D&D 5E Character play vs Player play

[Lanefan]

heh. Similarities and differences. We certainly used the "Dungeon Bonus" or mission bonus xp idea too. But, unlike you, I never met a DM who didn't use gp for xp. Everyone I played with and everyone I met always did, including our university gaming club which had numerous 1e groups even in the late 80's.

Why did you remove it?

Two main reasons: one, to (successfully) slow down the level-advance rate; and two, to (mostly unsuccessfully) curtail some in-game character greed. It also allowed us some design space to tinker with item values and in-game economics without knocking-on to the xp system.

Lan-"if we'd had xp-for-gp through my whole career I'd be about 25th level by now"-efan

 

[D'karr]

What is interesting with this would be to find out what cross-section of GMs that hold these ideas also promote the "access the plot dump" (see Mearls GMing in one of the introductory videos to a live session of 5e) illusory mechanical resolution technique. Its a totally dysfunctional play procedure in every way possible...but the GM is in control so is that enough to warrant a pass on the technique?

Though I agree that in a regular campaign the particular technique would be rather appaling and incredibly boring, if I recall correctly the particular video, I'm willing to give it a pass in that particular instance for one main reason. In the case of that particular video (slavelords?) there are some limitations to the "gameworld". The D&D team are specifically demoing the slavelords published adventure. In the particular case the DM is trying to limit the focus of the players to the specific quest they are being given. Possibly because of limited time, similar to playing in an adventure in any of the "Living Campaigns."

The players, out of necessity due to scenario limitations, take the quest and hooks simply because if they don't there would be no adventure. It is an artificiality that unfortunately there is no way of getting around with that kind of scenario restrictions. It is assumed that the PCs already have buy-in into the particular scenario simply by showing up.

In a regular campaign that type of scenario would drive me crazy, but in this case I can forgive the horrendousness of the situation.

[sblock]
BTW, I converted the original slavelords adventure for play with my 4e group. In our regular campaign the adventure started with a setup months before the PCs even discovered the slavelords were involved. I used one of the PC's background to put a major twist. Markessa was his sister and the PC was placed in a "Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker" situation with Markessa offering that they could rule the slavelords together as brother and sister. It was quite entertaining, and all the PCs hate that slavelord with particular glee, which has led to many adventures since then with Markessa as a recurring villain.[/sblock]

In my case it was almost painful to watch those guys playing. More because the gameplay was rather boring. Even the OOC side banter was not very entertaining. I guess I had gotten used to the PA guys which are actually pretty funny even if the game might be average.

 

[Lanefan]

According to "stealth" errata in Essentials, XP are awarded for a skill challenge whether the characters succeed or fail.

But neither "succeed" nor "fail" includes "avoid", which I'll touch on below...

As I've often commentd, the function of XP in 4e is very different from in classical D&D. (I won't purport to understand the point of XP in 2nd ed AD&D and 3E.) In classic D&D, XP are a reward. Better players expect to earn more of them; weaker players earn fewer. Poor players might spend a whole evening making a hash of a dungeon raid, having few combat victories and collecting little treasure and hence getting little reward for their efforts.

Interesting take; as in everything before 4e I've always seen xp as a *character* reward, given via the player. This ties into my long-held view that a character is still part of the party even if the player is absent that session, and still earns xp etc. Further, characters only get xp for those things in which they actually participate - did you take part in killing those Orcs? Yes? Good, you'll get a share of the xp. Did you run and hide from the Orcs? Yes? Sorry, no xp for you.

This goes against what 3e suggests (everyone gets xp for everything, regardless) and what 4e seems to assume (the same thing).

In the same vein, some DMs give out character xp for things done by the player e.g. bringing snacks to the game or writing a detailed backstory. Bleah!

In 4e, XP are bascially a pacing device. Provided the players are actually engaging the game - resolving encounters (be they combat or non-combat) in a way that engages the agreed story focuses of play (ie earns quest awards), they earn XP. In DMG 2 this is even extended to the idea that non-encounter-focused but serious exploratory play earns XP. The basic rate is around one level-appropriate monsters worth per quarter-hour of play. Hence, provided that players sincerely play the game, their PCs will advance in level, thereby progressing through the stages of the game (heroic, paragon, epic and the endgame).

At a frightening pace, I might add. Level advance should be a side-effect of play, not the main focus of it.

Awarding XP for failing at a skill challenge is part of this. But if the players "avoid" a skill challenge in the sense of (say) teleport around it, and hence engage in 5 minutes of play rather than 1 hour of play, then on the 4e logic XP shouldn't be awarded. Obviously the players didn't want to play that part of the game, they wanted to do something else - so let's have them do that, and then award XP when that has been done.

