D&D 4E Ben Riggs' "What the Heck Happened with 4th Edition?" seminar at Gen Con 2023

[overgeeked]

And really, that's why the central conceit of "the narrative and the mechanics will (try to) work together" is indeed the central conceit of so many TTRPGs, especially D&D; that by modeling what you're attempting, the rules intuitively help to flesh out both what's happening and the world around you, rather than being something where they generate a result and then you need to figure out how it works from an in-character standpoint.

And yet the mechanics of D&D don't always line up with the narrative. There's a thread for that.

 

[Alzrius]

And yet the mechanics of D&D don't always line up with the narrative. There's a thread for that.

No, not always. But it feels to me like 4E was far less interested in making that a priority than its predecessors were.

 

[Zaukrie]

I feel like the five of you have had this conversation before, multiple times.....but I could be wrong....

 

[Lanefan]

PC or NPC is not a property of a character in the fiction.

Correct. We agree on this, at least.

It's a description of who among the game participants owns/controls a character.

Indeed. The question then becomes, why should who controls a character make any appreciable difference to that character in terms of its game mechanics? (I take as a given that the mechanics are the framework on which the character is made and played, in other words that the character is played more or less to reflect its stats etc.)

So the real question is Why do the players get to control the implacable warriors, while the GM is stuck controlling the sea of mediocrities? And the answer is because - as per the blurb on the back of the PHB, THE WORLD NEEDS HEROES, a premise of the game is that the players control the protagonists.

I ignore blurbs like that. There's no heroic expectations here: they can be villains if they like, or explorers, or whatever.

The players control active people in the setting. Whether those people are themselves protagonists or are instead reacting to the protagonism of others is going to, one hopes, be changing all the time as the campaign goes on.

(side note: the bolded is the best line I've seen today!)

The character operates under the same "rules" as everyone else: they draw their sword (or whatever) and engage their foes in melee. They just happen to be implacable, relentless, remorseless, however exactly you wish to characterise it. Like Conan, or Eomer, or Aragorn, or Lancelot.

All those examples are of highly-experienced and well-trained warriors who would in theory map to very-high-level D&D characters. Joe the 2nd-level Fighter isn't yet anywhere near that good and IMO isn't all that much different than an experienced soldier in an army, other than having a desire to operate more independently.

To me, it seems like complaining that (say) Cathy Freeman (Olympic 400m, Sydney 2000) or Gary Kasparov (champion chess player) or Rasputin (notoriously hard to kill) doesn't operate under the same rules as everyone else.

And yet in almost all instances they do (or did, in Rasputin's case). They are all human, they all need to eat and sleep like the rest of us, they all have to abide by the same (or very similar) societal norms and laws, and absent prior knowledge one could pass any of them in the street and not notice a thing.

Those people are each far more similar to you or I than is a typical adventurer to a commoner in a D&D setting.

 

[Alzrius]

I feel like the five of you have had this conversation before, multiple times.....but I could be wrong....

Fair enough, and in the interest of not relitigating these same points again (any more, I mean), I'll bow out of this here.

I'll say to @pemerton @Manbearcat @Gammadoodler and others that I think this has been a rather fruitful and productive debate, which at least makes it somewhat different from how these threads often go.

My hat is off to all of you.

 

[overgeeked]

No, not always. But it feels to me like 4E was far less interested in making that a priority than its predecessors were.

The rules produced a different kind of fiction that not everyone was interested in. That's not the same as the fiction and mechanics being somehow in conflict.

 

[Lanefan]

Knowing how to fight does not make someone a 1st level Fighter.

Class mechanics are mostly for players.

I couldn't disagree more.

If class mechanics exist in the setting (and it's a given that they do, otherwise the PCs couldn't have classes) then those mechanics are and IMO have to be equally accessible to everyone else in the setting based on individual ability.

Not all the setting occupants will ever pick up a class even if they could; maybe the vast majority don't. But consistency demands they be able to if they so desire.

Otherwise there are almost no smiths in the world, either, because Mending is so easy to pick up.

In a 5e setting this might be true; if so, it's an easy fix: no more Mending.

 

[Zaukrie]

Fair enough, and in the interest of not relitigating these same points again (any more, I mean), I'll bow out of this here.

I'll say to @pemerton @Manbearcat @Gammadoodler and others that I think this has been a rather fruitful and productive debate, which at least makes it somewhat different from how these threads often go.

My hat is off to all of you.

I agree that this is one of teh more polite and constructive long threads in awhile!

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

If class mechanics exist in the setting (and it's a given that they do, otherwise the PCs couldn't have classes) then those mechanics are and IMO have to be equally accessible to everyone else in the setting based on individual ability.
Not all the setting occupants will ever pick up a class even if they could; maybe the vast majority don't. But consistency demands they be able to if they so desire.

But the rules say you have to pick a class when creating a character! What happened to consistency?

In a 5e setting this might be true; if so, it's an easy fix: no more Mending.

It's not about Mending. It's about every single cantrip being so easily available changing the world.

 

[Pedantic]

It's not about Mending. It's about every single cantrip being so easily available changing the world.

I am quite curious about that world. If one applied the same process that got us from 3.5-> Eberron to 5e, what does that resulting setting look like?