Speculation about "the feelz" of D&D 4th Edition

[pemerton]

my initial observations about what made earlier editions "feel" a certain way are limited by my having to rely on the rules as written, since I have very little--well, actually, non-existent experience actually playing with the rules.

Reading the rules, I came to the conclusion that 4e dispensed with the management of the mundane, which in turn meant that the attritional aspects of the game were no longer present

To generalise a bit (but hopefullly not so much as to be egregiously wrong), there were two main ways of playing pre-3E D&D.

The first, which is largely what is promoted by Gygax in his PHB (and mostly also in his DMG, though it suggests perhaps a bit more of the second approach), is dungeon crawling. Inventory is a big part of this, although whether mundane equipment or spell load out is the more important aspect of inventory will depend on table style, party level (the higher the level, the more important the spells and the less important the gear) and probably other stuff I'm not thinking of at the moment.

In my view the greatest exponent of this style (in essay form, at least - I don't know about actual play) is Lewis Pulsipher writing in early White Dwarf. Gygax's essay at the end of his PHB (just before the appendices) makes much more sense if read by someone who has also read Pulsipher.

Key to this dungeon-crawling style is that the bulk of the content has been determined by thge GM in advance, and hence the players have an objective framework in which to (i) identify the content (via searching, using potions of treasure finding, etc), and (ii) deal with content (via fighting, avoiding, looting the valuable stuff, etc). This objective framework underpins planning, which in turn is what makes inventory key.

There are three main elements of randomness/immediacty in this style: (1) wandering monsters - and one striking feature of Gygax's DMG is the pains he goes to discuss when a GM should disregard a wandering monster check because it will spoil play; (2) reaction rolls, which (i) reward CHA-focused or charm-focused builds and (ii) can turn what would by default be opposition into something more neutral or even advantageous; (3) rolls to find secret doors, traps and the like, which can affect the sorts of intelligence players are able to gather and also their ability to actually go to various parts of the dungeon (at higher levels this 3rd factor becomes less important, as PCs have wands of secret door detection, passwall spells, etc). Gygax's DMG also talks quite a bit about how the GM can manipulate factor (3) to help ensure that the players actually get to the content the GM wants them to get to; conversely, ToH is all about amping factor (3) up to the Nth degree as the focus of play.

This style doesn't really survive the transition to seriously non-dungeon-focused play, because (a) it is unrealistic to expect a GM to generate all the content for a verimilitudinous rather than narrowly contrive setting, and (b) it is unrealistic to expect the players to gather all the intelligence and do all the planning for such a setting.

Which brings us to the second style of play of pre-WotC D&D: it's a style which uses the mechanical trappings of the first style, but not the other play procedures. In particular, it assumes that the GM is overwhelmingly in charge of deciding what the content is that the players (via their PCs) encounter and hence engage with. The Dragonlance modules are a famous and fairly early published example of this style; the whole Planescape and 2nd ed Ravenloft ouevre is a highwatermark of it in pre-WotC D&D publishing.

In this style, mechanics often become secondary: the players don't use mechanics to gather and act meaningfully upon information (because the sequence of content is in any event under GM control - a hallmark of this style is that there is a clue, but then if the players don't find the clue a NPC tells them anyway); the players don't use mechanics to gain access to the content, but rather it comes to them as the GM dictates; and the one place where it is often assumed that mechanics will be deployed - ie combat - the assumption is that the PCs will win, such that if in fact they lose the whole adventure goes off the rails or grinds to a TPK-induced halt (and there is often an overt or covert signal to the GM that s/he should fudge combat outcomes to make sure this doesn't happen).
[MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] made a good post about this playstyle in a recent thread - summing up, in this second playstyle which downplays mechanics and relies heavily on GM control over the sequence of events in play (what content is introduced, and how the players' interactions with it via their PCs ends up), the players' main job is to provide colour and enthusiastic engagement with the GM's story.

My suspicion is that quite a bit of 5e is played in more-or-less this style.

A 4e fighter in the same position could pick up a tree branch and probably be sitting on the dead body of the orc king when the rest of his party finally enters the throne room, because, in 4e, the power is inside you!--er, I mean, inside the character. In a certain way, that's awesome.

Well, the slip here is telling!

