Players choose what their PCs do . . .

[Campbell]

Not entirely sure how you draw that conclusion from what I said - maybe elaborate your reasoning?

I say this because story advocacy pro-or-con wasn't in my thoughts at all when I raise the piint about bypassing challenges; my concern was more that the mechanics in question might allow the players to in effect put the game on 'easy' mode and in doing so unintentionally reduce the fun* and engagement it might otherwise offer.

* - assuming, of course, that there's more fun to be had in overcoming challenges by meeting them and putting some effort in rather than overcoming them by simply leaving them to starboard.

This is why it can be dangerous to use D&D as a baseline for judging all RPG mechanics. Dungeons and Dragons is primarily a game about overcoming detailed challenges prepared by the DM. Burning Wheel is primarily a game about finding out who the PCs are as people. Detailed maps and prepared encounters are not a feature of play. What matters is that we can continue to press PCs to fight for their beliefs.

Another important detail is that generally the more audacious the intent the more difficult the check will be and the more room the GM has to establish consequences of failure.

So imagine we have a PC, Vertigan the Bold. He has the belief I will claim my rightful place on the throne by vanquishing my brother, the usurper. Vertigan has been thrown in his brother's dungeons after a failed coup attempt. He attempts to escape the dungeons by using a secret passage. His player's intent is return safely to my brothers in arms who are hiding inside the citadel. If he succeeds at what should be a fairly difficult check he will rejoin his comrades in the city. However on a failure he might end up deeper in the dungeon in a crypt where his father's remains are laying and be confronted by his father's ghost who thinks Vertigan killed him.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The numbers are not a model. They're a resolution system.

Then where or what is the model? (and before you answer, note that an answer of "there isn't one" renders the setting as meaningless

An interesting ultimatum, and one I'll answer, but, in return, I'm going to offer a comparable one, below. Good luck with it.

So, the resolution system, is not the model of the antagonist side of the conflict, alone. Rather, the broader system models the PCs and their story, including their antagonists, /as such/. In fiction - and, I mean fiction you could actually hope to publish, even if only in a 30s pulp or 19th century penny dreadful - heroes do not stolidly fight the same foes in the same level of detail over and over again. Rather, new or terrible threats get the detailed treatment, and familiar or trivial ones are finished quickly or even glossed over - because fiction is not meant to be boring.

The basic d20 dice mechanic can't handle a spread of more than +/-5 without becoming unwieldy, and at +/-10, it becomes worthless. So you're either limited to modeling a narrow range of competence (sweet spot) with the game breaking down outside that, modeling improvement primarily off the d20 with geometrically exploding hp/damage (high level monsters with thousands of hps), or normalizing the range between heroes and adversaries (treadmill).

None are entirely satisfying, but each can be made to work.

So, in the treadmill version, you can't have adversaries with a nominal level outside the workable range of the d20 - less than +/-5 - so, instead, other factors have to vary when you would otherwise cross that threshold. That's what secondary roles are in 4e. A solo is an adversary that would be consistently beaten at even odds were you 9 levels higher, instead, at level, it's a meaningful challenge for the whole party. A minion is a creature that would be consistently beaten at even odds were you 10 levels levels lower, but instead, at level, can be dispatched quickly, if not without risk.

Put those together and a single creature could be reasonably modeled as an adversary over a range of 20 levels.

How do we show, mechanically (In the fiction it's just presented as duch) it's the same creature? Or, for that matter, a comparable one? Well, it's XP value can be held constant at those different levels.

So, different stats on both sides of the conflict - increasing with level for the PCs, shifting with secondary roles for the same adversaries at those different levels - models both, and the story of their conflicts.

Which tells me how tough they are relative to the PCs they're facing right this minute; but tells me absolutely nothing about how tough they are relative to each other or to anything else in the setting

You could, were you inclined to "monsterbation," normalize a collection of creatures based on their relative XP values, and pit them against eachother. You should get consistent results, in that the higher XPs will out do the lower.

Now, for that ultimatum:

Put another way, there's more to a setting than just the PCs.

Then what is the point of the game? And if the answer is "the setting" or "internal consistency" or something of the sort, keep in mind that youre reducing your players to a mere audience.

 

[Manbearcat]

Then where or what is the model? (and before you answer, note that an answer of "there isn't one" renders the setting as meaningless.

Why is "genre logic is the model (or litmus test)" not a sufficient answer to you? Sincerely curious.

Let me ask you something in relation to Minions Lanefan.

Take some sort of Tentacle Monster (The Kraken or the like). In non-4e D&D, you're going to get an instantiation of the Kraken (or, again, any genre tentacle monster such as in The Fellowship of the Ring) whereby to defeat the monster, you're just ablating its monstrous HP pool down to 0.

By orthodox rules, the classic genre trope of lopping off tentacles isn't occurring in the sort of "fidelity to the model of fighting a Kraken/tentacle monster" that you're advocating for. You can narrate the fiction as such (deploying genre logic), but you're not actually gaining any competitive advantage by dismembering the Kraken. I'm assuming, by your logic, the model should produce that competitive advantage, with the fiction intersecting with that newly gained competitive advantage:

The Kraken's tentacles go from x to x-, therefore the beast is less of a threat than it was moments before.

In 4e D&D, the Minion rules actually enable this model (unlike other D&D).

1) Kraken is a Solo with various attacks + rider effect and all kinds of traits and abilities:
2) The Kraken has x # of (Minion) Tentacles that go along with the Solo creature.
3) The Encounter Budget also includes Whirlpool Hazards that the Kraken needs to use its (Minion) Tentacles to grab and fling PCs into.

Sum told, the Encounter Budget is 4800 (including 1-3).

