Beyond Old and New School - "The Secret That Was Lost"

[jeffh]

This looks fun, even though it seems only tangentially related to the thread. (As an aside, it seems to me this is a more useful exercise if you're planning on running 13th Age or The Pool than any flavour of D&D, though it might be somewhat useful for Next or for 1E with secondary skills.)

[*]I would be automatically able to sail a small boat without needing to roll dice

In good sailing conditions, yes.

[*]I would know how to tie common knots

Yes

[*]I would be better at tying knots than someone who is not a sailor

All else being equal, yes.

[*]I would be less good at tying knots than someone who has high dexterity

All else being equal, no.

[*]I would be able to shoot and hit an unaware person at 50' with a bow without needing a roll

No.

[*]I would need to make a roll to shoot someone who was aware of me

Yes.

[*]I would be more effective with my bow than a weaker person because I can pull more weight

Virtually all game systems, even "one-roll" ones, differentiate between accuracy and damage in some way. I'd lean toward giving you more of the latter, but not necessarily any more of the former.

[*]I would be less effective with my bow than a more dexterous person

Depends what you mean by "dexterous". In D&D this is a very broad category that runs together a lot of things - manual dexterity, general grace and agility, and accuracy - that are quite different. In a system that defines dexterity less broadly, it might not help your archery at all. In D&D, it does so almost by definition, with the mirror image of the above caveat.

[*]I would be better at shooting my bow on a ship than a non-sailor

Yes.

[*]I would be better at shooting my bow on a ship in a storm than a weaker sailor

Yes, though whatever benefit you're getting from your strength probably accounts for this already without attempting to handle it explicitly.

[*]I would be worse at shooting my bow than a "soldier" with "good skill at archery"

Maybe.

[*]I would be awesome at repairing bows because not only am I good at archery, but I know how to tie knots and handle rope

No, since that's only a very, very small part of being a bowyer.

[*]I would never need to roll to repair a basic bowstring, given the materials I need

You don't generally repair those, you replace them. Almost any attempted repair will just snap the next time you try to use it. But you'd be pretty good at stringing a bow since you have the most important thing you need - strength - and certainly know enough about bows not to damage it in the process. (Again, the sailor aspect is contributing almost nothing here.) Stringing a bow is non-trivial - consider how big a deal being able to string Odysseus' bow was.

[*]I would always beat someone at archery if they were "bad at archery" without needing a roll

Not without needing a roll, but that roll should be very heavily in your favour.

[*]I would always get a better rate of pay for sailing a boat as a "sailor" than someone who was "highly charismatic" but not a "sailor"

Only if they had some way (e.g. a past history with you) of knowing that, or the setting was such that this is legally enforced in some way.

[*]I will always beat someone in a tug-of-war game if they are less strong than me

If the difference is large, sure. Even if it's close, the mechanics used should be such that you're heavily favoured (d20 is really bad at this).

[*]Since sailors are very used to playing tug-of-war, I'd expect to beat someone equally strong as me if they were not a "sailor"

No. Tug of war doesn't require that much skill.

[*]I do not need to roll dice to tell if someone else is a sailor.

If you mean on sight, no (no I don't agree with the statement, not no you wouldn't need to roll). You might pick it up from enough or the right kind of interaction with them, though not necessarily if they were actively trying to hide the fact.

[*]I do not need to roll dice to assess someone's skill as an archer

Again, it depends what you've seen of them. You certainly can't tell this just from a casual glance at someone doing something non-archery-related.

[*]I do not need to roll dice to assess how strong someone is

Same as above.

 

[ExploderWizard]

I must say that I can't see how this is a "HUGE change". Certainly an old-school fighter has no inherent magical prowess, and yet will often gain benefits that exceed the effects of a Bless spell as he levels up. I've never found that that devalues magic. Plus, you don't seem to feel the same way in reverse. That is, if we are in the business of keeping magic and mundane distinct, does it not devalue the Fighter's damage-dealing when the wizard unleashes a Fireball? Doesn't a magic missile devalue a sword strike?

I mean, any change in the numbers is basically indistiguishable from another, the source of the "+1" doesn't matter. The world where magical and non-magical effects are indistiguishable is D&D, because all you can do is raise or lower numbers. I'm not fond of trotting out the line, but your claim here seems a pretty strong endorsement of the "non-casters can't have nice things" argument.

A high level fighter will fight with strength and deadliness of many men. That is a very nice thing. It may not be flashy but it is steady and effective.

Magic may produce effects beyond the mundane thats why its......wait for it...... "magic". An important property of magic that got tossed away was that magical power was of a finite quantity. Once you have the utter nonsense of a magic user pew-pewing unlimited magic all day of course you need to give the fighter a pony. Once you have gone down the rabbit hole of ubiquitous magic then yeah the mundane starts looking a little sad.

