D&D 4E The Best Thing from 4E

[The Crimson Binome]

It does have an agenda, namely, an agenda of dramatic neutrality!

The lack of an agenda is not, in itself, an agenda. By definition. It's not a topic which is addressed in any way. While you could carefully balance a system in some way to remove the rule of drama, or narrative imperative, no attempt is made for that; no attempt is made either way.

The two systems that I am aware of that have the greatest degree of "dramatic neutrality" are classics: Runequest and Traveller.

The other great influence on my RP preferences was another system which I would consider dramatically neutral: Shadowrun. Unlike with D&D, this game did have some optional rules for making things more dramatic, but they were always clearly set off as optional, so we never felt the need to include them.

And if you don't use those rules, then there's a very good chance that your character will die horribly to some punk in an alley. That's cyberpunk for you, though.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The lack of an agenda is not, in itself, an agenda.

But we're not talking about the lack of an agenda. If you decide that PCs aren't going to be 'favored' in any way, that's an agenda: they're going to be mundane, random nonentities that the players do the best they can with.

The other great influence on my RP preferences was another system which I would consider dramatically neutral: Shadowrun.

It had a definite tone. Very dark.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

But we're not talking about the lack of an agenda. If you decide that PCs aren't going to be 'favored' in any way, that's an agenda: they're going to be mundane, random nonentities that the players do the best they can with.

If we're trying to decipher intent, then deciding that PCs aren't special doesn't require any consideration on the part of a designer. The only thing you need to do, for PCs to end up on equal footing as NPCs, is to not actively take steps to make the PCs special. If you don't even ask​ the question - possibly because it never crossed your mind - then you end up with equality by default.

It had a definite tone. Very dark.

Tone is different from dramatic weight. Shadowrun is dark and gritty, but it's equally dark and gritty whether you're a PC or an NPC. Some punk in an alley could shoot you, and you might die, but it could just as easily go the other way around. In fact, it probably will go the other way, because most player characters are actually better than some random alley punk - not in any literary way, but in real, measurable in-story ways (better equipped, better trained, etc).

 

[pemerton]

The lack of an agenda is not, in itself, an agenda. By definition. It's not a topic which is addressed in any way.

If we're trying to decipher intent, then deciding that PCs aren't special doesn't require any consideration on the part of a designer. The only thing you need to do, for PCs to end up on equal footing as NPCs, is to not actively take steps to make the PCs special.

Game design is not, in my view, a place to make clever distinctions based on actions vs omissions.

Designing a game such that PCs and NPCs are mechanically indistinguishable is one sort of choice. Designing a game such that they are not - eg because the came recognises the special literary function of protagonists - is a different choice.

No choice is more "default" or "neutral" than the other: there's nothing "neutral" about designing a game which is indifferent to whether or not an element of the game is a player's playing piece! It's a deliberate choice.

D&D started out being neutral (all stats were rolled 3d6), in 1st ed AD&d was non-neutral (there were different rules for generating NPC and PC stats), returned to neutrality in the 2nd ed AD&D and 3E eras (though not fully neutral in 3E, because all PCs are "elite" or some similar notion for points-buy purposes), and then returned to the 1st ed AD&D orientation in 4e.

But we're not talking about the lack of an agenda. If you decide that PCs aren't going to be 'favored' in any way, that's an agenda: they're going to be mundane, random nonentities that the players do the best they can with.

This.

An alternative explanation is that no one has turned their mind to it - which is probably the case when OD&D was written. But no RPG designer today could fail to be aware of the issue!

 

[D'karr]

Except that Shadowrun definitely makes PCs different than NPCs by the use of different dice pools (Karma Pool, and in early editions the Combat Pool, and other different pools) that only PCs get preferential access to (higher number of dice). When you talk about equipment you also talk about PCs being able to select top notch equipment from the start of the build process. Wired reflexes 3, some of the high-end armor, and some of the weapons (miniguns, sniper rifles, etc.) or high-end cyberdecks (Fuchis, Fairlights, etc.) are definitely not something that every NPC is going to have. However, you'd be hard pressed to find any PC (Street Sam, Rigger, or Decker) without them or their equivalent. In addition, SR is not a level advancement game. Most NPCs, except for the extraordinary (those that you find in the SR novels or Dragons), will have average stats in relevant skills whereas PCs usually have exceptional stats in their relevant skills. PCs routinely face off against a larger number (ratio of NPCs to PCs) of forces that are nothing more than mooks when the PCs deploy their weapons and equipment. Yes the PCs can die from random fire from a street punk, but it is not an usual occurrence. And how many mooks do you find with DocWagon contracts to save their butts in the middle of a fire-fight?

In D&D the ratio of PCs to NPCs is also skewed. From the very first editions you would usually find combats where NPCs/Monsters easily outnumbered the PCs (remember Number Appearing 5-20 (avg 15)?). In games like this you did not have NPCs that have the same build rules because the odds become overwhelming. As the PCs level up they become even more extraordinary (HP, equipment, To Hit Probability, etc.).

