Imaro
Legend
I'll assume you meant narrative control "to" all characters... and wasn't this,for the most part" accomplished through the tactical combat powers given to the classes?
D&D 5E Legends & Lore 4/1/2013
- Thread starter Blackwarder
- Start date
I'll assume you meant narrative control "to" all characters... and wasn't this,for the most part" accomplished through the tactical combat powers given to the classes?
am181d
Adventurer
I linked to a specific post. Read that specific post.
Imaro
Legend
It's a list of mechanics and design goals... not a particular feel the game gives.
Vyvyan Basterd
Adventurer
I'm not being defensive. I'm just concerned that the designers and too many of those playtesting think that a "tactical rules module" will cover the 4E fell adequately. That is an extremely shallow approach to take.
Obryn
Hero
Imaro
Legend
Again... how about telling us what the "feel" is instead of what its not...
OAN: What was the major element of it, if not the tactical powers of the PC's??
the Jester
Legend
Just as with any edition, the "feel" really depends on how the group played it.
Nonetheless, I would posit that there are a few things that many, perhaps even most, 4e games shared in terms of feel.
1. Narrative control is explicitly shared to a degree never before seen in D&D. Powers, both attack and utility, help to let the pcs define the game more than ever before. At the same time, the dm is expected to provide more exciting and fantastic terrain than in previous editions.
2. DMs had an easy time of customizing monsters/npcs, and therefore many groups fought a lot of campaign-specific monsters. This ties directly into one of my favorite things about 4e: Its ease of dming and of constructing monsters. This also ties into...
3. Combats are exciting and fun. Between the ease of encounter design (c.f. monster roles, monster stats based on level so reliable math) and the heavy emphasis on the tactical elements of the game, 4e does set-piece battles really well. In many groups, however, combat becomes a slog and can really slow down the game.
4. Players tended to use very little homebrewed material like powers, paragon paths and epic destinies. This is not hard and fast, but when there is an otherwise-excellent character builder tool available that simply fails when you use a custom race or paragon path, there is a huge disincentive for players to use such custom material. Exceptions include groups with players willing to disavow the CB and paper & pencil their way through the various bonuses to get their final defense, attack and damage numbers, groups that hack the old offline builder in order to add custom stuff in (my group falls in this category), groups that don't use any of the electronic/online tools at all, etc. But I think there is far less homebrewed material on character sheets these days.
5. The official 4e cosmology and lore fit together smoothly, far more smoothly than any pre-Eberron cosmology. Also, the background re: the creation, the Dawn War, etc. is awesome. The whole primordials-vs-gods thing is cool and logical and evokes the classical Titans vs. Gods clash. It all ties together very, very well; however, it does not tie together particularly well with old-skool D&D lore. There are a bajillion places where you really have to work to fit them together, if you are so inclined to do so (perhaps because you have a long-running campaign whose cosmology was already established and you want to keep it consistent while still using the new material as best you can). But the Feywild and Shadowfell as mirrors of the world? Excellent. The Astral Sea and its dominions? Very cool, and logical for a return to spelljamming. And so on.
6. The Math is Tight. This makes the game easy to balance at the expense of making it hard to throw a really unpredictable encounter at the pcs. You can feel how tight the math is during play, sometimes, at least as a dm. This one can really be good or bad, depending on how well you can tweak expectations and leave the pcs worried about an encounter.
Balesir
Adventurer
The leap is from "I don't really like that idea - it sounds <confusing or whatever>" to "I would really have preferred something more like this, for example". If you like what's being suggested, good for you, but "I would rather have seen something like this..." seems a perfectly logical and expected response from someone who doesn't.
This has actually already been done for 4e far more cogently than it ever has for 3.x or earlier, but to add to all the stuff Jester and others have mentioned, for me a very large part is this:
The players have actual agency and knowledge of likely outcomes under the rules. I, as DM, get to decide what the situation is the characters face, but I don't get to decide how they may (or may not) resolve it; that is down to the decisions of the players and the rolls of the dice. I find that infinitely more satisfying than thinking "do I let them succeed with this funky plan or not?"
The end result is we get situations where nobody knows where they are going to go, because the outcome will be a genuine fusion of the decisions of all the folk in the group, not just how the DM thinks it "should" work. Both as a player and as a GM, I find that liberating and refreshing.
I realise not everyone feels this way; good luck to them with whatever game suits their fancy, but this is what I find I want and I'll not apologise for it (although I may well compromise on it from time to time, when playing with people who like something different).
GX.Sigma
Adventurer
Can you explain what this means? I still don't understand it. How does Tide of Iron give a player more "narrative control" than Charm Person?
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