D&D General Railroads, Illusionism, and Participationism

[Lyxen]

The game's authors are wrong, period.

Yeah right. You'll excuse me for trusting the people who have produced a game I've loved for more than 40 years over an anonymous stranger over the internet who plays the game in only one way and whose only argument is "but I have win conditions in my game" (because the actual rules say nothing of the kind and I know that you will not produce any convincing evidence).

You know, it's funny, because I have always played the game the way I read in one of the first editions of the game I played: "The D&D game has neither losers nor winners, it has only gamers who relish exercising their imagination."

How long have you been ignoring important parts of what the rules tell you just because they don't fit YOUR vision ? Again, nothing wrong in that, it just goes to show that your OneTrueWayism has absolutely zero support. The authors are not wrong. Neither are you for playing the game in a different way, but you are certainly wrong in calling them "wrong".

I never said playing D&D to "have fun" is badwrongfun (you are repeatedly misinterpreting what I am stating), I said their claims that "winning" D&D is "having fun" is incorrect because there is a defined win/loss state in the rules.

Then prove it. Where in the rules does it define win/loss state ? I expect a precise quote and page number.

 

[Lyxen]

If two years in someone is still asking what die to roll for a saving throw in D&D, there's a problem either with my teaching or their learning.

And does knowing which dices to roll constitute "skilled play" ? My point is that you can know the basic and very much enjoy the game as it is without skilled technical play.

And no matter what, unless you're using a diceless system you're going to hit "technical" play now and then. In D&D it's most commonly seen in combat - occasionally exploration can get technical as well - and players need to learn at least the basics of how these things work.

And my point is that they don't, the DM can easily compensate, I have quite a lot of experience with this. And actually my problem with 3e and 4e was that they were very technical and simple storytelling play did not work as well.

That card's a good idea but it assumes the bonuses almost never change. In many situations, bonuses can change from combat to combat and even from round to round.

Not in 5e, which is a great progress of the edition, no longer unending lists of modifiers to compute for each attack. And if there is something like cover, the DM knows how this modifies AC anyway. After that, just roll two dices. The card has allowed my current partner to play with people like me with 40+ years of D&D in a complex campaign and enjoy herself, without having read a single line of the rules. We all enjoyed it, and I dare anyone to come and tell me that our fun was not the best because it did not imply "skilled play" on her part...

 

[Lyxen]

Ok. I wasn't talking about freeform play.

I play 4e as 4e: powers are a player resource to be used in various ways.

No. Sorry, it's not the case. The powers are extremely well defined about their condition of use and effect. I have made this comment to you before, you certainly don't play 4e as written (and once more it's not a fault), when it's the most formal of the editions. Case in point, the rules explicitly say that:

• Teleportation frees you from a grapple
• If you are house ruling things, you need to put them in writing before hand

It's cool that you interpret things the way your players like, what I still don't understand is why:

• While certainly not playing 4e in the spirit it was designed, it's still a great game ?
• While 5e has a style which is much closer to what you are looking for, it's inferior ?
• While you don't apply these principles to other games ?

 

[Numidius]

@Lyxen I'm wondering How much of the 5e crunch do you actually use at your table?
I'm running a B/X game that lately steered into freeform territory...

 

[Lyxen]

@Lyxen I'm wondering How much of the 5e crunch do you actually use at your table?

I'm not even sure we are using crunch (well, maybe we are, I think you would have to define it for me). For example, in terms of options, certainly no grids, there is almost no multiclassing, just one instance actually and that is one of our remaining powergamers. And also very few feats, again used mostly by that same guy on another character.

I'm running a B/X game that lately steered into freeform territory...

I remember Basic, BECMI and AD&D with fondness because it was actually simple and focussed on story and adventures. And I would certainly consider B/X again except for:

• Harmonisation: 3e started a standardisation with the d20 system that is very easy to use and that everyone understands well.
• High Level: Although we like our games simple, we like Planescape and High Levels as well, and 5e does this quite well.
• The online support: We play using DDB (and used Roll20 and the The Forge when I was overseas and during Covid), and it's cool, everything is in there, all the links, all the references, the search function, etc.

But honestly I find that there is a congruence of spirit between the way we played the game back in the 80s using Basic/BECMI/AD&D and the way we play now with 5e, much more than when we played using 3e (way too technical and "battlemappy") and 4e (way to "boardgamy"). We like cool stories, and intrigue, and cool characters being badass in strange situations, very much freeform overall, and can spend one entire evening on a trial or negotiations with demon and devil armies, for example, without a single fights (we actually had some army fights, in particular devil sappers trying to clear lava tubes of Cranium Rats).

In these circumstances, skills and powers and spells and abilities matter, they are used creatively all the time, but there is no crunch and the actual power does not matter. It's much more important to be clever about what you say to the Marilith in charge of Graz'zt besieged armies than using a technical gimmick to get +2 to an attack roll or get someone out of a spiked trap.

