D&D 4E The Best Thing from 4E

[The Crimson Binome]

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.

But adamantium doors won't actually keep out a group of paragon adventurers. It's a challenge, but it can be overcome. Instead of investing in three sets of adamantium doors, which the PCs will inevitably break through, why doesn't the bad guy invest in one set of Unobtainium doors (DC 40) so the PCs can't actually break through? Or the lower-level bad guy can get one set of adamantium doors? Why can't the lower-level bad guy buy a high-level trap, to easily dispatch adventurers in the Heroic tier?

Or are we not supposed to ask those questions?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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?!)

Yeah, I understand. I can't really answer your question because IMHO entirely removing GM judgment from things (short of changing the roles of players and GM in ways not contemplated by D&D for the most part) is infeasible. In other words no material is strong enough to build your trampoline. I can imagine it, in some abstract sense, but sufficient codification is infeasible. Were it to be attained the result would be unplayable, IMHO. Now, perhaps in some future we can only dream of GMs will have some sort of AI that can accomplish this, answer any question about "what would happen if..." given a sufficiently complete description of the general laws of the game world. I'm not sure if that would be a better game or not. It would probably be the apex of Saelorn's agenda, though he might or might not actually enjoy it.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

But adamantium doors won't actually keep out a group of paragon adventurers. It's a challenge, but it can be overcome. Instead of investing in three sets of adamantium doors, which the PCs will inevitably break through, why doesn't the bad guy invest in one set of Unobtainium doors (DC 40) so the PCs can't actually break through? Or the lower-level bad guy can get one set of adamantium doors? Why can't the lower-level bad guy buy a high-level trap, to easily dispatch adventurers in the Heroic tier?

Or are we not supposed to ask those questions?

I don't think this question is unique to 4e's approach. Why aren't dungeons built with the nastiest stuff right inside the front door? Why don't dragons just put death traps on their lair entrances that deal out 150 points of damage and can only be disarmed by a level 10 thief (in AD&D terms)? Presumably the justification is that Unobtanium is unobtainable, at least by level 15 enemies and likewise the magic and whatnot required to make unavoidable death traps is hard to come by.

The truth is that it is all a convention, in every edition. The world is arranged such that a set of graded challenges is presented to the PCs in sequence. You could invoke what I called the "Anthropic Principle" way back 30 pages ago. It is so because otherwise the story would be about some other time and place where it is so.

 

[Starfox]

With the economic structure of 4E, a lvl 30 material like unobtanium would cost x25 that of a level 20 material like titanium. Does the bad guy have that much ready cash, and is perhaps that cash better spent hiring guards?

 

[Starfox]

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.

Make a table rule to avoid illusionism. If the GM doesn't comply, change DMs. I am very doubtful a rule set can remove illusionism without having bare-bones mechanisms that are jarring and make it a borderline boardgame. Then, that was what many people thought 4E did, so maybe it is your kind of game.

 

[Sadras]

There are three references in this quote to what the PCs are aware of and/or are choosing.Should I read that as "PC" or "player"... (snip)...In the examples you give, do the players know how their decisions to delay will change things?...(snip)... - then I agree that time is a genuine resource.

Read them as both player and character are aware and yes the players know their decisions to delay things will affect things. I remember I became frustrated in 4e when the urgency of the in-game fiction for the characters did not carry through to the players - so they would declare rests often and refresh their abilities. It forced me to design every combat encounter challenging enough to warrant their rests. I'm curious, did no one else experience this or have a problem with it?

It goes without saying that, in my game, the PCs - certain imaginary beings in an imaginary world - are aware that every hour of delay could spell doom for the prisoners, so they have reason to make maximum haste.

Sure, they have a reason to make haste (in-game fiction), but is there a possibility of failure. Are your players aware of this - do they even fear failure? i.e. are the consequences heavy enough to actually warrant the characters making haste.
Where/what are those limits where you say they have just taken too long? How do you measure them?