If the teleport got them around a known* obstacle that would otherwise have required a skill challenge they should get the xp for it. (or, in my view, the xp should be divided between the character(s) who thought of the teleport idea and the character who cast it)

But let's take a more basic example. Let's say that written into a given adventure is this skill challenge: a cliff the party needs to climb in order to reach the adventure site at the top. They don't have flight or any other magical means of help. They can succeed, and climb up; or they can fail, and fall. Or they can avoid it completely by finding another way around and coming at the adventure from another direction! This is what should earn the same xp as beating the cliff.

* - bypassing something without ever knowing of its existence doesn't count.

This is also why 4e, more than any other edition, lends itself completely to "level when the story makes it appropriate" approach - and the DMG expressly canvasses that option (p 121), the first to do so as far as I'm aware.

This is a mechanic which for a bunch of reasons I don't like at all.

First, if levelling is by DM handwave either a) everyone levels at the same time whether they deserve to or not, or b) the DM will inevitably end up (rightly or wrongly) being accused of playing favourites.

It also goes against having a party with varying levels in it, which in a system that has permanent level loss along with occasional items that bestow levels is going to happen. And when it does, an across-the-board handwave system means the lower levels will never catch up to the higher. In a standard J-curve advancement system the lower levels will slowly catch up in number, if not in raw xp; as in a 4th-level chasing a 7th-level; by the time the 7th gets to 8th the 4th will probably be 7th.

And, it goes against characters being rewarded for what they actually do in the game. If character A is always sticking her nose in and taking risks in order to move things forward she should be better rewarded *by the game* than character B whose only concern is his own safety and who hides at the first sign of danger.

Lan-"when in doubt, charge"-efan

 

[Lanefan]

In order, we have:

- 13th Age

- Cortex Plus or Fate systems

- Dungeon World

- D&D 4e, 13th Age, or Dungeon World

All of which are systems I haven't played, and other than 4e have not even read the books for.

- This is a general, system-neutral GMing principle and can apply to all systems (but might be adversarial to the horror-ride agenda of a system like Cthulu or Dread). However, it is a sub-tenet of the VB, indie axiom of "say yes or roll the dice" (but its origins really predate the formalizing of it).

What does "VB" stand for here?

- Assuming its a good faith, plausible proposal by the player, this above, very specific, GMing technique would be found in the portfoloio of a pair of GMing agendas:

1) Metaplot-centric D&D play with heavy-handed GMing deployed to keep the component parts (in this case, a micro-conflict) of the GM's prepared metaplot (or AP) together, keep it dramatic, and as the exclusive locus of play. Players may be good with this because they primarily want to see the setting scenery, experience the GM's story machinations, and roll some dice. Conversely, the situation may become extremely disfunctional as more proactive players seek to propel the story's emergent facets themselves and, when stymied in their efforts to do so, they may "refuse to play along" and "break the game" by "acting out" (as I suspect GMs who feel that is inappropriate behavior might cast it).

2) Challenge-based D&D (pawn stance or not) where the GM is protecting "the precious encounter." If this sort of technique was deployed, and discovered by the players, in this agenda, it would be decried as foul play due to the GM ad-hoc gaming the scene (and the acruing of fairly benign player assets which might then be used for advantageous action declaration and resolution) and upturning the authenticity of the challenge and its resolution (through illusory scene-detail-generation resolution masking what is actually GM force - rather then letting the dice legitimately decide, saying 50:50 and rolling percentile dice out on the table).

You make that all sound way more negative than it needs to, I think. It's entirely possible the DM is simply trying to keep what could be an interesting encounter interesting and-or challenging and-or somewhat dramatic. Depends on the table whether this is OK, as you say.

However, if the player proposal is not good faith and/or obviously implausible (eg - the player attempts to stipulate an asset that either (i) utterly breaks genre or (ii) is entirely inconsistent with the overt, table-established backstory - solely to execute a scene-ending power play), its the GMs responsibility (to everyone at the table) to rectify this agenda dysfunction (twixt this player and everyone else) neatly in the moment and then address it fully outside of play. Here I would put "beard on NPC001" and "boxes in an alley" on one side and "ELMINSTER'S MY PAL GUSY AND HE IS CONVENIENTLY SITTING RIGHT HERE WITH A BAZOOKA LOL" on the extreme other.

I come from a background of perhaps slightly more DM-vs.-player playstyle than you, thus almost any player proposals are likely to be weighted in the player's favour. We're not cutthroat, but there's always a slight in-character sense of "us against the world", and as the DM represents the world just as the players represent the PCs there's always going to be that slight edge to things. Which I like.

Clearly you couple D&D 4e, 13th Age, or Dungeon World together. It looks like you put the asset/scene-detail generation schematic of the Cortex Plus and Fate systems somewhere to the inside of that. I suspect you put AD&D and 3.x on the other side.

