Legends and Lore - Nod To Realism

[pemerton]

Cool. Obviously I personally agree with this assessment. I apologize for guessing your view incorrectly.

I did think about this some more after my earlier reply to your post. What I think your earlier post did get right, in its diagnosis of the general vibe/orientation of 4e, is that the players' view of how the power should work should be given a significant degree of weight. In my own game, it seemed obvious both to me and to the player that a "creatures" burst/blast, as opposed to an "enemies" burst/blast, is not going to be very discriminating.

 

[Argyle King]

I like this idea. A suggestion to make it more streamlined: Instead of having a separate track for each power, why not add a "severity" to conditions? So you'd have something like:

Dazed 1: You cannot act out of turn and grant combat advantage.
Dazed 2: You cannot act out of turn, grant combat advantage, and you only get one standard action per turn.
Dazed 3: You cannot act out of turn, grant combat advantage, and you only get one move action per turn.
Dazed 4: You grant combat advantage and cannot take any actions.
Dazed 5: You are unconscious.

The first condition is a minor nuisance. The second (equivalent to dazed in the current rules) is a significant hindrance. The third means you can't do much except try to get out of the way. The fourth (equivalent to stunned) renders you more or less helpless, and the fifth makes you literally helpless.

Then when you have an effect that causes daze, it would do something like "Target is dazed (2)." The target would then be moved to dazed 2, or one level of severity above its current dazed, whichever is higher; so a target at dazed 2 would move to dazed 3.

A side benefit is that this offers an elegant solution to the problem of elite/solo monsters and the action economy. Right now, solo monsters have all kinds of kludged-in defenses to keep them from being shut down by status effects. This would provide a much cleaner way of implementing that; for instance, a solo might have an ability that automatically reduces the severity of all status effects by 2 at the start of its turn.

I like that. It fits with some of the ideas I've tossed around in my head about how to make the orb wizard work. One of my ideas was that effects imposed by an orb wizard would start at an increased severity.

 

[Imaro]

[Emphasis added -- tuxgeo]



I'm going to go out on a limb here and try to show that pemerton's words can be seen as making more sense than they appear to:

Pemerton misspelled "indie-rpgs" -- as in the website "the forge" of Ron Edwards. As we all know (or do we?), Ron Edwards moderates that "indie-rpgs.com" website; and he posts stuff about the narrativist playing style there. With his articles, the "indie-rpgs" website does promote a narrativist style, so saying that "indie-rpgs = narrativist" would have been more accurate.

It's merely a spelling thing: pemerton left out the hyphen and the terminal letter "s" in the part that I bolded in my quote from him, above.

Sorry tuxego, but I don't believe this to be the case.

I've quoted the interview I believe pemerton is refering to (if this is not the case then I am sure he will correct me.)...

Wizards of the Coast: As a designer, where do you look for inspiration—is every game session a chance to playtest new material? Do you house-rule constantly? Do you alter the rules of other games you play?

Rob: Inspiration for creative work comes from all over. I read a lot, mostly novels (science fiction/fantasy novels) and short stories and magazines of all types, ranging from Archeology and Scientific American to The New York Review of Books. I don't say much about such interests in WotC D&D work, but my personal blog at robheinsoo.livejournal.com has more to say about how these interests intersect with gaming.
Playing new games is always important. I'm interested in everything from WWII squad-level games to ancients miniatures to card driven games to indie RPGs. There are many design ideas and insights in games within these somewhat separate genres that haven't been taken advantage of by designers in the other genres. Dominion is the favorite game in my family at the moment, and it's a great example of a design that applied new ideas from one genre (M:tG's draft format) to create something new in a different style of game (parallel deck-building).


Or, from the article he linked...

CH: What’s it like working on a game with such a big team? I’d imagine the game is pretty unique in that sense.
Rob: No other RPG’s are in this boat. There might not be anyone else out there who would publish this kind of game. They usually get entrenched in the simulation aspect.
Indie games are similar in that they emphasize the gameplay aspect, but they’re super-focused, like a narrow laser. D&D has to be more general to accommodate a wide range of play.


Both of these instances refer to indie rpg's... not the site.

 

[LostSoul]

Can you elaborate a bit more on this transition of thought?

I guess it was because I was always interesting in producing an interesting story through play - Story Now, as explained above. Since that was my main goal when playing RPGs, I saw the DM's role in a different way. The DM wasn't supposed to be impartial, or so I thought; otherwise you couldn't create a story.

I stumbled on the Forge and played some of the games designed to produce what I wanted. That scratched the Story Now itch, and once I knew I could reliably get what I wanted out of play, I could approach games in different ways.

