D&D 4E The Best Thing from 4E

[The Crimson Binome]

• Your attack knocks the snot out of your foe. His stunned look advertises an opening for further attacks.
• Your attack puts your foe off-balance, preventing him from easily reacting to things around him.

Those don't really describe how your attack is any different, so much as how the enemy responds to your attack. I get that the first one is like "you swing really hard" and the second is like "you swing to try an unbalance", but then why does the second attack deal more damage? You can also swing really hard to just do a ton of damage (Brute Strike?), but how is a really hard swing (that results in extra damage) any different from a really hard swing (that stuns)? What is the difference in the narrative of your attack, to justify the difference in mechanical resolution?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

You can't have the exact same narrative action result in different mechanical expressions, because the whole point of having a codified system is that it tells you how to convert a narrative description into a mechanical result for the purpose of adjudication. A mechanical effect, bereft of the narrative description which invokes it, would be entirely pointless!

I don't agree. I'm not advocating that any old effect can be narrated any old way, but I think its quite possible for several different effects to all narrate as 'the enemy is off-balance and can't respond', it could be unable to make an OA, or has the dazed condition, or gets a debuff to his defenses, or some combination of those, or something different. Words aren't exact things, and the way people react to injury, surprise, magic, etc is probably also not exactly consistent. Within reasonably bounds I am therefor OK with different mechanics representing 'the same' effect. Its just not EXACTLY the same, but it may be that to an observer (IE from the narrative) you can't really tell, at least until the action moves on and you see the ultimate results.

And honestly, what edition of D&D has been consistent in this regard? Many different spells have divergent mechanical effects and yet do approximately the same sort of thing, discomfiting enemies in various ways. Obviously the details of what they do AT SOME LEVEL must vary slightly, but it just isn't that important.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

There's also the chance that you could fail, even if it's not important to the plot and there are no narrative stakes involved. If I want to build the boat, and the DM just agrees and says that I build the boat, then I didn't really accomplish anything. There's a lot that you can do with a boat. It opens up a lot of options. If I don't put points into that skill, then making the boat is essentially a non-option because it will take so long (and I'll ruin so many of the materials) as to make it infeasible. (And the player would know that it's infeasible, because the rules are so transparent.)

Well, there are 2 questions here. First, how does the character fail if he just keeps it up, surely he produces a boat at some point? If it really has no narrative stakes then success and failure are all of a kind anyway, so again why would you even make a check? I don't see how accomplishing rolling a d20 and getting a certain number is a big accomplishment that it matters. Its not a challenge even with a check!

Secondly how does the CHARACTER know its infeasible? Do characters know DCs? Being ignorant of the process of boat making as he is its perfectly reasonable in my mind that he would set out to work on a project he cannot complete. Heck, I recall my father bought some plywood monstrosity from some guy that tried to build a boat, then he wrestled with it for years and found out HE COULDN'T EITHER, this kind of thing is part and parcel of life.

Although it's possible that the question is irrelevant, since 4E doesn't really concern itself with the possibility of down-time. If a 4E game is supposed to keep moving forward at all times, then the only time it would ever come up is during a narrative-driven Skill Challenge, to accomplish some other goal. Kind of like how Basic was only ever concerned with dungeon environments.

D&D is really only about adventuring and downtime is merely a side concern. Sometimes downtime can be significant, but if it is then there's no reason why an SC can't govern something happening during it. I'd say anything significant is 'moving forward', as that is measured in terms of story-arc in some fashion. Even if the story-arc is simply "the things that the characters do" you'd surely make checks of some sort for the ones you thought were likely to alter the course of future play. 4e has the SC as a way to approach that is all.

Actually, now that I think about it, the more relevant part might be that NPCs in a 3.x game are constrained to the same rules as the players. A player can use knowledge of how the Craft skill works to estimate how long an NPC might take to build something, which might matter in a lot of cases.

I think all the commentary on bias and etc that has gone before applies here. Yes, the PC could try to judge how long it will take the bad guy to build a boat. Of course in 4e the DM will have to determine that in SOME fashion as well, and the 4e PC can try to divine that too. Since we've agreed that the exact numbers aren't the prime thing here the DM can simply make up a reasonable-sounding number, there's no need to go do calculations using arbitrary numbers.