Er...I do? I'm only familiar with the various D&D's (and by extension Pathfinder to some extent); and yes, there's a huge difference between how 1e and 4e seem to work in play, both mechanically and thworetically.

I want to evaluate the above Roguish Swashbuckling of 4e, 13th Age, and DW and the AD&D Fighter Hordebreaking elements and how they might be similar or different (in terms of table agenda, nature of character resources, and play procedures).

The AD&D Fighter (courtesy PHB stock feature in 1e and C&T Heroic Fray in 2e) works out in the fiction as a rock that waves of lesser enemies break upon. How is this accomplished? By way of manipulating the subjective metagame of the D&D action economy when faced with hordes of lesser foes (1 attack per level) in order to achieve the sought outcome; hordebreaker.

Before going further, I'll toss in that in 30 years of DMing 1e with this rule in place it has happened maybe ten times; largely because the presence of even one valid opponent in the fray knocks out the one-attack-per-level bit. That said, it *almost* came up in my session last night, except the PCs managed to scare the foes away first.

He doesn't all of a sudden develop some kind of supercharged Haste spell when in the presence of a pile of mooks. His actual rate of attack doesn't increase. However, folks who percieve (a) rate of attack as an actual objective metric whose locus of control is internal to the martial actor and (b) the action economy of D&D as an actual objective process-simulator (1:1 swing of a weapon vs AC mush contest) would seem to need some kind of externality to explain this (extreme to say the least) increase in rate of attack speed. Of course that makes no sense under any scrutiny. Its outcome-based, metagame manipulation of the AD&D action economy/rate of attack rules in order to simultaneously provide the player with a thematic class feature and an engaging play experience. Case closed.

Well, case not quite closed; as this rule touches on something that can annoy me in game design: all or nothing. Here, the 7th level fighter either gets 7 attacks per round or 3/2 (2 per if specialized). That's a huge jump based on only 1 level or HD difference of the foes - if they're all less than 1 HD/level the fighter opens up at 7/round, give the foes even one level and the fighter drops to her usual attack rate. And yes, there's no in-game explanation for it either...if the fighter gets 7 attacks per round against idiots she should by logic also get 7 attacks per round against real opponents. But she doesn't, and as I type this I'm talking myself into ditching the attack-per-level rule in my game in favour of maybe one extra attack per round period against minor foes.

I'm curious why an outcome-based player resource (thematic swashbuckling via asset generation and stunt performance) that "just works out because he is a BA swashbuckler" is authorial control/4th wall breaking and deviant from trad, yet an outcome-based player resource (thematic hordebreaking via metagame manipulation of the action economy when in the presence of mooks) in AD&D (both 1e and 2) might be deemed deployed from the perspective of the character and trad?

There's little difference - too little, thus the metagame action manipulation has to go.

It depends on (a) the play agenda, (b) the GMing principles, and (c) the system's mechanics. In a perfect world, these three components are carefully synthesized by the designers to churn out a specified, functional play experience.

That'll be the day...

Lan-"rolling the dice for one attack per level per round could take a while"-efan

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

This is ultimately what the boxes/beard discussion is about, too - if the players are keen on climbing boxes, what is the point of the GM not introducing boxes into the alley and insisting that the players do it his/her preconceived way? If the players want to infiltrate the guild in bearded disguise, what is the pont of the GM insisting that the wizard is clean-shaven, and hence making the infiltration take some other form?

The question "what is the point" is not rhetorical. There may be a point - upthread I likened unravelling the GM's intended solution to solving a sudoku - but if the players are looking for something other than sudoku-solving from their RPGing the GM might want to take notice. After all, it's not as if the OP is a statement of total congruence between GM and player expectations and experiences!

The problem is that "players" aren't one entity with one opinion. At any one table you're likely to have 4-6 players with 4-6 different likes and dislikes. There is literally NO way to make everyone completely happy. I believe that due to this fact, it is the responsibility of all players to be flexible. I enjoy acting my character and a bit of intrigue and social challenges, I enjoy killing things, I enjoy exploring dungeons, I enjoy puzzles. If any of these things come up in game, I'll just go with it.

To me, the idea that someone would show up at the table hating one of those things so much that if the game moved in that direction they'd be forced to leave is kind of wrong. Those people don't really like D&D. They only like a subset of D&D that caters to their particular needs/wants.

The point, in my case, is to make the game more interesting or at least go towards a more interesting conclusion. If infiltrating the guild in bearded disguise is going to create an hour long roleplaying session between one PC and a bunch of NPCs as he attempts to act his way into the guild and discover their plans while the other players sit around looking bored, then I'm going to say no or find some reason the infiltration fails.

If my plan is that the Guild's plot cannot be discovered because it would ruin the surprise ending to the game, I'll likely throw road blocks in their way if they attempt a plan that would discover the plot early. If it is as easy as saying "Yeah, he doesn't have a beard" then I will do that.

