D&D 5E Simulation vs Game - Where should D&D 5e aim?

[Ahnehnois]

It's not that the combat stat blocks itself represents everything about the creature, but it does reflect the true nature of a creature.

Moreover, they all apply in non-combat situations. If you fall, you use the same hit points you use in combat. The same fort save you roll to resist a lich's paralyzing touch is the one you roll to avoid getting drunk (even before saves were delineated in this way they were still used for combat and noncombat applications). A young character sneaking out of the house to meet his girlfriend rolls the same stealth skills as a seasoned adventurer sneaking past the king's guard. A wizard contracted to build a castle casts the same Wall of Stone spell he uses to throw a barrier up between himself and assailants in combat.

There are virtually no examples of rules that apply solely in combat or similar situations; the initiative structure is the only one that jumps to mind.

The thing is, if you insist that Gerry's stats are static, then Gerry can only appear on screen at certain times. There's a reason you don't see ogres in a 15th level adventure. They aren't worth putting there.

There are, however, ogres of all possible levels at all times, somewhere in the world. One particular group may adopt certain conceits regarding level-appropriate encounters, but that's hardly the totality of things.

And, I disagree that earlier editions presented a consistent, objective reality. An ogre gets hit by a 1st level fighter, as hard as the fighter can hit, and shrugs it off. The 15th level fighter kills the ogre outright with average damage. What objective reality has been measured here? Our 15th level fighter has somehow become superhuman?

Yes. That's precisely what a 15th level fighter is. Superhuman.

 

[Campbell]

Whatever else you might call them I think anyone who has played more than a single session of Apocalypse World, Burning Wheel, Marvel Heroic, Sorcerer or Dogs in the Vineyard could honestly not call them games. There is a right way and a wrong way to play them, and they absolutely punish strategic mistakes. They differ from games like D&D in that optimal play is not reflected in your characters having an easy time of things. There are patterns to discern and interpret - they are just different patterns.

Even if these games belong in a separate category it is utter foolishness not to acknowledge the roots and commonality they share with conventional role playing games.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

The thing is, if you insist that Gerry's stats are static, then Gerry can only appear on screen at certain times. There's a reason you don't see ogres in a 15th level adventure. They aren't worth putting there.

Giants like Gerry can show up whenever and wherever they should be, based on the defined ecology and events of the setting. How they would fare against a party of X level is entirely irrelevant to when and where they show up. Unless you would prioritize that every fight must be interesting, significantly ahead of internal consistency of the game world, which 4E clearly does (but which is less clear, with the opposite being the implication from the Monster Manual, in a game like 2E).

And, I disagree that earlier editions presented a consistent, objective reality. An ogre gets hit by a 1st level fighter, as hard as the fighter can hit, and shrugs it off. The 15th level fighter kills the ogre outright with average damage. What objective reality has been measured here? Our 15th level fighter has somehow become superhuman?

In editions other than 4E, the fighter deals the same damage regardless of level: the damage die of the weapon, modified for exceptional Strength. If the high-level fighter killed the ogre in one hit, then it would have an accountable in-game explanation, such as a magic sword or a belt of super strength or a special technique that allowed her to strike harder than normal.

But, then again, I've never seen D&D as a simulation based game. I played games that were meant to be sim based like GURPS if I wanted that. D&D as a sim game is such an abject failure that I cannot really see what the fuss is about.

And that's your prerogative, of course. Just know that there are plenty of people who did see D&D as a decent sim that made the right number of concessions to gameplay for the game to still be playable, and that those players did not continue on to 4E because that edition crossed the line.

 

[pemerton]

I'd argue that if anything, a successful play experience for a group of players and a DM should be seen as a downstream consequence of successful rules-based worldbuilding, rather than the other way around.

I still value consistency, but am much more willing nowadays to adjust or rewrite unrevealed backstory to adapt to the game's needs.

I personally have seen no evidence that what Ahnehnois says is true. In my own case, there is basically no correlation between worldbuilding (rules-based or otherwise - AD&D didn't really support rules-based worldbuilding, but Rolemaster does, and I've used both) and successful play experience. I've had successful play experiences with worldbuilding, and without. And I've had bad play experiences under world-building GMs and non-world-building GMs.