And again, the SC raises its head. You don't need to decide how long the bad guy's boat building will take, the PCs can simply be told to go ahead and try to do whatever they need to do before the boat is finished, and the progression of the SC will stand in for any time constraint. This again focuses the drama on the players, tension is built by successes and failures, not guesses as to if the DM will give them enough time to do what they want.

 

[Balesir]

Wow, this thread is getting hard to follow with limited free time and challenging to winnow out theposts I want to respond to from, but here goes... Sorry if it's a bit "piecemeal".

If the party needed to get there tonight, because the sacrifice was going to take place tonight, would an hour-long break for enchantment constitute abandonment of the quest? Or would they still show up right in time for it to be dramatically appropriate?

If I wanted to make a "race the clock" situation these days I would pretty much always do it with a skill challenge; it's a great metric to use openly but in a low key way (I just have green and red beads that I lay out to signal successes and failures).

If a decision is on the table about preparing for the anticipated showdown after the race at the cost of some speed, it seems to me the answer is simplicity itself: tell the players their characters can spend the time enchanting an item (or whatever) at a cost of one automatic failure in the challenge. Skill challenges are not lost after a single failure, so it's not a simple abandonment - but now you need X successes before two failures, instead of X successes before three failures. A straight tradeoff decision for the players to make, with no fuss.

Choices to help with potential later challenge issues - like the "get a decent meal before setting out" - on the other hand are just as simple. A check on Streetwise (to get a good meal fast) can substitute for an Endurance check later (to press on fast on an empty stomach).

Consider how this applies to looking for a secret door: the players announce "We search for secret doors, tapping and rapping and prodding and pulling, etc". The GM replies, without rolling or calling for a Perception/Search check "OK, you find one . . ." In this case, the GM doesn't pretend to the players that there was a possibility of an alternative fictional state for the game, where the PCs don't find a secret door.

The example brings up a point I find interesting about Robin Laws' "Gumshoe" system. Gumshoe is intended specifically for running mystery/crime solving adventures (and its offshoot, Trail of Cthulhu, is the first game I've seen out-Call of Cthulhu Call of Cthulhu!). A major feature is that finding core clues is never rolled for. If a character gets to the appropriate scene with an appropriate investigative skill and uses it (i.e. announces they search around), they get the clue. Automatically. Laws' insight was that detective stories aren't about finding the clues - they are about what you do with the clues once you have them.

With the second set of techniques, involving direct manipulation of the fiction, the illusion is created that the effects upon the fiction of resolving players' action declarations will matter to the broader state of the shared fiction. It is a type of covertness about the stakes. In my experience of reading publishes adventures, this variety of illusionism is generally advocated to mitigate against deep changes in the gameworld (eg if the PCs don't stop the evil-so-and-so, eventually another NPC will a day or week or so later).In my actual play experience, this variety of illusionism is used by GMs who (for either practical reasons or aesthetic reasons) don't want to lose control of the campaign world, or have it go in unanticipated directions.

[MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] wrote about illusionism for Story Now! gaming, but I think this brings to mind a better example still of how that could happen. Suppose a character is faced with a choice to either save a loved one and let a village be destroyed, or save the village and lose the loved one (just to pick an example at random...). If the player has the character choose the village, but it turns out afterwards that the loved one survived anyway, that's a form of Nar illusionism, I think. The hard, emotional choice was never really a hard choice, or an emotional one. It was merely a matter of which the GM had decided was "right" and which "wrong" (assuming that choosing to save the loved one would have meant the villagers got splatted). That might be OK for some sort of pseudo-tactical morality play, but it's not really about the characters' hard choices.

More generally, I think the tendency to identify meaningful choices in terms of "going left" or "going right" is a legacy of D&D's origins as a dungeon exploration game in which the players are trying to beat the GM's dungeon. It is predicated, too, on the players having access to information that makes it possible to choose rationally - detection magic (from spells, wands, swords, potions - these are very common items in the classic game); rumours; treasure maps; etc.

And, going back for a minute to my last post, here we have Edwards' third "agenda" - Gamism. The players are looking to make decisions that are tactically meaningful in the sense that they determine success or failure. "Illusionism" here means having choices that look like they should affect success chances, but don't really.

As an aside, I always found D&D to be a really awkward Gamist vehicle - even though I have found ways to pursue what [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] calls "lite gamism" - because the only real "loss condition" implicit in the system is character death. If you want a long-running game with character development and hardcore gamist agenda, you really need loss conditions that keep characters alive (but beaten). 13th Age has the start of an interesting idea for this in its "campaign losses".