I often do not not have an "intended solution". Instead, I have a list of "solutions I WON'T allow" and allow everything else. Solutions I won't allow are pretty much anything that splits the party for an extended period of time, anything that feels like a "loophole" to get around a restriction, or anything that is anticlimactic.

The end goal being that players have more fun when playing through a more interesting story. Even if they complain about a particular plan not working or not being allowed their experience overall is improved whether they realize it or not.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I think its pretty pervasive, to be honest. I think it cuts to the core of the "who should have the authority at the table" question that haunts these discussions so deeply. Almost every one of these threads (from alignment oversight to the play procedures for fleshing out mundane scene details that may become relatively benign assets) assumes that the precautionary principle must be applied for the sake of us all because player proposals are assumed to be coming from an M.O. of dysfunction or bad-faith.

That's because, IME, almost all player proposals ARE coming from a position of bad faith. I once spent 2 hours on a phone call with one of my friends because he was making a character for a Rifts game. He was telling me his character background and how his character, despite being a Rahu-man(a 14 foot tall giant with 4 arms) was going to start with one of the most powerful human made power armors in the game(Glitterboy armor). He managed to get one built for his size and shape because he was taken in by a racist society who hated non-humans and they took a liking to him and eventually grew to trust him so much that they custom made him his own suit of armor.

Now only was his background completely unlikely to the point of basically being impossible. But it was readily apparent that he just wanted his character to be more powerful. So he spent a long time making up a background for his character just to give himself more power. He would not take no for an answer and spent that 2 hours tweaking his background slightly to make it more and more believable so that I'd relent and give him the suit of power armor.

This is the kind of things I expect my players to do. So, when one of them says "Hey, how about this..." I put my guard up immediate and start looking for the hidden reasons why they'd be suggesting that and why it might make them more powerful. If a suggestion comes out it almost always is an attempt to trick the DM into giving them more power without realizing it.

What is interesting with this would be to find out what cross-section of GMs that hold these ideas also promote the "access the plot dump" (see Mearls GMing in one of the introductory videos to a live session of 5e) illusory mechanical resolution technique. Its a totally dysfunctional play procedure in every way possible...but the GM is in control so is that enough to warrant a pass on the technique? I mean, I saw nary a batting of an eyelash by supporters over it when that video was trotted out. However, it felt like I was hit by a cattle prod when I bore witness to it...you could probably hear my "OH GOD NO" groan in Australia when I saw that bit.

Having not watched that video, what did he do exactly? From my watching of their sessions in the past, their games are almost identical to mine. I assume whatever he did is normal at the tables I've played at, but I'm not sure what "access the plot dump" means.

 

[Greg K]

Everyone I played with and everyone I met always did, including our university gaming club which had numerous 1e groups even in the late 80's.

Just shows you the different experiences people have. My own experience was more like Lan's. Nobody I knew used gold for xp and that included not only home campaigns, but also both my university gaming club in Irvine and the tables at which I had played during a few visits to a large gaming club in my home city.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

That's because, IME, almost all player proposals ARE coming from a position of bad faith.

wow... I know people who I call powergamers (hence my screen name) that I wouldn't say that about... heck I only a few times can say people really tried to make bad faith proposals (although I was one of them...) and the people who made them too many times have long sense left all of the groups I know... how can you even attempt to play with people who do this all the time?

 

[Hussar]

I used to try to fight things like that, but, now? Naw. If you want a Holy Avenger at 1st level? Ok, take it. Now, what do you do with it? Why is that item important to you? What about that makes the experience of the game better for you? Nine times out of ten, you only have to do this once and the players get it out of their systems. If you oppose the player's wishes, then it becomes you against them and that's an entire game in itself. How far can I, as the player, go, before the DM shuts me down? I've played that game on both sides of the screen. But, once you stop playing the game entirely, suddenly it's no fun trying to game the DM. If you know that DM will say yes, then there's no point in seeing what you can get away with.

Works far, far better in the long run.

 

[pemerton]

What is interesting with this would be to find out what cross-section of GMs that hold these ideas also promote the "access the plot dump" (see Mearls GMing in one of the introductory videos to a live session of 5e) illusory mechanical resolution technique. Its a totally dysfunctional play procedure in every way possible...but the GM is in control so is that enough to warrant a pass on the technique? I mean, I saw nary a batting of an eyelash by supporters over it when that video was trotted out. However, it felt like I was hit by a cattle prod when I bore witness to it...you could probably hear my "OH GOD NO" groan in Australia when I saw that bit.

I haven't seen the video, and neither you nor [MENTION=336]D'karr[/MENTION] is encouraging me to change this state of affairs!

What happened?