D&D 5E Legend Lore says 'story not rules' (3/4)

[pemerton]

One of the major goals of D&D Next seems to be making the rules (especially action resolution) as simple and lightweight as possible, and cutting down on minor little things you can take during character creation that you have to remember later for some small benefit. Do you approve of these goals?

"Approve" might be too strong - I've personally always enjoyed heavy rules (I GMed Rolemaster for nearly 20 years), but like them to be built around a broadly coherent pattern (Rolemaster again, or 4e, would be examples).

But I can certainly see the attraction of a lighter game! I really like the design of some light games like HeroQuest revised or Marvel Heroic RP.

If so, how do you think the rules can accomplish what you mention here?

Now thats a good question!

When I look at the light games I mentioned - HQ, MHRP - they use fairly clear advice and rules on mechanically framing and resolving conflicts to merge colour and action resolution. A lot of the weight falls on the GM's shoulders, but the players have to get into it too. This also works with "rulings vs rules".

Here's an example from MHRP:

Dr Stranger has the superpower "Alliterative Invocations", which lets him spend a "plot point" (= action point, fate point, hero point etc) to boost complications created using his Supreme Sorcery ability.

"Complications" are a generic category of debuff in the MHRP system. There is nothing that tells you what particular complications sorcery can create in general, or Dr Strange can create in particular. All there is are rules for determining their rating on a common scale (they rate from d4 (mere nuisance that might even backfire) to one step above d12 (disabling). These same complicaiotn rules have to be used to adjudicate Dr Strange's sorcery and (say) an attempt by the White Queen to rip secrets from your mind using her telepathy.

Once a character has a complication imposed upon him/her, the debuff works mechanically by grating a bonus to any character taking action against the debuffed character in which the complication would hinder that character.

So suppose, playing Dr Strange, I conjure forth the Crimson Bands of Cytorak on an enemy and inflict a d8 complication. Now if another character takes an action against that enemy where the enemy would be disadvantaged by being bound by the Crimson Bands of Cytorak, the player of that other character gets a d8 bonus die in his/her dice pool.​

So we definitely have colour - the player of Dr Strange will be using alliterative invocations to get the benefits - but also action resolution consequences. A complication resulting from the Crimson Bands of Cytorak will affect different actions from a complication arising from having your mind read by the White Queen. But the actual adjuication relies heavily on the sensibilities of the players and GM - can the player come up with some idea about how/why the Crimson Bands of Cytorak will hinder the enemy resisting that player's PC's action? and does the GM agree with that suggested framing?

This system relies on simple, common, reasonably transparent mechanics, plus a readiness on the part of players and GM to agree on what does or doesn't fall within genre and "verisimilitude" constraints. It will obviously break down under adversarial or even aggressive optimisation play, but has other mechanisms to try to discourage such play - eg a similarly light and open-ended approach to recovery, and "fail forward" resolution of PC failures, so the players don't have to win every time to avoid losing the game.

Conversely, my one real objection to Moldvay Basic as a light system would be that its action resolution mechanics tend strongly towards PC death as the price of failure, which in turn gives players less scope to relax and approach things in a light and open-ended way, and makes "rulings not rules" easily turn into arguments and adversarial play, and generating the systemic pressure towards tightening things up (like AD&D), rather than leaving things loose and open and relying on "rulings not rules" to turn colour into action resolution.

At this stage, the vibe I get from D&Dnext is a bit closer to Moldvay Basic than a system like MHRP.

I'm going to focus on the idea that "Precise Shot bad, Archer good."

Since there's only so many concepts that can be communicated with natural sounding terms, I wonder if that means there's going to be more focus on top-level development and less focus on creating granularity.

<snip>

I wonder if there's a focus change here on not making Themes and Specialties easily modular, and rather on making them more holistic.

This is a good post, and gets to what I was trying to get to in my post upthread.

And yet, even in the current playtest, none of that is mere color. The fighter part is mechanically robust, the archer is covered by the Sharpshooter specialty with four feats over 9 levels, and the Marksman fighting style, with five maneuvers over 10 levels, and the blacksmith is covered by the Artisan background, which provides training in 4 skills.

