D&D 5E What are the Roles now?

[pemerton]

I have responded to emphatic statements from the pro-4E said claiming that the experiences of those who like 5E but don't like 4E are flat out wrong because the experiences are the same.

Who has said that? I haven't. [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION] hasn't. Can you quote a post you have in mind?

But someone (perhaps not you) who actively rejects doing something is not experiencing THAT THING they are rejecting doing.

I don't know what you think the reference of "THAT THING" is.

Upthread you described it as "immersion in character". I don't know many RPGers who reject that. Most of the players in my 4e game - probably all of them, but for some it is more obvious - enjoy immersion in character. My claim is that the presence of player authorship mechanics or practices in a game does not preclude immersion in character.

If by "immersion in character" you mean "playing without player authorship" then it is tautologically true that player authorship precludes immersion in character. But there is no reason to think that "immersion in character", so defined, is any sort of distinct psychological experience. If you define "immersed in the romantic harmonies" as meaning "listening to Beethoven" then, by definition, I can't be immersed in the romantic harmonies while listening to Wagner. But that doesn't given any reason to suppose that the emotional and aesthetic character of my experience, when listening to Wagner, is not the same as your when listening to Beethoven.

(Whereas we might both agree that the pleasure from listening to the Sex Pistols is quite different.)

 

[pemerton]

This would make them no different from faithful people IRL.

Board rules preclude teasing this out fully. But in the history of human thought there have been many influential writers who have defended arguments from the occurrence of religious experiences (eg Kant, or in a more radical existentialist mode Kierkegaard and Graham Greene) or from the subjective character of certain epistemic states (eg Plato, Descartes) to the conclusion that the objects of such experiences must exist.

In other words, the epistemic situation of faithful people IRL is a matter of philosophical contention. I have views on that contention (and wrote on aspects of it for my MA thesis) but I think board rules won't let me spell them out here. But given that relatively clever and reasonable people can disagree in real life, I'm not sure why an RPG is bound to suppose that the more sceptical interpretation of claims of religious experience must be true within the fiction.

there are (or can be) mechanics (bonuses, etc.) that do (or can) reflect a deity's intervention.

But do these exhaust the scope of divine interference in mortal affairs? In 4e the default presumption is "no", because by default players of divinely inspired PCs, just as much as the players of any other sort of PC, have access to the rules for skill challenges, p 42 improvisations, etc.

The reason I started my thread about miracles in 5e (which I think you posted in) was to see how 5e players think about this issue. I don't see anything expressly in the 5e rules that mandates spells and class features as the only manifestations of divine intervention in the world, but likewise the 5e rules don't have the same features as the 4e rules to make a contrary presumption the default.

So then what happens if a cleric in your game casts a spell like commune... or, if you are playing 5e, use the Divine Intervention power... Which is also another (again at least in 5e) problematic area with pemerton's example of just declaring your deity intervened and it's true... then what's the purpose of that ability??

The purpose of the divine intervention ability is to have a percentage chance of having the deity cast a free spell, possibly of a higher level than you can cast, in your favour. In it's basic mechanical structure the divine intervention ability is no different from a 4e utility power.

I don't see any connection between the presence or absence of that ability in the game, and a player narrating the end of an effect upon his PC as a manifestation of divine providence.

The in-fiction source of a PCs powers are, of course, all but irrelevant.

This is not true by defaut in 4e - power source is a keyword, and keywords underpin the connection between the mechanics and the fiction. If you ignore the fact that clerics are servants of the divine while other characters are not, of course that's your prerogative. But nothing in the game dictates it, and it is hard to see how p 42 could be used if you didn't have regard to these keywords (as well as many others, of course).

You run the risk of some discontinuity/nonsense when the faithless rogue is later hit by a Baleful Polymorph and experiences the same results

As [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION] indicated, this need not be so. The rogue PC will have his/her own basis/rationale for escaping from a Baleful Polymorph.

Gygax talked about this in his DMG: a cleric's successful saving throw is a result of divine beneficence, a thieve's is a result of cunning of hand and mind, etc. (Gygax doesn't specify who narrates this: player or GM. I think he is probably assuming it will be the GM.)

It is conjecture unless confirmed by a Commune spell or something of that nature.

<snip>

If a commune spell with the Raven Queen or other empirical evidence indicated otherwise, I would then have to deal with it as a fact of the shared narrative.

I'm not sure how you can say this about my game- wouldn't I know whether or not it's conjecture?

I'm also not really sure how a Commune spell helps. First, look at it from the perspective of the fiction. What does a Commune spell consist in? The PC performs a certain ritual, and then is vouchsafed a certain experience. If the PC has the experience without the ritual, how is that any different? There are certainly D&D modules out there in which PCs have prophetic dreams without having to perform rituals prior to them.

Now look at it from the perspective of the real world, rather than the fiction. How does a Commune spell help? The player of the paladin asks, via Commune, "Did you save me from the Baleful Polymorph?" How, as GM, am I meant to know what the answer is that the Raven Queen will provide? Either I have to make it up or the player has to make it up. If the player makes it up, what difference does it make whether the player makes it up when the Commune spell is cast, or when the curse ends?

If you are saying that you, as a fellow player, are happy only when the GM makes it up, that's an important fact about you as an RPGer, but I don't see how it is relevant to me, given that we are not playing together.

That mode of player authorship strikes me as an example where a player feels there is an "arbitrary space" (ie., the effect ends at the end of the next turn) and fills in the blank. However, as a fellow player, I would automatically interpret it as conjecture of the PC, because the fiction the player authored doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

Again, that would be an important fact about you if you were playing in the game. But in my game the opposite is true: it makes sense that the gods protect their devout worshippers and servants.

Also, I wouldn't necessarily call it an "arbitrary space" in the sense that was used in the article you cited. An arbitrary space is one with no reason. But in this case, there is a reason - it's just that the reason is supplied by the player.

But I do fully agree that there is a blank that gets filled in. The existence of blanks is pretty much a necessary condition of player authorship: if everything about the gameworld is already known, then there is no space in which the player can author. For instance, to refer back to the paladin's warhorse, if the location of every horse, and every evil fighter, in the gameworld is already known, then that ability can't work as described in the AD&D DMG, because there is no scope to stick a new horse and a new evil fighter into the fiction.

[MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION] and I have discussed this need for "blank spaces" to underpin certain sorts of action resolution in the past. And if you look at GM advice for games that support player authorship, they tend to discuss the significance of "blank spaces", and what details it is helpful to fill in in advance, and what details are better left loose and unspecifid so that they can be fleshed out in the course of play.

IME, allowing a player to assert the truth of the Raven Queen's intercession by default would be pushing it.

I think you may be underestimating how much player buy-in is required for all of these things. IME, tossing that kind of thing in without warning can lead to a very rough ride for the group. I agree that some people like that, but there are many others who find it annoying, distasteful, or "cheating".