4e, by making the encounter the focus of play, allows the GM to determine what content the players encounter via their PCs, but allows the players, via their PCs and via engagement with the mechanics, to determine the outcomes of those encounters. This is at the heart of its "indie"-ness, and is the point where (as per my post just above) I think 5e most radically departs. (And if "indie"-ness looks like combining elements of player authority as per the dungeon-crawl style with elements of GM-led story as per the second style of play I described: well, that's because it is! It's an attempt to allocate power across GM and players so as to get story without the GM just leading the players through something pre-written.)

5e can't really afford to put that sort of power inside the players, because once the players have principal control over the outcome of encountrs, which changes the shape of what is to come in a way that refelcts their choices and priorities, the GM's control over the "adventuring day" is forfeit; and once that happens, the intra-party balance of 5e breaks down.

I think this is the true meaning of the slogan that 5e "puts poweer back in the hands of the GM". Or of [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION]'s remarks that balance in 5e is on the GM, not the mechanical design.

Claimed Magic Items were not calculated into the math via marketing.

<snip>

See what's going on here? One group of Fighters likely takes out an at-level challenge in a round, the other group of Fighters likely takes three rounds to do it. Magic items radically change how difficult a typical combat is going to be

<snip>

Which is fine and not problematic at all provided the DMG tells you which party is at the correct power level in case someone didn't see the marketing about no magic items in the math.

Which it does not do...

But failing to do this is not problematic if it is assumed that the GM, in any event, is in charge of managing the outcomes of encounters and feeding from one to the next. That's not an assumption in classic dungeon-crawling play; and it's not an assumption for indie-style play (and hence, by implication, not an assumption for 4e - though the 4e modules themselves don't seem to be aware of this!); but I think it is an assumption of the default approach to 5e.

If we assume that the GM is in charge of managing those outcomes and shepherding the players (via the PCs) through his/her scenario, then the fact that an encounter takes one or three rounds is just another one among myriad factors that the GM is managing, fudging around, etc. For many D&Ders being able to do that sort of thing is what they mean by "being a good GM".

 

[Parmandur]

To generalise a bit (but hopefullly not so much as to be egregiously wrong), there were two main ways of playing pre-3E D&D.

The first, which is largely what is promoted by Gygax in his PHB (and mostly also in his DMG, though it suggests perhaps a bit more of the second approach), is dungeon crawling. Inventory is a big part of this, although whether mundane equipment or spell load out is the more important aspect of inventory will depend on table style, party level (the higher the level, the more important the spells and the less important the gear) and probably other stuff I'm not thinking of at the moment.

In my view the greatest exponent of this style (in essay form, at least - I don't know about actual play) is Lewis Pulsipher writing in early White Dwarf. Gygax's essay at the end of his PHB (just before the appendices) makes much more sense if read by someone who has also read Pulsipher.

Key to this dungeon-crawling style is that the bulk of the content has been determined by thge GM in advance, and hence the players have an objective framework in which to (i) identify the content (via searching, using potions of treasure finding, etc), and (ii) deal with content (via fighting, avoiding, looting the valuable stuff, etc). This objective framework underpins planning, which in turn is what makes inventory key.

There are three main elements of randomness/immediacty in this style: (1) wandering monsters - and one striking feature of Gygax's DMG is the pains he goes to discuss when a GM should disregard a wandering monster check because it will spoil play; (2) reaction rolls, which (i) reward CHA-focused or charm-focused builds and (ii) can turn what would by default be opposition into something more neutral or even advantageous; (3) rolls to find secret doors, traps and the like, which can affect the sorts of intelligence players are able to gather and also their ability to actually go to various parts of the dungeon (at higher levels this 3rd factor becomes less important, as PCs have wands of secret door detection, passwall spells, etc). Gygax's DMG also talks quite a bit about how the GM can manipulate factor (3) to help ensure that the players actually get to the content the GM wants them to get to; conversely, ToH is all about amping factor (3) up to the Nth degree as the focus of play.

This style doesn't really survive the transition to seriously non-dungeon-focused play, because (a) it is unrealistic to expect a GM to generate all the content for a verimilitudinous rather than narrowly contrive setting, and (b) it is unrealistic to expect the players to gather all the intelligence and do all the planning for such a setting.