I do agree with Aenghus, though: I regard unrevealed backstory as a means to an end. It is not an end in itself, and has to yield to the demands of play (which include, but aren't limited to, maintaining drama, maintaining engagement, and keeping up the pressure on the players).

Level (in 4E) and Challenge Rating (in 3E) are just meta-game descriptors. What the giant is - what it can actually do - must remain objective. And that's reflected in its stats - Strength, Will, attack bonus, stealth, etc.

A level 8 solo has what? Like +13 to hit? And a level 25 minion is like +30? The specific numbers aren't terribly important. The point is that, all else being equal, when attacking the same target - a moderately experienced paladin with AC 25, for example - the solo will sometimes miss in situations where the minion would not. The solo can certainly survive against successful attacks that the minion cannot.

But within the game world, to people actually watching this happen, only one of the two outcomes actually happens. The giant either hits, or it does not.

To me, this is all confused.

There is a metagame level of confusion, which [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] points out: there will never be a combat involving a level 25 minion against a 25 AC (ie approx level 8) paladin. Against the level 8 paladin, the GM would use the level 7 solo.

There is also a mechanics-to-gameworld dimension of confusion. In the gameworld, the spectators do not observe "attack rolls" and "hits". Just like turn-by-turn initiative, and 5' squares, and the action economy, attack rolls and hits are metagame abstractions. In the fiction, the spectators see the giant fighting the paladin. The fact that we can mechanically represent this as one +30 atttack doing 20 damage (the minion) or four +12 attacks doing 20 damage (the solo) has no relevance to what the spectators see.

Just as in Mearls' recently-announced Battlesystem, the spectators don't see anything different just because we have changed the way in which the mechanics abstract out of the combat situation (eg one attack roll per 10 orcs per minute rather than one attack roll per orc per 6 seconds).

This is only true if you insist that combat stat blocks are the mechanical representation of the creature in all aspects of its existence.\

<snip>

to people in the game world, there will be no inconsistencies.

Absolutely this.

to maintain internal consistency and objectivity, there must be exactly one mechanical way to represent any distinct thing

No. This claim assumes that the function of the mechanics is to represent causal processes within the gameworld. But in 4e this is not so. The function of the combat stats is to resolve concrete conflicts between particular protagonists and antagonists. It is not to provide a basis for extrapolating to events within the gameworld generally.

Another way to look at it is this: I know how the gameworld works, and this informs application of, and narrative extrapolation from, the details of mechanical resolution. I don't use mechanical resolution to find out how the gameworld works. What I do use it for, though, is to find out whether or not the protagonists get what they want.

 

[Lanefan]

Within the gameworld, the giant has no level and is neither a minion nor a solo. It is a giant. The people who look at it - the inhabitants of the gameworld - can see it, and can see what it is capable of.

The people who describe it as a level 25 minion or a level 7 solo are the players.

Yet they shouldn't be. They, through their characters, see only a giant; with no idea how it is represented in the game mechanics but fully aware it's gonna flatten whatever gets in its way.

The only person at the table to whom the giant's game mechanics should matter (or even be known) is the DM.

Lanefan

 

[Lanefan]

Level (in 4E) and Challenge Rating (in 3E) are just meta-game descriptors. What the giant is - what it can actually do - must remain objective. And that's reflected in its stats - Strength, Will, attack bonus, stealth, etc.

Except that those (in any edition) are also somewhat variable.

As long as there are multiple game-mechanical ways to represent the same in-game thing, you will have different results depending on which one you use. At that point, it is no longer internally consistent. Thus, to maintain internal consistency and objectivity, there must be exactly one mechanical way to represent any distinct thing; and if there is a different game mechanical representation between two things, then there must be some real, substantive difference between those things as they exist within the objective reality of the game world.

I see what you're getting at, but your theory quickly falls apart under examination:
- by your standards of "exactly one mechanical way to represent any distinct thing", all giants of any given type would be mechanically the same e.g. every hill giant has AC 20, 74 h.p., etc. - clearly this isn't the case
- the same thing also bans any given giant from developing as time goes on; Gerry the Giant you met two years ago has become Gerry the Fighter Giant since...nothing wrong with this
- and "the same in-game thing" can also be a character. When three platemail-clad fighters come marching down the street at you how can you tell which one is Falstaffe the Firstlevel as opposed to Fred the Fifthlevel or Frank the Fourteenthlevel? You probably can't, at a quick glance, and this doesn't break internal consistency in the slightest.

