Can you say a bit more? When I GMed a session of MHRP it seemed to do a pretty reasonable job of giving me that Marvel feel. (Right down to Wolverine being a bit OP!)
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Fighters vs. Spellcasters (a case for fighters.)
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TwoSix
Everyone's literal second-favorite poster
Nothing in particular, just that it doesn't attempt to do any sort of math-y physics simulation, like many point-buy superhero system often attempt.
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
OK, so that's for 3e/PF. What about 4e, and 1e?
In 1e the Ranger has it all over the poor Thief, it seems; except the Thief can pick locks and find traps. Playing a Thief as a combat unit is kinda pointless, and you better hope the DM is giving out experience for things other than combat.
As for 4e, I have no idea.
Lanefan
TwoSix
Everyone's literal second-favorite poster
1e and 2e, I totally agree with you. Ranger > Thief, provided you can meet the stat requirements. 4e, I prefer the Thief-Rogue with their movement tricks over the standard Rogue and Ranger.
Ahnehnois
First Post
Mechanics be damned, I'm taking the rogue on principle any day. His archetype is that he's the guy who finds a way to get stuff done.
The contrast is especially stark when you compare to other classic D&D archetypes like "jock with a sword", "nerd who gets his power by reading books", "obnoxious religious guy", "tree-hugging hippie", "starving artist", etc., etc.
The rogue mechanics really just need to catch up to how naturally desirable it is to play the streetwise guy who knows every trick in the book and some that aren't. Han Solo is a rogue. Batman is a rogue. That guy from the Dos Equis commercials is a rogue. That's what I'm playing when I'm going for wish fulfillment roleplaying.
The contrast is especially stark when you compare to other classic D&D archetypes like "jock with a sword", "nerd who gets his power by reading books", "obnoxious religious guy", "tree-hugging hippie", "starving artist", etc., etc.
The rogue mechanics really just need to catch up to how naturally desirable it is to play the streetwise guy who knows every trick in the book and some that aren't. Han Solo is a rogue. Batman is a rogue. That guy from the Dos Equis commercials is a rogue. That's what I'm playing when I'm going for wish fulfillment roleplaying.
I would say that not spelling out how your game is to be played, and furthermore implying that it can be played in ways that it can't (especially implying, via "back to the dungeon", that it will support classic D&D wargame-y play), is a fairly serious issue.
My gut feel is that it was unintentional. For instance, with the druid they didn't even do serious playtesting of mid-level animal companions until after the PHB had gone to press - and they then stuck in a half-baked rule in the DMG about "adventuring druids", without actually explaining that this was an errata to the PHB due to balance issues!
[MENTION=6695799]ImperatorK[/MENTION] is not trying to play indie-style, I don't think.
I think most people who encounter balance problems in 3E are trying to play either sandbox-style, or wargame style, or some mix of the two - in other words, some approach that doesn't, by default, issue in the requisite degree of GM force.
In my game the GM has more authority over backstory than do the players; has authority over scene-framing; and is a participant in action resolution.
The players also contribute to backstory, but generally only in aspects of the gameworld closely connected to their PCs. They don't set their own opposition. They can try to modify anything they want, but via action resolution, not rewriting backstory or reframing a framed scene - so this will be constrained via credibility considerations (ie "possible" means "possible within genre constraints") and mechanics.
Their are some nuances - for instance, the deva PC can call upon his Memory of 1000 Lifetimes do get a+1d8 bonus to any d20 roll, 1x/enc. I will often narrate the effect of this in terms of authoring some new bit of backstory that explains why his memories from past incarnations help him. This is backstory revealed in the interests of dealing with opposition, but tightly constrained within the action resolution mechanics.
I have talked consistently about player resources, which may or may not also be character resources - contrast, say, an equipment list (both player and character resources) with action points (player resources only) or hit points (which I would regard primarily as a player resource).
Having made that clarificationI would put the broader principle of scene-framing this way - a situation which the players cannot change via deployment of their resources is primarily colour, perhaps with a bit of backstory download also. But it is not a core instance of play - precisely because it provides the players with no opportunity to change the fiction via use of their resources.
That doesn't change the fundamental principle, but it does change the fictional positioning of the PCs in relation to the Chamberlain, which may open up new possibilities for deploying resources.
These examples are different, but not radically so.
With the dragon, what is the understanding between players and GM as to the basic genre and orientation of play? If players have built 1st level PCs looking for a dragon hunting game there seems to be a basic issue of miscommunication. Probably new PCs need to be built, perhaps at 11th level rather than 1st.
