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

[JeffB]

Nice article. About damn time. Just hope they can stick to their guns.

 

[Bedrockgames]

As with @Nemesis Destiny, I don't fully feel the force of this. Unless "grounded in reality" just means a particular (gritty) genre.

No. It just means keeping it believable and feeling realistic. I dont genres or modes of entetaintment like books/movies are the only way to conceptualize play.

it isnt a matter of them always being in conflict but I do think there are going to e points when they are. We are speaking quite generally of course. But as a general rule, the more "cinematic" the mechanics, the more it pushes against my suspension of disbelief if my expectation is a kind of gritty, grounded setting (though there are times when I want cinematic in a game). Perhaps there is a smarter way to do it that doesnt create a conflict here, but with a game like 4E at least, stuff like HS/ mundane encounter and daily powers definitely strain my sense of believability (and many posters here have advocated for those as cinematic/genre appropriate).

i spoke of genres because that is another way of looking at it and gets at the same concern to a degree (you dont expect the same off the wall physics you find in evil dead that you do in rose mary's baby--those are in the same genre but occupy very different subgenres and the striking difference is in how they approach realism).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

no. I want myth and magic. But i want mundane things to behave believably. And i dont want to feel like am a character in a story,but a person in a living world (so i dont want things like scenes, story structure, etc). You feel differently, and that is fine. Inm not trying to conver you.

Sure, OTOH what is "mundane"? It feels to me like this concept gets wielded like a hatchet to chop away at anything that isn't someone's favorite edition's way of doing things. I don't at all (seriously) mean to be critical. I consider your way of playing as valid as any, and I'd probably have fun playing with you (I'm really pretty adaptable that way, the point is to have fun, not worry about the details, friends, table, dice, etc). OTOH it is like there is a whole subset of people that seem to almost define their tastes and opinions by what is opposite to 4e's conventions and assumptions. I guess for every opinion/preference there will be someone on the opposite side of it, and someone on the opposite side of them ALL (I think we do agree about a few things).

IMHO nothing about anything in D&D has EVER been mundane. Maybe a level 1-3 fighter in pre-3e editions was (depending on race and such) more-or-less roughly similar to a real guy, but not THAT much. Even in OD&D 4th level sure broke that wall, when you could just start walking away from arrows through the gut and 20' falls onto hard stone and things. So, sure, gravity works, basic physics works, mostly if you explain something that isn't overtly magical you can kind of explain it roughly in real-world terms, but I am not sure I understand how that doesn't apply to 4e as well as 1e. OK, I can only use my Brute Strike power once a day, but its a plot coupon. My character CAN AND WILL hit things really hard with his sword many times in a day. He can even try to pull off something like Brute Strike any old time with a page 42 stunt.

I think, again, there are perfectly valid differences in taste here, you don't like plot coupons, but I don't think plot coupons have to violate causality or stop the game from following 'mundane' genre conventions (whatever those are in D&D). So I guess I am a bit puzzled as to why the discussion devolved down to being about fantasy realism. IMHO this is a pretty easy dial to tweak, one of the easiest. The DM vs player narrative control agenda differences are larger, and that's in my mind where we can't easily meet on a game design. I think it would be POSSIBLE to share some degree of game mechanics between our styles of play, but I probably want to play a whole different style of adventure, in a different type of setting, etc. It seems like the overlap is small enough that maybe it really just isn't worth the pain and agony to try to say "we're playing the same game", when in fact in any realistic sense we won't be, even if we share a very few basic rules.

IMHO WotC would be better off making a game focused on something like your agenda, calling it something evocative of that, and simply providing support for 4e and/or some sort of 4.5 update for the rest of us. The people in the middle ground will gravitate to whichever system is convenient or closer to what they want and each one can have some options to allow it to cover more ground. There can still be a nugget of commonality between the two, and you could probably port/share some sorts of rules (something like domain management is pretty abstract, or mass combat). You wouldn't have to even pretend though that items, spells, feats, etc were cross-compatible.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Sure, OTOH what is "mundane"? It feels to me like this concept gets wielded like a hatchet to chop away at anything that isn't someone's favorite edition's way of doing things. I don't at all (seriously) mean to be critical. I consider your way of playing as valid as any, and I'd probably have fun playing with you (I'm really pretty adaptable that way, the point is to have fun, not worry about the details, friends, table, dice, etc). OTOH it is like there is a whole subset of people that seem to almost define their tastes and opinions by what is opposite to 4e's conventions and assumptions. I guess for every opinion/preference there will be someone on the opposite side of it, and someone on the opposite side of them ALL (I think we do agree about a few things).

