Fighters vs. Spellcasters (a case for fighters.)

[Manbearcat]

I think what a "rule" is remains inconsistently defined. "I want the GM to use the rules" is a common statement on this thread when diplomacy is referenced. However, the rules say some tasks take a longer time. I want to summon up a Glabrezu and get a wish - is the description of when a Glabrezu grants a wish part of the rules? What about the bargaining aspect of planar binding, including the outright refusal of unreasonable tasks, or the determination of what tasks are restricted to 1 day/level? I think these can be seen as "rules", but can also fall into any of the four categories you set out.

I think the optimally functional breakout might be something such as:

Rules: Codified constructs to facilitate action resolution and any related in-game, mechanical interactions.

Principles: A fundamental proposition that serves as a foundation or guiding influence by which the overall play experience is facilitated; eg "Rulings Not Rules" serves notice that the GM is to be the arbiter of areas of play where the rules are silent, opaque, or unclear, and that ruling is final.

Techniques: A method of accomplishing or propagating a specific mode or outcome of play; follows from principles. GM-force is a technique. Asking a Ranger "what do you see when they pull back the cover" or telling a Ranger "when you pull back the cover you see" are both techniques.

 

[Wicht]

Slight Tangent: In my games, evil loses; as a rule evil only triumphs offscreen or for a short period of time. This is one of the accepted tropes of my particular genre of play. My one hard rule about alignment for campaigns is "no evil characters." (I am willing to bend this rule for particular one-shots). This is upfront. Players that therefore specifically try to perform evil acts can expect retribution of some kind from the game world. If a wizard therefore tried to summon a demon to get wishes, they would likely get messed over in the end. Characters that decide to become jewel thieves could expect to be hounded by the law, bounty hunters, and mercenaries until either they made restitution or were caught.

Players who don't want to be heroes of one form or another are not likely going to like my games. I am fine with that. I really don't want my free time to devolve into quasi-psychotic wish fulfillment of a rather dubious nature. Perhaps this is one reason my players don't suffer from constant fear of their characters being outshone by their teammates. I don't know how much this particular aspect of playstyle factors into the whole equation, but its worth considering I guess, and Hussar's examples of things DMs might do that would bother him got me wondering about it.

 

[N'raac]

I perceive "ability to fail" as "the dice tell me I fail" usually. That's something somewhat out of the DM's control. The social contract is usually that the DM won't do the numbers such that rolling a 20 would still result in failure. The players must always either have the opportunity to roll or the opportunity to find out, in reasonable time and through reasonable means, why something is going on that they can't impact at the moment. What "reasonable time and through reasonable means" is will depend a bit on the players and what has already happened in the game.

However, there is player investment to consider. At some tables the fact that a player has put a lot of time and effort into something should very clearly send the message that that's what they want to engage with. It is the social contract, again at some tables, that the player not get snubbed beyond what the dice themselves say. The pertinent info to massive potential failures is given out early enough that the players can avoid them or at least not suffer huge setbacks. Going back to the example of the jeweler moving shop: In the kind of play @Hussar seems to like the knowledge that the jeweler could move must be given beforehand so the players can take that into account. And even then, if the guy has moved then there will be clues as to where he goes (that might be subject to die rolls) because the social contract requires and demands that the DM give the players something to work with along the lines of what they've been preparing for.

To my mind, the players are well within their rights to be irked that the jeweler makes a midnight run with no apparent reason for doing so. If he was going to move that kind of wealth, it seems likely he would start packing up earlier, and would hire guards to accompany him, both things the PC’s would be hard pressed to miss while investigating his shop for robbery purposes.

If he wasn’t doing all these things, something must have spooked him so he took off at short notice – tracking him should not be all that difficult if he was rushed. I’m sure we could concoct a scenario where his sudden, unanticipated and untraceable departure is reasonable, but it would be tough to imagine what that might be, so a pretty odd situation. I note that avoiding suspicion, by the rules, imposes a -20(!) penalty on Gather Information. The prospect of the jeweler being tipped off seems pretty good, which may explain a midnight run, but not why he is impossible to trace.