This may all be true. So might the converse - I know that from my group (which is not just my current players but an overlapping continuity of players going back 25 years) I would get zero buy-in for a game in which players didn't have some degree of authorship over features of the gameworld and backstory in which their PCs are intimately bound up.

My point remains - here is one instance in which player authorship did not impede, but rather fostered, immersion in the character.

I know that spells are formulas for discrete expressions of magic, with duration being a component of that discrete predictable effect.

in a D&D style gameworld, things happen...weird things that aren't mundane like people turning into frogs. However (in games like D&D) these supernatural events and powers have durations, etc. that end up functioning like a kind of physics (even if a poor one).

<snip>

Why did the Baleful Polymorph end?-because effects like Baleful Polymorph do that.

If the claim here is that process simulation mechanics tend to leave no room for player authorship, then I agree. But if the claim is that 4e's mechanics (and D&D's mechanics more generally) are per se process sim, then I don't agree.

I guess people could run the Human Hexer's Baleful Polymorph ability as process sim if they wanted to, but nowhere do the rules tell you that that is what is going on, and plenty of the rest of 4e's mechanics tend to push against a process sim interpretation (as is pretty well known, I think).

[MENTION=6781913]Rejuvenator[/MENTION]'s comment about "filling in the blanks" is spot on, in my view, but that only comes into play if you are not running the mechanics as process sim.

I don't see why, if everyone at the table agrees (or just the DM, depending on how you play) that it's actually the Raven Queen ending the Baleful Polymorph, why that isn't the case. Isn't that how most narration works?

What I think is interesting is how that revelation/narration effects future decisions.

Spot on. On both points: the truth of the narration is established by consensus (which, at my table, is generally evidenced by an absence of disagreement); and what makes it interesting is how the narration affects future play.

In this particular case, its contribution to future play is mostly in respect of colour and theme - it reinforces the religious conviction of the paladin, the reality of the Raven Queen's actions in the world, the prospect that the non-Raven Queen devotee PCs (two of five) are nevertheless ultimately helping the Raven Queen realise her goals, etc.

so if the DM picks it up and run's with it making it a storyline...then that's fine. However, the cleric's declaration is only relevant, interesting, or even distinguishable as true if such a diversion happens.

I'm not sure why you use the word "diversion". Diversion from what? In games in which player authorship figures, it is also generally accepted that it establishes the focus of play (goals and/or theme and colour).

D&D is, I think, solidly in the Conan camp. Its earlier incarnations are all about tomb-robbing murderhobos and nihilistic meaningless death due to a failed save, etc. Making D&D more romantic or Tolkienesque, I believe, requires heavy-handed DM intervention in the mechanical operation of the game

as much as I like heavy narrative and joint authorship games, I've come to view D&D as a poor chassis for a game focusing on that

I'm not really sure what to make of these remarks in the context of my post. For instance, how does an assertion about the need for railroading relate to my example of player authorship as a source and expression of, rather than an obstacle to, immersion?

Are you arguing that by using player authorship (plus other features of 4e, like inspirational healing, etc) to realise the sort of game I want I am doing it wrong (perhaps contradicting the ethos of D&D?). Is the next step in the argument that to get the sort of game I want in D&D I must use railroading, and that - because railroading is in my view, as I think in yours, a pretty obvious unsatisfactory game experience - D&D is therefore not suited for doing what I want?

For the sake of clarity: I am not railroading. A player narrating the truth of divine beneficence in the gameworld is not an instance of heavy-handed GMing - it is not really an instance of GMing at all, except that I did not exercise any veto over the introduction of this content into the shared fiction. Furthermore, that bit of player narration did not clash with any of the game mechanics - it exploited them (taking advantage of what Rejuvenator called the blank space to be filled in). And it was one part of the overall game experience that produced, and continues to produce, an epic fantasy game in which the gods are real and the Dusk War is almost upon us, and which is not remotely Conan-esque.

I've generally run priests' powers in the way that you describe since about that time. Otherwise, you've got to jump in as DM and pretend to be (a) god and start selectively granting miracles, taking away spellcasting, and the like.

This is also a bit puzzling to me. Why are you assuming that heavy-handed GMing is the defaut, when the topic of discussion is an alternative to that, namely, player authorship? If the player is allowed to voice the ethos and convictions of the deity, then there is no need to assume the the sort of nihilistic religion that [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION] describes, but nor is there any need for the GM to heavy-handedly play the deity. The player does that heavy lifting.

are characters in your game never wrong when they make assertions outloud?

<snip>

So one character asserts "the Raven Queen did it" and is automatically presumed to be speaking the truth, what if another character asserts "I am invulnerable!" is he not automatically afforded the same consideration

I'm not sure how seriously you are asking this question, given that you are familiar with RPGs in which, and RPG techniques whereby, players exercise narrative authority.

In Marvel Heroic RP, a player of The Thing can narrate, as part of his/her action declaration, "I pick up a car and hit the Overmind over the head with it!" - thereby, among other things, making it true that at least one car was parked in the street. A player of The Punisher can't make the same narration. How do we tell? We look at keywords, the character history/description that appears on the facing page of the Datafile, etc.

How do we know that the player in my 4e game can narrate the beneficence of the Raven Queen - we look at keywords, refer to the character history and description that is established via a combination of pre-game backstory and actual play, etc. Much the same things that led Gygax to suggest that saving throws be narrated one way for clerics and a different way for thieves.

If an attack misses a PC, and the character's player wants the PC to respond "I'm invulnerable", s/he is free to do so, but subsequent events are likely to prove that narration false, because the default chance to be hit in 4e is around 60%.

If the paladin PC is, once again, turned into a frog (I can't remember whether the ability is at-will, rechargable or 1x/enc) then that may provoke a crisis of faith - "Why has the Raven Queen abandoned me?" It may even provoke a retcon ("The world is a cold and random cosmos after all, with only the illusion of divine beneficence.") I don't see why that would be a problem - it looks to me like the game working as it should!

My imagination would naturally and automatically consider the ramifications of the player's authorship. That bit of Raven Queen fiction starts a major domino effect that intrudes on my immersion. If the other players and DM aren't equally willing to factor that domino effect into the worldbuilding, then I'm left holding the shattered pieces of my presumptions and trying to patch it back together

But why would the active presence of a deity in a D&D gameworld have any sort of general tendency to intrude on immersion? (It may well do so in your case without there being any general tendency.) This is the stuff that D&D gameworlds tend to be made of, particularly the default setting for 4e, which consists of a backstory of mythic history rather than any detailed geography etc (there is also the Nentir Vale map, but it is completely orthogonal to the mythic history and I have never used it - as my campaign map I use the one from B11 Night's Dark Terror).

It seems to me that a major point of having three devotees of the Raven Queen as player characters (see my post not far upthread), in a game in which the whole trajectory of play (per default 4e) is towards the culmination of history in an epic Dusk War between the gods and the primordials, is to explore and discover the ramifications of devotion to the Raven Queen in that context.

