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

[Micah Sweet]

Now I'm just lost. Why, in the game world, would enemies not close with the fighter? And why would the fighter not be skilled enough to wallop them when they do?

I thought your objection was about an allocation of authority in the real world - ie you don't like the player of the fighter to be able to make it true that now, these enemies I can see within this distance of me close, such that I can wallop them.

That, what you just said, is the underlying assumption supporting that power, and many other 4e rules widgets.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Like 80% of professional wrestling promos.

Great! Now do it in six seconds, reliably, every time.

 

[Kannik]

Holmes basic's five alignments Neutral and the two axes of Law/Chaos and Good/Evil:

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compare to WFRP's five alignment system:

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For 4e it is a lot more the spectrum of WFRP than the grid of Holmes Basic. Just turn Law into Lawful Good, and Chaos into Chaotic Evil.

I see your "unaligned" as being more "passive neutral", where muscular neutral would be a more "active neutral". They're both still neutral, only coming at it from different directions.

I leave 'unaligned' for things like statues, trees, some PCs I've seen, and other things without enough intelligence to think for themselves.

Thanks to that first image, from this day forward I will forever know there are three central alignments: Neutral, Unaligned, and APE NEUTRAL.

(Or Neutral Cockatrice, but ape neutral jumped out at me first before I even saw these were example creatures.... Plus I took an overnight flight last night and am sleep deprived, so this may be much funnier to me than anyone else, and if so, apologies in advance!)

 

[Autumnal]

@pemerton , I missed something. What’s closed-scene conflict resolution? I know about conflict resolution - and it has become my favorite approach - but don’t know about the front part.

 

[Lanefan]

This book just covers the lore and setting side of the development. There was also Race & Classes, which I believe was the one more focused on mechanics.

At the time I remember having a look at R+C and not being too impressed; thinking even then that if I adopted 4e as a chassis I'd probably put my own spin on races and classes anyway.

But W+M really grabbed my imagination; and as I was at the time developing a new campaign and setting anyway, the timing was good.

But what we get in 4e is pretty freaking clear in regards to the former is abundantly clear in World & Monsters. There is even a point where they flat out say "the Great Wheel is dead" and layout their reasoning.

I'd replace their cosmology with my own anyway, regardless what they had.

 

[pemerton]

That, what you just said, is the underlying assumption supporting that power, and many other 4e rules widgets.

I'm just pointing out that it is a point about the real world - ie who gets to establish what happens next when we're playing this game together - not a point about the content or nature of the fiction itself.

 

[pemerton]

@pemerton , I missed something. What’s closed-scene conflict resolution? I know about conflict resolution - and it has become my favorite approach - but don’t know about the front part.

I'm thinking of HeroWars/Quest, Maelstrom Storytelling, a Duel of Wits or Fight! or Range and Cover in Burning Wheel, the general conflict resolution framework in Torchbearer (I think Mouse Guard is the same or similar), action scene resolution in MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic, and skill challenges. There are probably other examples I don't know of or have forgotten.

What these have in common is that, once the scene is "announced", resolution happens by reference to a "closed" framework (eg the dissipation of one side's action points in HeroWars/Quest; the required number of successes, or 3 failures, in a skill challenge; etc). While the scene remains on-foot, the GM must narrate consequences of particular actions in such a way that possibilities of both success and failure are not fore-closed; while also keeping in mind that, once the scene is done, the appropriate final consequence will need to be narrated whether it be success or failure.

Even though the technical details across these systems are different, many of the basic demands on the GM, and appropriate techniques, are shared. I find Robin Laws's discussion in HeroWars and in HeroQuest revised to be especially helpful. Maelstrom is also quite good. As I posted upthread, I think the 4e skill challenge advice is a bit underdone, with DMG 2 being the best (it tries to tackle the need for individual action resolutions and consequences to matter, while at the same time being located within the overarching context of resolving the situation).

 

[Autumnal]

Ok, got it. Thanks.

 

[Justice and Rule]

I think the case works better when you look at it from a variety of situations. Instead of two humans, what if one is a species that doesn't speak the same language? Or a mindless undead? There are likely more, but there are two popular thoughts on this.

First is that the mechanics need to make logical sense. Is it mind effecting? Is it a feint? The rules describe when it qualifies and how it works. The second type views it purely as a mechanical rule to determine fail or success state. How it works is however they say it does in any number of situations.

