Fighters vs. Spellcasters (a case for fighters.)

[ImperatorK]

Amazing how basic uncontroversial facts that completely invalidate your position are apparently delivered by men made out of straw.

They are if they're used as arguments against something I didn't say. That's the definition of a strawman, I believe.

 

[Ratskinner]

(4) GM force retains a high degree of popularity over metagame mechanics and overt social contract around genre, scene-framing etc, as a way of making the game hum along.
​

(1) and (2) also seem connected to "immersion" as a goal of play, which retains importance. (4) also seems related to this, and among other things also seems to act as a brake on the potentially anti-immersive consequences of (3).

At least, that's my take. The Forge idea, that we could make (4) redundant by inventing new systems that would hum along on their own if only everyone did what the system asked them to do, seems to have failed.

I'm assuming when you say "seems to have failed", you're referring to "failed at" appealing to something intrinsic to the majority RPG culture, thus capturing little more than a minority market share.

I would agree that it failed in that manner. The bizarre thing to me is when I see folks who are strictly players objecting to the replacement of GM force. ::shrug:: I will say that I think Forge's particular approach to it has something to do with it. I think it lead to a style of presentation and culture with a penchant for obfuscatory language and made many of those games extremely hard to just pick up a book and play. (I doesn't help when you go on a forum/list with a question and the author of the game literally tells you that you're playing it wrong.) FATE, descended from FUDGE, learned a bit from the Forge, but definitely is/was its own beast and came from a different culture. It seems resistant to the confusion, obscurity, and often venom that seems to shroud the Forge games. ...not that FATE is supplanting D&D or anything.

I do sometimes wonder about how much the Forge community's attitudes (and failed reaction rolls ) have "poisoned the well" for some very interesting and outré mechanics. I've met many gamers that are quite hostile about the Forge, and feel that it was a very snobby community that talked down to gamers of their ilk. Obviously I have no way of knowing whether the reception of any given mechanical idea was hampered by this. However, I do think that popularity of 13th Age and FATE (especially continued chatter about their OUT/Backgrounds and Aspects, respectively) indicates that the general audience is willing to accept what I might term "open-descriptor" mechanics, at least for some (mostly non-combat) purposes.

 

[Lanefan]

I didn't talk about an aesthetic. I talked about a set of techniques in play - stables of PCs, sandbox worlds, character level and player skill being in rough correlation - which virtually no one on ENworld uses (the only regular poster who does that I'm aware of is @Lanefan).

As my name's been taken in vain I suppose I'd better chime in here, though I can only guess at the topic as I don't have time to read through 350+ posts.

The 3e Fighter was, to me, very much over-mechanical-ized - too many mechanics. Too many times I was forced to reference the character sheet for feats, skills, bonuses, etc., etc. - with a simple Fighter, I should never have to do that. Fighters, more than any other class, differentiate themselves in the game by their personality, their character quirks (good and bad), and their role-played interaction with the rest of the party and-or game world.

In the game I'm about to DM tonight there are two Fighters, Kit and Donogb. Everyone at the table can easily tell who is who and what each is likely to do in any given situation...they are quite different in the game as played at the table, yet their raw numbers (stats, AC, h.p., bonuses, level) are fairly close to identical. What more do you need?

Lan-"players arriving, time to put my viking hat on"-efan

 

[Jackinthegreen]

They are if they're used as arguments against something I didn't say. That's the definition of a strawman, I believe.

According to the stuff at rhetological fallacies, a strawman is "Creating a distorted caricature of your opponent's argument, and then arguing against that."

 

[pemerton]

As my name's been taken in vain

Not in vain - I got a post out of you!

 

[pemerton]

But yeah, other than the rules telling you that the DM gets to decide how the rules work, which rules to use, and how strictly to adhere to them, there's nothing there giving DM's that kind of authority in the game.

Sheesh. How did it happen that you needed to quote rules text for something so obvious? Apparently to Hussar and pemerton it is a secret.

Thank you for posting this 3E text. It reminds me of part of why 3E is not particularly appealing to me.

That text is not part of Moldvay Basic, nor 1st ed AD&D, nor 4e.

Furthermore, that text leaves it open when the GM can make those decisions. For instance, it doesn't on its own entail that the GM can veto a player's declaration of action at the time it's made.

