D&D 5E Changes in Interpretation

[pemerton]

I don't see anything in 4E that would keep you from playing Story Now. That said:

I think that, if you're going to play that way, you have to take some time to add moral and ethical issues to the game. I don't think they are part of the initial situation of the game - in either the races, classes, or general background of the Points of Light world. ("The world needs heroes", yes, but that suggests High Concept Sim to me. I don't get a strong vibe of "What kind of hero will you be?" from the game.) As you play, the abilities and powers you get don't necessarily suggest more depth or breadth in addressing those issues, though some Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies do.

I don't think it would be very hard to make moral and ethical issues a key feature of play, though.

I think this is fair - both that you have to inject a bit of stuff, and that it's not that hard. Foreground tieflings, paladins, gods vs primordials, etc; don't put so much emphasis on elves, halflings, kruthiks etc. For example, take Bane, Erathis, and the fallen empire of Nerath - you don't need to add any extra story elements to frame a situation along the lines of "What would you do to restore civilisation?" For exatra bit add in a tiefling PC and some devils. For more cosmological flavour at upper tiers, add in the Game of Making (described in the Plane Above).

Relating that a bit more to what you said, I guess my view is that the story elements make it easy to frame this sort of situation. Whereas earlier editions of D&D don't have as many story elements with the same degree of potential inherent in them (at least in my experience), with AD&D's Oriental Adventures a noticeable exception.

Also, always a pleasure to read more about your hack! Did you use the changeling ritual and idea in play? My own game is a bit more "fight-y/super-hero-y" (Claremont X-Men is a big influence on my overall style, I think - a fair amount of fighting located within a convoluted and fraught history/cosmology and the occasional internal psychological struggle) and a bit less ethereal/eldritch, so I would have to work hard against some of my own tendencies to successfully use something like that.

 

[technoextreme]

(Try looking 'Paracelsus' up, if that name isn't too long, scary, and Latin. And hey, isn't the word 'gnome' from Greek, not German?)

What the were you thinking I was referring to what I said Germanic gnomes? And that is why I said play a Dwarf because its as plain as daylight that the Gnome in D&D really primarily was inspired by one source which is where why earlier on you saw this quote:

According to the player because it was the first one that was not "a dwarf with a different name"

EDIT:
Also if you are going to try and scare someone make sure you use Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim instead of his more common name.

 

[The Shadow]

What the were you thinking I was referring to what I said Germanic gnomes? And that is why I said play a Dwarf because its as plain as daylight that the Gnome in D&D really primarily was inspired by one source which is where why earlier on you saw this quote:

EDIT:
Also if you are going to try and scare someone make sure you use Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim instead of his more common name.

Ordinarily it would be a pleasure to meet someone else with knowledge of primary and secondary sources of this kind of thing. I think you're making some errors in your analysis, but nothing we couldn't enjoy arguing about over a beer.

However, I frankly don't like your attitude. I admit I replied in kind with sarcasm and snark (part of which you either missed or chose to play straight), which wasn't the high road to take.

But I still won't tolerate being browbeaten for liking something, nor for not liking your alleged substitute.

I propose starting over, and discussing this in more civilized and friendly fashion, either in another thread or via private message. If we can do that - by which I mean discussing the provenance of the gnome race (and possibly others) in D&D, without prejudice to whether anyone should like it, or miss it if it's taken out - great. If not, I'll just have to figure out how to get the ignore list to work.

 

[The Choice]

Here's the thing about the whole "gnome situation": nobody was poking fun at anybody. Nobody was dismissing your tastes or your preferences. The motivation behind their exclusion as a player race was explained by the designers at the time by the fact that, in the context of the D&D world, they could not find a niche the gnomes could fit as a PC race. They could find a place for them in the MM, though, and perhaps that experiment helped them define the gnome, taking classic elements (or really 3.5 elements, because prior to that, gnomes were pretty much "dwarves but can be illusionists". They also went from "can't be bards" to "have no bard traditions" to "favoured class: Bard". That's reinterpretation for you.) and bringing forth new ideas to make the gnome stand out more. I'm glad they took the time to do right by the little guys.

The video was a humourous look at races and classes, and anybody offended by it is taking this silly little elfgame really too seriously. I did not see such righteous indignation over the dropping of half-orcs from the PHB, and the reason given for that exclusion (ie their very... rape-y origin, right as that may be).

As is usual, people were/are looking for things to fake-get-upset about.

 

[billd91]

As is usual, people were/are looking for things to fake-get-upset about.

Here's the thing - you don't get to decide what's appropriate for people to get upset about. Nor does WotC. You make your statement and you live with the consequences of it. If you've pissed off part of the fan base, perhaps you should learn from the experience. It appears, from the D&D Next materials, WotC learned some valuable lessons and is trying to avoid having to learn them again (we'll see how well they do). Too bad they didn't learn them faster, then 4e's marketing might have been a lot less amateurish and annoying.

