Legends & Lore: Roleplaying in D&D Next

[pemerton]

I mean it's no wonder we generate bloodthirsty parties. It's simple, it's straight-forward, it requires little thought or discussion, and it generally works. DMs are too quick to assume anything players want is unreasonable, and that creates players who give up on being creative because their DMs shoot them down before listening to their idea.

D&D needs bottom-up rules of engagement just as much as it needs top-down ones.

I strongly agree with this. And I think it applies both in relation to play advice, and in relation to action resolution. If you don't want bloodthirsty PCs, the players need reliable access to non-combat action resolution options.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I think experiences with 4e are fairly varies (and that's not very surprising, given how many people play any given edition of D&D). I think GM judgement remains pretty crucial - in combat, it is especially prominent in the setting up of encounters and making choices for NPCs/monsters; out-of-comat it is crucial not just to framing skill challenges but to adjudicating the consequences of each skill check so as to reframe the unfolding situation as the challenge progresses towards its resolution. That is a different sort of GM role from (say in classic D&D) deciding the percentage chance of discovering a particular secret door, but nevertheless makes GM decision-making pretty central.

It's not just that. In our 2e game, we could expect nearly random rulings from the DM. Want to grapple a troll? Likely our 6 different DMs would give 6 different answers on exactly how that would work. One would rule it out immediately saying the troll was way to big to grapple, one would allow you to try it and then give the troll a free attack on you and make you make a dex check or fall off and take a bunch of damage, another one would come up with some convoluted rule that required 10 different checks for "realism".

If you tried to jump over something the distance you could jump would vary immensely from DM to DM. If you tried to talk to an NPC, one DM would use a charisma check and another would just rule that the NPC didn't like your face and ignore everything you said.

Meanwhile in 4e, you know what options you have. They are all listed as at-will, encounters, and daily powers. Even your Basic Attack has a stat block in Essentials and onwards to make sure everyone knows how it functions. They are written in a very specific formula with carefully laid out rules that explain how to adjudicate them. Anything you'd like to do that isn't listed in one of your powers is likely a crap shoot. After all, if your DM understand the reasons WHY there are power stat blocks and understands the balance of 4e, then allowing any actions that duplicate any power in any book is like giving someone a free feat(or couple of feats). The book discouraged stepping outside of the box because it explained the box was there for a reason.

True, the DM has the ability to frame a skill challenge. However, the book told you what the "correct" DC was for the skills at each level and how much XP to hand out based on the DCs you set. It gave you a list of skills and encouraged you to only use skills from that list. It explicitly said which stats affect which skills.

Players can read all that information and be fairly certain their DM isn't going to say "Give me a Strength based Diplomacy check, DC 47" because Diplomacy is stated in the book as being Charisma based and the DC by level has a chart. In this way, the rules remove a large amount of the decision making from the DM.

Instead, the DM uses the rules as a tool. You say "You are talking to someone, there's a skill for that...Diplomacy. It's hard, so a hard DC for your level is 26. Make a skill check and get 26 or more and your succeed."

In combat, you look at a monster's powers(of which they likely have 2 or 3) and you pick one and follow the instructions. You are making decisions, but from a lot smaller pool of options.

I'm not saying this is good or bad. But 4e does take a lot of power out from DM decisions and put them into the rules. Which is why a lot of players feel the shift into D&D Next is putting too much power back into the DMs hands. Like being able to arbitrarily decide what counts as good roleplaying and give out benefits because of it.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Hmmm... I'm now reminded of some of the issues they had with certs for Raven's Bluff - the Living City. Since the certs were physical, they could often be transferred, and there were some players either good enough at horse trading or wheedling at whatever table they sat at that they ended up with binders full of them as the campaign went on. People could come up to the scratch built with dozens of magic items and advantages on the certs and, I assume, that was one major reason Living Greyhawk implemented its own system of adventure certifications and accountancy of PC wealth.

It is precisely the reason. I wasn't around for Living City. However, I heard it referred to many times by people as the reasons LG had to implement the protections it did.

LG also used to hand out magic item certs that could be traded during year one. However, there were so many arguments about who even got them at the end of the adventure and arguments about certain characters being WAY more powerful than everyone else due to the number of certs they amassed that it was quickly replaced with the system we used after year 2...if a magic item dropped during the adventure, you still had to buy it for full cost and each and every member of the group could buy the same magic item if they wanted to.

This kept everyone at the proper wealth by level guidelines and stopped arguments about who got what item.

 

[pemerton]

4e does take a lot of power out from DM decisions and put them into the rules.

At least from my perspective, I feel there is a big difference between GM discretion over how action resolution works (which is what most of your examples are about) and GM discretion over how action resolution is framed and how the results of action resolution are interpreted (which is what I was trying to get at in my post).

I think GM discretion over the latter is a fairly important part of the mainstream roleplaying experience. If players get to frame their own challenges, and interpret their own consequences, it can be hard for them to apply enough pressure to their own PCs to keep things exciting!

I think GM discretion over the former - like what is the mechanic for grappling a troll, or resolving a jump, or talking to a stranger - tends just to lead to a poor gaming experience, as players cannot declare actions for their PC with any confidence, and hence in practice either (i) retreat to those areas of the system which do have reliable rules, like combat, or (ii) give up protagonisim and essentially "play along" with the GM's game.

Which is why a lot of players feel the shift into D&D Next is putting too much power back into the DMs hands. Like being able to arbitrarily decide what counts as good roleplaying and give out benefits because of it.

