D&D General Creativity?

[Lanefan]

Not really. The biggest change at level 9 is "Raise Dead" comes online for the Cleric, and honestly, that's not an unwelcome thing because by this point players are heavily invested in PC's and having a way to keep them alive isn't bad for the campaign.

Agreed about the change at level 9 but Raise Dead isn't the key element in that change in my view, in that IME if the PCs want to revive someone badly enough they'll gladly seek out and pay an NPC Cleric to cast it for them long before they can cast it themselves.

Far more relevant is that at 9th level Teleport comes online for mages and both Commune and Plane Shift show up for Clerics. All three of those spells are true game-changers.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Is "I can fly for 5 minutes!" more recontextualizing the scene than, "I can leap over haystacks!"?

Yes. But the first being more does not mean that the second is now not at all recontextualizing. You may note, for instance, that I included "low casters" alongside the "non-casters" represented by Fighters. The lowest levels of spells are in fact generally alright, especially if you add DM efforts to restrict the power of spells and to enhance skills in both breadth and power.

In both cases, that assertion being made is something that preexisted the scene. Neither character has discovered anything new about the scene.

I don't believe recontextualizing requires that you "discover anything new about the scene."

Each has just asserted what they could already do in the context of the scene. In the context of Superman is stopping bank robbers, "I am bulletproof!" is not recontextualizing the scene at all. Everyone knows at the start of the scene (except maybe the hapless bank robbers) that Supes is bulletproof. Asserting his bulletproofness or his ability to bend iron bars is asserting anything new about the scene.

On the bulletproof side, I fully agree...because it is  passive. It is not a declaration. That's a vital difference.

The bending bars, despite being somewhat secondary in your presentation, is actually the much more relevant response, because it is an action. But it is not an action which changes the rules of play, as it were. There is no insertion of a solution that simply did not exist before: the bars could always have been bent with a strong enough person. Superman (effectively) is using superpowered skills here, not anything remotely comparable to spells. His heat vision and cold breath, on the other hand, would be much more spell-like, and yes, they enable solutions which would not ever be possible by skill alone, only via special (and expensive) equipment or highly unusual situations.

I mean at some level there is more in the toolbox for casters than non-casters, albeit usually resource constrained and balanced by a general squishiness and ineffectiveness when not using magic (that some later editions break by over giving to casters to create more 'balanced' or at least uniform play styles across classes). But it's more a matter of the scope (quantity) of what they may assert casting a spell, particularly if spells are written in a very binary manner with few limitations (which low text terse versions of a spell usually suffer from) than it is a difference in kind.

I don't really see this as a rebuttal of my point. Especially in the context of post-TSR D&D.

I'm reading the Dungeon World SRD right now (again) just in case I missed something and I just don't see it. Dungeon World moves as written don't allow you to narrate any more than a D&D proposition would. In fact, they are just encoding the most common sorts of D&D propositions.

Because you have choices. Look at Bend Bars, Lift Gates. The player decides the consequences of their breaking an object. Hell, look at Spout Lore. The player must answer where they learned a particular fact if the GM asks, and that answer is true. That is by definition a recontextualization.

 

[Celebrim]

Agreed about the change at level 9 but Raise Dead isn't the key element in that change in my view, in that IME if the PCs want to revive someone badly enough they'll gladly seek out and pay an NPC Cleric to cast it for them long before they can cast it themselves.

Far more relevant is that at 9th level Teleport comes online for mages and both Commune and Plane Shift show up for Clerics. All three of those spells are true game-changers.

Agreed that all of those are pretty big, although we are still leaning into how big of game changer Clerics are. You are also assuming a 9th level cleric willing to cast Raise Dead is handily available, whereas in my game world those occur at rates such that you aren't guaranteed to have one in a nation much less a city. It's a quest to go find one.

 

[Celebrim]

Because you have choices. Look at Bend Bars, Lift Gates. The player decides the consequences of their breaking an object. Hell, look at Spout Lore. The player must answer where they learned a particular fact if the GM asks, and that answer is true. That is by definition a recontextualization.