And further furthermore, why are posters who are lauding that passage also denying that GM force is an important element in their games?

So does that mean the DM has no right to:

- limit the sources of character build options?
- customize, alter or remove racial or class options?
- ask you to wait your turn, as it is another player's (or the NPC's) action now?

I don't believe any player can just do whatever they want.

[MENTION=6695799]ImperatorK[/MENTION] can speak for him(?)self, of course.

For my own part, I addressed this upthread by distinguising different domains of authority - over backstory, situation etc. Character build options are in part about genre and backstory - that's negotiated between me and the players at the start of play and on an ongoing basis. Mechanical options are taken from those published by the publishers of the game (ie WotC). If someone wonders whether something would be overpowered, we talk about it and work it out.

As for taking turns, that is regulated by the action resolution rules.

Much more apt, as the Queen is not even the notional head of the US Government. The US is not a Commonwealth nation.

I am not the notional head of my game. I am one participant doing one thing - GMing. The others are participants doing a different thing - playing. Our various roles give us authority over various things.

Maybe you are not used to your players doing things like setting out their PC backstories, making up the familial, cultural, social, geographic etc histories that underpin those backstories, revealing elements of backstory in play, and the like. I am used to that. For me, that is part of playing the game.

Returning to the authority analogy - you are other are asserting that a GM cannot revoke authority on a permanent basis. The point of my reference to the British Crown's authority over the US was that it is an obvious counterexample. The Treaties of Paris and of Ghent put and end to British authority. They're not just marks of the British choosing not to exercise authority that they still enjoy.

 

[pemerton]

So, (i) is it inconceivable that you would ever write a bad combat encounter, or (ii) would you let half the party die, or (iii) do you reserve the right to alter your pre-written encounter but have never needed to?

[MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] have given interesting responses to this.

My game is not as focused on the playes overcoming challenges as LostSoul's is, so I'd be less likely to implement (ii) as you've written it. The ony time my 4e game had a "TPK", I gave the players the option of choosing whether or not their PC died. One chose that - he wanted to bring in a different character - but the others wanted to keep playing the same characters, so in the next session they regained consciousness locked in a gobin prison cell (the TPK had been at the hands of supernatural forces summoned by the goblin hexer).

The reason for the absence of other TPKs is that gien by Manbearcat - I rely on 4e's encounter building guidelines, and these have proved pretty reliable.

When individual PCs have died - the paladin once, the wizard twice - I've worked through with the player the circumstances in which they can be raised or otherwise come back to life.

When an encounter is actually taking place, I might introduce additional forces and complications, or not, depending on how things are unfolding both mechanics and story-wise. But that is not "being final aribter of events and outcomes". It's injecting more fictional material for the players to engage.

There could be a tangent here about what ways of altering a pre-written encounter count as forcing vs. non-forcing -- playing the opponents sub-optimally for the remainder of the combat, deus ex machina, reducing the hitpoints and BAB of the attackers in mid-stream but still having them be tactically on, ignoring critical rolls or adjusting down the larger damage rolls, or deciding the enemy was actually out to just capture them instead of killing them -- but I'm passing on that for now, so, if you grant me that pass...

This is an interesting issue. I think that, in the ideal of wargaming play, there won't be this sort of changing midstream. In indie play, I think it's expected that the GM will introduce compiclations as the scene requires.

Does scene framing mean the GM doesn't roleplay the NPCs?

<snip>

If the GM has a clearly set picture in their mind of how an NPC thinks, should they roll to see how she reacts to the note (1e-ish) or just have her react in the logical way for that character (2e-ish). Is the later GM-forcing?

The 2e-ish approach counts as GM force, yes.

In "indie" play, the PCs have performed an action - leaving the note to influence the witch - and an appropriate skill roll would be made. Success means they achieve their intention. Failure means something misfires or an external complication ensues.

The GM roleplays the NPC in either case - the nature and consequenece of success will reflect the NPC personality, and likewise complications arising from failure. Here is a link to an example of what I mean.

I don't think I'd say it's GM forcing for me that makes it immersive, but rather metagame mechanics that make it anti-immersive.

OK.

Are there any happy gaming tables that don't have at least an implicit social contract around genre?