Which brings us to the second style of play of pre-WotC D&D: it's a style which uses the mechanical trappings of the first style, but not the other play procedures. In particular, it assumes that the GM is overwhelmingly in charge of deciding what the content is that the players (via their PCs) encounter and hence engage with. The Dragonlance modules are a famous and fairly early published example of this style; the whole Planescape and 2nd ed Ravenloft ouevre is a highwatermark of it in pre-WotC D&D publishing.

In this style, mechanics often become secondary: the players don't use mechanics to gather and act meaningfully upon information (because the sequence of content is in any event under GM control - a hallmark of this style is that there is a clue, but then if the players don't find the clue a NPC tells them anyway); the players don't use mechanics to gain access to the content, but rather it comes to them as the GM dictates; and the one place where it is often assumed that mechanics will be deployed - ie combat - the assumption is that the PCs will win, such that if in fact they lose the whole adventure goes off the rails or grinds to a TPK-induced halt (and there is often an overt or covert signal to the GM that s/he should fudge combat outcomes to make sure this doesn't happen).
[MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] made a good post about this playstyle in a recent thread - summing up, in this second playstyle which downplays mechanics and relies heavily on GM control over the sequence of events in play (what content is introduced, and how the players' interactions with it via their PCs ends up), the players' main job is to provide colour and enthusiastic engagement with the GM's story.

My suspicion is that quite a bit of 5e is played in more-or-less this style.

Well, the slip here is telling!

4e, by making the encounter the focus of play, allows the GM to determine what content the players encounter via their PCs, but allows the players, via their PCs and via engagement with the mechanics, to determine the outcomes of those encounters. This is at the heart of its "indie"-ness, and is the point where (as per my post just above) I think 5e most radically departs. (And if "indie"-ness looks like combining elements of player authority as per the dungeon-crawl style with elements of GM-led story as per the second style of play I described: well, that's because it is! It's an attempt to allocate power across GM and players so as to get story without the GM just leading the players through something pre-written.)

5e can't really afford to put that sort of power inside the players, because once the players have principal control over the outcome of encountrs, which changes the shape of what is to come in a way that refelcts their choices and priorities, the GM's control over the "adventuring day" is forfeit; and once that happens, the intra-party balance of 5e breaks down.

I think this is the true meaning of the slogan that 5e "puts poweer back in the hands of the GM". Or of [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION]'s remarks that balance in 5e is on the GM, not the mechanical design.

But failing to do this is not problematic if it is assumed that the GM, in any event, is in charge of managing the outcomes of encounters and feeding from one to the next. That's not an assumption in classic dungeon-crawling play; and it's not an assumption for indie-style play (and hence, by implication, not an assumption for 4e - though the 4e modules themselves don't seem to be aware of this!); but I think it is an assumption of the default approach to 5e.

If we assume that the GM is in charge of managing those outcomes and shepherding the players (via the PCs) through his/her scenario, then the fact that an encounter takes one or three rounds is just another one among myriad factors that the GM is managing, fudging around, etc. For many D&Ders being able to do that sort of thing is what they mean by "being a good GM".

Post of the week, man; your second style really does capture my experience. Good show!

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[MwaO]

Why not?

I mean, the debates around 4e revealed a few key issues/talking points for the "D&D community" (I use scare quotes because what exactly that is is one of those talking points).

When you discover that the connection between many of your customers and your product is not utilitarian but deeply sentimental in some fashion (such that eg matters of technical layout of game elements like spells, class features etc play a fundamental role in market uptake, apparently at least as big as the details of the mechanics themselves), why wouldn't you run a market campaign that speaks to all that?

There's a difference between a campaign aiming at that sentimentality and misleading your target audience as to how/what your product does. An example of this was the survey. It was badly set up, it was designed to encourage negative responses to go away and only keep positive ones. There was a very high bar for a negative response to something they wanted(and they were often surprised when they got one) and a very low bar for things they didn't want.

That's why we don't have Warlords in 5e, because the survey said many people thought it wasn't a good idea for martial healing. That's why Ranger had problems, because the survey didn't focus on the people who actually liked to play Rangers. And that's why when they had some truly stupid ideas that no one liked, the survey actually did manage to do the job in spite of itself. Such as adding random small dice to hit or damage.