An example that might work with regards to finding out there are more magical protections they thought would be there might have to do with a previous skill check or encounter to gather information. The rogue (or whatever class or character has the skills to handle this) might have indeed tried to Gather Information and succeeded on getting that information, but not succeeded on staying low and not drawing attention to himself.

His roll may also have been adequate to get some info on protections used by the jeweler, but not everything. It’s not impossible that no one in the region knows about the magical protections at all, if they were undertaken by a wizard who travelled in specifically for the job. We’re now getting into setting issues on a macro basis (is the setting one where hiring such a wizard is practical? Is it common – if so, the PC’s should likely know it is common) and a micro level (is the cost of obtaining such protections justified by the magnitude of the wealth at stake, which crosses to the metagame of whether the reward is appropriate to the risk and the challenge).

How the DM frames that could have a range of possibilities, but in this style of play the main thing he needs to show if he expects the players to accept the extra magical protection is that someone overheard or perhaps that the person the rogue was gathering info from was a bit suspicious and raised an eyebrow or looked off to someone. In that case calling for a Sense Motive (or Insight I think in other editions) might be one of the appropriate things. The players get to know they might have failed at something and thus the scene is at least partially set up for later depending on the rolls.

Assuming that the PC did attract unwanted attention (pretty reasonable as he cases out the jeweler in a small community, backed up by the -20 penalty for keeping his questions on the down low), and did not detect the suspicions he aroused (I like the Sense Motive check, although the rules don’t call for one), then he has no call for complaint. Depending on the game style, often such rolls are made secretly so the player would not know with certainty whether he succeeded, or to what extent.

I think the optimally functional breakout might be something such as:

Rules: Codified constructs to facilitate action resolution and any related in-game, mechanical interactions.

Principles: A fundamental proposition that serves as a foundation or guiding influence by which the overall play experience is facilitated; eg "Rulings Not Rules" serves notice that the GM is to be the arbiter of areas of play where the rules are silent, opaque, or unclear, and that ruling is final.

Techniques: A method of accomplishing or propagating a specific mode or outcome of play; follows from principles. GM-force is a technique. Asking a Ranger "what do you see when they pull back the cover" or telling a Ranger "when you pull back the cover you see" are both techniques.

Under this model, where does “The demon can use this ability to offer a mortal whatever he or she desires—but unless the wish is used to create pain and suffering in the world, the glabrezu demands either terrible evil acts or great sacrifice as compensation” fall? To me, it is a rule, but one which requires GM arbitration, whether to determine whether the PC succeeds, to determine any bonus he gets to succeed, or to set the DC and/or consequences of the check.

Slight Tangent: In my games, evil loses; as a rule evil only triumphs offscreen or for a short period of time. This is one of the accepted tropes of my particular genre of play. My one hard rule about alignment for campaigns is "no evil characters." (I am willing to bend this rule for particular one-shots). This is upfront. Players that therefore specifically try to perform evil acts can expect retribution of some kind from the game world. If a wizard therefore tried to summon a demon to get wishes, they would likely get messed over in the end. Characters that decide to become jewel thieves could expect to be hounded by the law, bounty hunters, and mercenaries until either they made restitution or were caught.

Players who don't want to be heroes of one form or another are not likely going to like my games. I am fine with that. I really don't want my free time to devolve into quasi-psychotic wish fulfillment of a rather dubious nature. Perhaps this is one reason my players don't suffer from constant fear of their characters being outshone by their teammates. I don't know how much this particular aspect of playstyle factors into the whole equation, but its worth considering I guess, and Hussar's examples of things DMs might do that would bother him got me wondering about it.

I think this is very relevant – to the “GM with the jewelry robbery” example, I suggest it was incumbent upon him to make his expectations clear up front, in reviewing the characters (ie if you want heroes and you get criminals, speak up in vetting the characters). Perhaps it was not obvious at that time, but it was again incumbent on him to address the dichotomy between the game he (thought he) was running and the game the PC’s (appeared to) play.

 

[Manbearcat]

Under this model, where does “The demon can use this ability to offer a mortal whatever he or she desires—but unless the wish is used to create pain and suffering in the world, the glabrezu demands either terrible evil acts or great sacrifice as compensation” fall? To me, it is a rule, but one which requires GM arbitration, whether to determine whether the PC succeeds, to determine any bonus he gets to succeed, or to set the DC and/or consequences of the check.