Now, to go further afield, I'm going to propose that there is a binary at play in all RPGs: an exploration of conflict and an exploration of colour. (Have to Americanize it, sorry [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]!)

The exploration of conflict is primarily about the avatar(s) progressing through the narrative, and overcoming narrative conflicts to achieve their progression within the greater fictional world. This is also the means in which most customizable and progressible options are opened in most RPGs. This is fighting through orc caves in D&D, or exploring the Air Temple in Final Fantasy, or completing the Icecrown Citadel in World of Warcraft. The avatar(s) have a goal (defeat X, or explore Y) and the referee, whether this be a DM, a game client, or a shared server, presents them with challenges that carry the risk of failure.

Exploration of color, then, is the gameplay where conflict, risk, and stakes are not present or fairly low-key. It's talking to the city guards to find out what's going on in the city in D&D. It's exploring a ramshackle hut in Skyrim to find materials. It's trying out new outfits in Club Penguin. It's building up your home with new furnishings in RIFT, or ArcheAge, or Star Wars Galaxies.

This was such a good post I just wanted to quote part of it again. A real moment of expanded understanding as I read it - thanks!

Oh - I couldn't resist fixing up your spelling for you, though

In general, though, I want a game that is written such that mechanical resolution follows directly from narrative description; so a game that starts with the mechanics, and asks you to go figure out which narrative will get you there, would be "backwards" to me.

It's funny; I used to think this, but now I really, really feel the exact opposite. Shows how tastes differ and also change, I think.

Mechanical resolution following from in-game narrative now seems to me to be the root of so many of the problems I have always perceived in RPGs - D&D, especially. Narrative following mechanics lets the players have more freedom and clarity, allows all involved to envision the world as makes sense to them (as opposed to swallowing whatever BS the GM trots out in purple prose about the specific topic you happen to know about while the GM, evidently, doesn't) and means the designers can be sure that they have a game that works (assuming they playtest it properly...).

This leads to one point I wanted to make but failed to find [MENTION=6668292]JamesonCourage[/MENTION]'s post about (sorry). He explained quite convincingly how he found 4E skills, skill DCs and Skill Challenges lacking in "player empowerment". I get the sense that an important part of what he found important in having "transparent DCs" was that the DCs related directly to the game world. I actually don't think that is required, or even desirable to me. The DCs for skill challenges are "transparent" in the same way that combat encounter "monster lists" are in 4E. They generally, but not necessarily, are set somewhere near the PCs level and the number of successes (or monsters) will generally be proportionate. Exact parameters will be found through play, but the position in the challenge will be evident from the number of successes and failures. There is no "opposition" in the challenge, unless you use a "token" system as I outlined in a post way back.

This provides a type of transparency and clarity that is much more aligned to the "game" than to the game world, but I find that, as with the "game-aligned" rules for combat, these can be projected onto the game world via the players' imaginations quite easily. Such a modus operandi - give a clear and understandable game, which is abstract but transparent in its workings, and then let/make the players project the situation symbolised by this abstract game onto the imagined roleplaying world - I find to give several advantages. It makes it easy to share a clear and unambiguous picture of the state of play - literally, as it's the "game" state we share, not the detail of game-world colour. It also allows each player to imagine the game world in a way that makes sense to him or her; too often in the past we have stumbled over descriptions (either from the GM or from another player) that, to someone who actually has some knowledge of the topic being modelled, seem totally nonsensical. It also makes available options and choices clearer to the players, at least at the game level, and it allows consistent adjudication of quite variable "cool moves". It assumes character expertise, rather than having effective character expertise limited by the collective/shared expertise and communications abilities of the play group. Overall, I find it vastly superior. YM, naturally, MV.

 

[Tony Vargas]

What is the difference in the narrative of your attack, to justify the difference in mechanical resolution?

What's the difference in the narrative before you swing and hit for 1 hp of damage vs hitting for 8? The difference flows from the mechanic, not the narrative.

You're using the premise that mechanics must flow from narrative as if it were some sort of unquestionable axiom. It's not. Many game mechanics inevitably flow the other way.

In general, though, I want a game that is written such that mechanical resolution follows directly from narrative description

First of all, narrative often has to flow from mechanical resolution - you can't narrate that you hit until after the mechanic has been resolved. So right off the bat, you can't have what you say you want. I'm guessing that's an issue with expressing what you want.