Magic that never runs out and is utterly reliable isn't very magical anymore, its rather common. Thats when you run into the problem of all abilities being nothing more than sources of numbers. What is magical and what isn't just blurs together into a slurry of "stuff". That feels alright in the supers genre where everyone just has powers "from somewhere " but it doesn't fit the feel of D&D.

 

[Cadence]

I'm not sure about the "greater knowledge of where things are going". I don't see that the GM has to, or even should, have such knowledge. If the players are playing the protagonists, why don't they know where things are going?

I usually picture the DM having scattered plot hooks around, knowing where the local "dungeon" is, knowing who some people with villainous intent are, etc... The players don't have to go for any of the hooks or obvious villains, although it seems like it would take a fairly odd DM-player synergy if the players were never interested in anything the DM had prepared in advance. Even if the players come up with what they're interested in ("Nah, we'd rather go explore the far north"... or whatever) isn't it the DM who comes up with the challenges that await them their?

I haven't read that thread, and so have no advice to offer for these particular players. But I'd be surprised if a rulebook statement that the GM has absolute authority would make the problem go away.

I have had this sort of problem playing Rolemaster. It was always solved via group discussion and consensus, not unilateral exercise of authority.

Right. I couldn't see an obvious solution for either side of the the GM-authority debate here. In the example the player and DM involved couldn't come to a consensus. In a case like that, what's the tie-breaker? Should one be agreed on in advance? Or does one side just need to be the bigger person and cave?

---

Easy. I just do it. Maybe the mechanics of my character happen to agree, maybe they don't - just like in real life.

Huh. I'd never thought about it that way. I'm trying to think of any examples of people I've played with where the character acted like they were competent at something but actually weren't. The closest I can think of is one where the party (players and thus characters) had a mistaken idea of how tough the standard background NPCs were. Made that attempt at participating in the local fight-club surprisingly unpleasant. That party didn't repeat that error though.

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A nod of agreement with [MENTION=66434]ExploderWizard[/MENTION] for the post right above this one for magic vs. mundane. Couldn't XP it.

 

[pemerton]

I usually picture the DM having scattered plot hooks around, knowing where the local "dungeon" is, knowing who some people with villainous intent are, etc...

<snip>

Even if the players come up with what they're interested in ("Nah, we'd rather go explore the far north"... or whatever) isn't it the DM who comes up with the challenges that await them their?

I think this is actually the space in which a lot of playstyle differences are located, even though it can seem quite small when we are discussing it in abstract terms.

At least for me, the difference in play experience between "GM chooses mission/enemies" (and, say, feeds it to players via a patron or a classic dangling "plot hook") and "players choose mission/enemies" is extremely vast - even though, as you say, in the latter case it is still the GM who has to actually frame the challenge in mechanical and detailed story terms.

I couldn't see an obvious solution for either side of the the GM-authority debate here. In the example the player and DM involved couldn't come to a consensus. In a case like that, what's the tie-breaker? Should one be agreed on in advance? Or does one side just need to be the bigger person and cave?

I feel a bit bad commenting without reading the thread, but at least as you describe it it really seems to me to be a basic social problem and not a particularly game-related one. The solution is to be found in all the standard techniques of resolving human conflict. Which means - especially as the stakes are fairly low - that it might not be solved, and people might just walk away instead.

 

[pemerton]

The player describes what he or she wants to do and the DM offers a target number to accomplish it.

<snip>

the "modern" versions of the game based upon the d20 mechanic--3e, 4e, and 5e--all have a clear core resolution that can used: d20 roll + ability + relevant modifiers vs. target number. Within that framework any action can be resolved. It requires that a player comes up with an action--whether pre-defined or not--and the DM adjudicates by defining a target number.

It seems to me that you struggle with the idea of the DM somewhat arbitrarily coming up with a target number?

I don't struggle with the idea. I just think it's one of many possible mechanics, and if that's all you'll have you'll get a narrow game.

I think this is in fact shown by the fact that you still haven't actually told me how to resolve the battle captain in a non-4e game.

Here is the action the player wants to accomplish: I will charge the enemy, yelling a rousing war-cry, and when I hit it my allies, inspired by my example, will likewise charge the enemy without costing them an action in the action economy.

4e has a robust way to adjudicate such actions, via the allocation of daily powers. (Or encounter powers if it is a single ally who charges.)

I think [MENTION=66434]ExploderWizard[/MENTION] is correct that this is just impossible in classic D&D - to permit it would break the action economy. My feeling in relation to 3E is much the same, though my intuitive grasp of 3E is pretty limited.