Principle. We have action resolution from a deployed resource entailing (i) multiple 2nd and 3rd order interactions (possibly unintended/unconsidered by the designers) (ii) with one or more tethered to subjective considerations (contingent upon discernment of context; which may include what has come before due to overt play at the table - did you properly scribe the containment circle - or possibly exclusive access to backstory - this glabrezu has recently used its wish or this NPC spellcaster has prepared this contingency spell today). Definitely a principle.

By comparison's sake we could take:

Summon Demon

If you know the Truename of the Demon take + 1 forward. If you do not, take - 1 forward. You pull forth a demon from the abyss. Roll 2d6 + Int. On a 10 +, the spell is cast and you retain it - you can cast it later - and you may choose one. On a 7 - 9, the spell is cast, is forgotten, and you cannot cast the spell again until you Prepare Spells. Choose two:

- The demon will shed light on your situation with perfect Abyssal understanding. Ask a question of the GM and he will answer you truly. You take + 1 forward when acting on this information.

- After it is cast the spell is forgotten. You cannot cast the spell again until you Prepare Spells.

- Your summoning circle wasn't perfectly scribed. The demon retains some power and places a curse upon you. You take - 1 ongoing to casts spells until the next time you Prepare Spells.

On a 6-, Mark XP and the GM will tell you what will happen.

This is an example of a Rule. Things are hard-coded. Player deploys PC build components into the action resolution mechanics and that neutral process, and player action, infallibly determines the outcome. On a 6-, the rules say that the player earns 1 XP and the GM complicates things for the players with a GM Move. How does that happen? Principles will guide the GM in determining the most functional and appropriate GM Move to make on said 6-.

 

[pemerton]

it's the whole "discover it through play" ethos. It feels (correctly or not) like there isn't any way to actually discover or explore anything concrete.... only make stuff up based on dice rolls...

In fairly standard AD&D play, the PCs arrive at town and go to the nearest tavern. How do we know who/what they see in there? Rolling on a random table is a fairly well-established technique. Which is to say, once you get out of a certain style of dungeon play in which everything has already been written up, determination of backstory in play has a pretty long history.

This is almost alien to me since it seems the genre D&D is emulating (whether Swords and sorcery, high fantasy, or gonzo fantasy) all have exploration and discovery of the unknown as a genre conceit.

Here is a link to a session I ran focused on exploration/discovery. It was not totally no myth, but had a fair bit of generation of backstory on the fly, generally triggered in response to PC actions (eg the paladin examines the scroll; it has invisible ink on it). It shows how it can be done.

It also shows that there is quite a difference between spontaneous creation of backstory by the GM in response to player cues, and player creation of backstory. I do a lot of the former in my game, but (as I've already mentioned upthread) only modest amounts of the latter, in part for reasons give in Eero Tuovinen's blog that [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION] lnked to upthread (and that I also linked to earlier upthread).

who takes all the notes and records the details

I uploaded my campaign notses upthread, with a bit of explanation, but got no comments or queries.

I see a few downsides to the "through play" method such as issues with coherency and already established backstory, a dis-incentive to think outside the box (as in beyond the numbers/skills/powers on your sheet) in figuring things out or exploring (since nothing is really created yet anyway), and so on.

This is just theorycraft. Is there any actual evidence that players in "indie" games are doing less thinking outside the box? From this thread I can't really tell, because the non-indie players aren't posting much actual play. I linked to several actual play posts upthread - why don't you have a read of them, and then tell me what you see that does or doesn't satisfy your expectations for a "thinking outside of the box" quotient.

My own experience - though I haven't got any cofirmation for it beyond my own recollection of my onw play - is that one way to discourage players from "thinking outside the box" and engaging the situation is to routinely frame scenes in which, whatever they have their PCs do, they can't change anything.

I don't know if you're still running a 13th Age game, but if you are - have you found that its Background mechanic, which allows players to narrate themselves into mechanical capabilities by fleshing out their backstories, has discouaged the players from engaging the fiction?