Probably not.

What is an overt one?

One that's explicit rather than implicit.

I'm having trouble with "mere colour". On the surface that's how I'd describe a lot of 4e (we have a bunch of mechanical and meta-game things we can do that all have the same in game effect, but we're going to reskin them so it seems like you're doing something different). Or is it that when it's well done the 4e player should put in the descriptives of what they're doing and not just the non-colour part of what they're doing?

By "mere colour" I mean colour or flavour that has no effect on actual resolution in the game. An example from 3E would be (non-valuable) spell components - these are colour, but they have no impact on resolution, which is governed simpy by whether or not the PC has a spell component pouch.

In my 4e game I have never asked the archer player to track ammunition, and the player has never done so - that's another example of ammunition being "mere colour".

An example of something in 1st ed AD&D which can be mere colour is the description of the ranger's expertise at woodcraft - outside of the surprise and tracking rules this has no mechanical implications, and the secondary skill table in the DMG doesn't link secondary skills as a forester or trapper to being a ranger.

But this could be changed from mere colour to something ore via GM force - ie the GM narrating outcomes differently for a ranger PC rather than a different sort of PC on the strength of this flavour text.

In the context of 4e, I think your description of "reskinning" ignores the importance of keywords, many of which provide crucial anchors between mechanics and fiction and therefore are key to (not merely mere) colour: for instance, a fireball can burn things because it does fire damage; icy terrain can freeze a puddle or small pond because it does cold damage; etc. (The rulebooks don't do a particularly good job of bringing this out, but it is pretty clear in the discussion of affecting objects in the DMG.) So "reskinning" a fireball as an icestorm isn't just changing mere colour - it would also require changing the rules text, from fire damage to cold damage.

What I meant by "visceral" colour and immersion, though, is a bit different. I'll try to illustrate by example. In CoC, the way I experience my PC's dissent into insanity is not by, myself, going insane or experiencing insanity. Rather, the GM provides rich descriptions of the PC's dreams, delusional visions, etc, and the player immerses in those and riffs off them. (At least in my experience, a thespian GM helps a lot with CoC.)

In 4e (and the indie playstyle in general, at least as I understand it) the ideal way of experiencing the colour of the fiction is different. The experience of playing the game should itself give rise, in the player, to the emotion that the PC is experiencing. So if you want the game to be about the terror and uncertainty of combat, your combat mechanics should themselves cause terror and uncertainty - Burning Wheel aims for this with its action declaration rules.

A very clear example in 4e is the Chained Cambion in MM3, which is a monster that experiences immense frustration of being bound, and therefore lashes out with psychic attacks. One effect it imposes is to cause 2 PCs to each take ongoing psychic damage unless they are adjacent. Here is the power description:

Two enemies adjacent to each other in a close burst 5 are psychically shackled (save ends; each enemy makes a separate saving throw against this effect). While psychically shackled, an enemy takes 10 psychic damage at the start and the end of its turn if it isn't adjacent to the other creature that was affected by this power. Aftereffect: The effect persists, and the damage decreases to 5 (save ends).​

Because of basic features of 4e PC build, to be forced to stay adjacent to your ally is frequently a source of frustration - so when this effect is suffered by the PCs, their players themselves start to experience the frustration which is the emotion the monster is lashing out with. (In my own game this worked particularly well becaues the two PCs were a melee warrior and an archer who were on top of a crypt - which mean not only did one wish to close while the other stayed at range, but working out how to jump down from the crypt without getting seperated was a further source of frustration.)

For a certain sort of player I think this monster could be non-immersive - because from the power description it is not really clear what is going on in the fiction, and it can seem very metagame-y, with its reliance on a mechanical notion of adjacency, the infliction of damage being linked to events in the initiative sequence, etc.

But when I used this creature in my 4e game, it was hugely immersive - the players understand what is happening in the fiction because it is happening at the table - they are mentally and emotionally chained to one another, start (verbally) sniping at one another for not doing the best thing given the constraints their PCs are uner, etc. It was great.

 

[Dwimmerlied]

That's fine. Enjoy your game. I have nothing against you enjoying your game, have at it.

I was just pointing out that your assertion that the rules don't give DMs that authority is factually wrong and you should stop making the assertion. They have had that authority explicitly spelled out in the rules in every version of the game I can remember reading.

