Pathfinder 1E This is why pathfinder has been successful.

[TheAuldGrump]

On the issue of time.

I've done this before, in another thread, but I'll do it again here. You cannot possibly increase the pace of your groups that time will actually make any real difference over the long run. To go from 1st to 20th level in 3e takes about 260 encounters (give or take). So, the Slow Group, doing 1 encounter/day takes 260 days. The fast group, doing 4 encounters per day, takes 65 days.

The difference, and this is the absolute maximum difference you can get is about 6 months from levels 1 to 20. And the actual difference is going to be a hell of a lot less because the Slow Group dies a whole lot less than the fast group, meaning that it's not losing levels to Raise Dead and the like.

Your campaign world, unless you're running D&D 24 will not change that much in that amount of time. Heck, even going back to Keep on the Borderlands, it takes WEEKS for a cleared out cave to come back to even half population. Spending an extra four or five days clearing a cave? Makes zero difference.

It never did.

And in this your statement is one hundred percent wrong.

Some very important things for a setting, or in the real world, can happen over an amazingly short amount of time.

The PCs may, as an example, find themselves in Sarajevo in time to stop the Black Hand - they are heroes, this is what heroes do.

Does the Arch Duke get assassinated? Are the PCs off hunting boar instead?

Time, and its passage, matters. And if it 'never matters and never did' in your game then I really and truly do not want to play in your game. My actions will 'never matter, and never did'.

The Auld Grump

 

[TheAuldGrump]

What do we know about this? I know they collect a lot of info from DDI, but presumably that's not a very good guide to PF players' preferences.

I came back to D&D for 4e, after having left AD&D for greener pastures. If I'm going to play 5e, it has to offer me a play experience comparable, at least, to 4e. So far I'm getting no indications of that.

Whereas I find that difference or similarities in basic class architecture - eg do we all have AW/E/D - don't do much for me one way or the other. It's how the PC actually plays (both mechanically and in the fiction) at the table that I care about, and at least my experience with 4e has shown that to be quite different for different PCs despite the similarity of architecture.

On an unrelated note, you might remember our conversation about the Avalon Hill Mystic Wood game a week or two ago. I pulled it out yesterday and "played" a game with my two young daughters (well, the 3 year old chose a knight and rolled some dice but otherwise left me to do all the heavy lifting for her while she went out and danced on the verandah). One thing that struck me was that my older daughter's default instincts were cooperative rather than competitive - so even when the younger one's Saint George had defeated the dragon, the older one thought that rather than leaving the wood (which is the win condition after fulfilling you quest) George should hang around and explore the forest to help her knight - Britomart - find the prince (her quest).

The older daughter then expressed a desire to play a roleplaying session at home . . . somewhat controversial, as my partner is worried that I will overly nerdify the kids. But I would be lying if I said I hadn't already thought about how I might use Robin Laws' HeroQuest rev ed as an introductory RPG for my kids . . .

It is impossible to overly nerdify kids.

I am in a similar position - I had left D&D and was brought back by 3e. Then 4e drove me away again, but Pathfinder was available for me to enjoy.

The more 5e resembles 4e the less likely that I will be to ever play it. It sounds like the more it resembles 3.X the less likely you are to play it.

So yes, divisive - whether you like 4e and hate 3.X or hate 4e and like 3.X then you are on one side or another of that divide.

The folks that like both.... Well, they are the lucky ones. They will likely enjoy 5e as well, regardless of how much you or I like or dislike the game.

But I think that the split in the market shows that 4e was not as all encompassing as WotC might have hoped, and the success of Pathfinder shows that not all of the innovations of 4e were successful. [Insert Innovation/Engineering/Zoology quote here]

They may have brought you back into the fold, but they lost more people than they gained.

Again, I largely blame their marketing more than their rules. I may dislike the rules, but it was the presentation and marketing that made me hate the game before it hit bookstore shelves.

The two times I tried the game merely confirmed my dislike of the rules - and unlike any edition since OD&D I had no urge to run the danged thing.

Your arguments are largely cogent, even when I disagree with them, but there are others (on both sides, to be fair) that will make blanket statements about [insert game here] that merely further the divide.

Some are on this very thread. (Time never matters my sweet aunt Sally!)

The Auld Grump

 

[Rogue Agent]

If a GM wants to run a scenario where the main focus is on exploration of a largely static, magically warded site (ToH would be an example), then a PC who becomes more powerful by nova-ing may overshadow one who cannot nova (depending on the balance of power between a nova-er and a non-nova-er).

Sure. And at other times they'll be weaker because the daily demands of a particular scenario will outstrip their resources.

Unless, of course, your entire campaign consists of absolutely nothing except static, magically warded sites which nobody except the PCs are interested in.

And if all of your campaigns are designed so that the players never need to think strategically, the game world is never reactive, and your focus as the DM never needs to waver from the immediate, tactical encounter... Well, yes. That's DMing with training wheels. You are specifically limiting your scenario design to a very limited subset of potential play in order to make the game easier for you to run and for your players to play.

If you have fun playing that way, great. More power to you. But the problem with hard-coding those training wheels into the system is that it becomes impossible to do anything else with it. The resulting game will be very limited in its scope and very narrow in its appeal.

