D&D 4E The Best Thing from 4E

[AbdulAlhazred]

Why would the DM contrive such a thing? Why would the DM want to contrive such a thing? Why would it be "fun" for the PCs to encounter such a contrived scenario?

Well, I'm not saying it would or wouldn't be fun or better or worse. FOR YOU, with your agenda, you might find it more fun, but I wonder if this is really true. I mean if you say decided that you would eat lunch and buy a couple healing potions before setting out, gambling that this would benefit you more than arriving early might, and then you arrive and the DM says "Sorry, all you find is a deserted temple and a bloody altar, the action finished up an hour ago!" you might start to feel differently. Maybe you (and certainly the DM) would be wishing that he'd decreed that getting lunch took 5 minutes instead of 25 minutes, or that you didn't have to haggle for 15 minutes to get the potions you needed. You see where I'm coming from? IME, lots of it, almost every DM out there will succumb to that logic.

Now, ALTERNATELY, the DM could cast the whole adventure in terms of the struggle to arrive at the temple within the allotted time frame. 4e handles this perfectly, you create a skill challenge, the results of which determines when the PCs arrive. If they succeed they arrive in the nick of time, if they fail they're too late. Maybe they get a choice to take an extra failure right off if they want to get some potions or lunch first (or maybe they just have to make a hard choice, but note that integrating it as a cost in the SC makes it explicit without requiring DM judgment calls on the absolute time). The result is BETTER than it would be in AD&D, where it all must rest entirely on the DM fiat of time which is putting pressure on the DM to undermine the game's agenda. The SC isn't even undermining a simulationist agenda, it is just creating transparency which makes things more interesting.

Another thing that using an SC does is it focuses the DM's mind on the plot issue at hand, what happens if the PCs don't arrive in time? Given that this is now an explicit outcome of a game process it is more likely to be addressed explicitly as well (just speaking from experience with 4e myself here, and having run things in a more 'classical' fashion in my 2e days by contrast). The drama is also moved more towards things that the players have a hand in, as opposed to largely controlled by the agenda of the evil bad guy and his ritual schedule.

That's kind of what I was getting at, while I was rambling. You could frame lunch as a Skill Challenge where you negotiate through the market, diplomacize your way through the line, and stuff your face with the goal of spending as little time as possible on the task. The time spent depends on how well you do on the Skill Challenge. (And conceivably, since it matters, it's worth XP and someone could gain a level from this.)

Or the DM could describe the relative busy-ness of various market stalls, and the different foods available, so that the time required is a reflection of the circumstances and player choice rather than the result of some number of skill checks. The fastest option is always to just eat trail rations, but how often are you going to have access to fresh food at the market? and do you really want to miss out on this while you're here? Granted, it's all through the lens of what the DM thinks is reasonable, but that's true of everything in D&D, and the DM is a neutral arbiter in all things.

I haven't seen too many truly neutral DMs. DMs have agendas just like players do, and I'd always rather see SC mechanics and other transparent 4e techniques used to keep things going on the straight than often biased DM calls. This just comes back to the very start of this whole long conversation several days ago. 4e provides transparent resolution mechanics that empower the players because they make things more explicit.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

There is no discussion of time in the context of performing mechanically unspecified rituals (like sacrifices by cultists in temples), or for making one's way through a market square. Or for eating lunch, or visiting a friend's house, or making an address to the Senate. Or for tilling a field. (Though it does discuss time required to mine dungeons and build castles.)

My contention is that you've got this the wrong way round. Because they're codified, they're robust. The other times could be codified - there is no reason that searching a room for secret doors can be codified (see Gygax's DMG) but eating lunch at a tavern can't be. It's just that in Gygax's game searching for secret doors mattered while dining at taverns didn't.

I fundamentally disagree. A robust system is one which can handle a number of different situations without failing. At least, that's the engineering definition of "robust". So, a robust time management system must be able to handle all sorts of different tasks, and their countless variations, without failure. And the DM can do that. Easily. It's one of the great strengths of having a real-time natural-language user-friendly determination engine.