It's a kind of nice upgrade of some very old school D&D skills (I mean literally, look at the name "Bend Bars, Lift Gates"), but I don't feel like that is really all that different than old school D&D skills. Spout Lore is more or less the D&D Knowledge skill generalized. Players are always the source of their own background/backstory so I can't imagine a situation where I wouldn't affirm the source of the lore in D&D. The important point though is the lore is narrated by the GM. It would be the power to recontextualize if on 10+ the player got to narrate Lore that was true. But just saying in response to the GM, "My character learned this when they were doing their apprenticeship" or "I overheard a traveler in bar say this." or "I read in the Junior Woodchuck Guide" doesn't recontexualize the scene. I do like how they made Bend Bars/Lift Gates/Break Object into a skill that Fighters are proficient at which is the sort of thing I would do (and probably should have done, and probably will do now that I have meaningful template for how breaking things skillfully might work), but this is really not that different than proposing to your GM, "Can I break the X without making a lot of noise?" and the GM setting a DC for that. You could already do that in any edition of D&D. If you could come up with a plausible explanation how you broke it without making a lot of noise or damaging it beyond repair, in old school D&D you probably wouldn't even need to roll to do it.

 

[bloodtide]

And, as you go on, Wizards have a Swiss Army Knife of these loadouts and deployments and it gets progressively worse as we move through levels.

I would note this is only a problem in a basic, simple game play style. Or the much more worse style where the DM puts magic on a pedestal and refuses to take any action.

There are 3 realities once you hit level 9ish and above:

* The Wizard player is morbidly profligate + misplay-city in their loadouts and deployments.

* The Wizard player progressively reconceptualizes scenarios and dominates play.

* The GM intervenes with Calvinball buggery (of which we all know the regime of those moves and the simulation veneer that undergirds them).

EDIT - We’ve danced this dance many times in the past. If we want to bridge to yet another LFQW or F vs W thread, I’m for it (for all the good it will do)!

Well, I'm not sure of the meaning behind all the above....but this is not the only ways a game can go. The problem with the above is simply that the DM lets it happen.....often by running a Simple, Basic game and Putting Magic on a Pedestal, or both. So to define:

When I say Simple and Basic game: the 12th level heroes approach the dark lords castle 'secret' back door. The DM just sort of looks at the wall "oh, the back door is wizard locked". The wizard player, half asleep, just says "whatever, I cast knock spell and get us auto in".

When I say Magic on a Pedestal game: This is where the DM Absolutely Refuses to take any sort of action that might effect magic or casters. The DM just sits back and says "magic is all powerful, nothing can stop it".

Each is a huge problem, and then get ten times as worse when you combine them. And reading the post, I see the two more problems:

Magic is a Hammer, so the DM makes Everything a Nail: simple enough, the DM says "oh here is nail problem A" and the wizard player says "ok, I use magic hammer A".

The Simple Player Toolbox Problem: Wizards are easy as they come with a toolbox right in front of the player. So when the DM says "the group sees a loose screw" the wizard player can jump up and say "oh, oh, oh, I got a screwdriver in my tool box!"

And worse, too many games do all four of the above.

 

[pemerton]

The MU simply has access to more and general higher impact action declarations, but ideally they are no functionally different in kind than non-magical abilities. Casting spider climb let's you move upward at a speed of X and climbing at a DC 15 let's you move upward at a speed of Y.

My assertion is that, in fact, they are functionally very different. I make this assertion based on decades of play of A&D and Rolemaster, which is - in this respect - not very different from AD&D.

Here's a relevant quote from Vincent Baker:

​

Here's a quick resolution mechanism.​

​

1. We each say what our characters are trying to accomplish. For instance: "My character's trying to get away." "My character's trying to shoot yours."​

​

2. We roll dice or draw cards against one another to see which character or characters accomplish what they're trying to accomplish. For instance: "Oh no! My character doesn't get away." "Hooray! My character shoots yours."​

​

What must we establish before we roll? What our characters intend to accomplish.​

​

What does the roll decide? Whether our characters indeed accomplish what they intend.​

​

What do the rules never, ever, ever require us to say? The details of our characters' actual actions. It's like one minute both our characters are poised to act, and the next minute my character's stuck in the room and your character's shot her, but we never see my character scrambling to open the window and we never hear your character's gun go off.​

The player who is making the climbing check has to tell us what they are actually doing to traverse the surface (at least, assuming a model of action declaration similar to Prince Valiant or Burning Wheel or Rolemaster - declare action, which tells us which skill at what difficulty, then resolve action).

The fact of the dice roll doesn't just introduce uncertainty - it makes the fiction (which underlies likely consequences of failure) salient to both declaration and resolution.

Casting a fiat-type spell - Spider Climb can be an example, though sometimes it may not be (depending on further fictional details); but Rolemaster's Leaving or Long Door almost always is, as is Dimension Door - is like Vincent's example. We see the start of the scene, we see the end of the scene, we never actually see the character in action.

Of course you can say, as @Lanefan does in effect in post 219, that the character-in-action is casting the spell. That's the fig leaf I mentioned. It doesn't actually require the player to engage with the fiction, to tell us anything about their character in the fiction, to put their character and the fiction into some sort of opposition that needs to be resolved.