If you think too hard about that kind of stuff, most of the PC's convictions in a D&D game may turn out to be irrational.

For me, this tends to disrupt immersion. That's why I prefer an approach in which reasons emerge and are revealed in play. That they happen in play, and that some of them are authored by the players, tends - in my experience - to make them more salient and "real" (ie immersive).

 

[Ratskinner]

Board rules preclude teasing this out fully. But in the history of human thought there have been many influential writers who have defended arguments from the occurrence of religious <snippage>

Yeah, that's why I was apologetic for bringing it up.

Also, I'd like to second the notion that when you cut and paste different posts together to respond like this, that it makes it awkward to respond to them. Although I appreciate the effort such a long post must take. I know my eyes are glazing over as I finish this.....so fair warning if something looks weird, I may just be too tired to notice.

But do these exhaust the scope of divine interference in mortal affairs? In 4e the default presumption is "no", because by default players of divinely inspired PCs, just as much as the players of any other sort of PC, have access to the rules for skill challenges, p 42 improvisations, etc.

Wait, so Divinely inspired PCs only have capacity to act (make skill checks etc.) from Divine inspiration/intercession ? Without the Raven Queen, her clerics and paladins have no skill at persuasion or arms? This statement doesn't seem to follow for me, and is at least orthogonal to anything I was saying. I admit bafflement as to how "You can't (or shouldn't) narrate what the Raven Queen did or didn't do." is equivalent to "You can't use the challenge mechanics."

The reason I started my thread about miracles in 5e (which I think you posted in) was to see how 5e players think about this issue. I don't see anything expressly in the 5e rules that mandates spells and class features as the only manifestations of divine intervention in the world, but likewise the 5e rules don't have the same features as the 4e rules to make a contrary presumption the default.

I don't feel its controversial that gods in D&D are generally NPCs at best. Ascribing motivations and actions to NPCs is generally the purview of the DM. If the DM wants to do such things as you described and the table is keen on it, go for it. I'm fair sure that allowing a player to determine the actions of a deity as casually as you describe is a bit unusual for D&D play, and may require the kind of long-term group consensus you say your group has. I think any PC making that statement at any table I've played at would be taken as making a proclamation of faith, not statement fact. (You do later seem to imply that this was not a particularly consequential declaration, beyond the coolness of the retort...so we just may be weighing things differently.)

This is not true by defaut in 4e - power source is a keyword, and keywords underpin the connection between the mechanics and the fiction. If you ignore the fact that clerics are servants of the divine while other characters are not, of course that's your prerogative. But nothing in the game dictates it, and it is hard to see how p 42 could be used if you didn't have regard to these keywords (as well as many others, of course).

IME with 4e, admittedly limited, the Power Source keywords were the least useful/used, as in I don't recall them ever being relevant at all. I seem to vaguely recall how (at least initially) they were trying to make sure that they didn't have much impact, mechanically.

Gygax talked about this in his DMG: a cleric's successful saving throw is a result of divine beneficence, a thieve's is a result of cunning of hand and mind, etc. (Gygax doesn't specify who narrates this: player or GM. I think he is probably assuming it will be the GM.)

I don't recall him specifying the correspondence, i.e. everybody's HP and saves are some mishmash of providence, skill, etc. I also agree that he was intending the DM to be the narrator of such things (or at least exert strong editorial discretion upon his players.)

This may all be true. So might the converse - I know that from my group (which is not just my current players but an overlapping continuity of players going back 25 years) I would get zero buy-in for a game in which players didn't have some degree of authorship over features of the gameworld and backstory in which their PCs are intimately bound up.

My point remains - here is one instance in which player authorship did not impede, but rather fostered, immersion in the character.

Hang on....are you under the impression that I think that's an absolute? Why would this:

I think that can vary wildly depending on what manner of "immersion" players are seeking. If you are seeking immersion in the story, then authorship is no problem. If you are seeking character immersion, then authorship goes "bonk". (Or can). Personally, I find complication of game rules to drag me out of the fiction space more than authorship. However, as one might expect, YMMV wildly.

Make you think that? Is there some key qualifying or softening phrase that I neglected to put in?

I'm not sure why you use the word "diversion". Diversion from what? In games in which player authorship figures, it is also generally accepted that it establishes the focus of play (goals and/or theme and colour).

Diversion from whatever the game would have done otherwise. I'm presuming the DM had something in mind (even 4e isn't so easy as to run without prep, I wouldn't think) and after the player's comment, there is a new storyline. IIRC, you consider 4e to be a "no myth" game, and I think its probably the closest of D&D games, but I don't think 5e generally is. I can tell you that very few groups I know play any edition of D&D that way. (Although "Session Zero" is becoming more popular, I'm not sure that counts.)

I'm not really sure what to make of these remarks in the context of my post. For instance, how does an assertion about the need for railroading relate to my example of player authorship as a source and expression of, rather than an obstacle to, immersion?

It doesn't, it relates to the types of fiction cited in relation to the mechanics. To guarantee the plot results of romantic fantasy, the D&D DM needs to have the ability to override unfavorable results of D&D's combat mechanics in the kill-loot cycle. The degree and predictability of such necessity varies by edition (and optional rules within editions, at times). While 4e is solidly on the "rarely, if ever" end of that spectrum, it still isn't a guarantee of any particular result to the fiction by rule. At the very least, even the 4e GM is required to plot and set up a suitable array of enemies and NPCs to reflect what you have referred to as "signalling" by the players for the plots they want to see. There are other games for which this is either explicit or implicit in the operation of the mechanics.

I haven't gotten to play enough 5e to know how it shakes down in this regard from personal experience. I'd love to hear from those who have, especially if they've made heavy use of the mechanics & options that purport to support such play. My suspicion is that it hews more closely to the older editions, but ::shrug::.

Are you arguing that by using player authorship (plus other features of 4e, like inspirational healing, etc) to realise the sort of game I want I am doing it wrong (perhaps contradicting the ethos of D&D?). Is the next step in the argument that to get the sort of game I want in D&D I must use railroading, and that - because railroading is in my view, as I think in yours, a pretty obvious unsatisfactory game experience - D&D is therefore not suited for doing what I want?

I can't be sure of how to respond to this without being in your head and knowing precisely what you want out of D&D. Which is something that, despite lengthly conversations here, I do not claim. Although I also won't claim total ignorance we are getting into pretty finely nuanced discussion here. 4e is, in many ways that are likely the reasons you are its fan, an abberation for D&D. (In many other ways, like AEDU, I don't think it is at all...so go figure.) I believe that you yourself have stated several times about how 4e gave you precisely the kind of game you were missing in previous editions. In spite of that, I still suspect that your way of playing 4e was unusual (even if the rules supported it better than previous editions). I also suspect that 4e's success in this regard is more a matter of permission or flexibility rather than direct commission.

