prone (or some other equivalent effect), therefore such an explanation does not exist."

...and move towards:

"I cannot immediately come up with an explanation for how a snake could be knocked prone (or some other equivalent effect), but this does not mean that no such explanation exists, and - especially when the rules are on their side - I ought to give the players' imaginations the benefit of the doubt."