To my mind, the players are well within their rights to be irked that the jeweler makes a midnight run with no apparent reason for doing so.

<snip>

Assuming that the PC did attract unwanted attention (pretty reasonable as he cases out the jeweler in a small community, backed up by the -20 penalty for keeping his questions on the down low), and did not detect the suspicions he aroused (I like the Sense Motive check, although the rules don’t call for one), then he has no call for complaint.

I think the players would have excellent cause for complaint in the situation that [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] described: namely, that multiple sessions of play result in an utter anti-climax.

As a GM, there are so many ways to impliment such results - eg the unwanted attention starts hassling the PC in question, or the PC sees signs of the impending move prior to being ready for the heist and so has to go off half-cocked - that the off-screen fizzle is bascially inexcusable.

Who says the DM can't let the players pursue a course of action and then later render it untenable? I'm imagining the Fellowship scaling Caradhras, getting trapped in snow, and some player stopping the game and complaining to the DM about how he misled them by letting them try to scale the mountain. Stuff happens.

In "indie"-style play, the Caradhras events would be the result of failure during resolution of the "Cross the Misty Mountains" scene.

His position seems to be that the players can fail by their own bad decisions or bad dice rolls, but that the DM cannot allow them to fail otherwise. Which doesn't sound that bad until you start considering the implications.

What are these implications? I haven't noticed them yet in my game.

 

[pemerton]

Why would the noble Paladin and his righteous comrades seek the aid of a despot who pays off enemies with the lives of his people?

<snip>

I find it odd that the king is discovered to routinely trade with dragons when their arrival and departure at his castle would seem obvious to the denizens of the area. Why are they not aware of such routine comings and goings?

But therein lies the problem – we didn’t know dragons were coming and going until it was added in the course of the scene (it’s even noted that this was completely unplanned). But if they were coming and going routinely, shouldn’t the PC’s have known about that already, in which case the “big reveal” of dragon tribute is more a confirmation than a reveal the baby still stirs the pot, though).

If the PC’s didn’t “know” dragons were coming and going before, then where was the fictional positioning to have them suddenly arrive? How would this just routinely go unnoticed?

As a player, I think I would have grounds to ask why my character would be coming to the King to grant resources to fight the Dragon if I know he’s already engaged in an appeasement strategy, or if I know dragons come and go regularly from the Kings’ tower – but never attack and are never opposed.

<snip>

as a PC in the game, I think I would know how the King is perceived by his people before going to ask for his aid against the Dragon.

Where is all this backstory coming from. [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] never stated any of it. Much of it is contradiction to the scene that [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] actually outlined for us upthread. So why are you positing it?

As to particulars - maybe the PCs didn't know the king was trafficking with dragons. And maybe the king is not an evil tyrant. Maybe the paladin is hoping that he is noble and this is his chance to find out.

Maybe the dragons fly to a secret rendezvous point. Or are cloaked. Or maybe this was the first time.

maybe it’s unrealistic that prepared PC’s are walking in unaware of whether Dragons do, or do not, routinely come and go, where the palace is actually located (in view or obscured from the city), whether the people seem to respect or fear the King, and any other info one would expect living in this kingdom for any period of time would provide. Instead, they’re completely blind.

I think that Manbearcat's scene, and the discussion aroudn it, is more broadly illustrative of the idea I've mentioned upthread, that one of the goals of "indie" play is to shift the decision point from prep and planning ("transition scenes") to the moment of action resolution ("action scenes"). Discovering, at crunch time, the king and chamberlain are about to hand over a baby to the dragon would be an instance of that.

It seems like, for all we know walking through the door, the King might BE a Dragon.

Now that would be cool!

Seems like the player would be quite justified believing his efforts were to prevent the Drake drawing retribution on the city. He spent resources to ensure success. I thought success meant success – full stop – and not success that later has adverse consequences like retribution on the city.

As Manbearcat spelled out in post 1532, the intention of the action was to impress the Chamberlain in a certain fashion. Not to save the city. And that intention was realised.

Can the players decide, in rolling as they communicate with the Chamberlain, that the nation is actually ruled by a democratically elected Council of Twelve, which holds open meetings to make all decisions? If not, how was it established that it has an absolute monarch in charge of its governance, as it seems everything must be established in play.