You can have multiple narratives that all lead to the same mechanical effect - you can stab or slash someone for 8 damage, as easily as you can shoot or blast for 8 damage. The only thing I'm advocating is that, where you have different mechanical effects, they must follow from different narratives.

So I can stab or blast someone for 8 points, but if I hit them for 7, it has to be something else?

That doesn't sound like a useful rule of thumb, let alone an absolute of game design.

I also don't see how, for instance, it applies to the issue you ran into with Spiteful Glamour, nor with re-skinning in general. If different narratives can lead to the same result, then re-skinning a mechanic with a different narrative is no problem.

You can't have the exact same narrative action result in different mechanical expressions, because the whole point of having a codified system is that it tells you how to convert a narrative description into a mechanical result for the purpose of adjudication. A mechanical effect, bereft of the narrative description which invokes it, would be entirely pointless!

It'd be strange to see so isolated a mechanic in any version of D&D - certainly, no 4e power is entirely without it's little italic description, however inadequate you may find it personally. Even a system like Hero, which presents generically-labeled mechanical effects that you buy, mod, limit, and build into the powers you want includes (typically begins the build process with) defining the 'special effect' - what we're calling the narrative description of the effect.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Well, there are 2 questions here. First, how does the character fail if he just keeps it up, surely he produces a boat at some point? If it really has no narrative stakes then success and failure are all of a kind anyway, so again why would you even make a check? I don't see how accomplishing rolling a d20 and getting a certain number is a big accomplishment that it matters. Its not a challenge even with a check!

Secondly how does the CHARACTER know its infeasible? Do characters know DCs?

1) In 3.x, failing a check by more than five points causes you to ruin half of the raw materials. You'd eventually run out of raw materials (or money to buy raw materials) if you keep failing.

2) The DC of a check corresponds to the difficulty of a task in-game. Sometimes, the task might be harder than the character realizes, so you give up after the first attempt when your things go better-than-expected and yet you still fail to make significant progress. In general, though, I don't know if they ever address whether the DM is supposed to reveal the DC of a task. PCs do know how good they are at a task, though, so their estimates of success are unlikely to be too far off from their reality.

 

[Balesir]

You can have multiple narratives that all lead to the same mechanical effect - you can stab or slash someone for 8 damage, as easily as you can shoot or blast for 8 damage. The only thing I'm advocating is that, where you have different mechanical effects, they must follow from different narratives.

You can't have the exact same narrative action result in different mechanical expressions, because the whole point of having a codified system is that it tells you how to convert a narrative description into a mechanical result for the purpose of adjudication. A mechanical effect, bereft of the narrative description which invokes it, would be entirely pointless!

I have a whole book (and parts of several others) here devoted to footwork, balance and "breaking your opponent's structure" in western (and other) martial arts. An action that we frequently describe simply as "I attack with my sword" in an RPG is, in real close combat, a whole spectrum of subtle moves, shifts of weight and exploitation of the limitations of an opponent's body. A full list of the possible moves involved would need a "Handbook" of rules all of its own. Summarising the potential in a select set of mechanically different 'Powers' is a functional and effective shorthand to represent close combat as a coherent and understandable game that can be projected onto the game world via the application of imagination.

Close combat happens to be an area I know something about. I imagine, however, that a sinilar approach will work equally well for other areas in which I know a deal less than those with whom I am playing. This will allow me to do them the service of not spouting meaningless drivel about the subject they know while still effectively contributing to the game with a character that can do the stuff associated with said topic.

There's also the chance that you could fail, even if it's not important to the plot and there are no narrative stakes involved. If I want to build the boat, and the DM just agrees and says that I build the boat, then I didn't really accomplish anything. There's a lot that you can do with a boat. It opens up a lot of options. If I don't put points into that skill, then making the boat is essentially a non-option because it will take so long (and I'll ruin so many of the materials) as to make it infeasible. (And the player would know that it's infeasible, because the rules are so transparent.)

One point I think is worth noting about the "boat building" example is that I would not generally see "build a boat" as a challenge. The only exception might be if some demonic scout master declares that you have to build a raft that will sail the length of the lake, or you have to clean out the Vrok latrines before bedtime, or something.