Actually defeating (2) above would (a) model the bolded above (less attacks coming in on PCs and their vessel, less chance for PCs to be thrown into deadly Whirlpools, the Kraken (1) would then have to spend action economy to recover = impacts of encounter budget of 4800 are mitigated with a positive feedback loop) while (b) transliterating perfectly to the sort of genre fiction one would expect from a Kraken fight...

precisely the sort of modeling and transliteration to genre fiction that non-4e D&D doesn't produce (precisely because of its lacking of Minion mechanics).

Thoughts?

 

[Tony Vargas]

Take some sort of Tentacle Monster (The Kraken or the like)...
By orthodox rules, the classic genre trope of lopping off tentacles isn't occurring ...
Thoughts?

I think 1e had at least a few monsters with separate AC/hps for appendages, and IIRC 'killing' them reduced # attacks....

...yep, giant octopus & squid, and, MMII, Kraken.

 

[Manbearcat]

I think 1e had at least a few monsters with separate AC/hps for appendages, and IIRC 'killing' them reduced # attacks.

I can't recall this but, assuming correct, I wonder how [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] feels about this (individual HPs for appendages in 1e) and how that intersects with (or not) his feeling on Minions?

 

[Tony Vargas]

I wonder how Lanefan feels about this (individual HPs for appendages in 1e)

We've had 40 years to get used to it.

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] - all ficion in the world is created without models in the sense you are insisting upon, except for a certain subset of the fiction created by RPGers.

In 4e, the fiction is estabished in that mainstream way. We know that paragon tier PCs are tougher than heroic tier ones because we have the descriptions of the tiers of plat that I posted upthread. We know that an ogre savage and an ogre bludgeoneer are of comparable toughness because we describe them both as generic ogres wearing hide armour and wielding greatclubs.

Because such ogres pose little threat one-on-one to mid-paragon tier PCs we stat them as 16th level minons. Because such ogres pose some real threat to mid-heroic tier PCs we stat them as 8th level standard creatures.

The fiction is prior to the use of stats to establish parameters for resolution. That's why some of us have called it "fiction first".

The fact that their are more elements in the fiction than PCs has no bearing on this. JRRT was able to decide that the orcs in Cirtih Ungol killed one another without using a "model" in your sense. Humans are generally pretty good at making up stories.

An 8th level Ogre Savage has AC 19 and 111 hp. A 16th level Ogre Bludgeoneer has AC 28 and 1 hp (and never takes damage on a miss, because a minion). Which is tougher?

It's a trick question - they're of the same toughness, each wearing hide armour and wielding a greatclub, but statted differently for different resolution contexs.

Which tells me how tough they are relative to the PCs they're facing right this minute; but tells me absolutely nothing about how tough they are relative to each other or to anything else in the setting or to how tough they were yesterday or last week, which makes those numbers utterly useless for anything else beyond here-and-now interaction. Waste of time - why even bother?

Why even bother? Because that's what some of us call playing the game - finding out what happens in the here-and-now interaction. As per the topic of the thread, it's about establishling true descriptions of the events in the fiction.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Put another way, there’s more to a setting than just the PCs.

I haven’t commented in a bit, but I’ve been reading along with the current thrust of the conversation, and the above bit jumped out at me because I think it comes up often in these discussions.

The PCs....meaning the players and the characters they play...are what make a RPG a game. Anything in the setting has rules SOLELY for the purpose of interacting with the PCs. A game needs rules, the PCs are what makes it a game, therefore the rules are there for the PCs.

Beyond that, there’s no need for rules.

I think the idea that a game MUST have some internal consistency that could be maintained in the absence of PCs is simply not true. It may be a preference, but even then I’m not quite sure I understand the need. What matters in the fiction without the PCs being involved in some way? Any such detail can simply be narrated, or if random chance is required in some way, then it can be decided with the roll of a die.

It just seems like such a tail wagging the dog kind of situation.

 

[GrahamWills]

I have always been upfront about the substantive risks in Playing Passionately (I'll use this instead of Playing With Integrity).

The first risk is the creative risk [...]
The second risk is an emotional risk [...]

No, they are not the primary risk. The primary risk is that since it is by definition a selfish way to play (in the sense that you prioritize your character above everything else), you will make the game less fun.

Overall, when I run a game, I require all my players to prioritize making the game fun for everyone above anyone else. A play style that says "if my character would do that I will do it even if it makes the game less fun for other people" would be counter to the social contract I expect.

Everyone has had the bad play experience typified by the paladin who refuses to engage with the story because "it's not what he'd do". This style of play leads to issues like that. Sure, it can work, but I'd argue that passionately embodying your character is just as easy and a much more pleasant experience when it is within a framework that makes it secondary to respecting the story and genre.

 

[Ovinomancer]

No, they are not the primary risk. The primary risk is that since it is by definition a selfish way to play (in the sense that you prioritize your character above everything else), you will make the game less fun.

Overall, when I run a game, I require all my players to prioritize making the game fun for everyone above anyone else. A play style that says "if my character would do that I will do it even if it makes the game less fun for other people" would be counter to the social contract I expect.

Everyone has had the bad play experience typified by the paladin who refuses to engage with the story because "it's not what he'd do". This style of play leads to issues like that. Sure, it can work, but I'd argue that passionately embodying your character is just as easy and a much more pleasant experience when it is within a framework that makes it secondary to respecting the story and genre.

This is presupposing a story plot or antagonist that the players are expected and required to team up to defeat. Yes, in that style of play, this can be a problem because this style emphasizes team over individual. But, if there is no prepared story and the game follows the action, then the paladin refusing doesn't derail the game, the game is now about what happens next.

This was the biggest hurdle for me to overcome in my understanding -- you have to throw out the entire D&D conception of how games work and accept a completely new paradigm of play. One where the GM follows the players' moves and not the other way around. There's literally nothing to derail.