I think this has less to do with us wanting to hate on 4E and more to do with 4E really bringing clarity to some of these things that were under the surface. This isn't a criticism of 4E. I think one of its strengths as an edition is to speak very strongly to a core group of players whose style it suits. It basically, for me, took a lot of things that had maybe existed as issues in D&D and cranked them up a bit. I don't think that makes 4E objectively bad, or anything like that. It just means some of the things it did were difficult for my sense of what is plausible.

IMHO nothing about anything in D&D has EVER been mundane. Maybe a level 1-3 fighter in pre-3e editions was (depending on race and such) more-or-less roughly similar to a real guy, but not THAT much. Even in OD&D 4th level sure broke that wall, when you could just start walking away from arrows through the gut and 20' falls onto hard stone and things. So, sure, gravity works, basic physics works, mostly if you explain something that isn't overtly magical you can kind of explain it roughly in real-world terms, but I am not sure I understand how that doesn't apply to 4e as well as 1e. OK, I can only use my Brute Strike power once a day, but its a plot coupon. My character CAN AND WILL hit things really hard with his sword many times in a day. He can even try to pull off something like Brute Strike any old time with a page 42 stunt.

The plot coupon thing is a perfect example. For me that just doesn't reflect anything that is actually going on in the setting. It is there for the purposes of dramatic pacing and balance, and I just find it disruptive. Healing in 4E another one (and we have had endless debates, so I understand not everyone sees it as an instant mundane heal, but for me that is how it comes across, and I find it hard to ignore). Some of the other issues for me is some of the martial attacks just feel more like magic or quasi magic (at the very least a good deal larger than life) to me. Again, not a problem for certain styles of play, but it goes beyond how I have traditionally viewed my fighters (again, I understand not everyone agrees on this point, but the core assumptions we carry with us have a big impact on how we perceive things).

All that said can we sometimes go too far as a reaction against 4E? Absolutely. I would say the same thing in discussions about OSR and storygames, sometimes people on both sides injure their own enjoyment of the game as a reaction against a style they want to avoid (and as part of preference that becomes ideological). This is why I was trying to engage people with some ideas earlier (perhaps it was another thread) for a cinematic wuxia style D&D that draws on some of 4E's components. I also think a lot of the powers themselves could be workable for someone like me in a more standard game if you just tweaked a few things (replace daily and encounter powers with conditional ones, make a clearer line between what is a mundane and a magical ability). So yes, I think in large part we have probably overeacted to 4E in a lot of respects.

I think, again, there are perfectly valid differences in taste here, you don't like plot coupons, but I don't think plot coupons have to violate causality or stop the game from following 'mundane' genre conventions (whatever those are in D&D). So I guess I am a bit puzzled as to why the discussion devolved down to being about fantasy realism. IMHO this is a pretty easy dial to tweak, one of the easiest. The DM vs player narrative control agenda differences are larger, and that's in my mind where we can't easily meet on a game design. I think it would be POSSIBLE to share some degree of game mechanics between our styles of play, but I probably want to play a whole different style of adventure, in a different type of setting, etc. It seems like the overlap is small enough that maybe it really just isn't worth the pain and agony to try to say "we're playing the same game", when in fact in any realistic sense we won't be, even if we share a very few basic rules.

I am not totally averse to plot coupons. It depends on what form they take and the game. But for me, the realism issue is they don't represent anything within the fiction, so it gets into the realm of me crafting a story outside my character's point of view instead taking a 1st person perspective. Even in games I do like that have these things (bennies for instance in savage worlds) I always find it a bit jarring when I stop to spend them. There is just this hiccup effect it has on my imagination. Again that isn't to say everyone ought to share that experience, just that it is something I have noticed about myself (I had a very similar reaction to 3E wish lists for magic items when those were popular).

IMHO WotC would be better off making a game focused on something like your agenda, calling it something evocative of that, and simply providing support for 4e and/or some sort of 4.5 update for the rest of us. The people in the middle ground will gravitate to whichever system is convenient or closer to what they want and each one can have some options to allow it to cover more ground. There can still be a nugget of commonality between the two, and you could probably port/share some sorts of rules (something like domain management is pretty abstract, or mass combat). You wouldn't have to even pretend though that items, spells, feats, etc were cross-compatible.