The explanation is pretty clear: if your only rationing mechanic is roll vs target number then all you can trade off is likelihood vs effect, settling overall expected utilities. Whereas AEDU (or fate points, or Marvel Heroic SFX, etc) introduce other rationing devices which allow other ways of preventing breakage whilst still permitting reliable access to dramatic effects.

D&D uses this too, for spell users: would the game really be better if a magic-user (from 1st level?) had in principle unlimited access to Time Stop but had to make an inordinately hard d20 roll in order to perform that particular feat of magic? I think the answer to this is "obviously not". So if I'm to be persuaded that roll vs target number should be the only mechanism for allocating effects to non-casters, some argument is going to have to be given that actually addresses these issues.

(Even 3E actually has other rationing mechanics than roll vs target number: BAB also grants bonus attacks, rogues have reliable access to bonus damage plus daily abilities like defensive roll, etc.)

Actually, in my mind this is a necessary component of immersion and player enjoyment - not knowing what's off the edge of the map, new surprises being introduced, "Wait, I'm the heir to the throne?!" For me there's something lost when the player says, "I want to secretly be the heir to the throne but not know it."

<snip>

In some ways, the AEDU paradigm is like having a list of gifts and only things on that list can be purchased.

I don't really follow this: I don't see the comparison you're drawing between allocation of backstory authority ("Is my PC the heir to the throne?") and allocation of action resolution resources, which is what AEDU is about.

 

[Campbell]

I can't speak for anyone else, but when I run a game I don't want to have a better idea of where the game is headed than my players. The ideal situation for me is for one conflict to lead to another with complications arising naturally out of play. I don't frame scenes with an end goal in mind - the entire point is to see what will happen. I think our Chamberlain Experiment is a pretty good example of this play style at work. I don't think anyone could have anticipated that a skill challenge to persuade a chamberlain to let us see the king would result in a tale of conflicting faiths, redemption of a creature lost to the shadows, and obligations vs. friendship.

Right now I'm preparing to run a game of Demon: The Descent once my books from the Kickstarter arrive. One of the central conflicts of Demon is that the protagonists (PCs) possess a great deal of power, but more flagrant displays capture the attention of their enemies. The game has a tiered power structure where more powerful abilities not only have a resource cost, but expose players to Compromise rolls of varying difficulties. It's a mechanic with real teeth - when you fail a Compromise roll you select from a menu of narrative conditions that are then invoked in play which when resolved result in experience for the PC. I don't think I could have a clear handle on where the game is going, and I love that about the game. Players make choices that will have direct implications on the fiction - that's the point.

Compare this to the experience of playing a Solar in Exalted where careful use of Charms is encouraged, but there is no teeth in the rules of the game to reflect that. As a player it can be difficult to see the correlation between action and consequence. As a GM I must take a more active hand in deciding the appropriate result of flashy displays of power. I have to decide what happens - not see.

In general I operate on a few key principles when I run games:

• Anything worth doing can be done better with practice. If I can step into a scene during resolution and have a direct hand in how it will turn out then I don't have to be disciplined in scene framing, encounter design, etc. I'll never learn to run a game better if I do not have to deal with the consequences.
• As much as possible the link between player decisions and consequences of their actions should be visible to the players.
• Push hard on both sides of the screen and see what happens.
• If a result is unacceptable don't allow situations where it can happen. If it is unacceptable for a PC or NPC to die anticlimatically the rules / framed scenes should not allow for that possibility.

The reason why I like RPGs is precisely because of unexpected results. Even when I'm running a game it should feel more like improvisational jazz than a conducted orchestra. Yes, sometimes one of us hits a wrong note, but it can only get better the more we play together.

 

[Ratskinner]

A high level fighter will fight with strength and deadliness of many men. That is a very nice thing. It may not be flashy but it is steady and effective.

Magic may produce effects beyond the mundane thats why its......wait for it...... "magic". An important property of magic that got tossed away was that magical power was of a finite quantity. Once you have the utter nonsense of a magic user pew-pewing unlimited magic all day of course you need to give the fighter a pony. Once you have gone down the rabbit hole of ubiquitous magic then yeah the mundane starts looking a little sad.