Now, I'm not sure what exactly the "ethos of D&D" would be, but its default mode, supported by each and every edition I'm familiar with is: "We go on adventures (often in dungeons) kill things (sometimes dragons) and take their stuff. For this we get experience points which make us better at ...well, doing that again." That's not exactly the Hero's Journey or one of the Romantic Fantasy plots. Can other stuff happen around that?...you bet. Can the participants invent complicated rationales for all this stuff?...you bet. Can groups play with some of the rules differently...sure. Does that make it a great narratively-intense storytelling game?...not in my experience. Not that that makes D&D a poor game, or unfun, or negative in any way. It just is what it is.

I'm not sure how seriously you are asking this question, given that you are familiar with RPGs in which, and RPG techniques whereby, players exercise narrative authority.

In Marvel Heroic RP, a player of The Thing can narrate, as part of his/her action declaration, "I pick up a car and hit the Overmind over the head with it!" - thereby, among other things, making it true that at least one car was parked in the street. A player of The Punisher can't make the same narration. How do we tell? We look at keywords, the character history/description that appears on the facing page of the Datafile, etc.

My comments were specifically in reference to D&D-style games. I didn't intend for them to extend to all games. Other games, like MHRP, are designed with heavier player authorship (or more distributed authorship in general) in mind, sometimes even to extreme degree. Which is fine. Heck, one of the playbooks my group used in Dungeon World had a "move" that flatly stated there was always something in every scene that he could use for his daring maneuvers be it a rope, chandelier, runaway wagon, whatever. (BTW, that sounds great, but it gets old very quickly, IME)

I even think there's some room for player authorship in D&D beyond what the mechanics might strictly prescribe. However, I think that has to tempered to account for both the competitive nature of some groups/playstyles and what the rules are designed to handle, especially vis-a-vis the role of DM. So while the MHRP Thing's player may declare that action with the car, he doesn't add any dice for it unless he spent an action to create it as an...asset(? IIRC). This is not so true, or free, for a D&D player who might narrate picking up a weapon on the battlefield because it has mechanical impact (the damage die, proficiency, etc.) that are inherent to the rules system.

This is also an issue for free-form abilities like Polymorph or 3e Summoning spells in D&D, as compared to games like MHRP or Fate, which live in freeform mechanics. When you summon or polymorph somebody into a form, then you need stats for that form. In MHRP and Fate, you may have just created an advantage that has easily described mechanical capacity to impact the narrative.

How do we know that the player in my 4e game can narrate the beneficence of the Raven Queen - we look at keywords, refer to the character history and description that is established via a combination of pre-game backstory and actual play, etc. Much the same things that led Gygax to suggest that saving throws be narrated one way for clerics and a different way for thieves.

If an attack misses a PC, and the character's player wants the PC to respond "I'm invulnerable", s/he is free to do so, but subsequent events are likely to prove that narration false, because the default chance to be hit in 4e is around 60%.

If the paladin PC is, once again, turned into a frog (I can't remember whether the ability is at-will, rechargable or 1x/enc) then that may provoke a crisis of faith - "Why has the Raven Queen abandoned me?" It may even provoke a retcon ("The world is a cold and random cosmos after all, with only the illusion of divine beneficence.") I don't see why that would be a problem - it looks to me like the game working as it should!

....and if you're willing to "retcon" the event, then I suggest that the character's declaration wasn't very meaningful beyond an expression of faith, anyway.

But why would the active presence of a deity in a D&D gameworld have any sort of general tendency to intrude on immersion? <snippage>
That they happen in play, and that some of them are authored by the players, tends - in my experience - to make them more salient and "real" (ie immersive).

I think you're conflating two points. The presence of a deity actively interfering in the characters lives requires (in all D&D play I've experienced) the DM to take an active role in portraying the deity, and to a proportional degree of heavy-handedness vis-a-vis the divine actions. (heh...literally a Deus Ex Machina) This may or may not be disruptive to an individual player's immersion.

 

[pemerton]

I'd like to second the notion that when you cut and paste different posts together to respond like this, that it makes it awkward to respond to them.

The flipside is that when multiple posters make the same point, it is easier to respond to them all at once. I also feel that it reinforces the public nature of the forum, which I regard as a valuable thing. Although it's a little bit like a conversation, I'm conscious that there are also others reading along without posting. So it's also a little bit like writing an essay.

.and if you're willing to "retcon" the event, then I suggest that the character's declaration wasn't very meaningful beyond an expression of faith, anyway.

This I don't agree with. Retconning is always an option in serial fiction (which is what an RPG campaign resembles - story built on the back of already-"published" story). That doesn't mean that non-retconned material has no significance. Non-retconned is not the same as ambivalent or uncemented.

Wait, so Divinely inspired PCs only have capacity to act (make skill checks etc.) from Divine inspiration/intercession ?

<snip>

IME with 4e, admittedly limited, the Power Source keywords were the least useful/used, as in I don't recall them ever being relevant at all. I seem to vaguely recall how (at least initially) they were trying to make sure that they didn't have much impact, mechanically.

Not "only". Simply "have the capacity to act."

The structure of the game certainly generates the idea that divinity infuses many of their actions, though - for instance, even a paladin's at-will attacks are divine, not martial.

But what I had in mind was skill challenges and p 42 - so if a cleric or paladin uses an encounter power to get +2 to a check in a skill challenge (as per DMG 2, building on remarks about power-use in skill challenges found in the PHB and DMG), that means that the divine is coming to his/her aid, although it will not be a standard use of that power.

More generally, there is no presumption in 4e that skill-use is inherently "mundane". This is expressly called out in relation to the Arcana skill; it is an implication that follows from many published suggestions for skill challenges and the like in which a Religion check is made to generate some sort of spiritual or divinely empowered consequence (eg using Religion to gain beneficial omens in the DMG; using Religion as a countermeasure to possession by a demon in Demonomicon; etc), as well as the use of Religion for many ritual checks.

Hence, narrating the end of an effect as a bestowal of divine beneficence doesn't contradict any mechanical presumption that only the standard uses of divine powers can count as manifestations of divine power.

On the issue of "mechanical impact" of power source keywords, mechanics can cover a range of matters. As a general rule, the technical details of resolution (roll these dice, add this stat, etc) are not dependent on power source, although it is notable that martial powers get very little if any typed damage, that radiant damage is overwhelmingly (though not exclusively) the province of divine powers, etc.

But I think these keywords are very important to understanding what is happening in the fiction. When a cleric speaks a healing word, that is a divine power - the cleric revivifies by speaking some sort of rousing or restorative prayer. Contrast the warlord's inspiring word - although identical in its mechanical effects, this represents the rousing charisma of the battle captain. I think these differences in colour matter. They contribute to a picture of what is happening in the fiction, and underpin subsequent framing of action, narration of resolution, etc.