I don't believe recontextualizing requires that you "discover anything new about the scene."

Who is the "you" here - player, or character? Obviously when we talk about scenes and how they are contextualised, we are talking about the play at the table. So we are talking about the player.

For the player to "discover" something new, it must be authored by someone else. The whole point being made about playing a MU/wizard, as per my post above, is that it confers the same ability to reframe a scene as the GM would normally enjoy. So "discovery" is not apposite at all. The player is not discovering. They are stipulating. That is why it's not playing the game in the fashion in which the player who declares an action that is resolved as a Climb (or whatever) check is.

I will @Manbearcat so he can comment on whether or not I am following his thought accurately.

 

[Lanefan]

You are also assuming a 9th level cleric willing to cast Raise Dead is handily available, whereas in my game world those occur at rates such that you aren't guaranteed to have one in a nation much less a city. It's a quest to go find one.

In my game training is a thing at least until "name level" (about 9th for most), meaning someone has to be out there to train them and they'll probably know who and where that someone is.

I also work on the strong underlying assumptions that a) the PCs are most certainly not the only adventurers in the world and b) there's always a bigger fish.

 

[Lanefan]

The fact of the dice roll doesn't just introduce uncertainty - it makes the fiction (which underlies likely consequences of failure) salient to both declaration and resolution.

Casting a fiat-type spell - Spider Climb can be an example, though sometimes it may not be (depending on further fictional details); but Rolemaster's Leaving or Long Door almost always is, as is Dimension Door - is like Vincent's example. We see the start of the scene, we see the end of the scene, we never actually see the character in action.

Of course you can say, as @Lanefan does in effect in post 219, that the character-in-action is casting the spell. That's the fig leaf I mentioned. It doesn't actually require the player to engage with the fiction, to tell us anything about their character in the fiction, to put their character and the fiction into some sort of opposition that needs to be resolved.

Swinging a sword at a foe doesn't tell us anything about the character in the fiction either, nor require the player to engage with the fiction any further than does the casting of a spell.

And if the players-as-characters can't materially change the fiction through the actions of said characters e.g. by burning down a building, returning some stolen goods to their owner, building a bridge across a ravine (by whatever means they have available), or whatever, then what's the point?

I just don't see what the problem is here.

For the player to "discover" something new, it must be authored by someone else. The whole point being made about playing a MU/wizard, as per my post above, is that it confers the same ability to reframe a scene as the GM would normally enjoy.

So are you suggesting a scene is reframed every time something materially changes within it? That seems a bit much.

I was always under the impression that a scene was framed but once, during its intial set-up narration, and that's it; from there the players-as-characters go on to either ignore it and move on or to interact with it and in so doing almost certainly change it somehow.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Hold up. If bringing specific narrative effects to bear necessarily involves "recontextualising the scene" what other room is there for resolution? All you've got left is some kind of roll to interact, and that's just gambling, not a mechanic that involves decision making on the part of the player.

I'm partial to specific, discrete narrative powers behind spread about more liberally than just the wizard class, and specifically think many of them should be in the skill system and effectively always on for some "mundane" specialists, but I don't want to play a game without them.

To me the problem is basically one of level scaling and the LFQW problem.

• At level 1 the fighter can move 30ft wearing heavy armour and swing a sharpened piece of metal hard and fast at anyone in reach while the wizard can cast Burning Hands, or Jump a couple of times per day.
• At level 20 the wizard can permanently shapeshift into an adult red dragon, flying and breathing fire (as well as all the other dragon benefits) and that's just one of their spells. Meanwhile the fighter can ... move 30ft wearing heavy armour and swing a sharpened piece of metal very hard and very fast at anyone in reach.

If one of these situations is fine then the other isn't.

 

[Manbearcat]

Who is the "you" here - player, or character? Obviously when we talk about scenes and how they are contextualised, we are talking about the play at the table. So we are talking about the player.

For the player to "discover" something new, it must be authored by someone else. The whole point being made about playing a MU/wizard, as per my post above, is that it confers the same ability to reframe a scene as the GM would normally enjoy. So "discovery" is not apposite at all. The player is not discovering. They are stipulating. That is why it's not playing the game in the fashion in which the player who declares an action that is resolved as a Climb (or whatever) check is.

I will @Manbearcat so he can comment on whether or not I am following his thought accurately.

That looks right. Let me clarify where I'm coming from and what I'm driving at in this conversation. I'll go ahead and mention @Celebrim and @bloodtide as they've got a few responses up to me.