I don't know. While I have been strongly defending a position here about flavor, I am also quite tired of people breaking into camps and not trying things because its too X or too Y. Frankly, I would be willing to play an edition of D&D that violated many of the issues I discussed here if it were well rounded and a solid system. 4E is definitely too far in one particular direction for me (and I really did feel like the books were entirely dismissive of my style of play----rightly or wrongly), but I think we may be better off if people put the really strong preferences aside for a bit and just try a simple but good game that captures a broad range of what D&D can be. Whether that is possible I don't know. In many ways, I almost want to go back to the pre-internet days when we really didn't overthink a lot of this stuff.

 

[TwoSix]

This is why I was trying to engage people with some ideas earlier (perhaps it was another thread) for a cinematic wuxia style D&D that draws on some of 4E's components. I also think a lot of the powers themselves could be workable for someone like me in a more standard game if you just tweaked a few things (replace daily and encounter powers with conditional ones, make a clearer line between what is a mundane and a magical ability). So yes, I think in large part we have probably overeacted to 4E in a lot of respects.

I'm actually slowly working on a fairly radical 4e hack that does something similar. There are no encounter powers or daily powers, actually, there aren't really powers at all (or classes). Different weapons give you different powers (or at least stances), and magic isn't an innate ability, it's the product of ritual and artifice. If you have a magic missile, it's because you've crafted a wand that can create a magic missile 3 times a day, and recharges at moonrise.

Power progression is also decoupled from level or any kind of character building, and purely becomes a story option. Train with the town guards or a wandering swordsman to learn new weapon techniques. A boon from the elves might take the form of a cloak of invisibility.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

My compromise on "prone", "free descriptors" and circumstances with the fiction is to allow oozes etc to be knocked "prone" (ie they are not immune to that suite of player resources that generate that complication), but they don't grant a -2 penalty to non-adjacent archery (because their visible profile hasn't significantly changed).

Which is my own solution as well, though honestly the ranged attacks thing hasn't even come up from what I can remember. Likewise I've had a few situations where "no you can't push that swarm of rats with a sword" or other similar things have come up. You have to be careful not to fall into the "magic can do it all, martial sucks" trap though. The DMG/PHB could have of course clearly spelled this out as the intended mode of play where it was explained that powers effects are just generalized conditions that you can and will extend and modify for specific narrative reasons. You COULD run into problems with narrative munchkinism (people refluffing powers to make them more effective) but as a DM I'd feel perfectly free to nip that in the bud, or maybe just hit them with enough limitations/consequences to keep it in line (not always a sure thing, but certainly if you have 30+ years of DMing experience quite doable). It obviously might not be the easiest game for newbie DMs played that way, but OTOH I doubt too many newbie players are going to push you too far in that direction.

In the case of MHRP, I think this is a shared sense of Marvel superheroics. In D&D, I don't know that there is as much of a common source text, but I would expect most tables to be able to sort this out.

Yeah, MHRP of course has a very extensive and tight set of shared expectations going right down to the low level details of a lot of stuff. I think D&D does too, if you consider say 'classic' D&D. Each spell has a certain set expectations around it, each class feature, item, etc. Its not totally consistent but neither are comics. Of course 3.x and 4e players have a bit different shared lexicon. 3e is closer to classic D&D in that respect (it has the same basic spells and class mechanics are certainly closer), but I think sufficient agreement is mostly possible. It certainly isn't worse than things like different table rulings in 1e.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think this has less to do with us wanting to hate on 4E and more to do with 4E really bringing clarity to some of these things that were under the surface. This isn't a criticism of 4E. I think one of its strengths as an edition is to speak very strongly to a core group of players whose style it suits. It basically, for me, took a lot of things that had maybe existed as issues in D&D and cranked them up a bit. I don't think that makes 4E objectively bad, or anything like that. It just means some of the things it did were difficult for my sense of what is plausible.

...

I don't know. While I have been strongly defending a position here about flavor, I am also quite tired of people breaking into camps and not trying things because its too X or too Y. Frankly, I would be willing to play an edition of D&D that violated many of the issues I discussed here if it were well rounded and a solid system. 4E is definitely too far in one particular direction for me (and I really did feel like the books were entirely dismissive of my style of play----rightly or wrongly), but I think we may be better off if people put the really strong preferences aside for a bit and just try a simple but good game that captures a broad range of what D&D can be. Whether that is possible I don't know. In many ways, I almost want to go back to the pre-internet days when we really didn't overthink a lot of this stuff.