You can't have a codified system for eating lunch, because there are many variables which would need to go into it (if it's going to be a robust system which can account for variations), and the DM can come up with an answer much more quickly than any reasonable table of modifiers could, and likely with greater accuracy. The same is true of visiting a friend, or giving a speech.

The fact that the determination is made my an intelligent machine, rather than an abstract table, does not demote the passage of time to "mere colour".

For instance, the PCs have an hour to rescue the prisoners, and have to cross Greyhawk on foot to do so. How long does it take? Do they get stuck in a crowded market place? Do they get detained by thugs, or guards, or bump into friends who want to chat or old enemies who want to glower? All this is much like my example of the PC in prison upthread - neutrality does not really come into it, as there is nothing neutral about deciding one way or another in respect of these things. And what random table is going to do the job?

The determination is neutral as long as it does not incorporate bias on the part of the DM. The DM doesn't care whether the PCs make it there, or not. There is no incentive for the DM to contrive anything that is not in his or her honest interpretation of what should be there. The party probably won't get stuck in the market unless there's a festival going on. They may encounter thugs that were specifically sent to detain them, but otherwise, random bandit encounters usually are covered by existing tables (if the DM is uncertain). They probably won't bump into an old acquaintance in the next hour, given the relatively narrow window of opportunity for such an event, unless there's a good reason that there would be an increased likelihood that a particular acquaintance might actually be there.

I don't understand. What is the relationship between freedom of action declaration and resolving something as a skill challenge?

See my post immediately preceding this one, to [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION].

I'm not sure what you mean by a level-appropriate outcome: generally the fictional stakes for action resolution will be established (explicitly or implicitly) as part of framing the declaration of action and then adjudicating the outcome. There are fiction constraints and system constraints.

And I say that's going way too far in terms of system over-reach. There should be no limitations, based on the system, which are not a reflection of the fiction.

My specific example was just in terms of combat actions, because I didn't play 4E long enough to have any positive experience with Skill Challenges, but the dreaded page 42 states that the outcome of an improvised action should depend on the level of the character performing it rather than the nature of the action - a really clever and devastating improvisation, using one-shot environmental effects, might do as much damage as a daily power.

And that's just sad. It's massively dis-empowering to players, knowing that they can never have the kind of success they plan, because the outcome of any action is constrained by what the system thinks is "balanced". It just drags me right out of character, and reminds me in giant, flaming letters that this is a game and clever ideas will not be tolerated.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

And I say that's going way too far in terms of system over-reach. There should be no limitations, based on the system, which are not a reflection of the fiction.

I'm confused about what limitations you are talking about. We're not talking about limitations. Nor are we suggesting that the game should have some sort of massive book of times and schedules and modifiers and such that can be consulted to try to resolve any possible resource use or check, that's Jameson's shtick actually. We're saying that since such a thing seems untenable to us that the best option is to have robust transparent mechanics like SCs to resolve these things in a way that isn't subject to DM bias and doesn't require excessive preparation.

My specific example was just in terms of combat actions, because I didn't play 4E long enough to have any positive experience with Skill Challenges, but the dreaded page 42 states that the outcome of an improvised action should depend on the level of the character performing it rather than the nature of the action - a really clever and devastating improvisation, using one-shot environmental effects, might do as much damage as a daily power.

4e's advice is a bit more subtle than this. What 4e says is that the assumption is that the action takes place in 'appropriately challenging' circumstances, so that at level 1 the PC might be knocking over a burning brazier, and at level 30 he might be upsetting a vat full of elemental lava. The brazier might cause a level 1 damage expression, and the lava a level 30 damage expression. These are simply advice for how to balance effects within a challenging combat scenario however. Its perfectly acceptable for the PCs to be able to touch off a cataclysm that annihilates the 10,000 archon strong Chaos Army in one go if that seems appropriate. Presumably said army isn't going to be the main obstacle to overcome! However, in the midst of a knock-down drag-out climactic fight with Tiamat the DM probably doesn't want an infinite damage insta-gank effect and the game advises him on what will work and provide appropriate drama. There's nothing 'sad' or 'limiting' about it.