With the Chamberlain, there are at least two issues. First, there is the disparity across the PCs between "no mechanical possibility" and "mechanical certainty". 3E has more of this, I think, than any other version of D&D. 4e has flatter maths, though not as flat as D&Dnext is ostensibly aiming for. The less flat the maths, and the more disparate the capabilities, the more the GM is going to have to frame encounters with reference to the mechanical details of the PCs. Many of those who do not experience balance issues in 3E seem to emphasise this. In my 4e game, I tend not to worry as much about the mechanical details of the PCs; I focus more on the thematic aspects in thinking about scene-framing. But I still pay more attention to mechanical details of the PCs than if I were designing "status-quo" encounters for a sandbox game.
The second issue follows on from this: given that I want to frame a scene that fits the parameters described above, what do I do when the PCs return with the bard in tow, or vice versa? One possibility is to change the fiction to sustain the challenge (eg the Chamberlain is drunk and hence easily swayed; or the Chamberlain is furious about something, and hence only the bard has a robust chance of persuading him). Another is to frame a different challenge into the scene - the bard easily persuades the Chamberlain to admit them (perhaps this is even "saying yes") and the real action is with the king; or, if its the bard who is missing, then just as the PCs approach the Chabmerlain sans bard a band of assassins breaks through the palace windows, and the PCs get to save the Chamberlain by a display of martial prowess.
The broader point is that in my playstyle backstory and scene-framing are servants of play, where "play" is understood as I described it above - the players having the chance to impose their will on the fiction by engaging it via their PCs.
I think you are misunderstanding. The players do not have any such power. Rather, the GM has such a responsibility - a GM who frames a scene that the players can't impact via their PCs is doing a bad job, in my preferred style.
We have different preferences here. I'm not 100% sure I understand your continuum, but I want the fiction to feed into the mechanics, and the mechanics to then output changes in the fiction.
What you say makes me think that you may be someone who contrasts combat with roleplaying and developing the story (I often read posts on these boards in which people say they want quicker combat so they can fit in more story and roleplay). Whether or not I am right in that hypothesis, I am not someone who feels the force of any such contrast. Combat, like any other episode of action resolution, should be taking the prior fiction as input and generating new fiction as output. And if that fiction is not interesting, then the GM has framed a poor scene. (Hence my huge dislike for so-called "filler" encounters.)
I am not interested in AP play, I think the players should be "hooking" the GM, and I want the story - driven by the players - in the foreground. (Hence my huge dislike for so-called "sidequests", which implies that the players' concerns for their PCs are secondary to the GM's conception of what the campaign is about.)
This could well be dramatic, if it's the culmination of (i) a series of earlier decisions and manouevres to build up such a good bonus, and/or (ii) is the upshot of interesting exploitation of fictional positioning by the players ("free roleplaying") so as to get the chance to make the roll. (By analogy - an assassination attempt in 1st ed AD&D is a single roll, but that roll could be quite dramatic; so can a climactic to-hit and damage roll.)
More significantly, have I mentioned that I thin 3E has poor social conflict resolution mechanics? And as far as I can tell you agree, or at least you don't think they are genreally capable of resolving dramatic encounters in satisfying ways.
In your example of the players having no chance, via their PCs, of persuading the Chamberlain I'm not sure that I see how the playes are leveraging prior events.
But in a game in which the GM has a significant degree of authority over backstory, you are correct that when the players leverage prior events that will include leveraging GM-introduced backstory. But it can include other things as well, such as - in the duergar example - leveraging prior friendship with the duergar resulting from choices made by the players in past interactions with the duergar.
As to me (as GM) deciding what would result from the PC's prayer, you are correct that that is the GM introducing an opportunity in response to a success. That is fairly typical in "indie" play: the player will have set an intention as part of framing their check (in this case, "I pray for help!") and if the check succeeds then that intention is realised. Some GMs may allow the player to narrate all the details of their success; and some systems can stipulate that this is the case; and that increases the degree of authority of the players over backstory - because of course narrating any success brings with it an implicit or explicit backstory that explains how that particular success came about (in the case of the duergar, for instance, quite a complex backstory).
This approach to resoution, however exactly the narrative authority is distributed, is cooperative as between participants in the way that [MENTION=205]TwoSix[/MENTION] said upthread.
In my experience, one common explanation for GM's framing the PCs into scenes that the PCs can't really impact is because they are following the dictates of a module author.