Sure. I think my experience was the minute I got onto a D&D forum for the first time to eagerly talk to people and share ideas about this new and interesting edition of D&D (and I really had not at all thought about any issues of play style, which at the time I wasn't nearly as conscious about) I was instantly mugged by an army of fanatics who seemed hell-bent on making sure any D&D that wasn't exactly tuned to their oddly super-specific requirements was anathema and you couldn't even have an enjoyable discussion. It sure didn't at all make me want to be sympathetic to anyone's different agendas and most of us that like 4e very quickly learned to just draw very specific lines and not even consider discussions with people on the other side of them, because 99% of the time they seemed just to be out to make all conversation impossible.

I sort of feel like the final result of all this is that WotC turned its back on all of us that actually enjoyed, advocated, bought, and stuck up for what they were trying to do. It makes it rather hard to even talk about DDN as it is now or in some form that doesn't at least vindicate our opinions about 4e in some fashion. Its kind of a slap in the face really. This is sad because it really isn't where WotC is trying to come from, or where plenty of people here on Enworld are trying to come from, but I feel like I'll be damned if I am going to back down from what I have taken so much criticism for liking. You know what I mean?

So, yeah, in a reasonable sense my feeling is that if we had a game that was halfway between you and me, being somewhat polar opposites, it wouldn't be too bad, and we could work on doing our own things with it. OTOH like I say it is so bitter a pill that many of us aren't likely to ever swallow it. 10 years from now it will all be water under the bridge. RIGHT NOW, I want support for all the stuff I have in 4e in DDN. I wouldn't even comment on DDN except there was that hope that we could get a game that was 4e but better. lol.

 

[Ahnehnois]

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'm actually slowly working on a fairly radical 4e hack that does something similar. There are no encounter powers or daily powers, actually, there aren't really powers at all (or classes). Different weapons give you different powers (or at least stances), and magic isn't an innate ability, it's the product of ritual and artifice. If you have a magic missile, it's because you've crafted a wand that can create a magic missile 3 times a day, and recharges at moonrise.

Power progression is also decoupled from level or any kind of character building, and purely becomes a story option. Train with the town guards or a wandering swordsman to learn new weapon techniques. A boon from the elves might take the form of a cloak of invisibility.

Yeah, my personal outline of a sort of "4e-inspired" system is similar. I don't kid myself that I'm going to, or really capable of, writing a whole RPG that would add a whole lot to what is out there now, but its fun to create an outline anyway. My idea is to replace everything with 'boons'. You just play though the narrative and you acquire whatever you get based on the action. Level increases are then based on how many boons you have (IE if you have 10 boons maybe that makes you level 5 or whatever). You could adjust that based on the sort of fiction you want. HP and such can be based on level and basically all that core stuff could be pretty much right out of 4e, though I have some tweaks in mind.

Classes would still exist, they could define your HP progression and starting boons (which would be mostly your proficiencies and such plus some basic class mechanics). You'd just create a new class/subclass for every distinct enough archetype that would matter (So rangers can just be fighters that trade 'heavy armor proficiency' for 'tracking' etc). 4e/DDN/13a style background/theme/whatever would of course be perfectly feasible as well. ALL of these would however just act as packages of stuff, ways to make the DM and player's job of visualizing and constructing the character easier.

Clearly there would be some distinct differences in details of implementation between this and DDN or 4e, but I think you could get close to the same sorts of results. Different sets of boons would be an easy enough thing to develop for different styles of play, and adjusting some of the core rules (healing etc) wouldn't be drastically hard either, so you could support more than one type of play, genre, etc. I could even see different class and leveling rules for really distinct things (like a cosmic horror game could do away entirely with hit point progression by just saying "well, you never actually level up, no matter what boons you get").

 

[Bluenose]

No. It just means keeping it believable and feeling realistic.

So chopping someone's arm off with an axe; concussing them with a mace blow to the head; dropping them with a stab through the heart; blocking an incoming arrow; slitting throats for immediate reduction to zero hit points; swimming across the Danube in chain armour; walking for four days through the desert without water; travelling 50km a day to fight a battle the next; etc.

Any of those you don't find realist or believable?