First, my entry into the conversation isn't around "what sort of fiction does creative action declarations make?" That is an interesting (and important, in some corners of play) question, but that isn't the one I'm engaging with here. So I don't want to run together things like "story", "simulation", and "game" (hat tip @Campbell in another conversation). These are not only not the same things but, given a particular play paradigm, they may not even be connected or relevant.

I'm exclusively talking about "game" here and of Traditional D&D specifically (to remove many things, but one in particular being Cantrips and another being Rituals); the layer of D&D play where:

1) players make observations (through conversation at the table, typically with "GM as lens" in some capacity) about the imagined space >

2) orient themselves to a suite of prospective, permissible moves based on a combination of (a) what is before them + (b) their conception of what might be ahead of them + (c) the move-space and resources native to their character >

3) winnow that down to a particular line of play that they deem most applicable (which may not be optimally effective in this exact moment...but sufficiently effective + sufficient immediate and future risk assessment folded in)

4) > execute and resolve the play.

So I’m using the language of Obstacles/Problem Areas (or Situations) rather than "Scene." Yes, the interaction with and resolution of these things typically constitutes a “scene.”. But “scene” is parlance used in story dynamics rather than game dynamics, so I’m choosing language based on concerns of the latter rather than the former.

Alright, with that out of the way, let me piece together my sense of the important constituent, converging parts here.

* At level 3, both AD&D and B/X put the M/U at 3 spells; 2/1.

* At this point in play, the significant bulk (exclusive in Basic) will be Dungeon Delves; contained adventuring sites with particular dynamics. One of those important dynamics is # of Obstacles/Problem Areas in a dungeon. Let us just establish a number here and say the average dungeon, before Wandering Monsters, will contain roughly 6-8 Obstacles/Problem Areas (not the same as # of Rooms).

* With 3 spells, and only 1 x level 2, the M/U's spell loadout and deployment decisions will be intensive and consequential as both their repertoire and their "gas tank" is thin, particularly with respect to # of Obstacles/Problem Areas faced; see my (2) above.

* Name Level for an M/U in Expert is 9, while its 11 in AD&D. For Expert there isn't much play left, but when you extend to CMI, there is a lot of play left. For AD&D, there is a ton of play left by level 11. Lets work off level 11. The spell loadouts are subtly different here and, imo, more advantageous to the AD&D (now) Wizard, despite the fact that the B/X (now) Wizard gets access to a level 6 spell while the AD&D counterpart does not. This is because the AD&D Wizard has 18 total spells usable by this point with a huge 12 between 1-3 levels and a chunky 6 at 4-5. Meanwhile, the B/X Wizard will have 2 less spells usable total (16), with those 2 less being in that sweet level 2-3 range (where there is an abundance of "answers to problems").

* So the problem is 4-fold. The first issue is the bullet point directly above about (i) spell proliferation/potency. The next 3 work in concert to create a positive feedback loop that amplifies the situation. Those are other 3 are:

(ii) The # of Obstacles/Problem Areas of a dungeon/adventure does not scale with either # spells usable or spellbook growth. At most, you may see either (a) a small increase in total # of Obstacles/Problem Areas on a per dungeon/adventure basis or (b) an increase in "Megadungeons." But this doesn't remotely do the necessary work. Wizard players will suddenly have a considerable increase in their 2c (their prospective move-space/"answers") above while simultaneously dealing with a decrease of downward pressure on their loadout and resource management concerns.

(iii) Dungeon delves at this point notoriously break down for a myriad of reasons. Consequently, the constraints/pressures on Wizards reduce further while their prospective move-space expands even further when out of that artificial "obstacle course" environment of the dungeon.

(iv) To compound matters, Wizards develop more means to both "refresh the Adventuring Day" and "bigger guns" to allowing them more potent means to "recontextualize situations" (or reframe scenes). These further reduce pressures on curation of loadout/spell deployment because refresh = your allocation of loadout per Obstacles/Problem Areas is now completely undone while Big Guns can mean obviating multiple Obstacles/Problem Areas (or even just fundamentally "re-wiring a scenario" in a single spell deployment.

---

So this is where I'm at with your "recontextualizing situations" paradigm. The game doesn't scale for M/U's turned Wizard. And that scaling problem isn't univariate. There are multiple issues with lack of scaling, the host of which converge to create Wizards who recontextualize situations at a rate that is far, far beyond their martial counterparts, therefore disproportionately controlling the trajectory of play.

And how does that massive advantage get "offset?" By GM intervention via Force and Calvinball buggery that typically gets justified by either/or/both "simulation pretensions/veneer" or "storytelling imperatives."

And why does this problem not happen in Torchbearer at level (say) 6? Because none of the above apply to the TB Magician and the fundamental loop of play retains its integral components.