I think the key issue here is "arbitrariness". [MENTION=4892]Vyvyan Basterd[/MENTION] has pointed to comparable systems (eg Milestones in MHRP) which aren't arbitrary (and don't necessarily have to be GM-adjudicated at all).

The broader issue of "DM empowerment" in D&Dnext is one I'm not sure about. I have a certain fondness for flexible, portable and robust action resolution mechanics. (4e skill challenges are one example, though perhaps not the best.) Stat checks have the potential to be one part of that. But other stuff is needed too, like guidlines on setting stakes and establishing finality of resolution (which is what hit points do in combat). At the moment I feel that that is missing. Without that, I think the same issues I mentioned above will tend to occur: either (i) retreat into combat, where hit points do establish finality; or (ii) surrender protagonism and just go along with the GM's thing.

 

[chaochou]

In the context of D&D, it reminds me of an issue that came up in the "what can we learn from BW" thread a month or three ago: because of D&D's level system, a player who tries to build his/her PC into the centre of some sort of epic conflict is precluded from engaging directly with that conflict at start, because the epic enemey is (say) 10th level and the PC only 1st. So inevitably the authorial control passes back to the GM to frame the intermediate story steps that will progress things from 1st to 10th. I wonder if they are looking at how flatter math/"bounded accuracy" might help with this issue?

I think flatter math may help. However, I slightly take issue with this problem. A Burning Wheel character can have a goal like 'I will bring down the corrupt King John' but a 3 lifepath BW character is going to seriously lack the ability to do that. However, BW says that if you are taking steps - even just robbing a guardsman or handing out political flyers - then you are working (slowly) towards your goal and earn Artha. It's the GMs job to make those situations produce interesting consequences whether you succeed or fail.

So I think the key is these 'bonds, flaws and ideals' and this 'kicker' idea that underpin Inspiration. Obviously we haven't seen the tables to see what ideas MM has for these things, but I think it's interesting territory with the idea of giving players much more say during setup and character creation to shape what the game is going to be about.

 

[ShadowDenizen]

Anything you'd like to do that isn't listed in one of your powers is likely a crap shoot

But isn't that the joy of an RPG? To try for a crapshoot and have it tunr out sucessfully beyond your wildest expectations? Or even to fail miserably, as long as it entertains the group and furthers the story? (And I think that's a part of why 4E didn't do as well as it shuld have, IMO; it tried to do emphasize things that it couldn't do as well as a computer/console.)

I mean, if I want pre-planned options, I have Skyrim, DDO, or virtually any other computer or console RPG or action game.

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION], good points.

 

[ExploderWizard]

I ran across this gem on another forum.

http://www.goblinscomic.org/01202007/


How Inspired!!!!!

 

[pemerton]

But isn't that the joy of an RPG? To try for a crapshoot and have it tunr out sucessfully beyond your wildest expectations?

Maybe. But there's a difference between succeeding because you got a very lucky roll (which is pretty much the definition of a crap shoot) and succeeding because the GM decided to apply, in an ad hoc way, generous rather than strict action resolution requirements. The latter is closer to GM railroading, at least as I see it.

I mean, if I want pre-planned options, I have Skyrim, DDO, or virtually any other computer or console RPG or action game.

I don't really see the connectin between pre-planned options and robust action resolution mechanics. In Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, for instance, Iron Man can try stuff like powering up his armour by connecting to the grid, or powering up his armour by standing outside in a lightning storm, or any other whacky thing his player might think up. But the mechanics for resolving that sort of stuff are pretty clear - and it's certainly not just GM makes it up.

 

[Cyberen]

What is great with Inspiration, as described by Mike Mearls in this L&L, is that it tokenizes playstyle in a simple, robust and convenient way. It had to be done, because :1) by RAW, bounded accuracy PC are not special. They are average Joes for their level, and luck is not on their side if they repeatedly try bold action.2) this assumption is OK at some tables, but doesn't fly well with others (I deliberately mention tables rather than editions here), and Next aims at supporting as many playstyles as possible.So... Inspiration is a mechanism that makes PC special. It is something that SHOULD be made expli it at each and every table, because misunderstanding at this level is IME quite common and has, also IME dire consequences. Its tokenization is, IMO, the wisest thing that could ever be decided in a unification edition : the issues around the PCs status, central in setting the tone of a campaign, are tied to a single mechanism open to discussion and tuning.I think the most Basic expression of Inspiration should be the Rule of Cool : when the players are inspired by what happens at the table, the characters are Inspired and are more likely to overcome. It does a good job of conveying the specificity of table top gaming, having people gathering around a table to create and share some special moments, while not going over the top (because Advantage is a potent tool to achieve believable success).As a cherry on top of the cake, the Inspiration mechanism is now open to fanciful tweaking, in order to create or emulate specific playstyles. It's the perfect plug to introduce inspirational healing, or whatever option distinguishing Heroes from ordinary Joes. It's the perfect place to set the balance between player and DM empowerment.Concerning "saying no", I agree it's a useful skill, but please keep in mind that the game rules are not that far from AD&D, where it was pretty clear "No" was a default answer with pretty lethal consequences Concerning "bottom up" rules for role playing, I definitely agree, and I think Next does already a decent job in this field : Backgrounds, and the system described this week of bonds, flaws, and kickers, already create a network around each PC that helps fleshing out their personna while creating interesting situations. Not too bad, actually.