And that's just sad. It's massively dis-empowering to players, knowing that they can never have the kind of success they plan, because the outcome of any action is constrained by what the system thinks is "balanced". It just drags me right out of character, and reminds me in giant, flaming letters that this is a game and clever ideas will not be tolerated.

Excuse me? All the system's purpose is is to provide a set of mechanics that will handle the majority of things that happen and allow the DM to quickly and easily put things in scale. Its not there to 'constrain' anything. The narrative can provide any sort of plot devices it wants, and the players are free to fish for them, and the DM is free to hand them out based on whatever criteria suites him and his table. Neither 4e nor 2e has rules for how to collapse the whole cavern and crush the entire goblin tribe. That doesn't mean its impossible to do. 4e even has a framework for how you would resolve it (an SC) that 2e lacks!

 

[Tony Vargas]

This just comes back to the very start of this whole long conversation several days ago. 4e provides transparent resolution mechanics that empower the players because they make things more explicit.

By the same token, transparent resolution mechanics - clearer rules in general - can also be a tool in the DM's chest. They make it easier to create an encounter, monster/NPC, or other challenge that more consistently works as intended.
There isn't quite the contrast of DM empowerment in 5e/old-school vs Player empowerment (or 'entitlement' for those who want to use labels to prejudice said comparison) in 3.x/4e as is sometimes made out.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

By the same token, transparent resolution mechanics - clearer rules in general - can also be a tool in the DM's chest. They make it easier to create an encounter, monster/NPC, or other challenge that more consistently works as intended.
There isn't quite the contrast of DM empowerment in 5e/old-school vs Player empowerment (or 'entitlement' for those who want to use labels to prejudice said comparison) in 3.x/4e as is sometimes made out.

Right, I never saw these things as opposed either, particularly. Frankly I think of things on DM side more in terms of simplicity and reliability and I never termed it 'empowerment', but whatever it is, its a good thing.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

4e's advice is a bit more subtle than this. What 4e says is that the assumption is that the action takes place in 'appropriately challenging' circumstances, so that at level 1 the PC might be knocking over a burning brazier, and at level 30 he might be upsetting a vat full of elemental lava. The brazier might cause a level 1 damage expression, and the lava a level 30 damage expression. These are simply advice for how to balance effects within a challenging combat scenario however.

That's... not as bad as previously indicated. Actually, when you put it like that, it sounds a lot like the issue with scaling DCs that so many people misunderstood back in 2008 - how a barred door might be DC 20 for a level 5 character, but DC 30 for a level 15 character, and the thing they weren't accounting for was that the second door is reinforced with adamantium and the first door is just iron and wood.

Of course, that does lead to the obvious vagaries of assigning something like a "level" to mundane objects. Maybe a level 5 barred door is oak and iron so it has DC 20, and a level 15 barred door is reinforced adamantium so it has DC 30. Maybe a level 5 fire source is a burning brazier that deals 2d8+4 damage, and a level 15 light source is a suspended lava orb that deals 4d8+10 damage.

Do you describe the object to the players in terms of their level? Or their damage? Or do you just leave it undefined, and fill in the details when it becomes relevant? Do level 15 characters never encounter burning braziers, or do they just know that it's never worth their time to try spilling one onto an enemy? Is the DM careful to never include a level 15 fire source in the same room with level 5 characters?

I guess that's where transparency really goes out the window, for me. If you tell me that an iron+oak door has a break DC of 20, and an adamantium-reinforced door has a break DC of 30, then I'm fine; if you tell me that an iron-oak door has a break DC that's appropriate for a level 5 character, and an adamantium-reinforced door has a break DC that's appropriate for a level 15 character, then I don't know what that means. Maybe it's just because I'm not fluent in 4E, and I'm trying to understand based on my fluency in a related language. If I'd learned things the other way around, I can imagine thinking of doors in terms of their relative levels rather than their break DCs.