This was around when 4E was coming out (after a few years of playing various indie games) and I decided that I wanted to do the challenge-based thing with 4E. I didn't know what I was doing as a DM - what my job was (if you look at some of my early 4E play reports that should be pretty obvious!). I started reading the OSR blogs (like Grognardia) and I asked some questions here and I realized that the DM's job was to be impartial and, without caring what the outcome was - without any story that needed to be told - that was an easy thing to do. Or easy enough to do so that play goals could be achieved.

 

[Mark CMG]

I guess it was because I was always interesting in producing an interesting story through play - Story Now, as explained above. Since that was my main goal when playing RPGs, I saw the DM's role in a different way. The DM wasn't supposed to be impartial, or so I thought; otherwise you couldn't create a story.

I stumbled on the Forge and played some of the games designed to produce what I wanted. That scratched the Story Now itch, and once I knew I could reliably get what I wanted out of play, I could approach games in different ways.

This was around when 4E was coming out (after a few years of playing various indie games) and I decided that I wanted to do the challenge-based thing with 4E. I didn't know what I was doing as a DM - what my job was (if you look at some of my early 4E play reports that should be pretty obvious!). I started reading the OSR blogs (like Grognardia) and I asked some questions here and I realized that the DM's job was to be impartial and, without caring what the outcome was - without any story that needed to be told - that was an easy thing to do. Or easy enough to do so that play goals could be achieved.

I see what you mean. For me, and I guess I learned this early, I realized that good characters and conflict make for good stories. However, in games like RPGs (whether they are Storyteller games or not), there are other players besides the GM with character control. Forcing a particular story is unsatisfying, even when it is a good story, because it is antithetical to the shared process. So, as a GM, I make sure the characters not controlled by the other players are interesting (this includes both NPCs and "place") and I make sure there is always some friction, some obstacle, some conflict, and then I allow the story to unfold as it naturally would. Not all stories need to be great or epic for them to be satisfying, but they do need (for the sake of the game) to be generated in this manner, IMO.

 

[LostSoul]

I wonder if part of that is because I started playing D&D in '87 and really got into it through the '90s. I recall a Star Wars d6 book - one about how to be a GM - saying that, if your story was on a planet, you should (or it was okay to) improvise a blockade to keep the players on track.

Which is the kind of thing I did - up until I realized it didn't work (when it blew up in my face would be a better way of putting it!). The problem was that I didn't know where to go from there, and neither did the people I was playing with (for the most part).

 

[Mark CMG]

I wonder if part of that is because I started playing D&D in '87 and really got into it through the '90s. I recall a Star Wars d6 book - one about how to be a GM - saying that, if your story was on a planet, you should (or it was okay to) improvise a blockade to keep the players on track.

Which is the kind of thing I did - up until I realized it didn't work (when it blew up in my face would be a better way of putting it!). The problem was that I didn't know where to go from there, and neither did the people I was playing with (for the most part).

Even when going in with the best of intentions you sometimes get an idea for something cool and try to wedge it in (and it usually blows in your face then also!). This whole idea of saying "Yes" is part and parcel of the philosophy I outlined above too. There's an old improv adage I sometimes quote and this is one of the times when it is appropriate to do so. It says, "Let's go somewhere, anywhere, together." It's tied to resisting the instinct to contradict (or control) by saying "no" and rather look for ways to build without forcing an agenda. This is also why it's ill-conceived to think of the GM in an adversarial position (from either side of the screen). That stance can only breed contrarian attitudes and cause players (including the GM) to adopt feelings that lead more quickly to deadends in a story rather than opening up options and allowing positive momentum to reign. A story has fewer chances to fail if the possibilities are endless.

 

[Hussar]

First off - the idea of basing the game on P42 is very cool. You could dispense with a whole lot of stuff that way. Classes and whatnot could get largely ejected. Very cool for a rules light game. Reminds me a lot of Savage Worlds although I wouldn't call SW a rules light game. There was a recent bit in DDI Dungeon and Dragon that talked about pre-1st level PC's (and an adventure to boot) that ties very closely to this. Everyone draws from the same pool of powers. It's the personality of the player and the character he or she is trying to create that will determine which powers get used which, in turn, shapes the eventual character that's created.

Very cool.

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On the whole "Nods to realism" thing. John Scalzi in this article about flying snowmen hits this right on the head. There was a discussion going on about how fast Gollum sinks into the lava in LotR. The fact that from a realism POV, Gollum actually wouldn't sink in lava - it's too dense to sink into.

The discussion continues with an example where Scalzi's wife is reading a story to their daughter in which a snowman comes to life, dances around, eats soup and then flies away. The wife gets annoyed with the story at that point because "At which point my wife got an unhappy look on her face and said ‘A flying snowman? That’s just ridiculous".