 

[S'mon]

This is not my experience in play. Nor is it the experience of others I see describing why they left 4e.

This also is not my experience; it is one gripe among many about the rules, which were presented with a strong voice because they were so vastly different in terms of how familiar concepts were redeployed, in comparison to 3e (and 1e for that matter).

I agree with Kobold Stew. 4e may have been a development of 3e, but I find that the two play very, very differently. I've never found 3e intuitively very different from pre-3e in how it plays, except at high level when it 'breaks'. My Pathfinder Beginner Box campaign in particular, by losing a few things such as Attacks of Opportunity, plays very like my 1e AD&D or Labyrinth Lord campaigns. My 4e campaign is a different kettle of fish; the dynamics of the game are very different from any previous D&D, and trying to shoehorn it into the old paradigm is a recipe for unhappiness. Eg I find exploration-based play is the heart of all pre-4e D&D, but 4e works best with exploration de-emphasised in exchange for more of a scene-framing approach. Instead of exploring a labyrinth, you 'skip to the fun' and fight the minotaur (10th level Solo Brute).

 

[S'mon]

However, they didn't generally last much longer because Hasbro was in making cuts. In 2000, Employee [URL=http://www.enworld.org/forum/usertag.php?do=list&action=hash&hash=1]#1 [/URL] - Lisa Stevens was cut...

Real smart move there, eh?

 

[S'mon]

Well, I think a lot of indie games-especially, several of the narrativist "story" games are built for
a. players that don't trust the GM
b. players that like to DM, but don't want to give up that control as a player.

I think story-creation games work well with distributed authority, with no GM at all. I don't think they're really RPGs though, not as I understand 'RPG' - playing a role, if done, is only incidental to the object of the game, the creation of an interesting story.

I tend to think those narrativist 'story games' were primarily a reaction to '90 s White Wolf style role-playing gaming, with pre-written 'stories' created or run-through by the GM, and the players as little more than passive observers. This could lead to horrible railroading plots where the supposed protagonists were run along tracks with no opportunity to influence unfolding events. TSR did do a bit of this in the 2e AD&D era, but was never the main offender. Early narrativist games like Sorcerer! were still largely traditional PC-centric RPGs in form, but were trying to re-protagonise the PCs by ensuring they had genuine moral choices and freedom to respond to events (Bangs) as the player decided. Later Indie Storygames, like the one I played recently at the London Indie Game Meetup, often don't have 'PCs' at all, or 'GMs'.

 

[S'mon]

I think pre-4e D&D actually does a lot to inhibit narrativist play: too much fiddly, exploration-focused action resolution (eg 1 min/level and 10 min/level spell durations) that get in the way of clean scene framing and push in the direction of unstructured task resolution rather than conflict resolution.

IME, with pre-3e D&D those spells are both rarely enough used, and sufficiently vaguely worded, that they don't really get in the way of Dramatist play. My AD&D online game is pretty heavily Dramatist, in the GDS sense, and spell use has IME tended to support rather than undermine that. In the last but one session, a Druid PC's use of spells (speak with animals, call lightning et al), assisted me in scene framing and action resolution, and created some interesting questions about magic, nature and monotheism... (it's a setting with a monotheist quasi-Christian Great Church where the old Druidic faith is occasionally persecuted, yet Wizardry is normally tolerated - so the character is a sort of ambiguous 'wise man' advisor to a family of gentry; he takes long morning walks then prays at Chapel; as long as he can maintain this ambiguous position he's respected as something between a Cleric and a Magic-User by the NPCs and other PCs).

 

[GreyICE]

I think story-creation games work well with distributed authority, with no GM at all. I don't think they're really RPGs though, not as I understand 'RPG' - playing a role, if done, is only incidental to the object of the game, the creation of an interesting story.

I tend to think those narrativist 'story games' were primarily a reaction to '90 s White Wolf style role-playing gaming, with pre-written 'stories' created or run-through by the GM, and the players as little more than passive observers. This could lead to horrible railroading plots where the supposed protagonists were run along tracks with no opportunity to influence unfolding events. TSR did do a bit of this in the 2e AD&D era, but was never the main offender. Early narrativist games like Sorcerer! were still largely traditional PC-centric RPGs in form, but were trying to re-protagonise the PCs by ensuring they had genuine moral choices and freedom to respond to events (Bangs) as the player decided. Later Indie Storygames, like the one I played recently at the London Indie Game Meetup, often don't have 'PCs' at all, or 'GMs'.

How would you classify something like FATE, that clearly has PCs and a Storyteller, but where PCs share in the narrative of the story as a creative undertaking and have a lot more authority over events than any version of D&D has ever given them?