What I'm tending to miss, though, is why Lasting Frost in 4e is bad, but Called Shot in D&Dnext is good. They both strike me as having meaning only with the particular details of the action resolution framework (damage rules in one case, crit hit rules in the other), and neither seems especially evocative on its own without that framework (eg neither seems to me to carry the story weight of "Alliterative Invocations", although admittedly I am a big Dr Strange fan).

I agree that Archer and Blacksmith could carry the same weight as "Alliterative Invocations", but I'm not seeing how the system lets them do this except by mediation via the minutiae of action resolution.

Having got to this point, I can see two different ways forward in my thinking. One is along the lines of [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] upthread - that what is being offered is better packaging of detailed rules elements. That makes some sense, but doesn't seem to eliminate the fiddly bits of 4e - just to add another way of cataloguing them (a bit like what they started doing with feats in Essentials).

The second is that suggested by TwoSix in the post I quoted - that they are going to revisit the way that backgrounds and specialties currently decompose into fiddly elements. Done well, this could produce something that is both light and lets colour matter.

A fighter has a unique package of active abilities (maneuvers). An archer has a distinct package of unique abilities (feats that make them better at archery).

As I've said, the only diffrence I see here from 4e is the cataloguing.

I can't even remember what my current character's feats or powers are without looking them up.

I don't see how a Next specialty is any different. A quick look at the Sharpshooter speciality shows me a "Sniper" and a "Called Shot" feat each of which has fiddly interactions with the attack rules (Sniper also looks extremely weak for a character with martial damage dice - a bit like the "Careful Shot" ranger at will in 4e - but perhaps I'm missing some other feature of the system that makes it worthwhile), a "Weapon Focus" feat that has fiddly interaction with the martial damage dice mechanic (it's 4e's brutal but only on a subset of my dice - so I need to roll dice of different colours, but the rules don't seem to mention that - whereas the MHRP and Burning Wheel rules do include that sort of helpful suggestion in their dice pool building rules text).

I'm not seeing this massive departure from 4e's style - including apparent trap options like Sniper, which reads like it should be excellent for taking down the boss, assassination-style, but given that I can't add most of my damage bonuses actually looks useful only against minions that will drop on the weapon dice damage alone.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I would need to see the powers and game and play it to make a decision. But I am not fankly clear on what you are proposing here.

I have already offered my explanations of what I like and dont like in other threads with you. clearly you have already reached own conclusions about the underlying causes of my opinions. I dont think these lines of questions are done in good faith as this demonstrates. It is all about pinning me to a position to prove I really like 4E and I am just a crusty grognard who lives and breathes by the gospel of Gary (which is very much not the case by the way).

Naah, not at all. We're just talking about DDN here and in that context the question is only "could certain things be done in a way that is both good for you and also good for me", that's all. I am not interested in proving anything about anyone. You can just take me at face value and not suspect my motives. I have no logic trap to spring on you

Exactly what I'm proposing? Well, the devil is in the details, its not PERFECTLY clear to me either since I have certainly not tried to sit down and write said game, etc. I think there just may be a way to create a game that spans both of our critical concerns in terms of basic design. There are a lot of differences in how we're going to play, so we would still probably disagree on a lot of details and want to incorporate different elements, but we MIGHT get there if we could at least start out with a set of core rules and basic class mechanics that don't cause anyone to run in fear

 

[Ratskinner]

Yeah, my main question, and one that I suspect has an answer that is different from what people may think, is about that "parity and symmetry". Is it the parity and symmetry that you're actually worried about or is it the specific content of the powers and feats that 4e provided? I think, as an example, that such a system could have pretty easily delivered the entire classic D&D spell list. Why not? Obviously casting wouldn't be exactly the same, but the point is all of a sudden we're playing with a VERY different list of options, but the same basic fundamental mechanical strengths. Thus is it the MECHANICS that was an issue or the CONTENT that was the issue (and we could also ask similar questions about the presentation). I don't expect answers, but it is something that people probably SHOULD think carefully about because it has a great bearing on the reasoning for DDN's design. I question whether the right compromises are being made.