I personally have never played a D&D game where the role of time on the GM side of things is so constrained and knowable by the players. The only GM whom I've personally seen post about using such precise techniques is @LostSoul.

I'm genuinely surprised this playstyle doesn't see more light.

In the examples that you and @Saelorn are discussing, you are positing time as a player resource to be used to win against the GM (as in - get there in time the prisoners are saved, otherwise the GM declares them dead). That's fine, but as I've said I'm far from clear how, in the typical case, the players are meant to choose a winning strategy.

At our table, in our sandbox campaign, there is no winning strategy. There are better or worse choices.

If the timeline is, instead, about immersion in a "living, breathing world" then I can see that; but that doesn't make the players' choices more informed or rational - but I'm sure some players enjoy the fact that their choices are part of the mechanism of the GM's clock.

This is the style we are currently running. In our campaign I have a pre-determined timeline going 30-50 days ahead, based on the events after the destruction of the ToEE. The timeline is affected by the actions of the PCs - sometimes things are removed or added depending on the choices made by the PCs.
I'm tempted to start a thread when I have more time (excuse the pun) describing my current campaign as point of reference to determine if other Enworlders use time as an important constraint in their games.

In your hypthetical of it mattering whether the players choose to have their PCs go left or right, what are you envisaging being the meaningful decision, and how are you envisaging that being invalidated?

As a rough example, information that might be gained by taking the left side of the passageway, which could lead to easier exploration throughout the remaining dungeon. This is all dependent if one is actually utilising a map. From previous posts of yours, you have mentioned that exploration is not one of your driving forces for your games and this is likely the reason we might be on opposite ends of this debate.

 

[Manbearcat]

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 can't quite get my head around how you could come to this conclusion. Off the top of my head, I can think of several cognitive biases that constantly assail every person during play (including the GM), the GM during prep, and during post-game evaluation:

Availability heuristic bias
Curse of knowledge bias (probably the biggest problem that GMs in such a scenario face)
Framing effect bias
Observer expectancy effect bias
Selective perception bias

You can only on rare occasions utterly "defeat" these biases or, for that matter, even be aware that your objectivity is being assaulted by them (even if you're a person possessed of hyperawareness). This isn't even bringing in various mundane features of everyday life (lack of sleep, distraction, general fatigue, other stress).

Further, I believe that you cut your teeth on AD&D2e? That game is much more exploration centered than 3.x (which I believe that you also play/played). The generic process for a GM prepping an AD&D exploration scenario involves:

* Establishing what locale/terrain type this specific section of the adventure will take place in.

* Establishing what is concretely where.

* Establishing the very specifics of the what.

* Establishing movement rate per exploration turn in a specific locale.

* Establishing frequency/% of random encounters with respect to turns.

* Establishing encounter tables; populating them with kind/types, lethality, % chance for each.

Merely the last two, encounter table construction/management, are utterly rife with various biases. Further, none of the above even involve the myriad offscreen/undiscovered backstory evaluations/references (temporally and spatially) and the various rulings that you're going to have to make throughout the course of a session (because various subsystems/PC build mechanics are utterly incoherent with respect to each other).

Even if you've (meaning people running a game - not you personally) managed to convince yourself that you're running a cognitively unbiased, perfectly parameterized model run of a high fantasy world in an AD&D game...while simultaneously not falling prey to any of the above cognitive biases when actually running the game (eg having a conversation with your players), consider the inescapable reality that each and every one of your players at the table (who are trying, and failing to one degree or another, to manage their own cognitive biases) are (mis) perceiving and assimilating the (mis) information they believe you are conveying from moment to moment via their own biased mental models.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

With the economic structure of 4E, a lvl 30 material like unobtanium would cost x25 that of a level 20 material like titanium. Does the bad guy have that much ready cash, and is perhaps that cash better spent hiring guards?