Sure, but by the time the players have decided to have their PCs go to the Chamberlain this particular bit of background-extracting action resolution has already taken place. We're now in a new scene - the Chamberlain scene - that (as stipulated) the players can't shape.
That the GM has that sort of authority over backstory in the typical D&D game is not in dispute. The issue is, why has the GM framed the PCs into a confrontation with this immovable object? I can think of two answers: (1) because the GM wants to take the opportunity to provide some colour and some backstory; (2) because the players really wanted their PCs to meet the Chamberlain anyway.
If (1) is the case that is something I'm personally not interested in. I don't care for mere colour encounters. (If as GM I want to download backstory, I just download it.) If (2) is the case, then this is a bit like the 1st level PCs vs the dragon - why is there such a mismatch between what the players want to do in the game, and what the GM is serving up to them? For me it's a sign that something has gone wrong in basic communication.
I don't understand the comparison. The point I was trying to convey in the bomb example is that, in my style of game, the bomb (assuming that it has been built up as a challenge with which the players are trying to deal via their PCs) will not explode offscreen - rather, whether or not it explodes will depend upon the results of the player's action resolution checks.
If the PCs are trying to meet the king, then the analogy to the bomb exploding, or not, is the PCs being refused an audience, r being granted one. Just as the bomb outcome would turn on action resolution, likewise the king outcome. I don't see how pre-scripting that is comparable - that is like the GM deciding that the bomb explodes by fiat.
I am having trouble following your train of thought.
If the players want the next scene to be their meeting with the Chamberlain, and instead the GM frames a mere filler encounter with a courtesan, that is bad GMing in my view. If the courtesan encounter is some element of the Chamberlain encounter (for instance, she will introduce the PCs to the Chamberlain and put in a good word for them) that is a different matter - and the players might be expected to use the action resolution mechanics to help them make progress inthis respect (if they don't befriend the courtesan than fail forward might have them meeting the Chamberlain after the courtesan has slagged them off to him).
If for whatever reason the GM is adamant that the PCs shall not meet the king, then why frame the encounter with the Chamberlain at all?
I have no idea why you would say this about action resolution mechanics that bridge time and/or distance. (And that's putting to one side the fact that a shared storytelling activity based on resource management would seem to be the very paradigm of a game.)
Marvel Heroic RP, for instance, has a mechanic whereby a hero fighting a villain in NY can, via successful action resolution using a strength power, inflict on a the villain as a complication "Punched all the way to Newark and stuck in rush hour traffic". The resulting geographic separation of the villain from the hero is not a mechanical constraint on action resolution in that system, but simply a matter of fictional positioning. So MHRP has no trouble with geographically liberal action resolution (quite a marked contrast with D&D).
This gives rise to the same issues about time and geography. 4e canvasses running extended skill challenges of this sort, but the fairly clear intention is that they are for resolving the players' peripheral concerns rather than their central concerns. (In the HeroWars rulebook, the example given of this is a courtship of an NPC by a PC.)
But there is also the matter of what determines how the scene unfolds. Why does the Chamberlain avenue not work? If that is simply via GM fiat, rather than a complication narrated in response to a failure in the course of the overall resolution, that is not very satisfying for me.
You can't strip out the colour and preserve the resolution. For instance, the only reason the wizard's player was able to spend an AP to boost the skill check of the failure was because of leveraging fictional positioning: "Have you fixed the tear in your robe, Golthar?" You can't explain the skill check, and hence its consequences, stripped of this information.
And, as for the role of the mechanics, it is in virtue of the mechanics that the player has the chance to impose his will on the fiction via having his PC speak those words.
At the time they knew what was going on. As I said in the post, the precise details of the resolution escaped me.
The relevant rules (from my skill challenge summary document, that compiles the PHB, the DMG, the DMG2 and Essentials) are:
A secondary skill check may assist another PC’s check … by granting a +2 bonus to a subsequent check …
If another PC fails a skill check, you may spend an action point to make a secondary skill check as an immediate interrupt, in order to assist the failed check
If another PC fails a skill check, you may spend an action point to make a secondary skill check as an immediate interrupt, in order to assist the failed check
The player spent an action point and made the secondary skill check. What I couldn't (and still can't remember) is whether I called for a roll, or whether I decided to "say yes" (because I couldn't think of any non-deflating way of narrating a failure).
I don't really see how this is the GM deciding the outcome or being the final arbiter. It is the participants jointly determining the outcome via action resolution. If I was saying yes, that is a concession of authority to the player to impose his will on the fiction.
