D&D 4E The Best Thing from 4E

[The Crimson Binome]

There was a time, probably in the early 80's, after I'd DMed for several years, when detailed process simulation and the achievement of the 'ultimate system' that would somehow present answers to all the possible questions players asked and produce satisfying narrative harmoniously coupled with simple mechanics was the omega point of my conception of RPGs. That day has LOOOONNNNNGGGGG since faded to dust and been replaced by a great appreciation of agenda and cooperative shared world building/exploration. Not that the process sim phase wasn't fun, it was, but it really only worked for a pretty limited realm of play, roughly Gygaxian dungeon exploration.

Just because you've given up on reaching that goal, and would rather spend your time on alternate pursuits, that doesn't mean everyone else should give up. The original goal is still out there, and we're getting closer to attaining it every day, as more players become designers and mechanics continue to evolve.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Well, for one thing, as GM I really don't want all of the narrative control - what would the players be there for?

It's a role-playing game. The players would be there to play their roles - the characters they've created.

That's the traditional divide. If you want to build a world, then you're the GM; if you want to play a character, then you're a player. There certainly are games where those two jobs are blended to various degrees, and apparently 4E is one of them.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Just because you've given up on reaching that goal, and would rather spend your time on alternate pursuits, that doesn't mean everyone else should give up.

By the same token, just because you're obsessed with it doesn't mean everyone else should be, too.

The original goal is still out there, and we're getting closer to attaining it every day, as more players become designers and mechanics continue to evolve.

I'm afraid you're a little off here. It's not /the/ original goal (nor even a goal, per se), it's one way of approaching the game, one of many that can be said to be equally valid. And, no, games are not getting closer to that ideal. I'm not even sure many RPGs ever bought into it as the primary point of the game, even EGG, in his long rambling advice in 1e, made the concept - then generally spoken of simply as 'realism' - a clearly secondary concern.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I'm afraid you're a little off here. It's not /the/ original goal (nor even a goal, per se), it's one way of approaching the game, one of many that can be said to be equally valid.

It's the original goal of process-simulations, as expressed by [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]. My favorite parts of 4E are the ones which can be used toward reaching that goal (in this case, it's the unified defense structure).

As little as I care about what EGG had to say, his talk of realism was concerning verisimilitude, which is not a fundamental component of process simulation. At best, it's a secondary concern.

 

[Balesir]

It's a role-playing game. The players would be there to play their roles - the characters they've created.

That's the traditional divide. If you want to build a world, then you're the GM; if you want to play a character, then you're a player.

Play the character doing what? Is the character's aim to simply experience the stories in which they happen to be caught up, or to try to wrest some measure of control from the world over their own fate? It seems to me that by far the most interesting characters are ones who try to do the latter.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Play the character doing what? Is the character's aim to simply experience the stories in which they happen to be caught up, or to try to wrest some measure of control from the world over their own fate? It seems to me that by far the most interesting characters are ones who try to do the latter.

I would tend to agree, which is why I've never been one for railroad-style games, or games where the player characters are fated or destined for anything. It's part of why I prefer systems that use the same rules for PCs and NPCs.

A game is a series of interesting choices. There's no choice involved when following a railroad plot. If you kill the Big Bad and save the world, but you're just following direction and never had any say in the matter, then you might as well have read that in a book.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Cool, I think can see it now. I'd sum up the decision point as "how do you want this story to go?" (Is that fair?) If I decided to pray to Melora with my high Religion check, instead of using my okay-but-not-good Nature check, at that point I'm putting my PC's relationship with Melora into question, or at the very least bringing religion into the game. When I build my PC I'm going to invest in the resources that allow me to guide the fiction in the direction I want.

I guess one question is "why wouldn't you always use the skill with the highest modifier?" (Which makes me think of Burning Wheel's detailed list of skills.) That's probably a feature - the system reinforces your PC build choices by making whatever you're most interested in have the greatest weight so that you can reliably push the fiction in the way that you want, but on the same hand I can see how that would limit decisions because you'd always want to use that skill. The DM would need to be nimble, I think, to react and put pressure on the PCs and thereby the players.

