Legends and Lore - Nod To Realism

[LostSoul]

I come down on Imaro and Derren's side in this. It's been my experience that, if you don't give the flavour text any weight in action resolution, then the specifics of what the characters do in the fiction tends to get ignored. Which is a shame, because 4E's math makes it really easy to resolve all sorts of fictional actions.

I think that game design that's challenge-based, puts the fictional positioning of the characters in a privileged position with regards to action resolution, and provides acceptable (if unexpected) results through action resolution needs to rely heavily on an impartial player - the DM.

 

[Tovec]

Once again, this was probably covered but it irked me SOO much I had to comment.

Hercules? Son of Zeus? Mr. Twelve Labors? The guy who rerouted two rivers in a single day to clean out the Augean stables?

He can be fighter and that's okay? But Inspiring Word employed by a Martial power source character... whole different story.

I'm trying to understand how you're constructing your position -- and I admit, I'm having difficulties.

Are you comparing the son of Zeus, a demigod, to regular human fighters?

Put another way, it is okay for Hercules to do certain things because he was more than human. Indeed he was born a god, rich in super-human powers. He didn't get those powers from being a fighter, instead his being a fighter represented his training with weapons.

So, yes it does seem over the top for a class, which used to represent the simple talent of swinging a sword and wielding a shield effectively, to have a power source which allows them to yell at an ally and change their status from unconscious to fine and able to fight some more. The part that makes it silly, to many who think the way I do, is that they are able to do this without explicit access to magic, using a power souce which is not explicitly magical, and when the power source by convenient and conventional understanding SHOULD mean non-magical. Long and rant-ish I know.

You don't mock the skeleton. You mock it's creator. Or Vecna (the god of undeath). Or the shadow magic that animates it and keeps it intact.

So would I. You don't kill an ooze by mocking it. You kill an ooze by mocking Juiblex.

I generally include story elements in my game based on need, and haven't personally felt any consistency issues.

I already saw this was partially addressed.

But come on...
Mocking the master/creator, who is dead (based on the example), or plausibly not within earshot?
Mocking Vecna/Juiblex, who is a god, who is not paying attention to something so lowly AND who can take it?
Mocking the shadow magic, which is a force and incapable of emotion? Why not mock fire to make it not burn you?

 

[Hussar]

I come down on Imaro and Derren's side in this. It's been my experience that, if you don't give the flavour text any weight in action resolution, then the specifics of what the characters do in the fiction tends to get ignored. Which is a shame, because 4E's math makes it really easy to resolve all sorts of fictional actions.

I think that game design that's challenge-based, puts the fictional positioning of the characters in a privileged position with regards to action resolution, and provides acceptable (if unexpected) results through action resolution needs to rely heavily on an impartial player - the DM.

This presumes that players can't be impartial. I know that you've argued quite well for this point of view before, but, it's not one I subscribe to. And, there are a number of games which don't take this point of view as well. Any FATE system game presumes that the players will make choices that deliberately make things worse for the character - that's how you gain meta-game resources to affect the game.

Heck even D&D has toyed with the idea of "weaknesses" from time to time which is a very, very limited, basic form of this.

Putting everything in the hands of the DM, while traditional, is not the only way of doing it.

There's nothing wrong with expecting the players to step up and actually, actively, participate in forming the narrative of the game.

 

[Tovec]

Does the power say that it WILL NOT affect any objects in the burst? No it doesn't. So the DM can decide what the power does outside of that narrow interpretation.

The difference is, in 4e they have to take that initiative and a bad DM won't.
In 3e, everyone can just follow the rules, and a bad DM can be shown they are wrong.

Before you bring up the counter-argument of good DMs - they aren't really the issue, they can spin gold from festering waste in any game/edition. In 3e the rules support the game. In 4e the rules ARE the game.

This is a perfect example of my issue with 4e, where the game has its rules put into one nice little box and its flavour in another. Yes, it means that you can/get to come up with your own flavour when the provided text isn't working for you. On the other hand it means you get to/HAVE TO do so as well.

3e imposed limitations, but they almost always had reasons. They were limitations that made the fireball more exciting or valuable in a fight. If the effect is disjoint from the flavour then the fireball may as well be iceball, or any kind of elemental-ball they fell like when casting. It means that the flavour has to be provided by the people, and, as someone else said upthread, that's what I'm paying the game developer to do for me.

The effect of "I swing my sword and stick my enemy in a weakspot near his arm" can be done with both 3e and 4e, so it is moot. The fact that a simple swing in 3e isn't so simple, or has a bunch of secondary effects, in 4e changes that dynamic in a way I dislike immensely.