This is a really good question. For myself, I have come to the conclusion that a good part of it (beyond annoyance at myriad fiddly bits and the slowness it induces) was the content of the lists, particularly the powers. (I didn't really love the presentation, but it was clear, so I'm not complaining about it.) It seems to me that the content was what provided that feel that I found so difficult to change. Its not a bad feel, but I don't want the same feel for every campaign. When I contemplated what I would need to do to change that feel...it came down to re-writing all the lists. (or at least editing them.)

However, I actually think that actually hurts the case for designing 5e like 4e. So, if we imagine writing our "AD&D" version of 4e, what do we change? -- the lists. The same for every edition/playstyle. Then you've got one book (or set of lists, anyway) for each feel. And even though you've got a common mechanical structure, I don't think the classes would be very cross-compatible since they are generating different playstyles, part of which is the relative effectiveness of PCs. Which is not a problem they had when designing Essentials. Basically, the 4e architecture through its lists of powers/feats is very good (too good?) at enforcing a certain feel or playstyle. I think you'd risk putting fans of each playstyle into silos that didn't communicate with each other....which sorta defeats their purpose.

That doesn't mean that I'm feelin' all happy-fuzzy about everything I've seen about the way Next is being built. (Is it a bad sign that this article elicits almost no strong feeling from me either way?)

 

[Libramarian]

Conversely, my one real objection to Moldvay Basic as a light system would be that its action resolution mechanics tend strongly towards PC death as the price of failure, which in turn gives players less scope to relax and approach things in a light and open-ended way, and makes "rulings not rules" easily turn into arguments and adversarial play, and generating the systemic pressure towards tightening things up (like AD&D), rather than leaving things loose and open and relying on "rulings not rules" to turn colour into action resolution.

That's a nice clear exposition of the fail forward thing and a concern about classic style play that seems to be pretty common.

My experience running functional, low-conflict classic dungeoncrawling is the players compensate for death as the price of failure by investing less into their characters. However, this doesn't lead to completely emotionless "pawn stance" play -- I want to call it "avatar stance" play. The players express and share emotions, but the palette is limited to sort of basic emotions that pretty much any character in that situation would feel. Horror, tension, paranoia, disgust, glee...fiero? I've never used that word before but I think that's it. The thrill of victory and boo yeah...I want to try out this new magic item.

We've discussed this before talking about emotions in play -- I think awe and wonder and the sort of Lovecraftian deep horror where you suddenly realize how insignificant you are in the face of the weird, hostile cosmos is achievable here too, but it's more difficult.

It's fun to DM! It's not like watching people do crossword puzzles at all.

edit:
This emotion:
[sblock]

[/sblock]
The guy in the back is emotionless because he's just a hireling.

 

[Ratskinner]

The second is that suggested by TwoSix in the post I quoted - that they are going to revisit the way that backgrounds and specialties currently decompose into fiddly elements. Done well, this could produce something that is both light and lets colour matter.

I can't say I see that in the article, but I would wholly support such a measure. Mike, if this is close to it (and you're reading) that would be an awesome way to go.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

This is a really good question. For myself, I have come to the conclusion that a good part of it (beyond annoyance at myriad fiddly bits and the slowness it induces) was the content of the lists, particularly the powers...

Part of it is the content, but the "ultimate" reason, if you will, that the content ends up being substandard is that the lists are too long. Even if a list doesn't start too long, it ends up too long before they are done. And then when someone realizes this and tries to keep the list reasonably short, that gets all mixed up with over simplification--and makes people want to make the list larger again.

For example, one of the key things that will make a BECMI-style game work if you stick to the traditional Vancian casting is keeping the spell lists reasonably short. Breaking them up into levels helps, but there is still a limit. If you have 30 1st level wizard spells, some of them will be flavorless and some of them will be overpowered, merely from sure size of the list. So if you want to make the wizards more interesting, do it some other way besides adding to the spell lists.

Meanwhile, we've got 4 or 5 classes (or a few more with race as class). So the moment someone wants a variant, that instinct to add another class sets in--and it's exactly the wrong thing to do if you want a rich, well-designed game. You might end up with 8 or so in that well-designed game, if you carefully pick each one--perhaps with some branching options at later levels. But that suggests the need for some other element to give the variety.

