D&D 4E Anyone playing 4e at the moment?

[Parmandur]

Perhaps I do not understand the terms used .... Top down sounds like it means not having a consistency of structure meandering all over the place because you didnt build the bones first.

The main place I've seen that terminology is in Magic: the Gathering design, where Mark Rosewater uses it to distinguish between card Sets that were built "bottom-up" around a game mechanic concept that narrative tropes were built around (classically, the Ravnica world was built around dual-color interactions in the game space), as opposed to card sets that were designed "top-down" around a narrative theme where card mechanics are selected to re-inforce the tropes: Innistrad, the Gothic Horror set, is the classic example of the latter.

Top-down doesn't mean sloppy, it just means that mechanical decisions follow from the fluff. And bottom-up doesn't mean that the narrative elements must be lacking, just that the fluff is an add-on to the game mechanics. Either approach can be useful, depending on context.

 

[Garthanos]

Top-down doesn't mean sloppy, it just means that mechanical decisions follow from the fluff. And bottom-up doesn't mean that the narrative elements must be lacking, just that the fluff is an add-on to the game mechanics. Either approach can be useful, depending on context.

It sounds very hard to determine and black and white in a way that does not work. Healing surges allowing periodic resurge like the narrative of action heroic fiction create the tension of risk (which might be illusory) or hit points in general allows heroic choice to not be a stupid one (random saving throws whenever injured would serve a different narrative). Sounds like mechanics designed with very targeted narrative in mind not some bucketting of 4e design in the other category

 

[Charlaquin]

The main place I've seen that terminology is in Magic: the Gathering design, where Mark Rosewater uses it to distinguish between card Sets that were built "bottom-up" around a game mechanic concept that narrative tropes were built around (classically, the Ravnica world was built around dual-color interactions in the game space), as opposed to card sets that were designed "top-down" around a narrative theme where card mechanics are selected to re-inforce the tropes: Innistrad, the Gothic Horror set, is the classic example of the latter.

And indeed, that is exactly where I’m was borrowing the terminology from.

 

[Garthanos]

There is a narrative trope sometimes the 5 man band this might be seen as corresponding roughly with the classes in the original D&D. However Is that really true? There were also the US Fireteam to define roles in a more war time venu or even more directly D&D they had mechanics for a Wargame with different military units that served functions in their Wargame ie the mechanics came largely before the D&D narrative where pasted on top and the large artillery weapons mechanics became the D&D wizard instead of the narrative wizard being someone doing rituals.

 

[Charlaquin]

It sounds very hard to determine and black and white in a way that does not work. Healing surges allowing periodic resurge like the narrative of action heroic fiction create the tension of risk (which might be illusory) or hit points in general allows heroic choice to not be a stupid one (random saving throws whenever injured would serve a different narrative). Sounds like mechanics designed with very targeted narrative in mind not some bucketting of 4e design in the other category

Healing surges certainly have a strong narrative to them, but they are absolutely bottom-up design. Again, bottom-up doesn’t mean the narrative is flimsy and top-down doesn’t mean the mechanics aren’t solid. The “trope naming” MtG blocks are each widely considered two of the best blocks of all time, both in terms of design and flavor. It’s just a matter of what the starting point is.

Without question, 4e was designed from the bottom up. We know very well that, from the classes to the cosmology, the 4e devs asked themselves “what gameplay purpose does this serve?” That’s how we got the much more gamable world axis instead of the higher-concept great wheel. It’s how we got role-and-power-source class design instead of classes-as-archetypes. A lot of what I would consider the best parts of 4e were arrived at through very intentional and very well-executed bottom-up game design. But, it’s understandable why that would have been jarring for some folks, given that D&D’s design had historically been extremely top-down. And they went back to top-down for 5e.

 

[Charlaquin]

There is a narrative trope sometimes the 5 man band this might be seen as corresponding roughly with the classes in the original D&D. However Is that really true? There were also the US Fireteam to define roles in a more war time venu or even more directly D&D they had mechanics for a Wargame with different military units that served functions in their Wargame ie the mechanics came largely before the D&D narrative where pasted on top and the large artillery weapons mechanics became the D&D wizard instead of the narrative wizard being someone doing rituals.

You seem to be stuck on the idea of narrative being “pasted on top”. Narrative can be designed to very closely fit mechanics in bottom-up design. It just isn’t the starting point.

 

[Parmandur]

You seem to be stuck on the idea of narrative being “pasted on top”. Narrative can be designed to very closely fit mechanics in bottom-up design. It just isn’t the starting point.

Indeed, see the upcoming Strixhaven set for Magic: it's a bottom-up design built around using double sided cards and enemy color combos, but they built a solid narrative structure around that basis.

 

[Charlaquin]

Indeed, see the upcoming Strixhaven set for Magic: it's a bottom-up design built around using double sided cards and enemy color combos, but they built a solid narrative structure around that basis.

Is that so? Huh, I would have thought for sure Strixhaven was designed from the top down with “magic school” as the initial concept. Like, the Learn mechanic and accompanying Lesson subtype scream top-down design to me.

 

[Parmandur]

Is that so? Huh, I would have thought for sure Strixhaven was designed from the top down with “magic school” as the initial concept. Like, the Learn and Lesson mechanic screams top-down design to me.

Nope, other way around. Kaldheim was a top-down approach, figuring out how to do Norse mythology from the top down. They did have a "magic school" concept on the board for a while, apparently, but they picked it to fit the mechanics they were playing with after they started with the double sided card designs.

 

[Charlaquin]

Nope, other way around. Kaldheim was a top-down approach, figuring out how to do Norse mythology from the top down. They did have a "magic school" concept on the board for a while, apparently, but they picked it to fit the mechanics they were playing with after they started with the double sided card designs.

Neat!

Man, I used to follow Making Magic weekly, but I fell out of the habit when I went to college cause there wasn’t much of a Magic scene there. Now it’s been years since I’ve read one.