 

[Parmandur]

There's a difference between a campaign aiming at that sentimentality and misleading your target audience as to how/what your product does. An example of this was the survey. It was badly set up, it was designed to encourage negative responses to go away and only keep positive ones. There was a very high bar for a negative response to something they wanted(and they were often surprised when they got one) and a very low bar for things they didn't want.

That's why we don't have Warlords in 5e, because the survey said many people thought it wasn't a good idea for martial healing. That's why Ranger had problems, because the survey didn't focus on the people who actually liked to play Rangers. And that's why when they had some truly stupid ideas that no one liked, the survey actually did manage to do the job in spite of itself. Such as adding random small dice to hit or damage.

Well, that is assuming that which is in question: the survey results were in my head, for one: they got bigger and bigger responses over time, too.

Sent from my BLU LIFE XL using EN World mobile app

 

[MwaO]

But failing to do this is not problematic if it is assumed that the GM, in any event, is in charge of managing the outcomes of encounters and feeding from one to the next. That's not an assumption in classic dungeon-crawling play; and it's not an assumption for indie-style play (and hence, by implication, not an assumption for 4e - though the 4e modules themselves don't seem to be aware of this!); but I think it is an assumption of the default approach to 5e.

I don't have any objection to that approach. I have an objection to a game not telling me that's its approach in the game itself.

That's part of my real objection to the marketing. There's no mention of any of the design concepts that were in Legends & Lore and there's information that directly contradicts the design concepts. So the game should make that explicit.

As an example, if 5e said the following, "Over the course of a typical campaign, a party finds treasure hoards amount to (insert rolls here). It could be exciting to have either less rolls or more rolls or even none at all. Here's how to modify the CR chart for a no-magic, low magic, or high-magic game to make the encounter difficulty appropriate."

See? Same thing as what 5e actually does, but there's no pretending by the marketing of something the game doesn't actually say. Put some additional language saying you don't have to stick to encounter strength, just be warned things might not go expected, and away you go. A player new to the edition knows what to expect just by reading the game, not by finding out the hard way.

 

[pemerton]

If I'm going to invest time and money in a game, I want style

I expect the style to come from play. I prefer the rules themselves to be clear and easy to read in a hurry. I regard Rolemaster as an early pioneer in this respect (clear spell layout, clear monster/NPC layout, clear attack table layout, etc), even though the rules themselves are rather complex and a bit clunky in places.

 

[pemerton]

Post of the week, man; your second style really does capture my experience. Good show!

Sorry, not sure whether you are being ironic/sarcastic or sincere/literal. If the former, sorry - I wasn't meaning to mischaracterise and am very happy to engage further.

If the latter, OK, I'm glad I wasn't too far off the mark.

 

[pemerton]

There's a difference between a campaign aiming at that sentimentality and misleading your target audience as to how/what your product does.

I don't have any objection to that approach. I have an objection to a game not telling me that's its approach in the game itself.

That's part of my real objection to the marketing. There's no mention of any of the design concepts that were in Legends & Lore and there's information that directly contradicts the design concepts. So the game should make that explicit.

First, just to get a possible confusion out of the way - I prefer a game that is overt about its design principles and the play experience it sets out (and, hopefull, does) deliver. That's why Luke Crane's Burning Wheel is my favourite set of RPG rules from the point of view of writing (I like them a lot in play too); and why I like other clearly-written rulesets too (eg Maelstrom Storytelling, bits of Over the Edge, HeroQuest revised, Marvel Heroic RP most of the time, and bits of 4e).

But second, I don't think my preference is universal. I'm not even sure it's very widespread. I think a significant number of RPGers - perhaps even a majority - prefer that the rules not talk about their underlying concepts or the way they are intended to yield a certain play experience, because that is already too much "pulling back of the curtain". They want the experience of immersion/verisimilitude to extend from play even into engaging with the rulebooks.

Ron Edwards identified this as a factor in RPG rules presentation over 10 years ago:

A lot of game texts in this tradition reach for a fascinating ideal: that reading the book is actually the start of play, moving seamlessly into group play via character creation. Features of some texts like the NPC-to-PC explanatory style and GM-only sections are consistent with this ideal, as well as the otherwise-puzzling statement that character generation is a form of Director stance. It supports the central point of this essay, that the value of Simulationist play is prioritizing the group imaginative experience, to an extent that expands the very notion of "play" into acts that from Narrativist or Gamist perspectives are not play at all.