For example, the first may view CAGI as a mind effecting taunt. Works against a human, but not against an undead creature. The second, would simply say its a mind effecting taunt against a human, but a clever feint against an undead.

To be honest, why are we really even entertaining the first type? I mean this earnestly and not in an insulting way: the power itself doesn't mention any sort of specific method that it's using, it's not outlining a specific technique or making mention of any sort of specific in-universe mechanic to work, so why are we trying to find one? It feels like it is missing the point of 4E's design.

To give an example, in PF2E the Demoralize action has a bunch of limitations, largely because it's specifically outlined what is meant to be happening when you do that. You can do it in other ways, with penalties (or feats that take away those penalties), but the rules outline those limitations very clearly. And if you have problems with that, okay, that's something to discuss, because we can agree or disagree with how it's modeling it. But we can clearly see that the designers intended to have specificity in how it works.

Here, we have the opposite: we do have flavor text, but there's no mention of limitations or specifics in the power's mechanics. Like a lot of 4E powers it's clearly meant to be open-ended so that it can't be preemptively DM-limited in some way like, say, against mindless undead if it were simply an insulting taunt. It's open-ended to give it as much applicability as possible, and you're free to come up with a variety of ways.

To me, the problem is that people are looking at 4E with a 3E mindset: 3E something that is built around very specific ideas, limitations, etc. These things can be bent, avoided, and even skipped, but 3E is typically built around specificity in how things work; It is concerned with cause. Meanwhile we have 4E, which doesn't really care as much for how something it is done as much as what it does; it is concerned with effect.

Now there's nothing wrong with being more in-sync with 3E (or other, more specific/simulationist RPGs) mindset, but I don't really see that as a flaw of 4E. That feels more like the problem of the player, in the same way someone criticizing using clocks for enemies in BITD instead of hit points is missing the point of the design by trying to fit it into a box it's not meant to fit in. I feel like that's what is going on with CaGI so often: people try to put specificity on it and when they can't, they call it "magic mind control" because in D&D magic tends to be much more open-ended and interpretative when it comes to cause, which is largely missing here.

 

[payn]

To be honest, why are we really even entertaining the first type? I mean this earnestly and not in an insulting way: the power itself doesn't mention any sort of specific method that it's using, it's not outlining a specific technique or making mention of any sort of specific in-universe mechanic to work, so why are we trying to find one? It feels like it is missing the point of 4E's design.

To give an example, in PF2E the Demoralize action has a bunch of limitations, largely because it's specifically outlined what is meant to be happening when you do that. You can do it in other ways, with penalties (or feats that take away those penalties), but the rules outline those limitations very clearly. And if you have problems with that, okay, that's something to discuss, because we can agree or disagree with how it's modeling it. But we can clearly see that the designers intended to have specificity in how it works.

Here, we have the opposite: we do have flavor text, but there's nothing specific in how it acts beyond the rule mechanic itself. Like a lot of 4E powers it's clearly meant to be open-ended so that it can't be preemptively DM-limited in some way like, say, against mindless undead if it were simply an insulting taunt. It's open-ended to give it as much applicability as possible, and you're free to come up with a variety of ways.

To me, the problem is that people are looking at 4E with a 3E mindset: 3E something that is built around very specific ideas, limitations, etc. These things can be bent, avoided, and even skipped, but 3E is typically built around specificity in how things work; It is concerned with cause. Meanwhile we have 4E, which doesn't really care as much for how something it is done as much as what it does; it is concerned with effect.

Now there's nothing wrong with being more in-sync with 3E (or other, more specific/simulationist RPGs) mindset, but I don't really see that as a flaw of 4E. That feels more like the problem of the player, in the same way someone criticizing using clocks for enemies in BITD instead of hit points is missing the point of the design by trying to fit it into a box it's not meant to fit in. I feel like that's what is going on with CaGI so often: people try to put specificity on it and when they can't, they call it "magic mind control" because in D&D magic tends to be much more open-ended and interpretative when it comes to cause, which is largely missing here.

I understand that, but my point was exactly that final summary. Some folks have a 3E mindset and 4E doesnt compute. That isnt 4Es fault, its not their's either if its how they want the game to work.