And in this your statement is one hundred percent wrong.

Some very important things for a setting, or in the real world, can happen over an amazingly short amount of time.

You'll notice that Hussar's math is about a number of encounters all of which have EL = APL.

That is, literally, the only style of play Hussar can even begin to comprehend. He's proven this in countless threads. Trying to make him understand (a) anything that doesn't happen in a combat encounter or (b) an encounter that isn't a perfectly balanced challenge for the group's APL is a waste of time.

4e is simply more flexible because it doesn't dictate your playstyle to you the way 3e does.

For example, here's another statement that only makes sense if your idea of varying playstyles consists of slightly different flavors of rote, static encounters with EL = APL.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

If you have fun playing that way, great. More power to you. But the problem with hard-coding those training wheels into the system is that it becomes impossible to do anything else with it. The resulting game will be very limited in its scope and very narrow in its appeal.

At this point I have to interject that there are folks that push 4e past those limits - I know a few that praise War of the Burning Sky to the heavens for breaking that model. I have seen several threads dealing with 4e Kingmaker where it sounds very much like the DM has a firmer grasp of its nature than some Pathfinder GMs that I have heard.

I will also go out on a limb and say that it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that they do not notice correcting for the system any more than I notice correcting for the 'flaws' in Pathfinder - it is just how they run games, and is likely independent of system. I suspect that a lot of good GMs never notice what they do to make a game work.

If I were to ever run 4e *shudder* then I would likely use timelines there just as surely as I do for Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu, or Ars Magica.

The Auld Grump, and now, having defended 4e, I need to take a scrub brush to my brain....

 

[S'mon]

4e is simply more flexible because it doesn't dictate your playstyle to you the way 3e does. I can't play 3e without 15 MAD unless I choose a certain playstyle. I can play 4e without 15 MAD with any playstyle. I can play AD&D without 15 MAD with any playstyle.

While I agree re 15MAD, I'm not sure it's true that 4e is more flexible than 3e in general and overall. It depends on what you're trying to do with the system. There are certainly things 3e seems to accommodate better than 4e, like a variable level party - though 1e does that much better. If you want short but tense battles, that is really hard to do in 4e, whereas 3e does it easily; 1e does it at low level.

I was discussing with a new GM recently her plan for a campaign concerning the ingress of iron into a bronze-age world, with a heavy focus on the faerie and their dislike of iron. She wanted to use 4e but was concerned it wouldn't work well for what she wanted.

4e also makes exploration-based play difficult, especially in shorter game sessions. Trivial encounters work very poorly. The whole Tyranny of Fun thing can be problematic for a more 1e dungeoncrawl type style. Immersive simulation can be difficult, the system doesn't really encourage it due to often disasociated mechanics.

Overall I like 4e and find it a useful tool for much of what I typically want from a game, but like 3e it's a limited tool. 1e has its issues too - just as 4e mechanics don't support simulation, 1e mechanics don't give much inherent support to making combat exciting; with 1e you can never just 'rest on the mechanics'. Plus IME the 1e GM needs to be constantly making ad hoc rulings, almost building his own game. I like that, some people don't.

So, all different games, all have their own strengths and limitations.

 

[S'mon]

But I think that the split in the market shows that 4e was not as all encompassing as WotC might have hoped...

I think WoTC might have made a big mistake in trying to narrow the focus of D&D with 4e. Presumably their research told them that it was what people wanted, and they tried to give people (or at least the RPGA) what they said they wanted. But people don't always know what they want. D&D has always been the 'big tent' game, its incoherence has been a strength, enabling it to be adapted to lots of different playstyles using the same ruleset and genre tropes. 3e was arguably more focused than 1e/2e, but to me there's no doubt 4e was a LOT more narrowly focused than any earlier iteration. And that narrowness of focus narrowed the market for the game, apparently a lot more than WotC expected.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

I think WoTC might have made a big mistake in trying to narrow the focus of D&D with 4e. Presumably their research told them that it was what people wanted, and they tried to give people (or at least the RPGA) what they said they wanted. But people don't always know what they want. D&D has always been the 'big tent' game, its incoherence has been a strength, enabling it to be adapted to lots of different playstyles using the same ruleset and genre tropes. 3e was arguably more focused than 1e/2e, but to me there's no doubt 4e was a LOT more narrowly focused than any earlier iteration. And that narrowness of focus narrowed the market for the game, apparently a lot more than WotC expected.

They were also hampered by trying to change any terms and rules that they could so that they would not be covered by the OGL - preventing an OGL 'clone' of 4e.

Then the game started facing serious competition from a game using those same discarded terms from the OGL....

What happened was both predictable and foolish. In trying to remove the effectiveness of the OGL they instead crippled their own game.

And I fear that 5e will be similarly crippled.

The Auld Grump, in preparation for this race we will shoot ourselves in the foot....

 

[pemerton]

I think ByronD is flat out mistaken when he claims that 3e services a broader playstyle. I really do.

Still can't XP you, but I agree with this.