Not to rehash old ground here, but if you would rather have a player centric game, that's fine. You, as the DM have the right to ignore any rule you want, including the rules stating that you can ignore the rules (though thats a bit circular in the end). But when you ignore any of the rules (even that rule) you run the risk of fundamentally changing the game. One of the balances on magic is that Players are not expected to have the authority to tell the DM what works and what does not work. When the game dynamic shifts to where the DM becomes something less than an arbiter, and more akin to a vote counter, then the nature of the game has changed in a rather meaningful way.

And all of that is fine. If thats the game you want to play.

What is incorrect, however, is in claiming that the rules, as written, do not give the DM the power to arbitrate the game and control events within the game, and/or claiming that the rules as written create an imbalance of powers, when it is not the rules as written, but the ignoring of a fundamental rule which is apparently creating the situation. You can call DM authority whatever you want, but regardless of the title given it, it is the way the game was designed. The claim you are making is akin to someone saying that the umpire rulings in baseball's opinion should be modified by the opinion of the pitcher and the catcher, and then once this change is underway, wonder why the pitchers seem to be outperforming the batters, complaining that the game mechanics are flawed, and arguing that your style of play is irrelevant to the issue of why there might be a problem with a certain element of the game.

Thankyou for posting your quote, and your putting of it into context here. I'm trying to spread my experience, but alas, don't yet have the power to award more. Would you believe over the last couple of days I've read the entire thread? :/ I'd have awarded 100xp along the way weren't my ability to do so very capped, and I have to say that I might quote post for post every comment [MENTION=6681948]N'raac[/MENTION] has posted because he mirrored strongly my opinions and managed to do so (early on) while being insulted and stayed cool and presented his facts, or made clear what were opinions. Also, I love that there are a good number of people here, even those having strongly differing opinions, are capable of being courteous or at least impersonal. Its more impressive than cowardly snide remarks and insults of others, and why I love the ENworld community

I believe that [MENTION=221]Wicht[/MENTION]'s DMG quote points out a fact that I've seen furiously debated for some time. My intelligence has been insulted here for invoking those rules before. That quote, Rule Zero, is a significant mechanic and a big part of the system. It might have been implemented (or carried over from its predecessors) because any mortal-generated game system that attempts to model reality, or even a shared fantasy, is likely to be limited in its capacity to do so. Creating this rule zero is a nice and elegant way to help ensure that ridiculous results or game-breaking combinations are not given serious floor-time. It is also a very powerful argument against the proposition that the system is fundamentally flawed because it provides for (or even mandates) the use of uber powerful wizards (argued here) or druids and clerics (argued elsewhere). True system mastery acknowledges the system in its entirety, and not only the parts useful for the debate at hand.

If you personally don't think the system supports well your gaming style, perhaps that's true, but its not evidence that the system is broken.

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] I think Ahnenois makes the case of casual players succinctly:

I know that my players explicitly want to be given a variety of parameters and have a lot of the game dictated to them so they can just play.

In my limited experience, most D&D players are of the casual type. They're not self-aware of their own aesthetic preferences in the game, they aren't going to spend time thinking about the game away from the table, they are going to routinely forget important details, they are going to have moments of being unsure of what they should do next and generally putzing around, etc.

Either they're young and it's a developmental thing, or they're older and too busy. It's a rare person (usually a DM) who invests a lot in *any* tabletop roleplaying game.

 

[Hussar]

And when the GM responds that the Chamberlain waves dismissively and states "This audience is over" as you begin to speak, then summons the guards to eject you should you keep speaking, pointing to the time required, did you get to use your diplomacy? What if the DM tells you "The Chamberlain sticks his fingers in his ears and loudly chants "LALALALALALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU GO AWAY"?

Well, at this point, I thank the DM for his time, collect my books and walk out the door.

This DM has just proven that his (or her) ideas for the campaign trump mine, and that he is more interested in having the scenario play out in a predetermined way than he is in allowing me to play the character that we came up with together and he approved of before we played.

Because I do that with any DM - work with the DM when creating a character, to ensure that this sort of thing doesn't blindside the DM.

IOW, this level of DM force is unacceptable to me, and I won't play at this table.