While I don't necessarily disagree with the sentiment that perhaps magic is too reliable in the WotC editions...I don't see how that relates to the point I was addressing. Specifically, that there are only so many numbers to affect, and through that, magic and the mundane are basically indistinguishable. A high-level fighter's ability to survive falls from orbit is certainly a finite quantity as well (or any similar fantastic trauma that only ablates HP in older editions). I certainly can't see how any amount of mundane toughness allows a person to survive immersion in molten rock. By simply adding to that HP number, the fighter gains abilities that, IMO anyway, are extremely difficult to justify or narrate without bringing in the supernatural. IIRC, this actually begins to happen at some some of the mid levels (especially if one pays careful attention to some early-edition spell descriptions). If the distinguishing feature of magic is that it is unreliable, then why can the fighter so reliably preform obviously fantastic feats?

Magic that never runs out and is utterly reliable isn't very magical anymore, its rather common. Thats when you run into the problem of all abilities being nothing more than sources of numbers. What is magical and what isn't just blurs together into a slurry of "stuff". That feels alright in the supers genre where everyone just has powers "from somewhere " but it doesn't fit the feel of D&D.

That may be your experience, but I've never felt that way. Which is to say, even in old-school D&D, its just a slurry of numbers, to me (and I'm in an OSR group now). I don't personally connect that with the reliability of magic in the recent editions (although I think that brings about other problems.)

 

[Ahnehnois]

The reason why I like RPGs is precisely because of unexpected results. Even when I'm running a game it should feel more like improvisational jazz than a conducted orchestra. Yes, sometimes one of us hits a wrong note, but it can only get better the more we play together.

As somebody who's done quite a bit of both, I do think D&D is more jazzy. I also, however, look at the DM as a conductor/band leader. He knows the charts and he knows where things are heading. He knows the players and what they're inclined to do. He can direct anyone to do something different, unquestioningly. But because the ensemble is complex and because it can run without his direction, the performance still has a certain emergent quality.

If the distinguishing feature of magic is that it is unreliable, then why can the fighter so reliably preform obviously fantastic feats?

To me, the obvious answer is that the fighter's abilities are his own. A magical character is counting on an external source to provide his effects, while the fighter is doing everything himself. I don't know about you, but went I want to be sure something gets done, I feel I have to do it myself.

As to why those feats can be so fantastical, it seems to me that this is simply where D&D breaks down. The hp model is designed to handle slow blow-by-blow combat and to reward advancement, and that doesn't interact well with representing other hazards.

 

[Cadence]

I can't speak for anyone else, but when I run a game I don't want to have a better idea of where the game is headed than my players. The ideal situation for me is for one conflict to lead to another with complications arising naturally out of play. I don't frame scenes with an end goal in mind - the entire point is to see what will happen.

I'm guessing I've fallen into a semantic quagmire and we actually don't disagree on this as much as it seems.

I don't take "a better idea of where something is going" as locking things in or not being subject to change in unexpected ways... Take a fantasy sports league for example. Doesn't the player who has looked over the schedule for the season, when the bye weeks are, which players have injuries, and has examined the past performances have a better chance on average of predicting the outcomes across the weeks of the season than someone who doesn't have that knowledge? (Even though there are shocking upsets each week that the novice might have gotten lucky about and selected?)

Within a scene you're running, do the player's always exactly know the power levels of the opposition and all of the details about those capabilities? If not, doesn't that give you more knowledge about the scene? If there are any surprises/traps at all, isn't that extra knowledge the DM has? Ditto for the DC targets on skill challenges. Beyond a particular scene, as DM do you already have at least a sketched out idea about what the NPCs and challenges are around for the next scene?

At least for me, the difference in play experience between "GM chooses mission/enemies" (and, say, feeds it to players via a patron or a classic dangling "plot hook") and "players choose mission/enemies" is extremely vast -

That sounds totally correct to me.

But don't you still dangle some plot hooks before the players that there's a decent chance they might find attractive, even if its just describing the part of the world that you think they might be interested in and even though it doesn't put a limit on their possible choices?

How specific are the players at choosing the missions/enemies? Is it "we want to go find some local bandits and take them on", in which case you would have lots of knowledge they didn't have access to once you stat them up.

Of course the players can always decide unexpected things, but don't the better ones have some stability in their character conceptions that allow you to at least hazard guesses about what will interest them? Do your players ever let you know what their character's long term goals currently are to let you plan ahead?

If the DM doesn't have a rough idea of where things are heading, wouldn't that make it futile to stat up any future challenges or scenes? (How does a completely mutually created sandbox work?)

 

[Brock Landers]

As somebody who's done quite a bit of both, I do think D&D is more jazzy. I also, however, look at the DM as a conductor/band leader. He knows the charts and he knows where things are heading. He knows the players and what they're inclined to do. He can direct anyone to do something different, unquestioningly. But because the ensemble is complex and because it can run without his direction, the performance still has a certain emergent quality.

Nice, as a jazz bass/guitar player (as best I can!), dig the analogy.