Well, then, I don't understand your hypothetical game system. Why in your hypothetical system do NPCs get moodier as the PCs gain levels? Do you think that's a good mechanic?
I got the impression that you actually think this would be a bad mechanic, and were suggesting that 4e is saddled with it because of its DC-by-level table.
I don't see how, from my comment that "fail forward means, roughly, that you succed at your task but fail at your intent" that "the players may never fail with their stated intent". Your paraphrase is literally the opposite of what I said.
I'm not sure what you have in mind - but superficially, what you escribe here sounds like standard RPGing to me (though you are only looking at the path that leads to success: the players engage the scene, the outcome of that takes them into a new situation, they engage that too, the GM reframes, and in continues until the campaign is resolved.
Where is the Calvinball? Where is the dysfunction? And why is it adversarial?
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I see. I had been reading your emphasis as being on "genre", whereas it was on "simulation".
I agree that if you try and do superheroes through process-sim type mechanics you'll have big balance issues. The players of the weaker heroes need some sort of metagame resource to maintain their protagonism. In MHRP this is via being more likely to earn plot points with smaller dice (cause you get them on a roll of 1) and the GM being more likely to use the Doom Pool that is also being built up on those 1s to have a chance of dealing with the heavy hitters.
Math-y physics and genre simulation can be entirely orthogonal to each other. I wouldn't say Pendragon has much in the way of math-y physics, but by god it does a good job of simulating medieval romances about the Matter of Britain. By contrast Twilight 2000 was full of mathematically-correct combat/equipment and still didn't really do a great job of simulating combat - or at least, so the military veteran I knew felt.
So the PC’s enemies are not closely connected to them?
No, they are playing first level characters, and they want to hunt down a dragon. If they must be afforded the potential to see the King, why are they not equally entitled to be afforded the potential to hunt down a Dragon. Have you decided the time is not right (because they are 1st level) for them to confront a Dragon, so you are refusing to frame the scene at all?
While a different issue, I don’t think characters should stop being CHARACTERS in combat, but I know some perceive the shift to combat means the characters must lose any personality so they may deploy their combat capabilities in the most effective manner possible (and, in some games, failure to do so means character losses).
And here we differ. I’m fine having a setting provided, characters created, and there being other players in the setting whose actions can also have an impact.
I juxtapose this against “the PC’s barge in to the offices of the Chamberlain and demand to see the King.” That may well be a starting point for a series of earlier decisions and manouevres, rather than the endpoint.
Alternatively, why have the players forced their way into a situation they know may not be resolved to their benefit. Perhaps the best they can hope for in this scene is to gain information on the ability to access the King, hopefully not offend the Chamberlain so their later return will not be faced with issues right out of the gate, and move on – that is, part of a larger series of events and fictional positioning designed to lead to access to the King, knowing that will not be a quick or easy process.
Here again, we may differ. I don’t want the GM to read me a story about past events – as much as possible, I want my PC to experience them. Can he influence later events? Possibly – the Chamberlain may recall that they were utterly rude, or they may make a more positive impression. Neither result need get them the immediate audience they seek, but both change the fiction, and impact their future efforts.
Again, I think we simply disagree about whether the world should proceed on an entirely linear basis, guided exclusively by the focus of the moment. Things can happen which the players were not expecting, and for me that enhances, rather than detracting from, the game
And we’re back to “who decides whether the justification provided is adequate to permit the roll?” The PC can’t use this ability without the GM adjudicating he has sufficiently justified its use, and this is precisely as things should be. However, when we suggest that the task of using diplomacy to persuade the Chamberlain to grant an immediate audience with the King, this is a game breaker. Seems like, in both cases, the GM is deciding whether the players have adequately leveraged their PC resources in order to be permitted a roll.
Again, GM deciding whether or not to engage the resolution mechanic. “That was very clever, so I will give you that one with no need to make a roll. Your character’s relative skill is irrelevant.”
You just described a situation where you unilaterally decided that no roll was required, and success was automatic. That sounds like you decided the outcome from where I sit! Did the players have the ability to override your decision? If not, you were the final arbitrator.
I am returning to your “we use a chart to set DC’s” model. Does the chart ignore the capabilities of the PC’s? I must assume not, because they are never to be in a position where they cannot mechanically succeed. I am assuming players improve with levels, so if the DC’s are flat, the ability to succeed at L1 becomes more and more likely as levels rise, unless the DC’s rise with them.