It's exactly the same parallel with 4E roles, power sources, classes, and power lists. The power sources are made essentially meaningless, the roles collapse into nothing but a category, given that each class belongs to a role, the classes grow and grow--limited only by the needs of out of control lists of powers. Whereas a shorter list of powers coupled with 8-10 carefully considered classes--and then roles and power sources that are orthogonal and carry real weight--would have worked better while covering more conceptual ground.

Or to bring it back to the article, if the way to make an "archer" is to add something called "archer" to a list of other things, then your design is probably botched. Archer is defined primarily by weapon use--with some slight implications for armor and skill and abilities to go with the concept. Make the abilities and weapons and skills rich and meaningful enough, then a "fighter" or similar class that picks a bow and those skills and abilities will be an archer--both mechanically and in concept.

 

[Animal]

So basically Mike says that they want to slow down on adding new mechanics and take the playtest in a different but equally important direction for the time being. And somehow people concluded that the end product will have no add-on rule modules now.
That's quite a logical leap.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] (sorry, quoting seems borked right now, lol). While I only mentioned the 'packaging' aspect of things like Archer I do think there's MUCH room to streamline what was in 4e. 4e is good, but its also kind of a first cut, we can polish a lot of it. Given that there are some simplifying elements in DDN, Advantage/Disadvantage is a big one, then we can certainly leverage those things, and just generally trim down the number and complexity of powers, make 'feats' more implicit feature-type things that are rolled into other numbers or manifest in other ways that you won't need to remember (IE they can be things like permanent bonuses). There are some things I think are actually negative design decisions too, like eliminating the minor action and inconsistent terminology use, but those could and may well be fixed by the time things are done.

Frankly I think while martial dice sound appealing at first glance they are the new 'immediate action' or 'damage resistance', a rules swamp that will suck in and eventually choke off many a good idea. There are indeed likely to be numerous fiddly and trap options in this part of the rules by the time all is said and done (and are some already as you've pointed out). The other aspect of this is of course that you can't reuse elements with different classes. Sniper may be great for a certain type of blaster mage, but there's no way these kinds of elements can be crossed over from martial classes. The same would be true of for instance what in 4e is a weapon feat, which can usually apply to an implement, but in DDN that won't even be an option really in most cases.

Even ignoring the whole question of usage rates it would seem much cleaner and simpler to just rework the martial dice into a series of 'exploits' where the character can perform certain combinations. You could achieve results as good as what you get now with martial dice, but end up with a simpler structure that is more extensible and if you did thieves etc the same basic way, then you could for instance create magic weapons that would give any of these classes a new thing (like how powers can be attached to items in 4e).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This is a really good question. For myself, I have come to the conclusion that a good part of it (beyond annoyance at myriad fiddly bits and the slowness it induces) was the content of the lists, particularly the powers. (I didn't really love the presentation, but it was clear, so I'm not complaining about it.) It seems to me that the content was what provided that feel that I found so difficult to change. Its not a bad feel, but I don't want the same feel for every campaign. When I contemplated what I would need to do to change that feel...it came down to re-writing all the lists. (or at least editing them.)

However, I actually think that actually hurts the case for designing 5e like 4e. So, if we imagine writing our "AD&D" version of 4e, what do we change? -- the lists. The same for every edition/playstyle. Then you've got one book (or set of lists, anyway) for each feel. And even though you've got a common mechanical structure, I don't think the classes would be very cross-compatible since they are generating different playstyles, part of which is the relative effectiveness of PCs. Which is not a problem they had when designing Essentials. Basically, the 4e architecture through its lists of powers/feats is very good (too good?) at enforcing a certain feel or playstyle. I think you'd risk putting fans of each playstyle into silos that didn't communicate with each other....which sorta defeats their purpose.

That doesn't mean that I'm feelin' all happy-fuzzy about everything I've seen about the way Next is being built. (Is it a bad sign that this article elicits almost no strong feeling from me either way?)