This ideal poses two problems: one for the GM in particular, and one for the group as a whole.

The GM problem, only partly solved by GM-only sections, is that it makes it very hard to write a coherent how-to explanation for scenario preparation and implementation. Putting this sort of information right out "in front of God and everybody" is counter-intuitive for some Simulationist-design authors, because it's getting behind the curtain at the metagame level. The experience of play, according to the basic goal, is supposed to minimize metagame, but preparation for play, from the GM's perspective, is necessarily metagame-heavy, and if reading the book is assumed to be actually beginning to play ... well, then a certain conflict of interest sets into the process.

The usual textual solution is to assume that the GM is already on the same page and to address him or her as a co-conspirator. In many games, however, such information is outright punted, such that a GM must bring a particular set of experiences and values to the text in the first place in order to play the game.

The whole-group problem is that individually-conducted character creation often produces differing conclusions about the point of play from player to player, which is to say, the characters are fully plausible and created by the rules, but are also manifestly incapable of interacting in terms of any one person's desired genre/setting. The classic example in fantasy-adventure play is the party including a paladin and an assassin; the one in superhero play is the super-team that includes both a Spider-Man clone and a Wolverine clone.

The usual textual solution is to urge that all character creation be subject to the approval of the GM, which in practice poses some problems. For instance, it assumes that the Social Contract of the game group permits such authority and presents no procedure to follow if that happens not to be the case. Also, I have never seen any text explaining what a GM is supposed to do or to say to the player regarding how to re-write the character or to design a new one; every example, and there are many, seems to assume that the GM "just knows" how to communicate the je ne sais qua to the player.​

(It's interesting to see how popular the idea of "session zero" has become to deal with the whole-group issue that Edwards identifies; whereas Gygax in his PHB, being at least sometimes prepared to talk frankly in metagame terms and to distinguish prep from play, treats this sort of thing - getting together a compatible party with the right load-out of spells and gear - as something to be done in advance of play by converation between the leading players.)

 

[MwaO]

Well, that is assuming that which is in question: the survey results were in my head, for one: they got bigger and bigger responses over time, too.

The survey questions were designed to do that. It wasn't a real survey at all. It was a marketing push poll - you ask questions hoping to get respondents to come to conclusions you want them to come to anyway. If you feel 5e almost feels as if you designed the product yourself, you were influenced.

Also, at no point did they ever claim they got bigger and bigger responses over time. They made a claim that they had more and more unique playtesters. Not that the playtesters were all active. One reason you might have a unique playtester was that you forgot your playtester password and had to make up a new account because there was no password reset...

 

[pemerton]

without muddying things up with maneuvers et al

This gets back to the bit I don't entirely get: 5e has manoeuvres et al (wizard spells with forced movement, battlemaster abilities, the much-vaunted "shove" attack, etc).

Is it, as [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] suggested upthread, about the quantity of these?

rocket tag was a feature, not a bug; similarly with LFQW: they are freaking Wizards, man

balancing knights in shining armor with Merlin is always going to be relative; taking it too far just isn't realistic.

martial are not being overshadowed by spellcasters at our table.

While the spellcasters have awesome powers in theory, in practice hitting things dead is way more effective; and everybody has skills: balanced doesn't mean the same.

When I play, I have done Champion, Sorcerer and Wizard so far; the Champion contributed the most to the party. I call that balance?

My response to this is similar to [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION]'s - there seems to be a tension between the first two posts and the latter three.

That is, if in fact the casters are "realisitically" more powerful than the fighters, then why is this not manifesting itself at the table? And if in fact what the fighters do is more effective, then in whay theoretical sense are the casters more powerful?

(Personally, and bracketing whether "realistic" is the right word, I think that knights in shining armour clearly are as powerful as Merlin from the story point of view - it is their exploits, not Merlin's, that determine the fate of the realm. Or, in LotR terms, it is Aragorn as much as Gandalf who makes the choices and performs the deeds that determine the outcome for Middle Earth. I like a RPG that can somehow capture this on the player side rather than making it a matter of GM behind-the-scenes manipulation.)