BryonD
Hero
I can't speak to WotC's problems. But for a great number of people it *is* the system.
It may be that the two are compounding each other.
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NOW LIVE! Into the Woods--new character species, eerie monsters, and haunting villains to populate the woodlands of your D&D games.
Could Wizards ACTUALLY make MOST people happy with a new edition?
- Thread starter Gundark
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It may be that the two are compounding each other.
TheAuldGrump
First Post
One of the nicest things that I ever heard about 4e was actually about the adventure path that they were running - War of the Burning Sky.
In my estimation WotC adventure support has not been that good, even under 3.X. Though I know one huge fan of Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil.
The Auld Grump
BryonD
Hero
Actually, that is a very good point. WotC's adventures took a lot of flak during the 3E era as well. So that isn't a point of difference here.
Imaro
Legend
@Balesir : I want to address the rest of your post whnen I get a chance but I saw these statements and thought this might be the crux of some of our failure to communicate, as well as why I provided the definitions I did...
Please re-read the definitions I provided... Simulationist agenda in no way requires realism, they are two different things and this, IMO, is where most people get coinfused.
IMO, it seems you want D&D 3.5 to be realistic... not that you were in fact trying to get a simulationist agenda in play from it. At least that's what I get from the above post... I mean Toon is cited as a game with a simulationist agenda... it's not realistic though.
EDIT: I find your first post above akin to asking why doesn't Elric of Melnibone the greatest sorcerer of his age rule the Young Kingdoms as opposed to having adventures... or better yet why do people as skilled as Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser involve themselves in petty larceny... or maybe even why don't Tolkien's super elves subjigate mankind... and so on. The adventurers of extreme power who adventure when they could (and some do such as Conan) become rulers, tyrants, demi-gods, etc. is a trope of Sword and Sorcery fiction as well as some High Fantasy.
Please re-read the definitions I provided... Simulationist agenda in no way requires realism, they are two different things and this, IMO, is where most people get coinfused.
IMO, it seems you want D&D 3.5 to be realistic... not that you were in fact trying to get a simulationist agenda in play from it. At least that's what I get from the above post... I mean Toon is cited as a game with a simulationist agenda... it's not realistic though.
EDIT: I find your first post above akin to asking why doesn't Elric of Melnibone the greatest sorcerer of his age rule the Young Kingdoms as opposed to having adventures... or better yet why do people as skilled as Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser involve themselves in petty larceny... or maybe even why don't Tolkien's super elves subjigate mankind... and so on. The adventurers of extreme power who adventure when they could (and some do such as Conan) become rulers, tyrants, demi-gods, etc. is a trope of Sword and Sorcery fiction as well as some High Fantasy.
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Overcoming challenges, though, isn't definitive of gamism in the Forge sense. After all, the aim of playin Burning Wheel is to overcome obstacles, and BW is pretty clearly a narrativist vehicle.
The issue with 4e is whether your play group, in overcoming the challenges, celebrates the clever play that achieved it (this would be gamism, and [MENTION=27160]Balesir[/MENTION] has posted a lot about playing 4e in this fashion) or enjoys the story/theme that is expressed thereby (I post a lot about playing 4e in this other fashion).
I think 4e is limited in its support for really hardcore gamist play because (i) if you play it in this fashion then build can become overwhelmingly important, but build is pre-play rather than play, and (ii) in play, at least in my experience, it is not all that hard for the PCs to win. So it is the manner of winning that brings the interesting stuff with it. I would think that 4e gamist play would be more about showing of a "cool move" in a given context, rather than being the one to save the party from what was otherwise going to be certain death. (But [MENTION=27160]Balesir[/MENTION] should feel free to correct me on this - I'm theorycrafting, not basing this on serious gamist play with 4e.)
Mechanics that are "fun" on the game side are not, in my view, particularly indicative of any orientation in play. They're just indicative of smooth design.
Gamism, in the Forge sense at least, has nothing to do with "playing a game". It has to do with playing a game competitively.
The fact that 4e has more metagame mechanics, that don't bring their own modelling of the fiction along with them, is a different matter. I think Ron Edwards is right when he notes that metagame mechanics can serve both gamist and narrativist agendas well, and that in several respects (including this one) narrativism and gamism have more in common with one another than either does with simulationism:
Gamist and Narrativist play often share the following things:
*Common use of player Author Stance (Pawn or non-Pawn) to set up the arena for conflict. This isn't an issue of whether Author (or any) Stance is employed at all, but rather when and for what.
*Fortune-in-the-middle during resolution, to whatever degree - the point is that Exploration as such can be deferred, rather than established at every point during play in a linear fashion.
*More generally, Exploration overall is negotiated in a casual fashion through ongoing dialogue, using system for input (which may be constraining), rather than explicitly delivered by system per se.
*Reward systems that reflect player choices (strategy, aesthetics, whatever) rather than on in-game character logic or on conformity to a pre-stated plan of play.
*Common use of player Author Stance (Pawn or non-Pawn) to set up the arena for conflict. This isn't an issue of whether Author (or any) Stance is employed at all, but rather when and for what.
*Fortune-in-the-middle during resolution, to whatever degree - the point is that Exploration as such can be deferred, rather than established at every point during play in a linear fashion.
*More generally, Exploration overall is negotiated in a casual fashion through ongoing dialogue, using system for input (which may be constraining), rather than explicitly delivered by system per se.
*Reward systems that reflect player choices (strategy, aesthetics, whatever) rather than on in-game character logic or on conformity to a pre-stated plan of play.
Except they have a tendency towards boring encounters. Maybe I'm looking at too narrow a sample - but Thunderspire Labyrinth, for example, has cool circular paths in both The Chamber of Eyes and The Well of Demons, but as written no encounters exploits those paths. I had to rework the encounters pretty substantially to actually get the value that was there in the maps.
Well this I disagree with very strongly. 3E is laden with simulationist action resolution mechanics, and with somewhat simulationist NPC and encounter-building mechanics. All of which are potential obstacles to narrativist play, for the reasons indicated in the quote from Edwards above.
I've got no doubt that someone could play vanilla narrativist 3E. But I think it would be moderately hard work, and I think some drifting would be required. You'd probably want to tweak the XP system. You'd probably want to tweak the demographic rules, the monster design rules and the encounter-building guidelines. You'd probably want to look at the treasure distribution rules, and reduce the connection between treasure and monsters. You'd probably also want to reduce the simulationist orientation of the PC build rules. And you'd have to work out how to get conflict resolution out of a task-focused skill system (4e does this via skill challenges; BW does it via "Let It Ride"; 3E has no built-in mechanism for this).