The answer to the first is "no", for two reasons: (i) it is already establsihed that there is a ruling king; and (ii) there are no formal mechanics for this in 4e (as I mentioned upthread) and in Manbearcat's explanation of his scene there was never any invitation to the players to contribute on this particular point.

The answer to the second presumably is "via GM narration".

Hence, I come back to "group storytelling", with passing of the speaking stick determined largely by die rolls.

I don't believe that you have read the Eero Tuovinen blog to which both I and LostSoul have linked. It sets out the difference between "indie" play and group storytelling pretty clearly. In partcular, notice that the only time that Manbearcat's players got to contribute backstory was when the GM expressly invited them to.

Good example of characters who are mechanically identical but play completely different.

Are they mechanically identical? They're both wizards - do they really use the same spell load-out all the time?

I can impact on the fiction without having that impact be the best possible one to achieve our goals.

<snip>

And if the best tactical response is to engage in dialogue with the King and agree that we will not expose the fact that he is delivering babys to appease the dragons, will your Paladin stoop to that level as well?

<snip>

“reward” need not be cash. Did they advance their cause?

There is, to me, an implicit onus on the GM to value role playing, not just tactical excellence.

I don't really follow any of this. Because I don't know where you think player goals come from - though I get the sense you assume they come from the GM and the GM's story - I don't know what you mean by "tactical excellence". Do you mean something like "mechanical efficiency in achieving the goals set for the PCs by the GM"?

I also don't know what you mean by "valuing roleplaying". In your example of the fighter who charges the umber hulk, does the GM value roleplaying by having the umber hulk confuse the fighter, or by having the fighter not be confused by the umber hulk? Or simply by resolving in the standard mechanical fashion, which is what seemed to happen at your table if I read the anecdote correctly.

I also don't know what you are talking about with "rewards". Upthread you suggested that Glabrezus won't do something for nothing, just as PCs typically don't. Now you seem to be asserting simply that both Glabrezus and PCs act for reasons. The first point is wrong in my experience. The second point is banal.

From my point of view, here is the bottom line: I have linked to several actual play accounts upthread. If you are reading them, and then asserting that there is no roleplaying in my games, I'm stunned. And am awaiting your critique.

 

[Imaro]

In fairly standard AD&D play, the PCs arrive at town and go to the nearest tavern. How do we know who/what they see in there? Rolling on a random table is a fairly well-established technique. Which is to say, once you get out of a certain style of dungeon play in which everything has already been written up, determination of backstory in play has a pretty long history.

Well in most of the sessions I've played in and many that I have DM'd... most if not all of the NPC's in the tavern are pre-created. Maybe not detailed mechanically to the level of the PC's but they are still pre-determined. Can a DM add more, sure... but he's still the one creating the NPC's and deciding whether they are or are not in the tavern

OAN... rolling on a random table isn't the same as allowing PC's to make up back story... again the DM has final call since he is either selecting the random table or creating it and thus can insure coherency. It's not an issue of determining back story in play it's about the methods to do such and how the different ones have different positives and negatives.

This is just theorycraft. Is there any actual evidence that players in "indie" games are doing less thinking outside the box? From this thread I can't really tell, because the non-indie players aren't posting much actual play. I linked to several actual play posts upthread - why don't you have a read of them, and then tell me what you see that does or doesn't satisfy your expectations for a "thinking outside of the box" quotient.

No it's not theorycraft, I've run enough 4e to see it in action. In fact I'm finding it hard to understand how indie games can push the fact that the mechanics for their games are supposed to empower the players in playing and achieving the goals of the game while at the same time minimizing the need for DM fiat when following the goals of the game (since to do otherwise is considered bad game design)... but then you claim it doesn't discourage thinking outside the box. For me thinking outside the box is going beyond what is on the character sheet (mechanics-wise) and allowing DM fiat in to cover things the rules don't. It would seem the whole point of a well designed indy game (at least based around forge theory) is that you don't ever need to go outside the box...