An analogy could be drawn with Marvel Heroic RP: when Wolverine's player declares an attack using "I'm the best there is at what I do" for d8, and Captain America's player declares an attack using "Lead by Example", the mechanical resolution might be the same, but the action is meant to be narrated differently, and that different colour should infuse the narration of consequence, the framing of subsequent situations, etc.

I think the "timelines" over which 4e unfolds are often longer than MHRP - in 4e you may not get the thematic and narrative feedback from colour right away if you are resolving a combat and mostly using out-of-the-book powers (when p 42 and skill challenge are underway, then the timelines become closer to those of MHRP). At least in my experience, that doesn't mean they're not there.

I don't recall him specifying the correspondence, i.e. everybody's HP and saves are some mishmash of providence, skill, etc.

For hit points you are correct. For saving throws, in the section on divine intervention he calls out "the ever-greater abilities and better saving throws" of higher level characters as "represent[ing] the aid supplied by supernatural forces" (pp 111-12).

But in the section on saving throws (p 81), he says:

A character under magical attack is in a stress situation, and his or her own will force reacts instinctively to protect the character by slightly altering the effects of the magical assault. This protection takes a slightly different form for each class of character. Magic-users understand spells, even on an unconscious level, and are able to slightly tamper with one so as to render it ineffective. Fighters withstand them through sheer defiance, while clerics create small islands of faith. Thieves find they are able to avoid a spell's full effects by quickness . . .​

Given that a "small island of faith" is contrasted with sheer defiance, I have always assumed that the effect of that small island of faith is to bestow divine blessing. I have also always assumed that this is why clerics have the best saving throws vs poison and death magic (except for a small bracket of upper levels, where between 13th and 18th fighters are equal or better until clerics pass again at 19th): life is the special domain of their gods (given the default spell list and spell load-out of the AD&D cleric).

For a player to narrate the end of an effect in these sorts of terms seems to me an extension or development of what Gygax says, from GM to player authorship. It doesn't seem a radical departure from it as far as the relationship between mechanics and establishing fictional content is concerned.

(An aside: this is why I think one of 3E's biggest departures from AD&D is its changes to the saving throw rules, making them process-sim through-and-through. In this respect I think 5e is closer to 3E than to AD&D or 4e.)

while the MHRP Thing's player may declare that action with the car, he doesn't add any dice for it unless he spent an action to create it as an...asset(? IIRC). This is not so true, or free, for a D&D player who might narrate picking up a weapon on the battlefield because it has mechanical impact (the damage die, proficiency, etc.) that are inherent to the rules system.

This is also an issue for free-form abilities like Polymorph or 3e Summoning spells in D&D, as compared to games like MHRP or Fate, which live in freeform mechanics. When you summon or polymorph somebody into a form, then you need stats for that form. In MHRP and Fate, you may have just created an advantage that has easily described mechanical capacity to impact the narrative.

I think you may be underestimating how much 4e pushes towards the MHRP/Fate approach. For instance, one thing that codified "powers" do is reduce the incentive to pick up a free weapon simply for the buff; while the p 42 damage-by-level charts codify advantages in a way similar to those other systems.

This is even moreso in skill challenges.

Not to say that 4e is MHRP or Fate, but it's much closer to that than 3E or AD&D. I'm not sure about 5e, but I think it is probably closer to the earlier editions, lacking clearly codified level-appropriate damage, level-appropriate DCs, etc.

To guarantee the plot results of romantic fantasy, the D&D DM needs to have the ability to override unfavorable results of D&D's combat mechanics in the kill-loot cycle. The degree and predictability of such necessity varies by edition (and optional rules within editions, at times). While 4e is solidly on the "rarely, if ever" end of that spectrum, it still isn't a guarantee of any particular result to the fiction by rule. At the very least, even the 4e GM is required to plot and set up a suitable array of enemies and NPCs to reflect what you have referred to as "signalling" by the players for the plots they want to see. There are other games for which this is either explicit or implicit in the operation of the mechanics.

<snip>

I'm not sure what exactly the "ethos of D&D" would be, but its default mode, supported by each and every edition I'm familiar with is: "We go on adventures (often in dungeons) kill things (sometimes dragons) and take their stuff. For this we get experience points which make us better at ...well, doing that again."

There are a few things going on here.

First, 4e doesn't have a kill-loot cycle built into it. It is the first edition of D&D to drop the connection, in its mechanics, between killing and treasure acquisition (though 3E Oriental Adventures also does this, so can claim to be first but isn't a core book). Treasure parcels - whose receipt is guaranteed simply by playing the game, and thereby accruing the XP that make up a level - can be derived from looting, from gifting, from finding, etc. There is no presumption one way or another, and nothing in the monster entries comparable to treasure type (in AD&D) or the Treasure entry and treasure tables in 3E. Combined with inherent bonuses (in DMG 2) or treasure-as-item-upgrade (in Adventurer's Vault - this is how I have dropped the bulk of the treasure parcels in my game), there is no presumption in favour of treasure acquisition as looting.

Secondly, 4e doesn't require GM fudging of results to produce "romantic fantasy" play. Outcomes aren't guaranteed -in that respect it is a trad RPG, in which the protagonist can fail. But the divorcing of the system from process sim means that the GM is almost always free to narrate TPK-style defeat as unconsciousness rather than death. An exception occurred in the one "TPK" in my game - a dying PC was caught in AoE "friendly fire" and dropped below negative bloodied, therefore being officially dead.

But this leads to another point about fudging. When that PC died, it was easy to ask the player "Do you want to keep playing this guy, or bring in someone new?" The player wanted to continue with the same PC, so I narrated a resurrection scene which made sense in the fictional context (the Raven Queen sent her paladin back to deal with a wicked spirit that the goblin shaman had bound as a wraith) and simply deducted the cost of a Raise Dead ritual from the next treasure parcel. In other words, there is a very straightforward system economy against which to judge the extent and cost of such GM decisions. (I think this also counts as an example of some sort of player authorship, though not one that involved character immersion.)

4e is trad in its allocation to the GM of responsibility for preparing adversaries. (Though see some of my comments on GMing techniques below - the framework of its core cosmology, based around mythologically-grounded conflicts between the powers rather than the more traditional allocation of portfolios and alignments, opens up a bigger space for player signalling than is traditional - with AD&D Oriental Adventures being another early exception in my view.) But not so trad as to be radically different from Burning Wheel, HeroWars/Quest, Marvel Heroic RP, and I imagine a fair bit of Fate play.

To set up a slightly odd counterfactual - if a Martian RPGer came down to earth and read the 4e rulebooks (but with the DMG chapters on dungeon dressing taken out), and (being a Martian) knew nothing of the history of the game or its prior editions, I don't think s/he would extract the ethos you describe. (Whereas in the Gygax version I believe it is solidly inscribed.) The chapters in the DMG that I'm hiding from the Martian serve a legacy function, but nothing more than that (and in fact I agree with [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION] that it takes skill to do dungeoncrawling well in 4e - some posters on these boards have mastered that art).

