4E takes a different approach to how the game is played. I'm not sure why you place such value on denying the difference, which ought to be the major selling point for those to whose tastes 4E is by design better suited. Even if you don't believe that games are products of intelligent design, surely such huge differences -- e.g., just 24 pages (as 48 half-sized) in all of Traveller Book 1: Characters and Combat, versus 12 pages devoted to the Rogue alone in the 4E PHB -- cannot escape even the most myopic vision.
101 roleplaying descriptions justifying martial dailies
- Thread starter Aberzanzorax
- Start date
I'm not denying differences. I'm pointing out what are to me obvious similarities. I mean, at some very real level 4e and Traveller are played the same way; players create fictional characters and guide them through conflict-laden adventure scenarios.
My 4e group is going on hiatus until fall. In the mean time we'll be playing some LLB Traveller. You can rest assured that mechanical differences notwithstanding, I'll play it much the same way I did 4e (I'll make a bold, larger-than-life, and partly absurd character with which I'll do imaginative and frequently funny stuff).
BTW, my original point today was was about the effect of 1e's long combat rounds on immersion --ie, the dissociating effect of it's lack of detail-- but that got lost somewhere along the line.
While I do wear rather stylish glasses, I am not, in this context, myopic
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BryonD
Hero
Too bad your skill is tied to being lead around by the nose by daily and encounter frequencies.....I'd make something up on the spot (it wouldn't be the first time I had to do that while DM'ing). Frankly, I'm good at it
I'm sure you are quite good at it. I am as well. And let me assure you, making up justifications for what the rules say is fun, but making up whatever you want on the spot and expecting the rules to be the part that does the following, now THAT rocks.
It's not too bad. I like the 4e combat engine. I like the structure.
I'll freeform the rest of the game!
LostSoul
Adventurer
In my experience, we never described what happened in the combat round. It usually went like this:
"I hit AC 3."
"That hits."
"8 damage."
This is, to me, the same problem that 4E has, though it's a little different. Both versions allow you to consider only the mechanics without engaging the fluff at all.
(4E has great rules (in my opinion) on how to adjudicate "unexpected" actions, but the powers create "power blindness" and those unexpected actions aren't often attempted. Earlier versions, in my personal experience, weren't as easy to adjudicate on the fly, but stunts were attempted more often (though again, in my personal experience, never really amounted to much).)
Palladium Fantasy springs to mind here, where you make rolls for each attack and parry, using slightly different mechanics for different actions (sword blow, punch, kick, rolling with the blow, parrying, dodging, etc.). It's a rule-first thing but the rules are grainy enough to capture a lot of the fiction. Playing that game I can see each sword blow, the sparks flying as two swords meet, armour absorbing the blow and links of chain cut off, etc.
There were times when the rules relating to that one-minute combat round bothered me.
I specifically recall one (awesome) fight where our level 4 or 5 guys were assaulting a ruined fort full of bandits. We crept into a tower and used Hold Portal on the door to keep the bad guys out, then launched an attack from the tower onto the bad guys below.
One of the leaders (a human fighter) had Boots of Striding and Springing, so he was able to jump up on top of the tower. I was playing a Cleric, so I was able to nail him with a Hold Person.
When our fighter attacked him, we expected a one-shot kill (our experiences playing AD&D were heavily flavoured by Pool of Radiance). The DM ruled against this, which seemed to make no sense. A guy held immobilized for a whole minute, and you couldn't just slit his throat? Nope, not according to the rules.
We accepted it and moved on, though we thought it was dumb.
Pbartender
First Post
Right. And you can still do it for all sorts of situations arising in new D&D.
Read the rules. They let you do it... really, they do.
But they don't have to be... Powers and abilities and feats tell you what your character can do, not what they must do. There are rules for acting outside those boundaries -- even in 4th Edition -- if you care to use them.
And they really don't work all that much differently than what you're suggesting happened in older editions.
blargney the second
blargney the minute's son
My second fluff explanation above can cover that one: he's mastered the art of boomeranging his magic weapon such that it herds his enemies towards him before returning to his hands.
Alternatively, his minotaur battle challenge is so potent that it triggers the fight part of fight or flight at an instinctive level. Have you ever just snapped, or seen it happen to someone else?
Heck, it could even be a teamwork-based fluff. In a coordinated maneuver, my allies all use ranged attacks to herd the targets towards me. Then it's clobbering time.
One more: he whirls around and uses his immense strength to create a whirlwind that sucks them in towards him.
-blarg
BryonD
Hero
It's not too bad. I like the 4e combat engine. I like the structure.
I'll freeform the rest of the game!
It is all cost and benefit. And if the benefit outweighs the cost for you then big thumbs up!!
Originally Posted by Alex319
1c. The kind of "fluff description to justify mechanics" that is being demanded here is often not available even in real life. For example, when I push down on a car's gas pedal, the car accelerates. That's a "mechanic" - when I do this, that happens. What's the "fluff" that justifies this "mechanic"? In order to know that you would have to know how a car's engine works. But of course you don't have to know how a car's engine works in order to drive the car. Most of us do just fine only knowing the "mechanics."
Hi,
Okay, consider another example. Let's say you're playing a science fiction game and you come across an alien artifact. You can try out the artifact to see what it does, but you don't know the principles underlying it - it's just a "black box" from your (and your characters') perspective. Are you "not roleplaying" then? Does it matter if the DM came up with an explanation and you just don't know it, or if the DM didn't come up with an explanation?
Or consider another real life example. Gunpowder was invented long before people understood the chemistry behind it, so at that time, the "fluff" or the "mechanism" behind how gunpowder works was not "there", at least not in the sense that anyone was able to get that information. (It may have been "there", but people certainly didn't know about it.)
Let's put it this way. You're saying that if the fluff is not there, then it is "not roleplaying", but if it is, then it is "roleplaying", even if the players and characters don't know what the fluff is. Is that correct? By this definition, it would be impossible for a player or character to tell if he is roleplaying or not, because how are they supposed to be able to tell the difference between fluff not being there and them just not knowing about it?