If your game is designed for the mechanics to give maximum player empowerment while minimizing DM fiat... in such a situation how does less thinking outside the box not arise?? The mechanics are designed to empower you why think beyond the box just select one of the power packages since more than likely anything out of the box won't be as effective.

My own experience - though I haven't got any cofirmation for it beyond my own recollection of my onw play - is that one way to discourage players from "thinking outside the box" and engaging the situation is to routinely frame scenes in which, whatever they have their PCs do, they can't change anything.

IME, another is to have detailed and/or codified lists of abilities that the players nearly always turn to as opposed to thinking of something innovative, interesting or trying something not necessarily codified in said lists...

I don't know if you're still running a 13th Age game, but if you are - have you found that its Background mechanic, which allows players to narrate themselves into mechanical capabilities by fleshing out their backstories, has discouaged the players from engaging the fiction?

Engaing the fiction != thinking outside the box, they are two different things so I have to ask... what the point of this question is? The fact of the matter is that using backgrounds as such in 13th Age is exactly staying within the box, since that is how the mechanics for them work. Again for me, thinking out side the box would be trying to use a background in some way that isn't stated or implied in the book... perhaps if a background was directly associated with a particular icon it could grant a bonus to the icon roll for that icon or something along those lines would be thinking outside the box.

 

[Lanefan]

Slight Tangent: In my games, evil loses; as a rule evil only triumphs offscreen or for a short period of time. This is one of the accepted tropes of my particular genre of play. My one hard rule about alignment for campaigns is "no evil characters." (I am willing to bend this rule for particular one-shots). This is upfront. Players that therefore specifically try to perform evil acts can expect retribution of some kind from the game world. If a wizard therefore tried to summon a demon to get wishes, they would likely get messed over in the end. Characters that decide to become jewel thieves could expect to be hounded by the law, bounty hunters, and mercenaries until either they made restitution or were caught.

Players who don't want to be heroes of one form or another are not likely going to like my games. I am fine with that. I really don't want my free time to devolve into quasi-psychotic wish fulfillment of a rather dubious nature. Perhaps this is one reason my players don't suffer from constant fear of their characters being outshone by their teammates. I don't know how much this particular aspect of playstyle factors into the whole equation, but its worth considering I guess, and Hussar's examples of things DMs might do that would bother him got me wondering about it.

Where in my games anything goes; and if players want to play evil characters that's up to them, and if they decide to become jewel thieves at the Keep instead of visiting the caves of chaos I'll just have to roll with that.

The jeweller conveniently leaving town at the last minute isn't usually something I'd do unless I had a very good reason for it (e.g. he was the hook for another adventure) and in that case there'd be a breadcrumb trail of some sort.

All that said, there's still occasionally a time and place where a DM can bring down the hand of god and flat-out say "no, you can't go that way; it doesn't exist yet!" where the players have *really* caught her unprepared on a sharp left turn. Used in extreme moderation, this can provide a good war story to tell later.

Lan-"worldbuilding on the fly only really becomes an issue once the characters figure out how much fun 'planeshift' can be"-efan

 

[sheadunne]

For me thinking outside the box is going beyond what is on the character sheet (mechanics-wise) and allowing DM fiat in to cover things the rules don't.

I'm having trouble understanding this definition. Could you help me?

Are you suggesting

1) That "thinking outside the box" does not involve a mechanical resolution to the action?

2) That the game(s) in question do not cover all possibilities of mechanical resolution of actions (such as with the universal ability score check mechanic in all(?) version of D&D)?

3) That to think outside the box a player has to actively look for actions that aren't covered by the rules?

 

[pemerton]

For me thinking outside the box is going beyond what is on the character sheet (mechanics-wise) and allowing DM fiat in to cover things the rules don't. It would seem the whole point of a well designed indy game (at least based around forge theory) is that you don't ever need to go outside the box...

<snip>

Engaing the fiction != thinking outside the box, they are two different things

OK, this seems to entail that only games that follow process-simulation resolution can permit "thinking outside the box", because games that use non-process simulation resolution don't require GM-fiated departures from the mechanics in order to impact the fiction in unexpected ways.

EDIT: I think [MENTION=27570]sheadunne[/MENTION]'s questions (2) and (3) above push in something like the same direction as my inference above.