So I think 4e has a purely legacy connection to the "ethos of D&D" that you describe.

I don't feel its controversial that gods in D&D are generally NPCs at best. Ascribing motivations and actions to NPCs is generally the purview of the DM. If the DM wants to do such things as you described and the table is keen on it, go for it. I'm fair sure that allowing a player to determine the actions of a deity as casually as you describe is a bit unusual for D&D play, and may require the kind of long-term group consensus you say your group has.

That may well be so, though it strikes me as such an obvious solution to the problem of the GM using mechanical alignment to hose players of clerics and paladins - with immersion-busting consequences on the side - that I'd be shocked if mine is the only group to have taken the game in this sort of direction.

Hang on....are you under the impression that I think that's an absolute? Why would this <snip quote that contrasts immersion in character and immersion in story> Make you think that? Is there some key qualifying or softening phrase that I neglected to put in?

In your original quote, what struck me was less the "YMMV" and more the contrast between immersion in character and immersion in story. Your repost has made the "YMMV" loom larger, but I'm still not sure what its scope is: are you saying that mileages may vary in respect of the impact on immersion of heavy mechanics, or also in respect of the "bonk" effect of authorship?

In the example I gave, the player was not immersed in story - as one might be when watching a film. He was immersed in character - his character, the devout and unyielding paladin of the Raven Queen. It is that immersion which led him to utter his retort (and thereby engage in a piece of player authorship) without skipping a beat at the table. There was no "bonk" effect - quite the opposite; and had I said to him "Of course, you might think that the Raven Queen turned you back from a frog, but only the GM knows for sure" I would have completely broken his immersion in his character, by generating doubt or a crisis of faith where, from his perspective, the fiction presented no grounds for such emotions. The "bonk" would have resulted from questioning his authorship.

To the extent that this falls under your "YMMV" then there may be no point of contention between us - I hope you'll expand on this! But the "immersion in character"/"immersion in story" contrast struck me (perhaps wrongly) as another device for trying to wedge the 4e players/story gamers/what have you away from those who are the truly character-immersed roleplayers. If this rhetorical effect was not what you intended, then I'm sorry that I read you wrongly.

Diversion from whatever the game would have done otherwise. I'm presuming the DM had something in mind (even 4e isn't so easy as to run without prep, I wouldn't think) and after the player's comment, there is a new storyline. IIRC, you consider 4e to be a "no myth" game, and I think its probably the closest of D&D games, but I don't think 5e generally is.

5e I don't have a proper handle on in this respect, although with its mechanically simple monsters and strong background + personality system couldn't it be approached "no myth" (well, quasi-no-myth) after settling on a few core conceits with the group? (I'm not sure where you see Burning Wheel or Fate as falling on the no-myth spectrum, but I think of them as considerably closer to no myth than trad dungeon-crawling D&D, and couldn't 5e be played in a similar way?)

In this case I was the DM. The PCs were fighting the Hexing cultists because they were Far Realm-crazed allies of the PCs' nemesis, an agent of Vecna trying to recover the Raven Queen's name. The next session was a social only session dominated by dinner with the Baron, which led to the party's fighter and wizard-invoker (as he then was, before being reborn as an invoker-wizard) calling out that nemesis (who was also the adviser to the Baron), leading to combat with the nemesis, which was then followed by an assault on the Baron by a catoblepas, plus cultists of Orcus taking advantage of the catoblepas-induced chaos). Somewhere during all this, but I can't remember exactly when or how, the paladin had received a sign that the catoblepas was on its way (the MM3 catoblepas write-up links them tightly to knights of the Raven Queen, and this paladin has Questing Knight as his paragon path).

In terms of GMing techniques, I would have had potential/likely opponents statted out in advance, because it speeds things up (especially if they are custom). On this occasion I also had maps drawn of the Far Realm cultists house and the Baron's mansion, both adapted from the 3E module Speaker in Dreams. How and if/when things get dropped into play depends on what is happening in the game. As best I recall I hadn't been expecting the Baron's dinner to turn into a fight against the advisor; but I do remember I had been anticipating for some time that the PCs might attack him, because I remember statting him up, and then re-statting him with a stepped up level at least once because he was still on the scene, and needed to be levelled up to remain a mechanically relevant opponent.

So I don't think there was any "diversion": the focus of play was on dealing with the baron, and his advisor, and other enemies of the Raven Queen. And it remained so. (For completeness: there was some other connected stuff involving dwarves, and the fate of civilisation against hobgoblin attacks under the Baron's leadership, which spoke more to the conerns of some of the less Raven Queen-focused players.)

I can tell you that very few groups I know play any edition of D&D that way. (Although "Session Zero" is becoming more popular, I'm not sure that counts.)

Session Zero? At first I assumed a d20 variant, but a quick Google suggests that this is analogous to the character-and-campaign building step in Fate or Burning Wheel. Is that right?

My group tends to be fairly informal about these things - because we are very stable and default to extended campaigns, we can afford to use the first few sessions of actual play to find out what makes the characters tick, how they fit together and how their destinies might be connected, etc. The players also tend to look to me (as GM) to somehow twist and weave their various goals and loyalties and backgrounds together - they will do some of this themselves, but not to the sort of extent that Fate does by default.

When we started our 4e game, I told every player that each PC had to have one loyalty in his/her background, and a reason to be ready to fight goblins. Otherwise anything from core 4e was available. At the start of the game I therefore knew that I had three PCs who worshipped the Raven Queen (a popular loyalty), and four PCs who really wanted revenge against goblins (and five PCs altogether - two PCs overlapped the two categories, and one of the PCs had only fairly weak reasons to be ready to fight goblins). So it was only natural that the initial antagonist (Golthar from the module B11 Night's Dark Terror merged with Paldemar from H2 Thunderspire Labyrinth) should be sending goblins to raid the foresters so that they might find a lost tapestry that contained a secret for stealing power for Vecna, while he himself tried to learn the secret of the Raven Queen's name so that he could trade it to Orcus in return for the control over dead spirits, and also to help Orcus kill the Raven Queen.

From the perspective of player authorship, it was the players who made Orcus and Vecna so central (by choosing Raven Queen devotees - and subsequent choices of religious orientation have made other gods and primordials come to the fore as allies or antagonists). Goblins as opposition was stipulated by me as GM (because I had a module - B11 - that has as an early big scene a goblin assault on a homestead, complete with a grid map, not to mention a race against time to beat the goblins to the homestead, which was our first skill challenge). And I wrote in the nemesis, Golthar/Paldemar.

In terms of how close this is to the norms of D&D play - I think it's pretty far from dungeon-of-the-week, or from adventure path, play. It's not full-fledged No Myth. The approach is something I worked out myself GMing Oriental Adventures around 1986-87. The GMing manuals that I find most helpful, in the sense of giving me advice that I feel is relevant to my game and helps me improve it, are Luke Crane's Adventure Burner and some of Robin Laws HeroWars/Quest books, and also Maelstrom Storytelling. I learned of the latter from Ron Edwards, and I find some of his posts, and also Paul Czege, pretty helpful too.