In 3.x the build rules forced the DM to build NPCs the same way as PCs. All that added to my game was time wasted for a monster that would last at best 3 rounds. In the end I just skipped over the NPC build rules because they were, in practice, a complete waste of time.

In 4e you can decide to build NPCs in the same way as PCs, but thankfully the game does not force that on the DM, and the game preparation is much better for it.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Right.

Well, it's not completely in the hands of the players. But I want as much there as possible.

So, as an example, my RPG uses Knowledge skills (like 3.X does). So if someone makes a Knowledge check to see if their character is aware of something (as compared to research, or the like), the checks follow very vague guidelines (different DCs representing different levels of proficiency -Competent Professional, Skill Professional, Master Professional, etc.). But that's because Knowledge is used to know about setting, and setting it determined by the GM, and varies greatly. I can't write out concrete DCs (DC 15 lets you know about bears!) because each and every GM has their own take on their own game world's setting. So I am forced to leave it vague, meaning that the GM's judgement is mandatory.

On the other hand, everything else I can take away from the GM, I do. I want objective DCs when I can get them. So, how hard is it to gather food? What about in different terrains? In different seasons? What's the temperature? Has the area been picked clean? Is food in the relevant season to be found? Is it particularly lush? Well-traveled? Are you moving quickly? All of these are modifiers to the DC to find food, and the players can look them up and take them into consideration before deciding if they want to gather food, if they would rather roll or take a 10, if they want to take a different route, if they want to move quickly or slow down, etc.

The GM still sets the setting, of course. The GM does get to determine what food can be found where, and what the terrain is, and what the season is, and the temperature, and if it's been picked clean, etc. Because the GM does run the world. But players can do things to mitigate GM interference (feats to eliminate penalties from bad terrain, seasons, etc.). They can explore the setting and use that knowledge to mitigate these conditions in the future.

The GM's judgement is still part of the game. It's a required part of it. Just like player judgement. But I want to hand over as much information as I can to my players (transparency) -usually in the form of objective DCs- and then give them access to character builds where they can leverage explicit rules to their advantage, without getting permission from the GM.

I want them to be able to say "the DC is normally 18, but my Adapted Skill feat reduces the DC to 15, and I get +6 and can always take a 10 from the Consistent Skill feat. I take a 10, get a 16, and succeed. And barring outside circumstances (fatigue, or attribute damage, or whatever), I always will succeed." And I want them to be able to do this on their own, without my input.

Well, even my skill challenge system is more structured than 4e. The number of successes necessary is set based on:
(1) Who is participating, and if they can succeed at all the skill checks by rolling a 0, 5, 10, or 15.
(2) If they're acting quickly, or under tight time constraints.
(3) If they're trying to keep their actions secret.

These modifiers determine the DC. The players have control over how quickly they're acting and if they're trying to keep their actions secret, and so explicitly have control over the difficulty of the skill challenge. They also have control over who is participating (and can leave out incompetent PCs, if they wish), and can look up DCs to see how hard the skills will be, and thus can make a very informed decision on (1), as well.

My system also explicitly calls out situations that are resolved via skill challenges (like chases or outlasting a storm), with lists of the most common skills to be used in those situations and what those skill uses will be (like Land checks to catch up to someone or Craft checks to jury rig a shelter). So, my system probably wouldn't resolve Manbearcat's scenario using a skill challenge (it'd just be skill checks).

Anyway, I hope some of that was enlightening.

I dunno. I think as a general system for anyone to use things are just as much in the hands of the GM in the longrun as in a 4e game. All the various factors you list are mostly things that GMs aren't going to be sure about ahead of time. Taking your foraging example; is the area 'lush'? What is meant by 'area'? Is the character's expertise in swamps really applicable to a swamp in the Shadowfell, and to what degree? There's thus this '20 questions' process that MUST happen in the vast majority of cases which is entirely open to GM judgement and fundamentally is the heart of the process.

PERSONALLY, designing a system I would just talk about and emphasize the value of transparency as part of the GM instructions for pretty much everything, along with using a 4e-like design where transparent mechanics are the norm. I can see that your system certainly emphasizes transparency, but there's just so much that you can achieve in terms of player empowerment within the confines of a basically classically structured RPG.

I'm sure you get the results you are looking for, and I'm sure that if you carefully prime someone to run the system exactly the way you do, they can get similar results. I'm just not convinced such a system could work for the general public that way, it would probably fare about as well as say 4e, where if you are a reasonably good DM and inclined to use the system as it was designed (but not always well explained) then you get good results, but you can easily get terrible results too, if you're a controlling freak of a DM.

IMHO I would rather spend my game designer/DM resources on other things than trying to nail down such a vast array of modifiers and conditions, especially when my assumption is that I'll be just setting most of them to fairly arbitrary 'common sense' values that may or may not work in practice unless I playtest the whole thing for years.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I don't agree with you. The game mechanics can either favor the PC, or hinder the PC, or they can stay out of the matter altogether. Choosing to not incorporate bias, either for or against, is an entirely different level of neutrality.