They may be, but this raises extra complexities. For instance, it would be fine for a player to build a PC whose principal nemesis is his vampire sister. But the player can't also insist that the sister have all the standard vampire vulnerabilities; or that the sister has only one coffin, whose location is in the family manor. The GM has the prerogative to set obstacles that the player does not anticipated, at least in my preferred style.
Achieving fidelity to the player's conception while also providing a challenge is one of the challenge's of this sort of GMing.
This is still not making sense to me.
As GM, I say - "OK, you want to play a dragon quest, that's fine, let's roll up some 11th level PCs." You are positing that the players reply "No, we want to be 1st level dragon hunters". Even though everyone knows that D&D just doesn't work like that.
I don't know what I do at that point - look for more rational players? - but we are in the realm of absurdities that TwoSix talked about upthread. The sort of game I enjoy presupposes that GM and players are on the same page as to what the game is to be about, and what sorts of fiction the mechanics support.
In D&D that potential is called "being 11th level". But for some reason you are supposing that the players don't want that. This is part of why I don't really understand the example,
This is confused too, for similar reasons. If I want to run a 1st level game and my players want to play and 11th level game we have a problem that has nothing to do with GM force over scene-framing, backstory or action resolution!
I don't understand how you envisage this all unfolding. How have the players forced themselves into this situation? If you mean the PCs, is there some fundamental mismatch between the game the players want - one where their PCs are movers and shakers at court - and the game the GM is running? In a situation in which the GM is framing scenes which the players don't care for, or the players are trying to force their PCs into scenes that the GM does not want to run, we have a problem that is not connected to issues of authority over backstory, scene-framing and the like. We have a basic problem about the group not agreeing on what sort of fiction they want the game to involve.
Here is some apposite advice from Ron Edwards:
I think [your group's problem] has nothing at all to do with distributed authority, but rather with the group members' shared trust that situational authority [ie authority over scene framing] is going to get exerted for maximal enjoyment among everyone. If, for example, we are playing a game in which I, alone, have full situational authority, and if everyone is confident that I will use that authority to get to stuff they want (for example, taking suggestions), then all is well. . .
It's not the distributed or not-distributed aspect of situational authority you're concerned with, it's your trust at the table, as a group, that your situations in the S[hared] I[maginary] S[pace] are worth anyone's time. Bluntly, you guys ought to work on that.
It's not the distributed or not-distributed aspect of situational authority you're concerned with, it's your trust at the table, as a group, that your situations in the S[hared] I[maginary] S[pace] are worth anyone's time. Bluntly, you guys ought to work on that.
Your imagined scenarios in which the group can't agree on what level of PCs they should be playing to play a dragon hunting game, or in which the players and GM can't agree on what sort of Chamberlain situation is interesting to engage with (the players want their PCs to be able to persuade the Chamberlain, but the GM will not frame such a scene), seem to me to exhibit similar dysfunction.
I'm not sure what "linear" means here - all RPG play unfolds linearly, in time, doesn't it? But I certainly do think that what happens should reflect the focus of the moment. It shouldn't reflect someone's (especially the GM's) decision at an earlier moment. That's why Ron Edwards calls this sort of play "story now".
Of course things can happen that the playes weren't expecting? Was the player in my game expecting a duergar to drop him a potion from a cleft in the roof? Were they expecting dinner with the baron to end up in a fight with their nemesis? The whole point of playing in my preferred style is to have events occur which no one was expecting. The purpose of the mechanics is to make it easy for this to happen.
Saying yes is not deciding the outcome - it is agreeing with the player's choice of outcome. Deciding that a credibiity requirement for framing action resolution has been met is not deciding the outcome. It is opening the door to the participants collectively deciding the outcome via the mechanics.
I am not the one who decided that the PCs would goad their nemesis into attacking them in front of the baron. The players decided that.
This is what people mean when they talk about "the maths" of 4e (or a similar game). Bonuses correlate to level; the DCs on the DC chart are level-dependent. The basic design principle in 4e is to ensure a 60%-ish chance of success for a thematically suitable PC against a level-appropriate challenge.
When people complain about feat taxes, or problems with the differences in skill bonuses across different builds, in 4e, they are complaining that, in practice, the build mechanics don't always deliver these promised mathematical results, and therefore cause the game's sceneframing and adjudication techniquest to break down. Those are legitimate criticisms of a game setting out to support the sort of play 4e seems to be aimed at.