The GMing advice that I think is least helpful to me is the sort found in the Wilderness Survival Guide, and Rolemaster's Campaign Law and (later) GM Law, which emphasises starting with a map, then adding history and gods, etc, etc - but says very little about framing and managing situations, following the hooks and leads that the players throw up, etc. Back in my early days of GMing I tried a bit of this sort of stuff, but didn't find it very effective.

The way I would summarise my approach is: if the goal of the adventure is a McGuffin in the literal sense - that is, the bulk of the adventure would be the same regardless of goal (rescue the princess, recover the artefact, etc), and regardless of the PCs participating in it - then it's not for me as player or GM. I think this preference is consistent with expectations of player authorship of certain key background details that are core to that player's PC. I think it deviates from ENworld norms, and so probably from more general D&D norms (at least non-4e D&D norms). But there are enough posters on these boards who seem to approach the game in similar ways that I don't think it's some sort of crazy minority.

I can't be sure of how to respond to this without being in your head and knowing precisely what you want out of D&D. <snip pretty accurate conjecture>

You did a good job! (I also agree that AEDU is not an aspect of 4e that marks any radical departure from the past.)

Probably our main point of disagreement (or perhaps difference in experience, and perceptions/conceptualisations built out of that experience), is that I think that 4e is a relatively natural outgrowth of non-Gygaxian AD&D (ie trying to use AD&D to play Dragonlance and the like) plus 3E's basic mechanical rationalisations of the AD&D system, together with 3E's frank embrace of heavy over light system.

What it drops from 3E is the veering towards process-sim. What it drops from non-Gygaxian AD&D is the baroque subystems, and the reliance upon the GM to inject any sense of theme or narrative direction.

As to whether I'm an outlier in viewing 4e this way, or just lucky that it doesn't get in my way: when I read Chris Perkins columns on the WotC site I don't see anything that strikes me as foreign or deviant from my approach. He seems to have richly developed PCs, with goals that drive the campaign (but still relying on the GM to inject adversity), and with the mechanics feeding into that (eg the fact that one of the PCs was a Prince of Hell made a difference to the play of the game).

Perhaps controversially, and responding to this and an earlier post of yours, I don't think trad dungeon-crawling loot-and-kill D&D is very Conan-esque either. Conan quite often gets no treasure (eg The Phoenix on the Sword) or loses the treasure (eg Tower of the Elephant, and the one set in pseudo-Africa where he sacrifices the jewels of Gwahlur for the girl). And he is not amoral, either. While I think there are significant obstacles to playing OGL Conan for a Conan-esque result (all its d20isms), and I think there are issues with GM-adjudicated alignments/codes, I think it was right in putting forward the idea of the Barbarian's Code of Honour.

The most Conan-esque game I feel I've ever run was a relatively recent Burning Wheel session. (Write-up here.) I'm pretty confident I couldn't have done that in AD&D, and it would have been hard in Rolemaster also (RM lacks "say yes" rules, and they can't easily be grafted on without pushing hard against the general ethos of the system).

 

[Imaro]

The purpose of the divine intervention ability is to have a percentage chance of having the deity cast a free spell, possibly of a higher level than you can cast, in your favour. In it's basic mechanical structure the divine intervention ability is no different from a 4e utility power.

I don't see any connection between the presence or absence of that ability in the game, and a player narrating the end of an effect upon his PC as a manifestation of divine providence.

Okay, this was mainly addressed to @LostSoul because of the specific way he runs deities in his campaign.

First let me state, I disagree with your assertion about what divine intervention is. The exact wording of the divine intervention ability makes it clear that it's purpose rests solely in whatever the character is asking help for and the DM decides the nature of the intervention... so it's purpose is not to cast a free spell (though the ability could certainly accomplish that and uses spells as a guideline for the power level of the intervention) it could also be used to do any number of things including ending an effect.

My point in bringing this (and the Commune spell which was ignored) is that they are both ways of determining objectively through mechanics and the fiction, when divine intervention has taken place. We know the mechanical nature of asking for divine intervention (an action must be used) and the connected fiction (the nature of the intervention must be stated)... we know the fictional ramifications of failing (must wait an entire day) or gaining (must wait 7 days) to regain the ability... Knowing all this and seeing as a 20th level cleric is always answered for divine intervention, it'd be pretty easy to tell what is and isn't actual divine intervention. So yeah someone could claim something was divine intervention but it sure doesn't fit the criteria of such as laid out in the rules or the relevant fiction surrounding said rules... I mean I could also claim that my thief picked a lock with his magic fingers spell... even though he doesn't know any spells, didn't use any components, etc. So did he use a spell or did he just pick a lock? I get that's how you and your group enjoy playing the game, but my point was that there are certain abilities, conceits, etc. within the game itself that could arise when using that type of playstyle.

On a side note does 4e have the commune spell?

 

[Manbearcat]

On a side note does 4e have the commune spell?

Its got several iterations of these types of divinations in the utility powers scattered throughout the classes/themes. The typical usage (like the Shaman Speak with Spirits) grants a power bonus to n skill equal to y ability modifier. Then there are various Rituals with their own discrete mechanics. These range from Read Omens with the Weal/Woe deal to Hunter's Blessing granting limited bonuses to checks against a specific quarry to the Religion check of Discern Lies serving as a bonus to Insight checks to detect any untruths spoken in your presence during an interrogation scene.

 

[Imaro]

Its got several iterations of these types of divinations in the utility powers scattered throughout the classes/themes. The typical usage (like the Shaman Speak with Spirits) grants a power bonus to n skill equal to y ability modifier. Then there are various Rituals with their own discrete mechanics. These range from Read Omens with the Weal/Woe deal to Hunter's Blessing granting limited bonuses to checks against a specific quarry to the Religion check of Discern Lies serving as a bonus to Insight checks to detect any untruths spoken in your presence during an interrogation scene.

With commune you have the opportunity to directly contact your actual deity I was just wondering if there were any powers in that space within 4e... Not a bonus to a skill or anything like that but an actual connection to your deity or your forces proxy? I've played 4e but I honestly don't remember and I wasn't really fond of religious characters in 4e.

 

[Rejuvenator]

My imagination would naturally and automatically consider the ramifications of the player's authorship. That bit of Raven Queen fiction starts a major domino effect that intrudes on my immersion. If the other players and DM aren't equally willing to factor that domino effect into the worldbuilding, then I'm left holding the shattered pieces of my presumptions and trying to patch it back together

But why would the active presence of a deity in a D&D gameworld have any sort of general tendency to intrude on immersion? (It may well do so in your case without there being any general tendency.)

Note the emphases... Are you asking about my immersion? And no, I never claimed "any sort of general tendency to intrude on immersion", so it's not necessary to lead with that question.