A dramatically-neutral system is not forcing its agenda on you, because it doesn't have an agenda. It's not trying to promote any given outcome.

No choice is still a choice. Every game has an agenda, even if its "don't ever mechanically favor anyone." The agenda may be a negative one, to NOT do something, but that implies the exclusion of say incorporating dramatic considerations in play. There's nothing inherently superior or more flexible about that approach.

Now, obviously when a game focuses to an extreme degree on certain specific and perhaps peculiar considerations, then it is probably a niche game. I don't think 4e is even close to that though. It takes account of the fictional dimension of the game to a greater degree than past D&D's (or present ones perhaps), but its not all that extreme. It isn't offering explicit plot coupons with instructions to let the player invent new elements and situations in the narrative for instance. Its a mainstream game with a very gently applied agenda. Monsters for instance are still creatures and follow most of the rules of PCs, they just have simplified and slightly different stats that better serve their usual purposes. The DMG has rules for making classed NPCs, and nothing stops the DM from using PCs as NPCs either if he really wants to go in that direction.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

(Trying to recall my 2e: I played it, but heavily modified, and it was the ed that drove me from the game for 5 years, I'm really /much/ more up on 1e.) The normal range of stats for D&D humans is 3-18. Doesn't rolling 4d6 drop the lowest for PC stats favor them? Doesn't giving the classes, compared to the poor classless kobolds, for instance, also favor them? Doesn't having them all come together conveniently to form a party favor them?

Just getting a party of 1st level adventurers together to /be/ PCs requires a lot of system-favoring-the-PCs-just-for-being-PCs assumptions. Some of them mechanical, many of them merely implicit.

That's if you want to play a game about adventurers who might or might not be heroes - who will probably die quite soon, like as not. If you want to play a game about 'heroes,' then, yeah, you need more such mechanics just to get it off the ground.

Yeah, this is true also, even OD&D favors PCs. In Chainmail terms they are elite 'veteran' warriors, or in the case of a magic user actually at level 1 already a unique figure. Normal humans OTOH are 1 hit die untrained figures. The difference isn't huge, but going by the original combat system it grows geometrically with level such that a level 2 fighter using the default OD&D rules is virtually impossible for ordinary humans to face in combat.

I'd actually say Moldvay Basic is the point where a level 1 PC is weakest, relatively. The D&D-specific combat system is far less steeply curved than the chainmail based one, and fighters only have a d8 hit die, not the d10 they got in 1e. Even there PCs are described as heroic figures in the making, not ordinary people. They might only be as good as an Orc in a fight, but that's pretty good compared to the local farmer.

 

[Tony Vargas]

An alternative explanation is that no one has turned their mind to it - which is probably the case when OD&D was written. But no RPG designer today could fail to be aware of the issue!

In 0D&D - as in every ed but 3.x (though even 3.5 had inferior 'NPC classes') - PCs and monsters were statted out quite differently. And, in the classic game (though maybe not so much in 2e, IIRC), 'monster' could include any foe the players met, including other people. 'Men' was a listing in the MM. Even when an NPC was nominally of a class, it would get a condensed set of stats that might (or might not) jibe with an actual full PC write-up of the same class.

I'd say it was games like RuneQuest that consciously decided to use the same stats to describe both PCs and monsters/NPCs - that PCs have always been 'special' in D&D, in some sense. That'd still have been the late 70s, still quite early in the history of the hobby.

It isn't offering explicit plot coupons with instructions to let the player invent new elements and situations in the narrative for instance.

True. Might have been an interesting optional variation, though. Take healing surges, expand the things players can do with them, maybe fold action points and dailies with them into a pool of 'plot point' resources, for instance.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

An alternative explanation is that no one has turned their mind to it - which is probably the case when OD&D was written. But no RPG designer today could fail to be aware of the issue!

But we know from examining the source material that OD&D HAD a stance. Its possible it was a largely happenstance, but it was a stance of some sort! The level names of PCs makes that clear, the fact that PCs were drawn from the exceptional singular figure rules of Chainmail, and the mere fact that they could advance whereas it was explicit that most NPCs didn't ever advance. While its possible to say that NPCs and PCs use the same rules (henchmen are built using PC rules for instance, as presumably are many hostile NPCs though it isn't really stated) PCs are consciously designed to promote the game's agenda, not 'just like NPCs'.

Beyond that we can look at other games of the time and we can see that the idea of these agendas, maybe not yet formally declared as such, was quite active. Tunnels & Trolls has COMPLETELY different rules for NPCs, En Garde! also treats NPCs (to the extent they exist) differently too. This is quite common in 70's era game design, actually. In fact you can probably find almost every technique used in 4e somewhere in one of the widely known games of that era. There were games with 'minions', games with creatures as purely stat blocks (BRP/RQ/CoC springs instantly to mind), etc.

My point is, game designers were quite aware of agendas right from day one at Gygax's kitchen table. He was a pretty insightful guy, and while he might not have articulated it as "there is this range of choices I could make" he certainly knew WHY he did what he did.