I'm sure there's other stuff that would get in the way too, but these are the main ones that occur to me.
I didn't play 3E to any significant extent. I play 4e because it is different from 3E. If I wanted to play a simulationist game, or to drift a simulationist engine to narrativism, I would use RM or HARP.
2E seems to aim at high-concept simulationist play, but unlike eg CoC or Pendragon has crappy mechanics for supporting it, and therefore produces (at least in my experience) railroady adventures and encouragement to the GM to "suspend the action resolution rules" (ie what I tend to think of as cheating) in the interests of the story. I see it as the edition of dysfunctional GM force.
Gygax's AD&D seems to me aimed at exploration-heavy gamist play, with a lot of the action resolution to be handled by negotiation at the table, or by ad hoc mechanical systems, rather than via settled mechanics. The idea of the "skilled player", who is lauded in Gygax's PHB and DMG, seems to be someone who is good at "winning" in this sort of play (contrast this with Tunnels and Trolls, for example, where luck is so important - part of the idea of AD&D, and it's preference for negotiation over dice in many circumstances, seems to be to remove the importance of luck - it's an ongoing debate whether, in luck's place, it gives us gaming the GM!).
As for drifting 4e to narrativism, it's trivial. All I had to do to get my current game going was to tell the players (i) build PCs that are legal by mechanics and backstory of the PHB, (ii) give your PC a loyalty to someone/something, and (iii) give your PC a reason to be ready to fight goblins. Once these PCs have been built, the sytem - in terms of its PC build mechanics, its encounter build mechanics, its monsters (both mechanical design, and integration into the thematic conflicts that are inherent in the default backstory), its action resolution - makes it completely straightforward to run a situation-and-character focused narrativist game. The prevelance of metagame mechanics, and the tight scene framing that the action resolution mechanics support, stops sim/exploration taking over. And the fact that building for theme also means building for mechanical viability, plus the fact (in my experience) that the action resolution mechanics are very forgiving of diverse approaches to resolving encounters (both on the players' and the GM's part), means that gamism doesn't take over either.
I think I'm a better GM now than I was then. But if I tried to run a simulationist game now I'd be better than I was then. I don't think there's anything peculiarly difficult about running a non-simulationist, or non-Gygaxian game. In fact, when I was a teenager I couldn't run a Gygaxian/Pulsepharian game, although I tried, but I could run a vanilla narrativist game.
The first quoted sentence I have no independent view on, nor independent evidence for - all I can go on is the vibe I get from ENworld. That vibe suggests that "larger" at least is warranted. (And maybe "larger" vs "much larger" is just a quibble.)
With the second sentence, again I'll quibble on the "vastly" but do think that 3E could be drifted to narrativism more easily than 4e to simulationism or to Gygaxian exploration-heavy gamism. I don't think the drifting of 3E would be completely trivial, though, for the reasons given in my post above this one.
But what do hit points model in the game? This came up in a couple of recent threads - "In defence of the theory of dissociated mechanics", and "Unhealable injuries".
Consider a player whose PC has 50 hp left. The player knows that no archer (other, perhaps, than Apollo or his peers) can kill her PC with a single arrow. Indeed, half-a-dozen members of the town guard could let loose with their crossbows and the PC would be fine, and able to run away unhindered. The player also know that her PC can jump over a 50' cliff with no fear of death, and no trouble picking herself up at the bottom and walking or running away.
What does this knowledge, which the player has in virtue of how hit points interact with the action resolution mechanics, correspond to in the gameworld? Nothing that I can see. In practice, as far as I can tell, most sim-oriented D&D players treat hit points de facto as "meat", even though many editions of the game have contained text saying that they're not only meat but also luck, skill etc.
My personal view is that Gygax was right in his DMG when he said the idea that a high-level fighter is as "meaty" as a dragon is ridiculous. (For games where hit points really are meat, but which deal with the issue of falling, being shot by a crossbow, etc, in a way that works with this rather than against it, see Rolemaster, or Runequest, or HARP, or . . .)
But the notion that hit points just reflect skill is equally untenable, because that doesn't fit with falling damage, surviving area attacks, etc. The only way I can make sense of D&D hit points is as a metagame mechanic. (4e is the first version of the game to make this explicit.)
Agreed.
Yep. In my case, I was interested in 4e initially because I enjoy RPGs and liked to keep up with the news. And as the previews came out it seemed like 4e would be a system that could support narrativist play fairly well. And for me, Worlds and Monsters was the clincher. When I eventually bought the books with the intention of running it, it was narrativist play that I was aiming for.
For anyone who is interested, here is my take on 4e as a narrativist-supporting system (there is some extensive cross-posting here from posts 262, 278 and 290 on the "Is D&D about combat?" thread).
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4e and roleplaying
First, here's a brief take on what I think of as roleplaying. It's from a blog post that LostSoul drew my attention to, and that I see something new and worthwhile in nearly every time I look over it:
I'm sure that this doesn't exhaust what "roleplaying" might mean for a player in an RPG, but I think it captures a good chunk of what is going on in a lot of games, both mainstream and more avant garde.
Now look at the discussion in the 4e DMG on quests - how a GM designs quests, the importance of player-initiated quests, etc. Here're some sample passages, from pages 102-3:
I'll agree that that's not quite Burning Wheel, but I see 4e as a little "abashed" in its presentation of what the designers' seem to have had in mind.
This on page 103 of the DMG helps build up the picture, though:
And I think the intention is further suggested by this, from page 258 of the PHB:
The DMG, on page 122, suggests what these other kinds of rewards might be:
There is also this, on pages 18 and 24 of the PHB:
How this stuff about character design is meant to fit into the stuff on quests isn't made entirely clear - again, we're not looking at Burning Wheel here - but the picture I get is that the designers envisage PCs who have a place in the fiction - of which backstory is an element but not the most important element - and that the players and GM work together to conceive of quests (ie adventures) that build on and develop this place in the fiction. (That is what the "other kinds of rewards" seem to be about.) And the players engage these quests via advocacy for their PCs.
So anyway, that's what I see as 4e's take on roleplaying, and how the GM and players are meant to work together to bring it about.
Combat, roleplaying and fiction
Combat in 4e is a means to the end of roleplaying - part of the "recipe for advancing a level" - but isn't what the game is presented as being about, at least in the passages I've quoted.
But if all decisions in a combat become about tactics, instead of advocating for a particular persona, then roleplaying in my preferred sense has dropped away. The players have instead become some sort of hive-mind, in which a given player's PC just happens to be the game pieces over which that player has pre-eminent control.