Of course, you can drift 3E in various ways, and because in some ways its mechanics are less transparent thatn 4e's, that drifting may be less obvious. 4e is highly driftable as well, I think - S'mon and I seem to play fairly different 4e games, for example - but I think the drifting is inevitably going to be more obvious, because of the mechanical transparency.

A simple example - I'm sure there are any number of 3E/PF GMs who handwave the passage of ingame time that is not measured in combat rounds, and therefore the duration of all those 10 min/level (and, at low levels, 1 hour/level) spells. And treat this as just "playing the game", whereas it is in fact a suspension of the default action resolution rules. But a GM who does funky stuff with resting in 4e is immediately told by 4e critics "Look, the only way you can make it work is to houserule it!".

 

[pemerton]

Sure. And at other times they'll be weaker because the daily demands of a particular scenario will outstrip their resources.

Unless, of course, your entire campaign consists of absolutely nothing except static, magically warded sites which nobody except the PCs are interested in.

Well, no. But suppose this particular campaign arc takes 5 or more sessions to play out. Which might be a couple of months of play time. I'm going to look to mechanical solutions for the 15 minute day (a number of which I've canvassed upthread) rather than draw comfort from the fact that, in due course, nova-ing will no longer be a stragegy that proudces a noticeable imbalance of effectiveness between the PCs.

And if all of your campaigns are designed so that the players never need to think strategically, the game world is never reactive, and your focus as the DM never needs to waver from the immediate, tactical encounter... Well, yes. That's DMing with training wheels. You are specifically limiting your scenario design to a very limited subset of potential play in order to make the game easier for you to run and for your players to play.

Is it essential to imply that all those who play with a different playstyle from yours are necessarily inferior or stupid?

My campaigns don't particularly reward strategic play (unless you count diplomacy as a branch of strategy). I don't care for it, and so don't set it up for my players. My campaigns reward players who (i) care to immerse themselves in intricate and often morally complex relationships between numerous NPCs, gods, and the PCs, and who (ii) enjoy finding out what happens when commitments to one or more of these parties are made and then tested. (Which is to say that if follows the standard narrativistic model. This actual play report is as good example as any.)

It's not as if 3E/PF offers some great potential to enhance my games that I'm missing. For various reasons - including features of its action resolution mechanics, which in turn feed into its approach to the handling of ingame time, which in turn feed into the sort of scene framing techniques it supports - 3E/PF is not particularly suitable for my sort of game. I've run my sort of game using Rolemaster, which is about as unsuitable as 3E/PF in its non-combat action resolution mechanics, but probably is more suitable in its combat mechanics (because they are more metagameable) and definitely more suited in its PC build mechanics (because they produce richer PCs with more points of connection to the fiction).

your focus as the DM never needs to waver from the immediate, tactical encounter

<snip>

If you have fun playing that way, great. More power to you. But the problem with hard-coding those training wheels into the system is that it becomes impossible to do anything else with it. The resulting game will be very limited in its scope and very narrow in its appeal.

I'm sure my game is narrow in its appeal. Luckily I have players who seem to enjoy it.

But I think it's a little strange to suggest that my focus as the DM "need never waver from the immediate, tactical encounter." You may or may not recall this post from a couple of months ago, which was in reply to me:

To be clear: I am not saying there's anything wrong with what you're doing. But I am saying that what you're doing has pretty much everything to do with how you're playing the game and pretty much nothing to do with the actual rules of the game.

<snip>

Every time you link to one of these AP reports, I click through hoping to get some elucidation of your position. But although you claim they'll show how 4E specifically and mechanically supports your style of play, these reports never seem to actually contain any information about the mechanical resolution of the actions you're describing.

In short, these reports aren't doing what you apparently think they should be doing.

To be clear: I can see that the encounters you're creating "pour on the pressure" and are created using Forge-like narrativist techniques. But none of it seems to be coming out of the mechanics of the system. And I'm not seeing anything about these encounters that couldn't be just as easily done in 3E or any other system that doesn't feature 4E's dissociated mechanics.

And the example of actual play that I had linked to - the encounter of which you said "I can see that the encounters you're creating "pour on the pressure" and are created using Forge-like narrativist techniques" - was of a social encounter in a combat-free session. (My first combat-free session of 4e.)

You may or may not recall my reply to you, in this post. It elaborates some of the points I've been making in this thread, about the different approach to timekeeping, scene transition and action resolution that 4e's mechanics support in comparison to more simulationist ones, which in turn better support the "Forge-like narratist techniques" that I am using in my game.

 

[pemerton]

And in this your statement is one hundred percent wrong.

Some very important things for a setting, or in the real world, can happen over an amazingly short amount of time.

The PCs may, as an example, find themselves in Sarajevo in time to stop the Black Hand - they are heroes, this is what heroes do.

Does the Arch Duke get assassinated? Are the PCs off hunting boar instead?

But is this going on every day? And if you are relying on the mere possibility, how hair-trigger do you expect the PCs to be? Are they really to live every day - and the players to play as if - every day may be the outbreak of WW1?

I'm happy to drive play through frenetic action, but I'm not sure I would want to try and drive it through what (if I've understood it right) seems to me to be a type of frenetic anticipation.