 

[pemerton]

No. Sorry, it's not the case. The powers are extremely well defined about their condition of use and effect. I have made this comment to you before, you certainly don't play 4e as written (and once more it's not a fault), when it's the most formal of the editions. Case in point, the rules explicitly say that:

• Teleportation frees you from a grapple
• If you are house ruling things, you need to put them in writing before hand

It's cool that you interpret things the way your players like, what I still don't understand is why:

• While certainly not playing 4e in the spirit it was designed, it's still a great game ?
• While 5e has a style which is much closer to what you are looking for, it's inferior ?
• While you don't apply these principles to other games ?

Why would I play 5e - a game that has little appeal to me - rather than games that do have appeal to me? That really makes no sense.

You are, in my view, simply wrong about the use of powers in 4e: you seem to ignore that the rules for skill challenges (in the DMG, DMG2 and PHB) frequently reference the use of powers in skill challenges, and make it extremely easy to adjudicate this because (i) powers have clear fictional heft - mostly via their keywords -and (ii) have a clear place within the uniform player-side resource structure.

You also seem to pay little or not attention to p 42 in the DMG, and its further illustration in the DMG's discussion of the use of powers to damage objects.

It is obviously conceivable, in the fiction of 4e, for a grappling being to cling to the person they are grappling even when that person tries to teleport away. (Likewise in 5e, as a recent actual play post from @hawkeyefan illustrated.) And it is also possible, in the fiction of 4e, for a Slaad lord to drag someone grappling it, through damaging entropic forces, via teleportation. In my 4e game I don't recall how the former was actually adjudicated; the latter was adjudicated via Arcana checks made by Ygorl. This was a particular application of the general advice on adjudication in 4e.

That advice has no relevance to MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic. Hence I don't apply it to that system - I use its rules and principles. Those include the central place of Distinctions and Traits, as mediators between the fiction and resolution. It's a strength of the system (and I think goes further than the Fate Create an Advantage action). But also a limit, because fiction that has not been mechanised can be relegated to mere colour.

Part of the skill of GMing MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic is managing this, especially via the imaginative use of Scene Distinctions.

 

[Lanefan]

How long have you been ignoring important parts of what the rules tell you just because they don't fit YOUR vision ?

Hmmm...let's see.

I've been DMing for about 37 years 5 months, which means I've been ignoring* important parts of RAW in favour of what I want for about 37 years, 4 months, and 29 days if not longer.

Then prove it. Where in the rules does it define win/loss state ? I expect a precise quote and page number.

Didn't we all just have this argument last month, in another thread?

* - or, more correctly, rewriting.

 

[Lanefan]

And does knowing which dices to roll constitute "skilled play" ?

Yes, in that having and using that knowledge is a skill that players learn and non-players don't.

And my point is that they don't, the DM can easily compensate, I have quite a lot of experience with this. And actually my problem with 3e and 4e was that they were very technical and simple storytelling play did not work as well.

This is a different issue, in that technical play and storytelling play aren't necessarily opposed to each other.

 

[Lyxen]

Why would I play 5e - a game that has little appeal to me - rather than games that do have appeal to me? That really makes no sense.

I understand hte matter of taste, what I don't get is the logic of using an extremely rigid game, the most rigid edition that D&D has ever produced, to ignore and interpret powers and rules in a completely wild fashion, for once, and even stranger, refusing to do it for games which are much more open.

You are, in my view, simply wrong about the use of powers in 4e: you seem to ignore that the rules for skill challenges (in the DMG, DMG2 and PHB) frequently reference the use of powers in skill challenges, and make it extremely easy to adjudicate this because (i) powers have clear fictional heft - mostly via their keywords -and (ii) have a clear place within the uniform player-side resource structure.

Well, simply put, this is because you are not reading the rules. In the PH and the DMG, which are the basic resources, Skill Challenges are ONLY about skills:

• PH: Your goal is to accumulate a specific number of victories (usually in the form of successful skill checks) before you get too many defeats (failed checks). It’s up to youto think of ways you can use your skills to meet the challenges you face.
• DMG: Skill Challenges: When characters make skill checks in response to a series of changing conditions, with success or failure being uncertain, they’re in a skill challenge. What skills naturally contribute to the solution of the challenge? How do characters use these skills in the challenge?
  

I have never really read the DMG2, but scanning it quickly, it's mostly more of the same. There is one part where it mentions using powers, and you know what it does ? To get a bonus to the skill check... Right...

You also seem to pay little or not attention to p 42 in the DMG, and its further illustration in the DMG's discussion of the use of powers to damage objects.

I have already proven to you that you are not reading that section correctly, you retain ONE vague sentence out of 10000 which tell you the contray.

It is obviously conceivable, in the fiction of 4e, for a grappling being to cling to the person they are grappling even when that person tries to teleport away.

And in terms of rules, I have pointed out that it's impossible. You have gimped that poor Ygorl to a point where an extremely difficult encounter is brushed away by a player clinging to him and forcing Ygorl to make skill checks instead of using his considerable powers.

 

[Lyxen]

I've been DMing for about 37 years 5 months, which means I've been ignoring* important parts of RAW in favour of what I want for about 37 years, 4 months, and 29 days if not longer.

Which is fine if you pur it that way, because it's a totally different story than telling all the authors of all these editions from Molday to 5e that they are "wrong"...

Didn't we all just have this argument last month, in another thread?

In which case, I'm sure all these clear win conditions in the rules have already been listed, just point me towards the posts which contain the reference...