Now in a certain sort of game (eg Tunnels & Trolls or D&D played in their most simplistic mode) then a certain degree of advocacy might remain in such a situation - because the player will want to keep his/her PC alive (otherwise s/he has to drop out of the game, at least temporarily) and PCs in simplistic T&T and D&D don't really have personalities beyoned the desires to live, to kill and to loot. So staying alive by killing the monsters is advocating for the first two of these elements of the PC. (The problems in actual play caused by the third of these - the desire to loot - are illustrated by the need, in Gygax's PHB, for an explicit set of guidelines on handling treasure distribution among surviving PCs.)
But once PCs have more complex personalities and backstories than the loss of advocacy during combat lurks as a threat to roleplaying. (In saying it's a threat, I'm assuming that the players want to play an RPG. If they really want a tactical skirmish game linked by improv drama - to borrow some evocative phrasing from Justin Alexander - then there is no problem.)
In my experience (for what it's worth - I'm just one guy GMing a handful of players), keeping character advocacy alive in combat, once PCs become more complex, is achieved by making the stakes of combat overwhelmingly salient to the interests of the PCs in question, and in such a fashion that they are overwhelmingly salient to the players as well. So the players, in pursuing what is salient to them, will find themselves advocating for their PCs.
This is achieved in a few ways. First, the players have to actually be interested in playing their PCs. This is more tricky than it sounds, because it's not unheard of for a player to conceive of an interesting PC on paper, but have no interest in actually playing that PC at the table. (I have had such players in my group - in practice, they tend to have little impact on the group or the game, sitting around doing little until the dice start rolling, at which point they make the relevant tactical contributions before sitting back again to watch others actually play the game.)
In addition to these players, though, are those who want to play their PC but have been burned by past experiences - of GMs punishing them for it (eg paladins being stripped of their paladinhood) or stomping on it (eg GMs railroading over the top of PC-initiated "sidequests" - I use inverted commas because I feel the very notion of a sidequest makes sense only in the context of a GM-dominated railroad).
To encourage these players to actually play their PCs, the GM needs to set up situations, and then follow them through, in a way that actually illustrates to these players, and assure them, that playing their PCs won't cost them (in XP, in kudos, in respect at the table, in interesting things to do) but will reward them.
And combat can be a part of this as much as anything. Drop so-called "filler" combats. Make every combat encounter speak to one or more of the PCs directly. And then set it up so that the players have a reason to play out their PCs' interests and concerns. You want an alignment between the PC build and backstory, the thematic/story concern of the player in putting together that PC, the build of the encounter by me as GM, and the way players and GM together resolve the encounter.
I think 4e works well for this because (at least in my experience) it is pretty forgiving of a wide range of tactical choices made in the course of play. (I know that some others think that tactically highly optimised play is essential for PC survival, but I haven't seen that.) Also, in 4e if you build a character that expresses your thematic concerns as a player, you can be reasonably confident that if you play that character in a way that expresses those concerns (ie you advocate for your PC) this won't lead to any sacrifice of tactical "oomph".
It's also true that 4e, with its many non-simulationist mechanics, is vulnerable to being played as a pure skirmish game, because its lack of simulationism makes it much easier to drift its action resolution in a direction where the fiction doesn't matter. I think how 4e combat is experienced, in this respect, may depend whether, for any given group, the stuff that is drawn on the battlemap is first and foremost fictional stuff - trees, rubble, fog, walls with doors and windows, etc - or first and foremost mechanical stuff - cover, difficult terrain, obscuring terrain etc. Perhaps in part because my maps are fairly sketchy and my group uses board game tokens rather than miniatures or even WotC's picture tokens, I think that the fictional stuff prevails. And this is reinforced by the resolution of interactions that are not just manipulating the map, but involve the fiction affecting the mechanical resolution - like climbing walls, overturning furniture, opening or closing doors and shutters, etc.
Furthermore, as 4e is written, fiction does matter straightforwardly to resolution in ways that are independent of the battlemap. The rules on damaging objects, for example, make it clear that keywords (like fire, ice, teleportation etc) have fictional signficance. A tree can be set alight, for instance, but a stone pillar can't. Icy terrain can be used to cross a river, whereas a grasping vines spell that also creates difficult terrain probably can't. And so on. So here we have constraints generated by the fiction affecting the mechanics, not just a self-referential mechanical system with any fiction as optional colour.
Narrativist 4e
So far, I've talked about roleplaying in 4e - the players engaging the fiction via advocacy for their PCs - and how combat can be a vehicle for that. But how does the narrativism fit in?
Here's a bit more from From Eero Tuovinen's blog:
And here's a quote from Paul Czege:
For me, these give a good account of situation-and-character driven narrativist play. In particular, they explain what is needed - namely:
Because (iii) can lead to suprising outcomes, it is also helpful to have guidelines and materials to enable (ii) to take place even if it wasn't known, in advance, what exactly would be required. Also, the reason that the italicised part of (iii) is important is because if the scene lingers on once the interesting stuff has happened, this gets in the way of starting again at (ii).
I find that 4e has a lot of features that help with (i) to (iii) above: a focus on the encounter as the unit of play; robust action resolution mechanics with a strong metagame component; and a lightly sketched but thematically rich default setting.
For example, the GM has a fairly robust toolkit for building engaging challenges - both guidelines (these are better developed for combat than for skill challenges, but I come to 4e skill challenges with at least a passing knowledge of how skill challenge-style mechanics work in other games like HeroWars/Quest) and story elements (again a richer selection for combat than non-combat, but there are plenty of interesting noncombat ideas in the 4e books - as well as a range of mechanical elements that might be included in a skill challenge, Worlds and Monsters has good stuff on how different story elements can contribute to the game).
And once the GM has built these challenges, 4e's action resolution mechanics are heavily focused on the "situation" (the scene, the challenge) as the focus of play. This is expressed in the skill challenge mechanics, which emphasise "the goal of the challenge and [the] obstacles the characters face to accomplish that goal" (DMG p 72) and also emphasise "describing the situation and . . . [then] narrating the results" of the players' skill checks (DMG p 74). There is little focus, here, on conceiving of the situation in terms of its outgrowth from "the physics of the gameworld". The focus is on what the players do, via their PCs, to engage the scene and resolve the conflict (achieve the goal) that inheres in it. (Even where this is not spelled out, it is implicit in comments like the advice in the DMG to "fast-forward through the parts of an adventure that aren’t fun" (p 105).)
In the case of combat, there is also an emphasis on the situation as framed or constructed rather than extrapolated, although in the DMG this is more about tactical matters than thematic matters (Worlds and Monsters is more useful here, in my view). 4e's metagame approach to monster and NPC design (solos, elites, minions, etc - indeed, arguably, its treatment of the whole matter of "levels" as a metagame device rather than an ingame matter) facilitates this.