That said, however...

No. This claim assumes that the function of the mechanics is to represent causal processes within the gameworld. But in 4e this is not so. The function of the combat stats is to resolve concrete conflicts between particular protagonists and antagonists. It is not to provide a basis for extrapolating to events within the gameworld generally.

But if you're going to be the least bit internally consistent you have no choice but to have combat stats "always on" even when there is no combat nearby. I'm a 5th level fighter with 48 h.p. and AC 18 when I'm walking down the street in armour; I don't need somebody clubbing at me to tell me this. And that irrelevant NPC guy over there who happens to be walking past, he's a 7th-level Rogue with 32 h.p. and AC 23 long before anyone attacks him.

The gameworld is sinply *not* internally consistent if there is a bubble around the PCs in whch game mechanics work differently.

Lan-"tinu bubbles, in the air"-efan

 

[Campbell]

I'm going to go one further in this post - I hope nobody minds. I'd actually make the argument that as games, Story Now games are more successful. When you make a decision that leads to engaging the game mechanics in a game like Burning Wheel you have to accept the consequences of your decisions as a player. Unlike games like VtM, there is no guardian at the gate to mitigate consequences. The GM is just as limited by the rules of the game as any other player. Say Yes or Roll The Dice is a rule. Ignoring it as just like a DM who ignores alignment considerations for paladins. They are not playing the game as it was meant to be played, and the game will break.

I will further stipulate that GM as world exploration enabler is one of the things that initially turned me off of 3e. I simply don't view that as a duty that must be undertaken to play the game. I'm interested in tough situations and player choices. For me one thing must lead to another. I believe that one of the most problematic assertions our hobby tends to make is placing DMs/GMs in a pure servant role rather than just another player of the game with differing responsibilities and play conditions. Basically, I am not my players' bugaboos. They know they have just as much responsibility for the shape of play as I do.

Sure, as a GM I take a leadership role. That is worthless if I don't actually use it to lead. I'm here to make sure their PCs lead interesting lives, and need to make hard decisions. I am not here to detail histories, make passive plots for them to puzzle out, or draw dungeon maps.

I'm frankly surprised by old school hostility to narrative games, rather than the lead by the nose sort of play popularized in the '90s. If any argument could be made for RPGs not being played as games it's the style advocated by Planescape, Classic WoD, and others where player decisions are marginalized.

 

[Hussar]

/snip
In editions other than 4E, the fighter deals the same damage regardless of level: the damage die of the weapon, modified for exceptional Strength. If the high-level fighter killed the ogre in one hit, then it would have an accountable in-game explanation, such as a magic sword or a belt of super strength or a special technique that allowed her to strike harder than normal.

/snip

So, why doesn'T that argument hold in 4e? In 3e, the fighter kills the ogre because he uses Power Attack and whacks the Ogre in one hit. In 4e, the fighter kills the ogre because he is just that good and kills the ogre in 1 hit.

Why is it okay if the mechanics are on the player side of the screen (Power Attack) but, not okay to put it on the DM's side of the screen (the monster is a minion)?

Yet they shouldn't be. They, through their characters, see only a giant; with no idea how it is represented in the game mechanics but fully aware it's gonna flatten whatever gets in its way.

The only person at the table to whom the giant's game mechanics should matter (or even be known) is the DM.

Lanefan

I believe he meant player as in the DM. The players will know it's a minion after they hit, but, they shouldn't beforehand. It's no different than the players learning the AC of a monster after a couple of whacks at it.

Like you said, the only person at the table who gets to decide what mechanics the giant uses is the DM, and that's the same in any edition.

 

[Ratskinner]

I think that there must be a set of statistics that truly (honestly, objectively) represents what each individual kobold or frost giant is within the game world.

hmm...I can't say categorically that no game system and no set of stats could do that, but I will say that, AFAICT, the D&D mechanics are not and have never been a system capable of doing that. Especially in the older editions its obvious that stats existed to function within the tactical/combat game environment and not to actually represent anything "objectively" about the creature in question in the game world. (Heck, most monsters weren't anything mechanically but a pile of combat stats until 3e). 3e probably represents the zenith of full/complete mechanical representation as design goal, but even that edition maintains the same fundamentally abstract mechanical architecture.