 

[bert1000]

Well, I'm not saying it would or wouldn't be fun or better or worse. FOR YOU, with your agenda, you might find it more fun, but I wonder if this is really true. I mean if you say decided that you would eat lunch and buy a couple healing potions before setting out, gambling that this would benefit you more than arriving early might, and then you arrive and the DM says "Sorry, all you find is a deserted temple and a bloody altar, the action finished up an hour ago!" you might start to feel differently. Maybe you (and certainly the DM) would be wishing that he'd decreed that getting lunch took 5 minutes instead of 25 minutes, or that you didn't have to haggle for 15 minutes to get the potions you needed. You see where I'm coming from? IME, lots of it, almost every DM out there will succumb to that logic.

Now, ALTERNATELY, the DM could cast the whole adventure in terms of the struggle to arrive at the temple within the allotted time frame. 4e handles this perfectly, you create a skill challenge, the results of which determines when the PCs arrive. If they succeed they arrive in the nick of time, if they fail they're too late. Maybe they get a choice to take an extra failure right off if they want to get some potions or lunch first (or maybe they just have to make a hard choice, but note that integrating it as a cost in the SC makes it explicit without requiring DM judgment calls on the absolute time). The result is BETTER than it would be in AD&D, where it all must rest entirely on the DM fiat of time which is putting pressure on the DM to undermine the game's agenda. The SC isn't even undermining a simulationist agenda, it is just creating transparency which makes things more interesting.

Another thing that using an SC does is it focuses the DM's mind on the plot issue at hand, what happens if the PCs don't arrive in time? Given that this is now an explicit outcome of a game process it is more likely to be addressed explicitly as well (just speaking from experience with 4e myself here, and having run things in a more 'classical' fashion in my 2e days by contrast). The drama is also moved more towards things that the players have a hand in, as opposed to largely controlled by the agenda of the evil bad guy and his ritual schedule.



I haven't seen too many truly neutral DMs. DMs have agendas just like players do, and I'd always rather see SC mechanics and other transparent 4e techniques used to keep things going on the straight than often biased DM calls. This just comes back to the very start of this whole long conversation several days ago. 4e provides transparent resolution mechanics that empower the players because they make things more explicit.

So, I originally found this to be an interesting discussion but I think I’m lost now. What are people arguing about?

I thought the idea thrown out was that certain systems through their structure can help minimize illusionism. Illusionism defined as player choices being nullified behind the scenes by DM choices. So, for people that don’t like illusionism, it would be helpful to identify systems that do something to limit it.

Someone proposed that 4e was such a system, particularly SCs which give it more anti-illusionism power than other editions of D&D. SC provide a non-combat resolution that outline success/failure ahead of time with the resolution structured and not very dependent on DM.

So is someone arguing that SCs and 4e doesn't really provide better minimization of illusionism, so if that is a concern then don’t worry about which edition you play?

I’m not sure what people are arguing anymore, but feel like there still might be a kernel of usefulness somewhere in here.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

That's... not as bad as previously indicated. Actually, when you put it like that, it sounds a lot like the issue with scaling DCs that so many people misunderstood back in 2008 - how a barred door might be DC 20 for a level 5 character, but DC 30 for a level 15 character, and the thing they weren't accounting for was that the second door is reinforced with adamantium and the first door is just iron and wood.

Right, adamantium is, in your example, a 'paragon environmental feature', and it makes sense. A bad guy wanting to keep out bad-assed paragon threats has to invest in adamantium doors! Level 15 challenges can still have wooden doors of course, but they're set dressing as far as being part of the challenge, although they still act as terrain.

Of course, that does lead to the obvious vagaries of assigning something like a "level" to mundane objects. Maybe a level 5 barred door is oak and iron so it has DC 20, and a level 15 barred door is reinforced adamantium so it has DC 30. Maybe a level 5 fire source is a burning brazier that deals 2d8+4 damage, and a level 15 light source is a suspended lava orb that deals 4d8+10 damage.

Yeah, they never QUITE made the full leap and put it that way, EXCEPT in DMG2 there are something called 'Terrain Powers'. This was a nifty way where the DM would codify some sort of environmental/situational thing as a power, which a character (PC or NPC) could then use if they took the appropriate action. Being powers these things at least technically have a level, but as close as they got to 'level 15 door' was just the chart that showed 'adamantium' as a DC30. I think it could have been made more explicit and removed some confusion but they probably were trying not to lard the whole game with too much terminology.