And whereas some people seem to think that success in 4e combat depends on highly optimised play - such that gamist considerations about being successful start to crowd out other considerations - as I said above I haven't had this experience at all. I find that - unlike other fantasy mainstream fantasy RPGs I've played - AD&D, RQ, RM - 4e is very forgiving of a wide range of player decision-making during the course of combat (eg where to move, who to heal, who to attack, how to attack them, etc), which means that combat provides a fertile ground for players to express their own thematic points.
And whether in or out of combat, the metagame character of 4e's action resolution mechanics - which a lot of the time lend themselves to being treated as setting parameters on narration, rather than dicatating what is happening in the fiction without the need for interpretation/narration - allow players and GM to narrate what is happening in a scene in a way that drives the story in the direction they want to push it.
A simple example of this point about metagame mechanics: in a recent session an NPC cast Baleful Polymorph on the PC paladin of the Raven Queen, turning him into a frog. As per the NPC's stat block, after a round had passed I told the player of the PC that his paladin had turned back to his normal form. The paladin's turn came up next, and his player had him charge the NPC spellcaster. Speaking for the NPC, I said something like "I'm not scared of you - I already turned you into a frog!" And without missing a beat, the player of the paladin replied, in character "Ah, but the Raven Queen turned me back". That is, the player treated the polymorph mechanic as a metagame mechanic, and then narrated the result - namely, that his PC is no longer a frog - in a way that further developed his PC's relationship to his god, and his reliance upon his god to see him through in every situation. There wouldn't be the same scope for this if it was just assumed that, because at the mechanical level the polymorph has to come to an end after one round, so in the gameworld the polymorph would come to an end after 6 seconds regardless of the Raven Queen's relationship to her paladin.
In both non-combat and combat contexts there is fairly robust guidance as to suitable DCs, damage numbers etc to use. (This is a bit like the sort of guidance HeroQuest/Wars gives in its pass/fail cycle, although not identical.) I find that this helps with both encounter building and encounter resolution. It makes it easy to adjudicate unexpected choices made by the players (eg "We're going to negotiate with these duergar slavers rather than fight them" - I've got DC numbers to support a skill challenge, or "The tiefling paladin is going to charge through the wall of the burning hut to rescue the unconscious dwarf" - I've got DC numbers and damage numbers to support this). This reduces any temptation to fudging, railroading, or saying "no", thereby encouraging players to engage the situation as they see it and do interesting stuff with it. And the forgiving nature of the combat and other tactical resolution mechanics means that I can be confident in setting these numbers that I'm being fair to the players and not likely to run a risk of TPKing them. And it also works well with the metagame character of the mechanics - you can set a DC that is fair, let the situation play itself out, and then add in the narration that supports that outcome as part of the process of play.
Another feature of the action resolution mechanics in 4e, that helps with narrativist play, is that they bring scenes to a close. A skill challenge comes to an end - the players can't keep check-mongering. A combat is at an end, and now a short rest takes place - there is no need for check-mongering around healing. Magical treasure is identified by handling it in a short rest - there is no need for check-mongering around looting. To the extent that the rulebooks don't spell out a "let it ride" implication, subsequent GMing advice has done so. All of this contrasts very much with the approach of a game like RM, or any other game where the action resolution mechanics produce lingering consequences that the players can't afford to ignore (because they produce hooks for the GM to hang "gotcha's from") but which, if not ignored, cause scenes to linger on even when there is nothing more interesting to be gotten out of them.
The final aspect of 4e that I think is there in the box that helps the sort of game I want to play is its default setting. Unlike some other D&D settings, it is laden with thematically-rich conflict (eg Raven Queen vs Orcus - death and undeath; Ioun vs Vecna - magic and secrets; Erathis vs devils vs demons - civilisation, domination, destruction; etc). And this content is distributed throughout the race descriptions, the class descriptions, the monster descriptions, etc. So it is very easy for players to build PCs who are invested in a thematically engaging conflict (and to keep developing and rebuilding them, via the retraining rules), and it is equally easy for the GM to build situations that put those conficts into play. This ties into (i) and (ii) above.
And this lore - both the stuff to which the players have access, and the stuff that the GM sees when quickly skimming over a monster description - is all true. There is no "secret" canon that will derail or wrongfoot players, invalidating their conception of how their PCs are located in the conflicts that they care about. Or that will derail or wrongfoot GMs, invalidating the way they have framed and resolved the situations in their games.
(I personally find that this is a marked difference from earlier D&D worlds. Consider, for example, the World of Greyhawk. Yes, the Scarlet Brotherhood are slave-trading martial artists, so they're fun to encounter and beat up on. But exactly what thematic conflict do they bring to the table without me as a GM having to do any more work? I don't know FR as well, but my impression is that its chock full of secret canon that is likely - designed, even - to wrongfoot the players.)
Now, unlike the indie games on which I'm modelling my approach, 4e doesn't mandate that the players build PCs that are invested in conflict. And there are some monsters and other story elements that don't scream conflict to me. As a GM, I personally would find it harder to run a narrativist game if the PCs in my game were all halfling rangers of Avandra. (Luckily I don't have a single one.) And even if I had players who built compelling PCs, I could stuff it up by using encounters consisting only of kruthiks and ankhegs (which I at least don't find all that compelling on their own). But the thematic stuff is not hidden - both on the player side and the GM side its easy to find and use. As I posted upthread, to get my game going, all I had to add to the 4e default setting and the 4e rules were two instructions to the players: your PC must have at least one important loyalty, and your PC must have a reason to be ready to fight goblins.
Conclusion
What is coming together here is some system stuff: (i) features of 4e's PC build rules; (ii) its monster design; (iii) the default story that PCs and monsters bring with them; (iv) features of its action resolution rules. And some participant stuff: (v) the GM adopting a situation+character narrativist approach to encounter design - I'm deliberately building encounters that will pick up on the hooks built into the PCs; (vI) players who want to roleplay by advocating for their PCs; (vii) both GM and players following through on this in actual encounter resolution - in particular, as GM, in the course of resolution I'm deliberately making choices that will engage the players and let them advocate for their PCs as part of resolving the combat.
Because of the system stuff, the participants don't have to drift, or push against, the system to play in this way. If anything, I feel you might have to push against some aspects of the system to play a different way. (I'm also aware that nearly every feature of 4e that I've identified as supporting the sort of play I'm interested in is one of those aspects of the game that tends to be criticised by those who prefer 3E or PF to 4e. That's why I think "reconciliation" is unlikely.)