Scalzi's reaction is priceless:

“To which I said: ‘So you can accept a snowman eating hot soup, but not flying?’ Because, you know, if you can accept the former (not to mention the entire initial premise of a snowman coming to life), I’m not sure how the snowman flying became qualitatively more ridiculous.

Which brings me back to the discussions in this thread. Fireball is ridiculous. You can accept the idea that it's hot enough to melt metal, but not burn hair, but, the idea of only targetting creatures breaks you? Really?

But, at the end of the day, where we draw the line will always be different for all of us. For me, I have no problem with a selectively targetting fireball. There's a dozen different ways to describe it. Obviously, though, there are others for whom this is problematic. Same with various other mechanics (Healing Surge being a poster child).

I guess my question becomes, who should make that decision? Should the game designers tell the players, "This is how X works all the time - change it if you want to." or should the designers tell the players, "This is the mechanical effects of X - you decide how it works." ? Obviously 4e has gone with the latter approach.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Should the game designers tell the players, "This is how X works all the time - change it if you want to." or should the designers tell the players, "This is the mechanical effects of X - you decide how it works." ? Obviously 4e has gone with the latter approach.

IMO, the first is closer to what I want: "This is the definition of X. Here is what happens if you change it."

I want a toolbox, which opens up a world of new uses. I want to know what X is so that I can improvise its effects around it (even if some of those effects are horribly "unbalanced").

The other way around makes little sense to me. If I have to define X in terms of what it already does, that makes the reality of the numbers more important than the reality of the narrative. It's no longer me describing an event and extrapolating effects, it is now me describing an endpoint and working backwards from it. It's hard to be surprised, delighted, or excited by justifying or explaining. It's much easier to enjoy yourself when you don't know exactly where you're going.

Sort of...which kind of adventure would you rather have? An adventure that says "The Evil Necromancer is building his army of undead in the East!", that then lets you run with that situation, or an adventure that says "Plucky Heroes Kill Evil Necromancer", that then asks you to play Mad Libs, fill in the blanks, and tells you what your outcome is going to be before you even start it?

Which one is more fun for you?

 

[pemerton]

What I think 4E is missing that would make it a good Story Now game is... well, let me paraphrase from The Forge's glossary what Story Now is:

Commitment to producing, heightening, and resolving a generalizable, problematic aspect of human interactions through play itself.​

If you look at how the notion of "narrativism" is actually used by Ron Edwards, I think you'll see that that definition is too narrow. For example, Edwards (correctly, IMO) identifies The Dying Earth as aimed at narrativist play, but it isn't aimed at resolving the sort of premise described in the official definition. It's aimed at producing cynical humour in the course of play.

I tend to think of "narrativist" play in terms of the actual way The Forge uses the term, then, rather than the official definition - something like play aimed at producing something worthwhile from an evaluative/aesthetic perspective. This can be heavy, moral(-ish) stuff of the sort that Paul Czege produces, or lighter narrativism of The Dying Earth variety, where the aesthetic goal is humour. My game is certainly lighter than something like My Life With Master or Nicotine Girls. It's closer to 70s and 80s Marvel supers - fairly commonplace thematic stuff of the sort one might do using mainstream fantasy tropes.

I think 4E is missing some key components:

• It doesn't "spike" the game with problematic aspects of human interaction the way, say, Sorcerer (demons = dysfunctional relationships) does.
  
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  The game kind of points in that direction but it doesn't make it a primary feature of play.
  
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• The reward system doesn't heighten those problematic aspects.
  
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• It doesn't guarantee resolution of those problematic aspects of human interaction, but then again most games don't.

I think a lot of this is fairly easily achieved without having to drift very far (and not at all on action resolution, I don't think). It's all in encounter building and treasure awards.

As you say, the game points in the right general direction. If, as a GM, one builds encounters that pick up on those pointers, and has players who are interested in following those pointers, then nothing else needs to be done to make those issues emerge in play (for example, the action resolution mechanics, at least in my experience, doesn't make the game get bogged down in something else, like the minutiae of polearms or of exactly how hard it is to set a library on fire).

If treasure parcels are decoupled from killing enemies - very easily done - and follow wish lists put forward by players interested in following the thematic pointers, then there is no reward mechanism pulling away from the narrativist goal of play. It's equally true that there is no mechanism like (for example) the BW artha cycle to reinforce that goal, but as long as everyone at the table is on the same page, the game isn't prone to throwing up distractions and red herrings (quite different in this respect from more purist-for-system games, at least as I've experienced them).

As for your point about resolution, this is what (I hope) epic tier will be for. I already found the whole idea of taking a paragon path a very good opportunity to push the players into making some meaningful choices that ramify very interestingly in the themtically-oriented aspects of the fiction. This, I think, is the biggest drifting in the way my group has approached the game, because the rules as written are pretty silent about the story dimension of gaining a paragon path (or an epic destiny).