The answer to the non-tangential question: My immersion would be spoiled by the player making an in-character comment stemming from his PC's fervent belief and the DM actually deciding that this is not just mistaken conjecture but actual fact in the fiction, furthermore overriding a major assumption about how spells actually work in every game I've ever played in and a rule of fantasy physics that I've internalized for my suspension of disbelief. That's what would spoil my immersion.

RatSkinner wrote: "Why did the Baleful Polymorph end?-because effects like Baleful Polymorph do that". You replied that "if the claim is that... D&D's mechanics more generally... are per se process sim, then I don't agree."

I fully agree with RatSkinner. Baleful Polymorph ends, because it ends. That's the fantasy physics of it. If your 4E game is different, that's fine, and thus the players will need to fill in the blanks. But please don't generalize that D&D in general is not process-sim in context of Baleful Polymorph's duration. That is contrary to my interpretation from the PHB since BECMI and AD&D and 5E reinforces my interpretation of spells as process-sim.

From the (5E) D&D Basic Rules:

A spell is a discrete magical effect, a single shaping of the magical energies that suffuse the multiverse into a specific, limited expression. In casting a spell, a character carefully plucks at the invisible strands of raw magic suffusing the world, pins them in place in a particular pattern, sets them vibrating in a specific way, and then releases them to unleash the desired effect....

I interpret this as a "process-sim" fiction that explains why spells have discrete, specific, particular, limited effects, including duration.

This blurb from the 5E PHB reinforces my gaming experience (ever since BECMI and AD&D) that spell effects (including duration) are set and predictable (in-character and out-of-character) and something I've internalized for a long time. So why disagree in general with the fair claim that Baleful Polymorph ends because it ends?

EDIT: Your posts are very long, so I didn't read all of it. If you meant to argue that the villian's Baleful Polymorph doesn't have a set duration in the fiction in your 4E game, that's fine. But fairly or not, I read more general claims in your post about what D&D is or isn't, originally in response to my post about my immersion, plus this is a 5E thread so I'm trying to keep it on topic too.

 

[SirAntoine]

The reason I mention the Raven Queen is because she has been the most prominent deity in my 4e campaign - of 5 PCs, one is a paladin of the Raven Queen, one a cleric (hybrid ranger) of the Raven Queen, and one an invoker-wizard who serves the Raven Queen, Erathis, Bane, Ioun, Pelor, Vecna, Levistus and probably one or two other gods I'm forgetting.

The other two PCs are a fighter-cleric of Moradin, and a drow sorcerer-bard who is part of a secret society that worships Corellon and tries to overthrow Lolth and undo the sundering of the elves.

I won't bore you with the details, but through various chains of events, over the course of the campaign the PCs have (i) promised to help Kas (an ally of the Raven Queen) against Vecna (an enemy of the Raven Queen), (ii) have killed Torog, the god of the underdark, an destroyed his Soul Abattoir, meaning that the souls of those who die in the underdark now flow to the Raven Queen, (iii) have defeated the Prince of Frost and made vassals of the frost giants on the Feywild, meaning that the Raven Queen now controls winter on the Feywild as well as on the mortal world, (iv) have freed the Raven Queen from her obedience to beings of the Far Realm (with whom she entered into a pact to conceal her true name) by killing the entity who was making a profit out of it (he was given oversight of the bridge which may be traversed but once, where souls leave the Shadowfell and travel who-knows-where) and then killing the messengers sent by the stars to spread the news of the Raven Queen's name.

So it turns out that the story of the campaign, a little unexpectedly, is of the rise and rise of the Raven Queen.

My game mostly uses the backstory of the 4e world as written in the books - and this reveals the Raven Queen to be an ambitious person, who started as a dead soul but then (i) overthrew the former god of death to take his portfolio, (ii) helped Corellon fight Lolth so that she was able to take the portfolio of fate from the latter, and then (iii) helped the other gods fight the former goddess of winter so that she was able to take that portfolio. The same backstory also establishes that she is an enemy of Vecna and Orcus and has some sort of alliance with Kas, and that she has somehow contrived to hide her true name.

So I wouldn't describe my game as having departed from canon. I think it has drawn upon canon to inform play.

I am not really seeing whether you use that canon. What I mean is if you want to author what the deity does and cares about, wouldn't a home-made deity be better? If you entered another campaign and wanted to author something for the Raven Queen that went against the canon, are you saying you would want the DM to let you override the canon?

 

[pemerton]

My point in bringing this (and the Commune spell which was ignored) is that they are both ways of determining objectively through mechanics and the fiction, when divine intervention has taken place.

I didn't ignore Commune. I discussed it at length. Here is what I said (post 932):

I'm also not really sure how a Commune spell helps. First, look at it from the perspective of the fiction. What does a Commune spell consist in? The PC performs a certain ritual, and then is vouchsafed a certain experience. If the PC has the experience without the ritual, how is that any different? There are certainly D&D modules out there in which PCs have prophetic dreams without having to perform rituals prior to them.

Now look at it from the perspective of the real world, rather than the fiction. How does a Commune spell help? The player of the paladin asks, via Commune, "Did you save me from the Baleful Polymorph?" How, as GM, am I meant to know what the answer is that the Raven Queen will provide? Either I have to make it up or the player has to make it up. If the player makes it up, what difference does it make whether the player makes it up when the Commune spell is cast, or when the curse ends?​

The Commune spell reveals backstory: it doesn't provide any mechanics for creating backstory. Someone has to write it - why not the player?

More generally - why is it important that the only miracles be those generated by using discrete class features or spell? What adverse effect results from narrating other events in the game as consequences of divine beneficence?

We know the mechanical nature of asking for divine intervention (an action must be used) and the connected fiction (the nature of the intervention must be stated)... we know the fictional ramifications of failing (must wait an entire day) or gaining (must wait 7 days) to regain the ability... Knowing all this and seeing as a 20th level cleric is always answered for divine intervention, it'd be pretty easy to tell what is and isn't actual divine intervention.

Isn't it obvious that the clerical divine intervention ability is not the only form of divine intervention in the game? For instance, every memorisation and casting of a clerical spell is an instance of divine intervention that doesn't conform to that pattern. Likewise every turning of some undead. Not to mention that a GM would be free to have gods intervene in other ways - eg bring a curse down on a city, which the PCs might then try and lift - without it having to be the case that some NPC cleric called down that curse.

I could also claim that my thief picked a lock with his magic fingers spell... even though he doesn't know any spells, didn't use any components, etc. So did he use a spell or did he just pick a lock?

And if your thief was an arcane trickster, wouldn't that claim make sense? Though 5e reintroduces anti-magic shells, which create complexities around this sort of narration.

On a side note does 4e have the commune spell?

Yes. It has a series of escalating Religion-based divinations - Consult Mystic Sages, Consult Oracle, Voice of Fate - whose scope of knowledge is defined by reference to whether it is known to the most learned sages, known to at least one creature, or concerns matters yet to occur.