Well, yeah, I think the content of the power lists does contain a lot of the feel, and other things like the agenda/playstyle of the game heavily depend on the details of the powers too. I think that's kind of inevitable though. Consider the other extreme, a game which just had classes that were total black boxes with no common mechanics. You'd have to rewrite those too, wouldn't you? I mean some stuff can carry over in either case, but is it more in one than the other? I don't have a reason to think so.

And clearly there would STILL be lists of spells in some fashion. I think where I would change things and where 4e got it wrong was in making exclusively class-based power lists. I think power sources could have profitably subsumed a bunch of that. At least that makes the lists shorter (and I've estimated that a careful rewrite of 4e using 20 levels and some other assumptions could have its current class roster with under 1000 powers, in the ballpark of the full 2e spell list circa 1996).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Part of it is the content, but the "ultimate" reason, if you will, that the content ends up being substandard is that the lists are too long. Even if a list doesn't start too long, it ends up too long before they are done. And then when someone realizes this and tries to keep the list reasonably short, that gets all mixed up with over simplification--and makes people want to make the list larger again.

For example, one of the key things that will make a BECMI-style game work if you stick to the traditional Vancian casting is keeping the spell lists reasonably short. Breaking them up into levels helps, but there is still a limit. If you have 30 1st level wizard spells, some of them will be flavorless and some of them will be overpowered, merely from sure size of the list. So if you want to make the wizards more interesting, do it some other way besides adding to the spell lists.

Meanwhile, we've got 4 or 5 classes (or a few more with race as class). So the moment someone wants a variant, that instinct to add another class sets in--and it's exactly the wrong thing to do if you want a rich, well-designed game. You might end up with 8 or so in that well-designed game, if you carefully pick each one--perhaps with some branching options at later levels. But that suggests the need for some other element to give the variety.

It's exactly the same parallel with 4E roles, power sources, classes, and power lists. The power sources are made essentially meaningless, the roles collapse into nothing but a category, given that each class belongs to a role, the classes grow and grow--limited only by the needs of out of control lists of powers. Whereas a shorter list of powers coupled with 8-10 carefully considered classes--and then roles and power sources that are orthogonal and carry real weight--would have worked better while covering more conceptual ground.

Or to bring it back to the article, if the way to make an "archer" is to add something called "archer" to a list of other things, then your design is probably botched. Archer is defined primarily by weapon use--with some slight implications for armor and skill and abilities to go with the concept. Make the abilities and weapons and skills rich and meaningful enough, then a "fighter" or similar class that picks a bow and those skills and abilities will be an archer--both mechanically and in concept.

Well, I've been saying for literally years, WELL before Essentials, IIRC well before PHB3, that 4e should have used power source based power lists instead of class lists. There could be SOME class powers of course, but you'd get your basic mechanics from source, then toss on class features and maybe theme on top to give them specific utility in your role. Drop the game to 20 levels with 6-7 levels/tier, cut out some fat, replace a lot of powers with single scaling variants, etc and you can end up with a VERY compact power list, even with a lot of classes, and certainly HALF the 4e classes are useless cruft and/or can be subsumed in other concepts.

As you say, lists do tend to grow. I think Mike is ready to try to stop doing that. I'm not sure if in the long run any game that continues to get support will resist entirely, but my main point is the existence, nominally, of lists doesn't force them to be too long, any more than they are in B/X.

As for things like Archer, the flaw I think that 4e ran into was associating ability score with powers. That both necessitated a differentiation between weapons and/or splitting classes, or a V class (ranger), etc. If ALL attacks with a bow were just to use dex, then you have solved the problem. A good archer has a high dex, and uses a bow. Whatever other options exist can be class-independent and just build on that. You can use that approach with power based classes or any other design, and it makes perfectly good sense. It provides a good logic for the rogue -> dagger kind of thing too, rogues use daggers because the essence of being a rogue benefits from dex and daggers are dex based light weapons. I THINK you run into a lot less corner cases this way than you did in 4e, and while it is still odd to make your fighter that is primarily about 'defending' into a bow user it is not that big a deal, less so even if you are building classes to fill several roles.