In the example of the druidess saving the children, the challenge was actually "to find a village haven for the kids". Building a boat is simply a means to the ends, here; other ways to tackle the problem probably exist and may involve different skills. As [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] has already said, boat building in downtime is not a challenge at all. The only questions are how long it will take and how much it will cost; both are functions for the economic system, not the challenge system.

 

[D'karr]

What is the difference in the narrative of your attack, to justify the difference in mechanical resolution?

Those are details that are not necessary for the conflict resolutions of the game. It could be that in one attack the PCs body weight is optimized for the attack or the enemy is positioned in a way that makes him more susceptible to the attack. In either case it is unimportant as combat is a very abstracted approximation.

In the end the game does not care, each attack is nuanced in a different way to provide variety in the game. What narrative device is used if the roll on the W was a 1 or a 12? It does not matter as the game does not concern itself with those details. For good or ill D&D has never concerned itself with nothing more detailed than I hit him with my axe/sword/dagger/bohemian ear spoon.

When I played Moldvay D&D combat had two modes - weapons with different damage values, or weapons all do d6 damage. That is how abstract D&D combat can be. What was the narrative difference for the attacks? None, because it is not something the game concerned itself with.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

One point I think is worth noting about the "boat building" example is that I would not generally see "build a boat" as a challenge. The only exception might be if some demonic scout master declares that you have to build a raft that will sail the length of the lake, or you have to clean out the Vrok latrines before bedtime, or something.

It might not be a challenge, but it's still a task with an uncertain outcome. It's probably a bad example, though, because it's not something that the system is designed to handle.

Maybe my issue with Skill Challenges is just that they're too abstract? Regardless of how you go about trying to save the kids, it will always take the designated number of successes before three failures. It doesn't matter what you do exactly, because any step will either be a success or a failure. You can't hit on some brilliant plan that bypasses the whole thing in one shot, and you can't make a single mistake so devastating that you fail the whole thing outright. In a lot of ways, it doesn't matter what action you try (in terms of the narrative), because the only thing that matters is whether you succeed at the designated-relevant skill check.

At least, that's how it played out for me. It felt like there was no incentive to even try and come up with a good plan, since the execution was going to come down to the dice regardless. Just put in the minimum effort required to be allowed to make the check.

 

[D'karr]

I believe the issue is one of significance and suitability. If a task is not really significant then a skill challenge might be used but it's not like it's necessary. It does not matter if you use a skill challenge or not. After all where is the challenge if there is no significance to the goal. Skill Challenges are meant for goals that are significant to the emerging game. The emerging story in which the PCs are somehow challenged.

For example if my goal was to craft the first Dragonlance in The War of the Lance, that is a suitably significant goal. Therefore a skill challenge might be a good way to address that. Part of the challenge might be gathering materials or craftsmen. Finding the secret to the lances, and the actual crafting. It would also be important to note that the crafting of the Dragonlance might be a skill challenge or multiple challenges posed across a large span of time. Finding the secret might be a challenge that happens in session 1 but the actual crafting does not happen until session 7, for example. The same might be said about an important magical item that the PCs might want to craft. When it comes to the boat the significance only emerges based on the situation. Is part of the character's plan to use a boat to escape across the lake from the dragonarmies that are surrounding them? Is there a boat readily available? No, then maybe crafting a boat becomes important. The goal might be significant. Crafting a boat as part of my downtime activities, not really significant.

Also note that in a skill challenge the failure of the skill challenge is not supposed to be a show stopper, it is a disadvantage (sometimes a severe one). When crafting a boat for escaping from the dragonarmies a failure in that challenge is not that we don't get a boat. The failure might be that we delay too much and end up running into a patrol, or the boat is so poorly constructed that we end up sinking off shore and have to make our way with depleted resources (loss of HP, HS, Action Points, etc.) Those are all complications/disadvantages, but they don't short circuit the game. If we fail to craft the Dragonlance, does that mean that we break the lance? Is that a show stopper? If it is then that is not an appropriate failure for the challenge. Then again having the lance break when used against a dragon is a pretty interesting disadvantage. All these things are part of what make skill challenges an appropriate tool. If a goal is a single roll task then it does not require a skill challenge. When to use and when not to use a skill challenge is part of knowing the appropriateness of the tool.

As someone mentioned crafting a boat, depending on context, is one of those things that are probably not appropriate as a skill challenge because of significance.