Yeah, that fits with my description of 4e's skills as 'knacks' or M.O.s. They aren't literally all the categorizations of everything the character can know, they are just highlighting those areas where the player wants to focus.

I think the question you ask though brings a counter-question, which is what do you mean by 'always'? The players can only apply their skills to the fiction at the points where they can demonstrate that the narrative will support it, so obviously that's one limitation that we are all aware of. Its great to be a level one 4e PC with a +14 Diplomacy bonus, but skeletons just don't really care...

Beyond that there may be reasons why a character may not want to exercise his best skill every time. There could be narrative consequences to pursuing some tactics for instance. I may be a great diplomat, but if I show the orc king a willingness to compromise he'll assume I'm weak, best to Bluff instead, or maybe its time for a show of prowess using Athletics or an attack power even though none of those are really the characters forte (obviously he's got to have SOMETHING to back up this plan, but it needn't be his strongest suite).

 

[Balesir]

I would tend to agree, which is why I've never been one for railroad-style games, or games where the player characters are fated or destined for anything.

Then why deny them any possibility of the role of discoverer? By demanding that all natural laws are set beforehand, this is what you are doing (as well as making a world far from human experience). If Newton's Laws of Motion were really set in stone, Einstein would never have had a chance, and Global Positioning Satellites would not work as they do. And even Einstein may have been wrong (to a degree); either there is something very odd going on with dark matter or our understanding of the laws of motion and attraction are, let's say, incomplete.

The natural laws of our own universe are not (yet) fully understood - but you want them to be so for a game??

It's part of why I prefer systems that use the same rules for PCs and NPCs.

You lost me. What has this to do with fate, destiny, free will, the nature of game world natural laws or anything like? PCs might be subject to different mechanics just because they are the ones whose lives we are following, just as the subject of a documentary will have cameras following them while others won't. Or because the GM requires mechanics to govern the motivations, behaviour and interests of characters that s/he is running "impersonally" as part of the game world. Or just because the PC rules may be too complex and fiddly for the GM to have time for when dealing with dozens or hundreds of NPCs.

A game is a series of interesting choices. There's no choice involved when following a railroad plot. If you kill the Big Bad and save the world, but you're just following direction and never had any say in the matter, then you might as well have read that in a book.

I agree with all of that. I don't see that it has any relevance to the discussion at hand, but I agree with it in much the same way that I'm in favour of freedom, justice and fairness.

 

[Tony Vargas]

It's the original goal of process-simulations, as expressed by [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION].

The point is, it is not the, or even an 'original goal' of D&D. It's one of the many crazy things folks did with D&D back in the day.

As little as I care about what EGG had to say, his talk of realism was concerning verisimilitude, which is not a fundamental component of process simulation. At best, it's a secondary concern.

First you try to claim a OneTrueWay that D&D has 'always' been, then you dismiss what the guy who wrote it had to say.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Just because you've given up on reaching that goal, and would rather spend your time on alternate pursuits, that doesn't mean everyone else should give up. The original goal is still out there, and we're getting closer to attaining it every day, as more players become designers and mechanics continue to evolve.

Its an illusion, there is no such system. That is what you eventually realize. Even if you could make that system, it wouldn't be the 'best' RPG possible. It might at most be the best for some certain agenda. Its a moot point however since such verisimilitude can only be achieved with greater and greater complexity, which undermines playability and overwhelms players. I think this is a large part of why people are interested in 'OSR', not because of a fine appreciation of it as the higher form of RPG, but just because it stands for a very mechanically simple game.

So, I didn't 'give up on' anything. I just outgrew the need for it. Such a game doesn't even tempt me today. Nor have mechanics 'evolved' appreciably. People have gotten more refined in their presentation and homed in on the most effective techniques, which makes games better overall in some general sense, but every technique at use today has antecedents and was known in some form even in the late 1970's. More important than the evolution of games is the evolution of the tastes and refinement of the gamer community.