After all, everything in the stat block can be measured objectively.

Actually, very few things in stat blocks can be measured objectively, AFAICT. Precisely which things varies a bit from edition to edition, but generally most D&D stats focus on combat, which D&D explicitly handles abstractly (most prevalently in older editions). That abstraction makes it next to impossible to actually perform the statistical reverse-engineering from within the fiction. In particular the lack of correspondence between a game-world physical strike and the game-mechanical hit, and basically any and every implementation/definition of HP that I've seen make it particularly difficult.

It is a true fact that X specific creature will have Y% chance of hitting a stationary target, using a defined weapon at a given range, as corresponds perfectly to its ranged attack bonus.

Except that "hitting" in the game-mechanical sense of "do HP damage to" can only recently be associated with a singular attempt to swing/shoot/etc. the target, and even that isn't explicit in the rules. Certainly fighters didn't make one actual-fictional swing per round back when rounds were a full minute long. Furthermore, its not evident that a "hit" at the table corresponds to your weapon actually physically damaging a creature (missile attack or melee) or whether they just spent a bit of luck, divine providence, etc. to avoid your efforts in this last minute. Thus, a creature's attack bonus may or may not actually correspond to their ability to physically strike a target in the scenario you describe. Even though that is the general assumption that we all make, its not actually evident from the way the rules work and how they are described (again with some variation between editions.)

ASIDE: How that applies and works (or should apply and work) for ammunition, ROF, and ranged attacks has been a fertile ground for argument and rules tinkering for as long as I've been discussing the game. Its only recently, with the shift to much shorter combat rounds in the WotC editions, that I've seen that calm down.

It is a true fact that X specific creature will have Z% chance of remaining unaffected when exposed to a particular disease, as corresponds perfectly to its Fortitude (or whatever).

IIRC, even Gygax talks about poison saves representing a dodge to the poisonous blow, rather than just toughing it out. That is to say, a "save" might include both avoiding the exposure and/or resisting the disease. So, did a hero avoid the disease because his immune system fought it off or because he happened to do a better job cleaning out that wound today or because he happened to turn the blow so that the disease didn't reach the bloodstream? Which happened in any particular case is generally impossible to tell from the rules alone.

Prior to 4E, every metric in the game could be measured and determined empirically in game because it was a truth within that reality.

There are plenty of corner cases that make that not so. One example that springs to mind is "massive damage" rules and sneak attacks, critical hits, or backstabs, which would trump/shortcircuit one's ability to measure HP by checking how many licks with this broadsword does it take to get to the center of that ogre. Look up Schrodinger's Wounds for Pete's sake. I've even heard (well, "read") it argued by OSR fans on this board that Old-School casters aren't even aware that spells come in slots or that the slots have different levels or even what their spells actually are! I don't personally see how that can be the case, but I've been told it solves no end of fictional inconsistencies regarding the question of "what just actually happened". ::shrug::

Simply put, the D&D (especially older-edition) rules function at such a level of gamist abstraction that it often requires our willful ignorance to relate them to fictional positioning. Indeed, the most common advice for dealing with all the inconsistencies that HP mechanics create is simply "You're thinking about it too hard. Just ignore it and go with the flow."

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Why is it okay if the mechanics are on the player side of the screen (Power Attack) but, not okay to put it on the DM's side of the screen (the monster is a minion)?

For a consistent, objective reality, it cannot be different on one side than on the other. In editions prior to 4E, but especially in 3.5 where they detailed everything out, the players and the monsters used the same mechanics.

The DM's side of the screen was copied directly out of the player's side of the screen, which is why you had enemies casting spells from the wizard spell list and ogres using the same Power Attack as the PC barbarian. (The DM's side of the screen also included things that the PCs were unlikely to need, like monster racial abilities, but you could be certain that any PC who did gain access to those abilities would use them as-is; since a medusa's gaze was an objective thing, it worked identically regardless of which side it appeared on.)