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4e and roleplaying
First, here's a brief take on what I think of as roleplaying. It's from a blog post that LostSoul drew my attention to, and that I see something new and worthwhile in nearly every time I look over it:
One type of player role is when the game requires a player to be an advocate for a single player character . . . When a player is an advocate for a character in a roleplaying game, this means that his task in playing the game is to express his character’s personality, interests and agenda for the benefit of himself and other players. This means that the player tells the others what his character does, thinks and feels, and he’s doing his job well if the picture he paints of the character is clear and powerful, easy to relate to.
I'm sure that this doesn't exhaust what "roleplaying" might mean for a player in an RPG, but I think it captures a good chunk of what is going on in a lot of games, both mainstream and more avant garde.
Now look at the discussion in the 4e DMG on quests - how a GM designs quests, the importance of player-initiated quests, etc. Here're some sample passages, from pages 102-3:
Quests are the fundamental story framework of an adventure - the reason the characters want to participate in it. They’re the reason an adventure exists, and they indicate what the characters need to do to solve the situation the adventure presents. . .
Quests should focus on the story reasons for adventuring, not on the underlying basic actions of the game - killing monsters and acquiring treasure. "Defeat ten encounters of your level" isn’t a quest. It's a recipe for advancing a level. Completing it is its own reward. "Make Harrows Pass safe for travelers" is a quest, even if the easiest way to accomplish it happens to be defeating ten encounters of the characters' level. This quest is a story-based goal, and one that has at least the possibility of solution by other means.
Quests should focus on the story reasons for adventuring, not on the underlying basic actions of the game - killing monsters and acquiring treasure. "Defeat ten encounters of your level" isn’t a quest. It's a recipe for advancing a level. Completing it is its own reward. "Make Harrows Pass safe for travelers" is a quest, even if the easiest way to accomplish it happens to be defeating ten encounters of the characters' level. This quest is a story-based goal, and one that has at least the possibility of solution by other means.
I'll agree that that's not quite Burning Wheel, but I see 4e as a little "abashed" in its presentation of what the designers' seem to have had in mind.
This on page 103 of the DMG helps build up the picture, though:
You should allow and even encourage players to come up with their own quests that are tied to their individual goals or specific circumstances in the adventure. Evaluate the proposed quest and assign it a level. Remember to say yes as often as possible!
And I think the intention is further suggested by this, from page 258 of the PHB:
Most adventures have a goal, something you have to do to complete the adventure successfully. The goal might be a personal one, a cause shared by you and your
allies, or a task you have been hired to perform. A goal in an adventure is called a quest.
Quests connect a series of encounters into a meaningful story. . .
You can also, with your DM's approval, create a quest for your character. Such a quest can tie into your character's background. . . Individual quests give you a stake in a campaign's unfolding story and give your DM ingredients to help develop that story.
When you complete quests, you earn rewards, including experience points, treasure, and possibly other kinds of rewards.
allies, or a task you have been hired to perform. A goal in an adventure is called a quest.
Quests connect a series of encounters into a meaningful story. . .
You can also, with your DM's approval, create a quest for your character. Such a quest can tie into your character's background. . . Individual quests give you a stake in a campaign's unfolding story and give your DM ingredients to help develop that story.
When you complete quests, you earn rewards, including experience points, treasure, and possibly other kinds of rewards.
The DMG, on page 122, suggests what these other kinds of rewards might be:
[Q]uests can also have less concrete rewards. Perhaps someone owes them a favor, they’ve earned the respect of an organization that might give them future quests, or they’ve established a contact who can provide them with important information or access.
There is also this, on pages 18 and 24 of the PHB:
The Dungeons & Dragons game is, first and foremost, a roleplaying game, which means that it’s all about taking on the role of a character in the game. . .
Your character’s background often stays there - in the background. What’s most important about your character is what you do in the course of your adventures, not what happened to you in the past. Even so, thinking about your birthplace, family, and upbringing can help you decide how to play your character.
Your character’s background often stays there - in the background. What’s most important about your character is what you do in the course of your adventures, not what happened to you in the past. Even so, thinking about your birthplace, family, and upbringing can help you decide how to play your character.
How this stuff about character design is meant to fit into the stuff on quests isn't made entirely clear - again, we're not looking at Burning Wheel here - but the picture I get is that the designers envisage PCs who have a place in the fiction - of which backstory is an element but not the most important element - and that the players and GM work together to conceive of quests (ie adventures) that build on and develop this place in the fiction. (That is what the "other kinds of rewards" seem to be about.) And the players engage these quests via advocacy for their PCs.
So anyway, that's what I see as 4e's take on roleplaying, and how the GM and players are meant to work together to bring it about.
Combat, roleplaying and fiction
Combat in 4e is a means to the end of roleplaying - part of the "recipe for advancing a level" - but isn't what the game is presented as being about, at least in the passages I've quoted.
But if all decisions in a combat become about tactics, instead of advocating for a particular persona, then roleplaying in my preferred sense has dropped away. The players have instead become some sort of hive-mind, in which a given player's PC just happens to be the game pieces over which that player has pre-eminent control.
Now in a certain sort of game (eg Tunnels & Trolls or D&D played in their most simplistic mode) then a certain degree of advocacy might remain in such a situation - because the player will want to keep his/her PC alive (otherwise s/he has to drop out of the game, at least temporarily) and PCs in simplistic T&T and D&D don't really have personalities beyoned the desires to live, to kill and to loot. So staying alive by killing the monsters is advocating for the first two of these elements of the PC. (The problems in actual play caused by the third of these - the desire to loot - are illustrated by the need, in Gygax's PHB, for an explicit set of guidelines on handling treasure distribution among surviving PCs.)
But once PCs have more complex personalities and backstories than the loss of advocacy during combat lurks as a threat to roleplaying. (In saying it's a threat, I'm assuming that the players want to play an RPG. If they really want a tactical skirmish game linked by improv drama - to borrow some evocative phrasing from Justin Alexander - then there is no problem.)
In my experience (for what it's worth - I'm just one guy GMing a handful of players), keeping character advocacy alive in combat, once PCs become more complex, is achieved by making the stakes of combat overwhelmingly salient to the interests of the PCs in question, and in such a fashion that they are overwhelmingly salient to the players as well. So the players, in pursuing what is salient to them, will find themselves advocating for their PCs.
This is achieved in a few ways. First, the players have to actually be interested in playing their PCs. This is more tricky than it sounds, because it's not unheard of for a player to conceive of an interesting PC on paper, but have no interest in actually playing that PC at the table. (I have had such players in my group - in practice, they tend to have little impact on the group or the game, sitting around doing little until the dice start rolling, at which point they make the relevant tactical contributions before sitting back again to watch others actually play the game.)