Do you describe the object to the players in terms of their level? Or their damage? Or do you just leave it undefined, and fill in the details when it becomes relevant? Do level 15 characters never encounter burning braziers, or do they just know that it's never worth their time to try spilling one onto an enemy? Is the DM careful to never include a level 15 fire source in the same room with level 5 characters?

Well, hmmm. There are of course always possibly some very mundane things that even high level PCs could do that would obviously be 'low level', like say 'drop a rock off the balcony onto the ogre'. A level 1 PC could do it and its not a rare resource or anything, so one line of reasoning is "OK, its a level 1 damage expression" and the level 20 guy would be ill-served by doing it. OTOH I would say the DM should be describing the situation such that this rings true. The level 20 ogre is a massive juggernaut of bone and armor plate, it just barely feels a brick sized object striking its head.

On the flip side, I don't see anything wrong with putting a level 15 lava filled lamp in a level 5 dungeon, but the DM obviously has to know what he's up to. It could be used to create a puzzle challenge, tip over the lamp onto the otherwise undefeatable enemy. I did this in the 2nd encounter I ever wrote in 4e. The level 1 PCs enter a cave and they run smack into a Carrion Crawler (level 7 elite). The cave sloped downward a bit, and they had just passed a couple nice barrels of oil. Clearly there was a theme here! Anyway, I think you can mix things up, the game isn't saying not to ever do that, its just saying "this will be a routine element at this level", at level 5 the level 15 lamp is not routine, its a super potent weapon.

I guess that's where transparency really goes out the window, for me. If you tell me that an iron+oak door has a break DC of 20, and an adamantium-reinforced door has a break DC of 30, then I'm fine; if you tell me that an iron-oak door has a break DC that's appropriate for a level 5 character, and an adamantium-reinforced door has a break DC that's appropriate for a level 15 character, then I don't know what that means. Maybe it's just because I'm not fluent in 4E, and I'm trying to understand based on my fluency in a related language. If I'd learned things the other way around, I can imagine thinking of doors in terms of their relative levels rather than their break DCs.

Yeah, I guess its a bit different way of looking at it. I just welcomed it as a guideline IIRC. One of the things that 4e did was use 'level' in a totally consistent way, it always references to the 30 character levels. There aren't a separate set of spell levels, dungeon levels, etc "level 7" always means something that would be mechanically in scale for inclusion at level 7 as a fairly standard adventure element. This leads to things like traps that are actually just a variant on monsters, a single level 7 trap is literally the same XP and challenge as a standard level 7 monster, and can sub for it in an encounter.

 

[pemerton]

Well, hark back to 1974. E. Gary Gygax would sit at his desk and precisely map out dungeon levels including all sorts of tricks and puzzles and whatnot, and then his friends would come over and try to dope out how to traverse said dungeon levels and survive. THAT is the model, it hasn't changed since 1974! You PRECISELY map out the world to such an extent that anyone could look at your notes and maps and objectively judge how the actions of the characters will play out. There may be judgment involved, there may be matters of DMs simply keeping stuff in their heads or not writing it up sufficiently to meet that ideal, but the dungeon 'objectively exists' (albeit as a piece of paper).

The agenda represented by [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] AFAICT and as I've experienced this in the past with players with his tastes is to simply extend that process TO THE WHOLE WORLD and create an entire game world in which every single little thing is specified down to a sufficient level to allow objective judgment of the outcomes of at least a reasonably anticipated subset of all the possible actions players could have their characters take.

<sip>

in this world view the DM is arbitrating the hostile world and the characters conquest/exploration of it.

<snip>

I think the attraction was that the GM can then be seen as an opponent, or at least that the WORLD is an opponent, a puzzle to be overcome by cleverness. If the world is arranged on plot needs then its not an antagonist, its simply the stage.

Yes, I get all this, and described it upthread.

But describing the aspiration doesn't answer my questions. (Compare: one person talks about using a trampoline to jump so high they can see the top of their house roof; another person says "Yeah, cool, but I'm going to do that to see the top of the Empire State Building!" It makes sense in the abstract, but what the hell does is their trampoline going to be made of?!)