[MENTION=98255]Nemesis Destiny[/MENTION]
When did the rules compendium come out? Which of the 3 "core" books is it? PHB, DMG or MM?

Short answer? Wherever (s)he wants it to be. See your sig. Fudging dice, "forgetting" to roll. In AD&D terms all rules were just guidelines and this is spelled out over and over in all the material that I read on it.

Besides, if it was a homebrew (as things often were), as a DM, you'd be constantly called upon to make judgments, because there is no way you could think of every possible angle a player might take with their powers/abilities/spells/items. That will require fiat.

I think you are confusing DM fiat - in order to get something to happen which normally wouldn't - with DM's prerogative - in which they can change whatever the hell they want.

That explains it then. My stuff older than 2e is put away in a box. It's interesting in that in the 2e version, the word 'must' was changed. I wonder why...?

By 4th edition there is no reference to anything but creatures. I wonder why....? Oh wait, maybe it was an evolution and was left out intentionally? ..Maybe.. Maybe they didn't think people would need it included. Maybe in 4e they just wanted the spell effecting creatures and not effecting anything else, in order to make it more like a videogame. And that later someone pointed out the fallacy of fireball not catching things on fire, so when they wrote a rules compendium they decided to throw people a bone and say that DMs can make it catch stuff on fire. A logical fix. A more logical one would be changing the spell's rules regarding it instead of making it optional in a non-core book but that (like the entire "maybe" discussion) is just conjecture.

[MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] Why should the game designers have to tell us how a spell/effect works? Prior to 4e, I would say it is because they worked on the rules and that they designed them to function a specific way. Post 4e, I'd say you are probably right as everything is balanced so it makes very little difference anyway.

The point is, prior to 4e, if you didn't like a rule then it was simple to not use it or to modify it so it made more sense. In 4e, however, it has been said upthread that if the text doesn't make sense that it should be reskinned in favour of something that does work for you. Not that the rule should be fixed or corrected but that how it looks and how the flavour effects the spell/effect should be changed.

We saw this argument over and over with the Aragorn dream sequence suggestion from before. The same analogy should work for the little pixies that catch enemies on fire but not paper.

Personally, if something is designed a certain way and I like that design then I'll use it. If I don't like the design I won't. But using flavour of the moment to alter the design to fix an illogical effect is just a step in the wrong direction. It also has the added downside of making flavour text not matter along with part of the rules text.

(I'm not going to lie, the last bit of this post got away from me, but it is well past my bed time. Also, I caught up, finally!!)

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

In 3e, everyone can just follow the rules, and a bad DM can be shown they are wrong.

This is a double-edged sword though. Sometimes players take it upon themselves to "correct" even a good DM. Especially when it works in their favour, even to the detriment of other things going on in-game. This gives rise to the false belief that you must play by RAW, usually to the detriment of the game as a whole.

This is a perfect example of my issue with 4e, where the game has its rules put into one nice little box and its flavour in another. Yes, it means that you can/get to come up with your own flavour when the provided text isn't working for you. On the other hand it means you get to/HAVE TO do so as well.

For me, this is pure bonus - I usually don't like the "default" flavour text. I actively enjoy making it up as I go, as a player or DM.

@Nemesis Destiny
When did the rules compendium come out? Which of the 3 "core" books is it? PHB, DMG or MM?

Rules Compendium came out Autumn 2010. It compiles all the core rules of the game, but contains no classes, races or any of that, no monsters, nor any of the DMing advice from the DMG. Just rules. I find it to be an excellent table reference.

I think you are confusing DM fiat - in order to get something to happen which normally wouldn't - with DM's prerogative - in which they can change whatever the hell they want.

Perhaps. In any case, call it fiat or prerogative (sometimes it's the same thing), I stand by my points.

By 4th edition there is no reference to anything but creatures. I wonder why....? Oh wait, maybe it was an evolution and was left out intentionally? ..Maybe.. Maybe they didn't think people would need it included. Maybe in 4e they just wanted the spell effecting creatures and not effecting anything else, in order to make it more like a videogame. And that later someone pointed out the fallacy of fireball not catching things on fire, so when they wrote a rules compendium they decided to throw people a bone and say that DMs can make it catch stuff on fire. A logical fix. A more logical one would be changing the spell's rules regarding it instead of making it optional in a non-core book but that (like the entire "maybe" discussion) is just conjecture.

That rule was also in the original books, in 2008 (DMG p 65 & 66). The rules compendium version is more clearly worded, however. So, no, it wasn't left out. It wasn't written in every power for brevity's sake, but it is hard-coded into the rules that you can attack objects instead of creatures, with a few caveats (namely that objects are not subject to attacks against will, and certain damage types).