In addition to these players, though, are those who want to play their PC but have been burned by past experiences - of GMs punishing them for it (eg paladins being stripped of their paladinhood) or stomping on it (eg GMs railroading over the top of PC-initiated "sidequests" - I use inverted commas because I feel the very notion of a sidequest makes sense only in the context of a GM-dominated railroad).
To encourage these players to actually play their PCs, the GM needs to set up situations, and then follow them through, in a way that actually illustrates to these players, and assure them, that playing their PCs won't cost them (in XP, in kudos, in respect at the table, in interesting things to do) but will reward them.
And combat can be a part of this as much as anything. Drop so-called "filler" combats. Make every combat encounter speak to one or more of the PCs directly. And then set it up so that the players have a reason to play out their PCs' interests and concerns. You want an alignment between the PC build and backstory, the thematic/story concern of the player in putting together that PC, the build of the encounter by me as GM, and the way players and GM together resolve the encounter.
I think 4e works well for this because (at least in my experience) it is pretty forgiving of a wide range of tactical choices made in the course of play. (I know that some others think that tactically highly optimised play is essential for PC survival, but I haven't seen that.) Also, in 4e if you build a character that expresses your thematic concerns as a player, you can be reasonably confident that if you play that character in a way that expresses those concerns (ie you advocate for your PC) this won't lead to any sacrifice of tactical "oomph".
It's also true that 4e, with its many non-simulationist mechanics, is vulnerable to being played as a pure skirmish game, because its lack of simulationism makes it much easier to drift its action resolution in a direction where the fiction doesn't matter. I think how 4e combat is experienced, in this respect, may depend whether, for any given group, the stuff that is drawn on the battlemap is first and foremost fictional stuff - trees, rubble, fog, walls with doors and windows, etc - or first and foremost mechanical stuff - cover, difficult terrain, obscuring terrain etc. Perhaps in part because my maps are fairly sketchy and my group uses board game tokens rather than miniatures or even WotC's picture tokens, I think that the fictional stuff prevails. And this is reinforced by the resolution of interactions that are not just manipulating the map, but involve the fiction affecting the mechanical resolution - like climbing walls, overturning furniture, opening or closing doors and shutters, etc.
Furthermore, as 4e is written, fiction does matter straightforwardly to resolution in ways that are independent of the battlemap. The rules on damaging objects, for example, make it clear that keywords (like fire, ice, teleportation etc) have fictional signficance. A tree can be set alight, for instance, but a stone pillar can't. Icy terrain can be used to cross a river, whereas a grasping vines spell that also creates difficult terrain probably can't. And so on. So here we have constraints generated by the fiction affecting the mechanics, not just a self-referential mechanical system with any fiction as optional colour.
Narrativist 4e
So far, I've talked about roleplaying in 4e - the players engaging the fiction via advocacy for their PCs - and how combat can be a vehicle for that. But how does the narrativism fit in?
Here's a bit more from From Eero Tuovinen's blog:
One of the players is a gamemaster whose job it is to keep track of the backstory, frame scenes according to dramatic needs (that is, go where the action is) and provoke thematic moments . . .
The rest of the players each have their own characters to play. They play their characters according to the advocacy role: the important part is that they naturally allow the character’s interests to come through based on what they imagine of the character’s nature and background. . .
The actual procedure of play is very simple: once the players have established concrete characters, situations and backstory in whatever manner a given game ascribes, the GM starts framing scenes for the player characters. . .
The GM describes a situation that provokes choices on the part of the character. The player is ready for this, as he knows his character and the character’s needs, so he makes choices on the part of the character. This in turn leads to consequences as determined by the game’s rules. . .
The player’s task in these games is simple advocacy, which is not difficult once you have a firm character. . .
The GM might have more difficulty, as he needs to be able to reference the backstory, determine complications to introduce into the game, and figure out consequences. Much of the rules systems in these games address these challenges, and in addition the GM might have methodical tools outside the rules, such as pre-prepared relationship maps (helps with backstory), bangs (helps with provoking thematic choice) and pure experience (helps with determining consequences).
The rest of the players each have their own characters to play. They play their characters according to the advocacy role: the important part is that they naturally allow the character’s interests to come through based on what they imagine of the character’s nature and background. . .
The actual procedure of play is very simple: once the players have established concrete characters, situations and backstory in whatever manner a given game ascribes, the GM starts framing scenes for the player characters. . .
The GM describes a situation that provokes choices on the part of the character. The player is ready for this, as he knows his character and the character’s needs, so he makes choices on the part of the character. This in turn leads to consequences as determined by the game’s rules. . .
The player’s task in these games is simple advocacy, which is not difficult once you have a firm character. . .
The GM might have more difficulty, as he needs to be able to reference the backstory, determine complications to introduce into the game, and figure out consequences. Much of the rules systems in these games address these challenges, and in addition the GM might have methodical tools outside the rules, such as pre-prepared relationship maps (helps with backstory), bangs (helps with provoking thematic choice) and pure experience (helps with determining consequences).
And here's a quote from Paul Czege:
My personal inclination is to call the traditional method "scene extrapolation," because the details . . . of scenes initiated using the method are typically arrived at primarily by considering the physics of the game world, what has happened prior to the scene, and the unrevealed actions and aspirations of characters that only the GM knows about.
"Scene framing" is a very different mental process for me. . . I'm turning a freakin' firehose of adversity and situation on the character. It is not an objective outgrowth of prior events. It's intentional as all get out. . . I keep NPC personalities somewhat unfixed in my mind, allowing me to retroactively justify their behaviors in support of this. And . . . the outcome of the scene is not preconceived.
"Scene framing" is a very different mental process for me. . . I'm turning a freakin' firehose of adversity and situation on the character. It is not an objective outgrowth of prior events. It's intentional as all get out. . . I keep NPC personalities somewhat unfixed in my mind, allowing me to retroactively justify their behaviors in support of this. And . . . the outcome of the scene is not preconceived.
For me, these give a good account of situation-and-character driven narrativist play. In particular, they explain what is needed - namely:
(i) character build rules that will locate the PC in a situation of potential conflict that is thematically engaging;
(ii) scene framing rules/guidelines that give the GM the flexibility to force the issue; and
(iii) action resolution rules that
(a) let the players engage the conflict (via their PCs),
(b) let the GM keep injecting conflict/complication as the scene resolves,
(b) leave the outcome to be determined by how all this pans out in actual play (no railroading/fudging/cheating/predetermination of the resolution), and
(c) that bring the scene to a close.