In Gygax's version, there are hard rules about how much time various activities take, how wandering monsters work, etc. Because of what I've called, upthread, the Spartan character of the gamworld, the aspiration is manageable.

His game also includes a huge array of resources (detection spells, magic items etc) intended to let the players make rational choices about how they engage the geography. Plus there are conventions that make the model, like that monsters don't leave their lairs - so you can scout out the troll's location in session 1, leave the dungeon, spend money to buy oil, and then in session 2 go back and fight the troll.

But when you (notionally) extend it to a whole world, which is itself on a GM-controlled timeline, and where there are no hard-and-fast rules to manage time as Gygax has for his dungeon, the players aren't any more pitting their wits against the GM. At best, they're making gambles about how the GM's secret timelline is going to unfold.

It's a completely different gameplay.

In a post below yours, [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] says "You can't have a codified system for eating lunch". Why not? We have codified procedures for how long it takes to find secret doors, for how long it takes to walk down a corridor, for how long it takes to cast a spell, for how frequently random orcs roam the corridors. We could have codified procedures for eating lunch. But we don't - and even if we did, there'd be something else that might come up that wouldn't be codified.

Gygaxian D&D deals with this by shutting down the confines of the gameworld (to a dungeon), by stipulating conventions about the nature of said dungeons (challenge-ranked levels, static inhabitants of lairs, etc), by codifying the passage of time. As an approach to play, it really has very little in common with the players trying to beat a GM's secret timeline in circumstances where every determination about what is happening when, and how long an action takes, is in the hands of the GM.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

So, I originally found this to be an interesting discussion but I think I’m lost now. What are people arguing about?

I thought the idea thrown out was that certain systems through their structure can help minimize illusionism. Illusionism defined as player choices being nullified behind the scenes by DM choices. So, for people that don’t like illusionism, it would be helpful to identify systems that do something to limit it.

Someone proposed that 4e was such a system, particularly SCs which give it more anti-illusionism power than other editions of D&D. SC provide a non-combat resolution that outline success/failure ahead of time with the resolution structured and not very dependent on DM.

So is someone arguing that SCs and 4e doesn't really provide better minimization of illusionism, so if that is a concern then don’t worry about which edition you play?

I’m not sure what people are arguing anymore, but feel like there still might be a kernel of usefulness somewhere in here.

I think the gist of the debate is between things like the 4e skill system and SC system where you incorporate the narrative and mechanics in a fairly structured way so that the participants all know how it should go and what constitutes success or failure, vs the unstructured approach of other editions, specifically 5e was referenced. In a 4e SC the argument is that the players are empowered by the fact that the DM follows a recipe. Presumably the players know this recipe and can be more sure that the DM is taking fair account of their agency by following it.

The counter-argument was that 4e's system is in some fashion 'too loose' and that only rigid specification of the parameters of the conflict before hand coupled with strict following of those parameters in play is really empowering, because the players presumably are treated fairly by the objective DM who's only function at the table is to run the scenario as written.

There was a side aspect to this with JC explaining that in his RPG the rules are simply all-encompassing and cover every situation that comes up, coupled with a procedure by which the players can generate outcomes without the need for the DM to intervene. Some of us showed great skepticism about the viability of this kind of system, but in any case... The concomitant to this was that JC found 4e to be far too imprecise and subject to DM bias.

Finally the current bit of the discussion was focusing on the example of the PCs being under time pressure based on a deadline. In the 'AD&D view' the DM would have to come up with this deadline and adjudicate every action of the PCs in terms of their expenditure of time as a resource. Pemerton pointed out that this is fraught with DM judgment as the game can't possibly list the time required to do every trivial thing, and in any case 1000's of unaccountable details like the length of the queue at the hot dog stand are involved, rendering the result essentially DM fiat.

Conversely I was just pointing out that in the '4e view' a skill challenge lacks this issue, you can simply count successes and failures based on its procedure and not worry about the absolute numbers. It boils down to a judgment as to which of the two is less subject to DM bias and consequent loss of player agency.