We saw this argument over and over with the Aragorn dream sequence suggestion from before. The same analogy should work for the little pixies that catch enemies on fire but not paper.

Did I miss something? Pixies burning things? If you refer to my example with pixies, they absolutely could burn paper.

Any attack that can target a creature can target objects.

Unless against will defence, or if it uses one of several damage types which also do not affect objects.

Personally, if something is designed a certain way and I like that design then I'll use it. If I don't like the design I won't. But using flavour of the moment to alter the design to fix an illogical effect is just a step in the wrong direction. It also has the added downside of making flavour text not matter along with part of the rules text.

For what its worth, altering flavour is not exclusively or entirely to bend powers around "illogical" effects. I like having the power to pave over awful flavour text (beacuse I think most of it sucks). I find it engaging to do. In fact, that is the primary reason suggested in the books for doing so.

Kind of like how they suggested renaming the skills in 3.0 to suit your character. Footpaddin' and all that crap (another fine example of truly terrible flavour text).

Could some of the interactions between keywords have been better? Sure. Every game has its warts. No edition has ever been "perfect". I'd like to see some tweaks too, and in my home game, I make some.

 

[LurkAway]

I come down on Imaro and Derren's side in this. It's been my experience that, if you don't give the flavour text any weight in action resolution, then the specifics of what the characters do in the fiction tends to get ignored. Which is a shame, because 4E's math makes it really easy to resolve all sorts of fictional actions.

This presumes that players can't be impartial. I know that you've argued quite well for this point of view before, but, it's not one I subscribe to. And, there are a number of games which don't take this point of view as well. Any FATE system game presumes that the players will make choices that deliberately make things worse for the character - that's how you gain meta-game resources to affect the game.

I was curious about this too, so I had put a poll here. Too bad I screwed up the poll a bit. Any ideas how to create a new poll with the right wording that will give the most meanigful result?

 

[Mark CMG]

So, just to be clear, by the rules for all editions (just by the rules as written, without need for a DM adjudication), if a guy is standing in a ten by ten by ten room and he is targetted by a fireball, all of the papers in the room (let's say piled around his feet) catch on fire, no ifs, ands, or buts. The papers (not magical, just normal maps, let's say) are in the blast radius and the guy is the target, but the guy is blasted and the papers burst into flames. Right?

 

[Hussar]

Mark CMG, no, you're right. In 4e, it is not automatic if the papers light on fire or not. It is up to the DM to adjudicate that.

Pre-4e, all DM's were forced by the mechanics into a single interpretation of how fireball works.

It all comes down to whether you feel the DM should be empowered to make determinations or not. In pre-4e, those determinations were solely the realm of the rules. The DM had no real say in the matter. In 4e, it's up to the DM.

I can't believe that I'm arguing in favor of DM empowerment.

 

[Imaro]

This presumes that players can't be impartial. I know that you've argued quite well for this point of view before, but, it's not one I subscribe to. And, there are a number of games which don't take this point of view as well. Any FATE system game presumes that the players will make choices that deliberately make things worse for the character - that's how you gain meta-game resources to affect the game.

Heck even D&D has toyed with the idea of "weaknesses" from time to time which is a very, very limited, basic form of this.

Putting everything in the hands of the DM, while traditional, is not the only way of doing it.

There's nothing wrong with expecting the players to step up and actually, actively, participate in forming the narrative of the game.

Uhmmm, you seem to be either ignoring or glossing over the fact that FATE uses a bribe system in order to get those players to be impartial(something totally lacking in the rules of D&D)? If the players were naturally impartial why is this necessary, why does the DM have to offer them a fate point in order to compel an aspect?

 

[Imaro]

No, it really, really isn't. The fact that you and others would continuously state this doesn't make it true. For one, this is SPECIFICALLY spelled out that you can, at the DM's discretion have your effects affect objects. Additionally, the 4e DMG (pre-errata, page 66) states:

This passage is about a player directly attacking an object... Not about whether a fireball used in an attack against creatures in a room full of combustibles while attacking a creature will ignite said combustibles. You're stretching so far now it's not even funny.

The thing is any way you slice it, it's still a DM call on whether my fireball can ignite papers or melt metal... so it is not an inherent property of the fireball power itself as it has been for the spells of previous editions.

If you want to argue the specifics of an edition, actually READ the book.

Really? This is the card you're trying to pull now... that I haven't read the 4e books. I'm not even going to respond to this.