(ii) scene framing rules/guidelines that give the GM the flexibility to force the issue; and
(iii) action resolution rules that
(a) let the players engage the conflict (via their PCs),
(b) let the GM keep injecting conflict/complication as the scene resolves,
(b) leave the outcome to be determined by how all this pans out in actual play (no railroading/fudging/cheating/predetermination of the resolution), and
(c) that bring the scene to a close.
Because (iii) can lead to suprising outcomes, it is also helpful to have guidelines and materials to enable (ii) to take place even if it wasn't known, in advance, what exactly would be required. Also, the reason that the italicised part of (iii) is important is because if the scene lingers on once the interesting stuff has happened, this gets in the way of starting again at (ii).
I find that 4e has a lot of features that help with (i) to (iii) above: a focus on the encounter as the unit of play; robust action resolution mechanics with a strong metagame component; and a lightly sketched but thematically rich default setting.
For example, the GM has a fairly robust toolkit for building engaging challenges - both guidelines (these are better developed for combat than for skill challenges, but I come to 4e skill challenges with at least a passing knowledge of how skill challenge-style mechanics work in other games like HeroWars/Quest) and story elements (again a richer selection for combat than non-combat, but there are plenty of interesting noncombat ideas in the 4e books - as well as a range of mechanical elements that might be included in a skill challenge, Worlds and Monsters has good stuff on how different story elements can contribute to the game).
And once the GM has built these challenges, 4e's action resolution mechanics are heavily focused on the "situation" (the scene, the challenge) as the focus of play. This is expressed in the skill challenge mechanics, which emphasise "the goal of the challenge and [the] obstacles the characters face to accomplish that goal" (DMG p 72) and also emphasise "describing the situation and . . . [then] narrating the results" of the players' skill checks (DMG p 74). There is little focus, here, on conceiving of the situation in terms of its outgrowth from "the physics of the gameworld". The focus is on what the players do, via their PCs, to engage the scene and resolve the conflict (achieve the goal) that inheres in it. (Even where this is not spelled out, it is implicit in comments like the advice in the DMG to "fast-forward through the parts of an adventure that aren’t fun" (p 105).)
In the case of combat, there is also an emphasis on the situation as framed or constructed rather than extrapolated, although in the DMG this is more about tactical matters than thematic matters (Worlds and Monsters is more useful here, in my view). 4e's metagame approach to monster and NPC design (solos, elites, minions, etc - indeed, arguably, its treatment of the whole matter of "levels" as a metagame device rather than an ingame matter) facilitates this.
And whereas some people seem to think that success in 4e combat depends on highly optimised play - such that gamist considerations about being successful start to crowd out other considerations - as I said above I haven't had this experience at all. I find that - unlike other fantasy mainstream fantasy RPGs I've played - AD&D, RQ, RM - 4e is very forgiving of a wide range of player decision-making during the course of combat (eg where to move, who to heal, who to attack, how to attack them, etc), which means that combat provides a fertile ground for players to express their own thematic points.
And whether in or out of combat, the metagame character of 4e's action resolution mechanics - which a lot of the time lend themselves to being treated as setting parameters on narration, rather than dicatating what is happening in the fiction without the need for interpretation/narration - allow players and GM to narrate what is happening in a scene in a way that drives the story in the direction they want to push it.
A simple example of this point about metagame mechanics: in a recent session an NPC cast Baleful Polymorph on the PC paladin of the Raven Queen, turning him into a frog. As per the NPC's stat block, after a round had passed I told the player of the PC that his paladin had turned back to his normal form. The paladin's turn came up next, and his player had him charge the NPC spellcaster. Speaking for the NPC, I said something like "I'm not scared of you - I already turned you into a frog!" And without missing a beat, the player of the paladin replied, in character "Ah, but the Raven Queen turned me back". That is, the player treated the polymorph mechanic as a metagame mechanic, and then narrated the result - namely, that his PC is no longer a frog - in a way that further developed his PC's relationship to his god, and his reliance upon his god to see him through in every situation. There wouldn't be the same scope for this if it was just assumed that, because at the mechanical level the polymorph has to come to an end after one round, so in the gameworld the polymorph would come to an end after 6 seconds regardless of the Raven Queen's relationship to her paladin.
In both non-combat and combat contexts there is fairly robust guidance as to suitable DCs, damage numbers etc to use. (This is a bit like the sort of guidance HeroQuest/Wars gives in its pass/fail cycle, although not identical.) I find that this helps with both encounter building and encounter resolution. It makes it easy to adjudicate unexpected choices made by the players (eg "We're going to negotiate with these duergar slavers rather than fight them" - I've got DC numbers to support a skill challenge, or "The tiefling paladin is going to charge through the wall of the burning hut to rescue the unconscious dwarf" - I've got DC numbers and damage numbers to support this). This reduces any temptation to fudging, railroading, or saying "no", thereby encouraging players to engage the situation as they see it and do interesting stuff with it. And the forgiving nature of the combat and other tactical resolution mechanics means that I can be confident in setting these numbers that I'm being fair to the players and not likely to run a risk of TPKing them. And it also works well with the metagame character of the mechanics - you can set a DC that is fair, let the situation play itself out, and then add in the narration that supports that outcome as part of the process of play.
Another feature of the action resolution mechanics in 4e, that helps with narrativist play, is that they bring scenes to a close. A skill challenge comes to an end - the players can't keep check-mongering. A combat is at an end, and now a short rest takes place - there is no need for check-mongering around healing. Magical treasure is identified by handling it in a short rest - there is no need for check-mongering around looting. To the extent that the rulebooks don't spell out a "let it ride" implication, subsequent GMing advice has done so. All of this contrasts very much with the approach of a game like RM, or any other game where the action resolution mechanics produce lingering consequences that the players can't afford to ignore (because they produce hooks for the GM to hang "gotcha's from") but which, if not ignored, cause scenes to linger on even when there is nothing more interesting to be gotten out of them.
The final aspect of 4e that I think is there in the box that helps the sort of game I want to play is its default setting. Unlike some other D&D settings, it is laden with thematically-rich conflict (eg Raven Queen vs Orcus - death and undeath; Ioun vs Vecna - magic and secrets; Erathis vs devils vs demons - civilisation, domination, destruction; etc). And this content is distributed throughout the race descriptions, the class descriptions, the monster descriptions, etc. So it is very easy for players to build PCs who are invested in a thematically engaging conflict (and to keep developing and rebuilding them, via the retraining rules), and it is equally easy for the GM to build situations that put those conficts into play. This ties into (i) and (ii) above.
And this lore - both the stuff to which the players have access, and the stuff that the GM sees when quickly skimming over a monster description - is all true. There is no "secret" canon that will derail or wrongfoot players, invalidating their conception of how their PCs are located in the conflicts that they care about. Or that will derail or wrongfoot GMs, invalidating the way they have framed and resolved the situations in their games.