Is that how it works? I could never find the price listed for wooden, iron, or adamantium doors. At that price, I would expect more down-ranking, then. If an adamantium door isn't going to stop a lvl 20 hero, then replace it with a wooden door and 24 lvl 10 traps; they might only be half as accurate, and deal half the damage, but sheer volume would make them much more effective.

I have yet to see any edition of a fantasy game where the economy makes some sort of sense. It's usually not as bad at low levels, though.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

You can only on rare occasions utterly "defeat" these biases or, for that matter, even be aware that your objectivity is being assaulted by them (even if you're a person possessed of hyperawareness). This isn't even bringing in various mundane features of everyday life (lack of sleep, distraction, general fatigue, other stress).

Nobody is perfect, and nobody should be expected to be perfect. As long as you're aware of these sorts of things, you can try to account for them, and however close you get should be close enough.

 

[JamesonCourage]

Hmmmm, I think rules explain under what conditions you succeed at things. Obviously PCs have limits, but most of them aren't really spelled out in the rules.

I guess it's probably true that not all rules set limits, but I have a hard time coming up with them. They set how you win (there are no other ways to win), what you can do (all the things you can't do), how to judge things in case of a tie (ruling out all other methods), etc. Rules set limitations which then define the game.

Now, if an EPIC TIER character wanted to jump to the Moon, that might be quite possible, depending on the character. There's an ED that lets you walk 'ANYWHERE' (Planeswalker) for instance. If a player wanted to cast that as 'jumping' I don't see an issue with that.

(1) Reflavoring. Go for it if you want to (I did it in 4e from the first session when the monk wanted a hammer but only had a club, or something). But it's not what the rules say.

(2) Doesn't it take like 24 hours? Or is that another ED? I don't have DDI my subscription anymore. If it is 24 hours, I guess it could be a really, really long jump.

So, yes, there are constraints, but I never suggested there weren't. I just suggested that 4e was very solid in the department of providing a general structure and procedure for doing fairly arbitrary things.

Page 42 was tremendous. I just wish it was in the hands of the players.

I agree, this is a feature of 4e that we haven't discussed. It is quite scale independent. There are rules that set specific DCs for some specific quantifiable things (like jumping), but in general a DM can pretty easily ramp up or down the crazy factor of the game by just selecting DCs in different ranges. You could have paragon characters leaping 500' if you wanted. IMHO this is a table thing, not something where the player must be able to be sure that at EVERY TABLE 4e will always play identically. When a player joins a table they will find out how things work at that table, or negotiate, etc. There is a pretty good default set of assumptions though.

Doesn't Athletics have defined rules for jumping? I don't remember, but I thought it did.

That aside, this is a weakness of the system, in my opinion. Players have no floor from which to stand from moment to moment. This is straight up "mother may I" in my opinion. They have to play the GM -find out what's okay with his views, and run with that. They have no other option for this, because they aren't given the tools themselves. (Page 42 is the GM's tool, not a player tool, and that's too bad.)

Yeah, I generally stick to what I've decided also, but I'm not hesitant about making up new things that fit well in the story. I respect player agency but I wouldn't feel BOUND by a random choice where the players had no real preference. I wouldn't change things in a way that made incoherent fiction, but beyond that I might make more interesting fiction.

Which I think is entirely normal for GMs. It's not how I run my game, but I have no problem in playing in that kind of game, as long as I know it's happening (whether I just catch on and then adjust my mindset, or I'm told that explicitly before play begins).

I think they could have gone a bit further, but it was pretty good. Certainly these days there's little excuse for a name-brand RPG not to include such niceties.

Well, simplicity. But I prefer nuance over simplicity in my RPGs, so I have a ton of this stuff in my RPG (societal racial traits, biological racial traits, national traits, regional traits, flaws, quirks, complications, personality traits, etc.).

But, staying to 4e, yes, the stuff presented really opened up the imaginations for PC backstory for my players, and that really gave me something to hook them on from session one. It was really nice.