(I personally find that this is a marked difference from earlier D&D worlds. Consider, for example, the World of Greyhawk. Yes, the Scarlet Brotherhood are slave-trading martial artists, so they're fun to encounter and beat up on. But exactly what thematic conflict do they bring to the table without me as a GM having to do any more work? I don't know FR as well, but my impression is that its chock full of secret canon that is likely - designed, even - to wrongfoot the players.)
Now, unlike the indie games on which I'm modelling my approach, 4e doesn't mandate that the players build PCs that are invested in conflict. And there are some monsters and other story elements that don't scream conflict to me. As a GM, I personally would find it harder to run a narrativist game if the PCs in my game were all halfling rangers of Avandra. (Luckily I don't have a single one.) And even if I had players who built compelling PCs, I could stuff it up by using encounters consisting only of kruthiks and ankhegs (which I at least don't find all that compelling on their own). But the thematic stuff is not hidden - both on the player side and the GM side its easy to find and use. As I posted upthread, to get my game going, all I had to add to the 4e default setting and the 4e rules were two instructions to the players: your PC must have at least one important loyalty, and your PC must have a reason to be ready to fight goblins.
Conclusion
What is coming together here is some system stuff: (i) features of 4e's PC build rules; (ii) its monster design; (iii) the default story that PCs and monsters bring with them; (iv) features of its action resolution rules. And some participant stuff: (v) the GM adopting a situation+character narrativist approach to encounter design - I'm deliberately building encounters that will pick up on the hooks built into the PCs; (vI) players who want to roleplay by advocating for their PCs; (vii) both GM and players following through on this in actual encounter resolution - in particular, as GM, in the course of resolution I'm deliberately making choices that will engage the players and let them advocate for their PCs as part of resolving the combat.
Because of the system stuff, the participants don't have to drift, or push against, the system to play in this way. If anything, I feel you might have to push against some aspects of the system to play a different way. (I'm also aware that nearly every feature of 4e that I've identified as supporting the sort of play I'm interested in is one of those aspects of the game that tends to be criticised by those who prefer 3E or PF to 4e. That's why I think "reconciliation" is unlikely.)
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Balesir
Adventurer
If this is the impression you have then communication has indeed faltered. I am not talking about "realism" at all; I'll try to explain more clearly on this specific point. Oh, and I am going, generally, on Ron Edwards' and The Forge contributors' definitions of GNS, rather than a Wiki or ENWorld summary, useful though those summaries might be as introductions.
"Simulationist" play reaches out to simulate something. That something must be consistent within itself for Sim play to really "work". Some minor flaws are forgivable and, perhaps, inevitable but in general the "world" presented should "make sense" on its own terms. Toon, for example, does this admirably. D&D, on the other hand, gets into choppy water pretty quickly without some willing and rigid adherence, by the players, to a number of meta "rules".
Take, for example, the threat of low level monsters. In D&D we see these left to low level parties to deal with, or attacked with an army. But, if the inhabitants of this "world" are rational beings, and if the world really works as defined by the game rules, this is utterly barmy. Send in a single high-level character and the threat will be wiped out inside a day!
A key focus - maybe even a requirement - of Sim play is for the players, through their characters, to explore the game setting. Not just to wander around it in character, but to explore how it works, to (attempt to) grok what "makes it tick". To do so requires freedom in what their character does. RPGs have much vaunted this freedom almost since day 1, and yet it fails for a very high number of cases. Not only is play as a shopkeeper or town guard likely boring and unrewarding, but deciding, say, to attack the town dignitaries to seize the offered reward without the inconvenience of fighting the "evil" monsters leads to non-sensical situations really fast, IME. Your (mid-to-high level) characters attack the clerk offering the reward and set off to find and take the money. Next, either the town guard arrives (and gets slaughtered), of a "town guard" that is somehow as high a level as the PCs turns up, triggering a host of "WTF" questions. How did these guys get to be the level they are? Do monster infestations (that germinate levelled "adventurers") pop up on a regular basis hereabouts? Why aren't these guys dealing with the threat as part of their job? How come there are any monsters left after (apparently) generations of multiple levelled "adventurers" being generated?
Basically, if the "physics" of the world work as described by the rulebooks, the situations described in the D&D published game worlds (even the 'default' settings) just don't hang together. They don't represent stable (or even metastable) situations - and yet they are frequently apparently meant to have existed for a fair while.
We can handwave all this away and just live with the fact that the world is a backdrop, in a familiar idiom, for our play. But that isn't the crux of Simulationist play; it does not allow of any exploring or poking the setting to see how it works. It doesn't make for a solid sandbox in which to play. As a result, for Sim play, it works up to a point (as long as we deliberately ignore the parts of the world that don't stand up to scrutiny by a rational mind), but under stress it all falls apart (which is back to what I said above). It falls apart, not because it is different from the "real world", but because, in the final analysis, it makes no sense on its own terms.
Sure - but those tales are (almost by definition) not Simulationist vehicles. Neither do the worlds they are set in adhere to D&D "physics". At no point is it made clear that Conan reaches 12th level, for example. Trying to model his adventures with the assumption that he does reach 12th level, in fact, is probably impossible.
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Balesir
Adventurer
Well, although we have had no TPKs, we have had some PC deaths, so there is always that mode of "losing". Nevertheless, I think what you say here is largely correct. Milestones are also an intriguing way to measure the "cojones" displayed by the party
.Another issue with 4E for hardcore play, incidentally, is the difference between PCs and monsters vis-a-vis damage and hit points making PVP play more swingy. Not that we have had any of this in the actual campaign play.
BryonD
Hero
You are significantly generalizing about "non-simulationist" and I'm talking very specifically about your assessments and comments to how you run 4E. I said your assessments are unique and tied to your knowledge and experience at DMing. You tried to blow that off as no different than when you were a teenager, clearly implying that the whole thing applies to any reasonably competent beginner.
The your turn around and post your umnpteenth long post referencing multiple game design blogs (and fairly obscure ones if I do say so) and talking about things in forge terms and generally being intensely academic on the whole matter.
The bottom line is that:
Your point of view is not typical.
Your point of view is not remotely the level of knowledge that WotC made a huge point of marketing 4E to.
I don't challenge that you can find specific comments here and there from a designer or two that roughly aligns with you on 4E, but I've seen plenty of broad general comments on the fundamental core of 4E from designers that run exactly contrary to your position.
I've talked to many 4E fans and your take is practically unique.
And, all that aside, I just think a lot of people are going after a completely different experience anyway. I know I am.
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