3.5 better for world building?

[Ariosto]

Would you mind then sharing what your idea of "world building" entails?

It entails such things as terrain (3.5 DMG pp. 86-93), climate and weather (pp. 93-95), cities (pp. 98-102), NPCs (pp. 105-128), towns (pp. 137-139), technology, economics, politics, law, religion, and other subjects addressed in 3.5.

Would you mind then sharing the greater value to the enterprise of "Until the end of the encounter, as an immediate reaction, an ally of your choice within 5 squares of you can charge a target that you charge"?

Perhaps it does not have to be a great impediment, but I do not see how it is a great help!

That "baroque set of combat rules" impacts the flavor of the world setting.

Yes, precisely! "Impacts" is what it does, which is just the opposite of what I think most here consider better for world building.

(There are probably some who consider the specific assumptions built in to many tables in 3.5 more important than the systematic structure in which having that baseline facilitates representation of other assumptions. In that case, the disagreement is merely over which world one prefers to have imposed upon one. I like the old AD&D one, myself, but in its heyday my own D&D campaign was quite far from that!)

 

[malraux]

It entails such things as terrain (3.5 DMG pp. 86-93), climate and weather (pp. 93-95), cities (pp. 98-102), NPCs (pp. 105-128), towns (pp. 137-139), technology, economics, politics, law, religion, and other subjects addressed in 3.5.

Yeah, this is why I don't fully grok this topic. I see all of that relatively orthogonal to the rules of either 3e or 4e. At worst, NPCs kinda overlap. I can come up with terrain, climate and weather, cities, towns, technology, politics, law, religion, etc and its all fairly rules independent.

 

[nightwyrm]

Yeah, this is why I don't fully grok this topic. I see all of that relatively orthogonal to the rules of either 3e or 4e. At worst, NPCs kinda overlap. I can come up with terrain, climate and weather, cities, towns, technology, politics, law, religion, etc and its all fairly rules independent.

I'm in total agreement here. The best book I've ever read on world building was the 2nd edition Campaign Sourcebook and Catacomb Guide and it has no charts, no tables, no long lists of rules and is completely edition independent.

 

[Ariosto]

The CS&CG was to my mind egregiously padded. Nonetheless, most of what actual substance was in it concerned what I (and Ben Bova, and others) call world-building.

I can come up with terrain, climate and weather, cities, towns, technology, politics, law, religion, etc and its all fairly rules independent.

In a world in which the rule is ... oh, for heaven's sake, I am not going to beat that dead horse. Enthusiasts have probably exceeded detractors in pointing out peculiarities of the 4e world. Either you have some acquaintance with those, and with how things work in at least one other world... or there's some homework for you to do before you'll have much to say on the subject.

Now, 3.5 modified some details from 3.0 to be more simplistic or to fit new game balances. However, there is still a basic ethos of making numbers approximately represent something or other. There are baselines mapped to our real world, and extrapolations beyond (which often enough map to another real-world scale).

Generally, in the neighborhood of 6th level, you are getting into the "beyond" even if you are not in game terms a magician!

I am not a big fan of 3.5. I usually do not want a rules-heavy game, but if I do then there are others ahead of it.

The thing is that systems and data actually referring to and depicting a spectrum of phenomena are a lot more useful for building a world than are pure abstractions aimed at creating a fairly homogeneous experience. This is pretty evident in super-hero games, in which benchmarks for the numbers figure prominently.

 

[MerricB]

Now, 3.5 modified some details from 3.0 to be more simplistic or to fit new game balances.

The word you're reaching for here is "simpler".

Cheers!

 

[malraux]

Now, 3.5 modified some details from 3.0 to be more simplistic or to fit new game balances. However, there is still a basic ethos of making numbers approximately represent something or other. There are baselines mapped to our real world, and extrapolations beyond (which often enough map to another real-world scale).

Generally, in the neighborhood of 6th level, you are getting into the "beyond" even if you are not in game terms a magician!

I am not a big fan of 3.5. I usually do not want a rules-heavy game, but if I do then there are others ahead of it.

The thing is that data actually referring to and depicting a spectrum of phenomena are a lot more useful for building a world than are pure abstractions aimed at creating a fairly homogeneous experience. This is pretty evident in super-hero games, in which benchmarks for the numbers figure prominently.

I'm totally not following this. To the extent that numbers mean something in 3e, they basically mean the same thing in 4e. Skills like jump/athletics have pretty much the same meanings in both editions. Beyond that though, I don't see anything linking 3e the rules system with building cities or weather that isn't utterly banal or generic.

 

[MerricB]

I must confess, I'm a little confused by what is meant by worldbuilding here. There are so many levels or starting points for it.

My basic understanding is that system will dictate the type of world you build. It is inescapable: system does matter.

Consider Dark Sun for instance. When you build the setting in 2E, you begin with the premise that there's no divine magic. That then trickles down and has significant game play issues. In fact, it pretty much breaks the baseline of D&D, so that you need to provide alternative sources of healing so that the game functions. (To be fair, D&D functions without healing, but the game changes drastically).

However, with Dark Sun in 4e, eliminating the Divine power source has a much less severe effect on gameplay, since there are already existing options for non-divine healing.

I think there's little doubt that in 1e-3e (especially 1e IMO), there are far more random world-stocking tools than in 4e. However, how much is this world-stocking (by which I mean locating towns and monsters) world-building? There are wealth of monsters to employ in 4e as in earlier editions; it's just that they aren't arranged in random tables.

More problematic is that the 4e monsters aren't arranged in a nice table of by-wilderness-terrain...

Cheers!

 

[Ariosto]

The word you're reaching for here is "simpler".

No, the words I want are definitely "more simplistic". The effect of the simplification was to warp the spread of results to be less accurate when compared with the actual basis.That was already somewhat inaccurate -- already simplistic -- before, and became more so.

 

[nightwyrm]

In a world in which the rule is ... oh, for heaven's sake, I am not going to beat that dead horse. Enthusiasts have probably exceeded detractors in pointing out peculiarities of the 4e world. Either you have some acquaintance with those, and with how things work in at least one other world... or there's some homework for you to do before you'll have much to say on the subject.

I think this is where the disconnect is for me. I see the rules in any books as being, at best, a model useful for conflict resolution or situations involving the PCs. They do not represent physical realities upon which I do my world building. When the model conflicts with what I imagine my gameworld to be, the model gives way.

For example, the much debated 1-1-1 diagonal moving rules used in combat. The use of that rule is purely limited to combat situation for ease of use at the table. The gameworld in which the PCs lives are not going to be some non-euclidean dimension where the pythagorean theorem is meaningless.

I realize this may not be the view of others, but this is how I DM and it seems to work ok. I can't seem to shake my view that the D&D game (like all games) is a model and all models are situational with various assumptions and restrictions. Go outside those assumption, and your model will either give incorrect results or fail outright.

 

[Chrono22]

The disconnect for me, is that the combat is no longer taking place in the world the PCs live in. Sure, over the top exciting combat can be fun, but having it doesn't necessitate throwing out simulation or common sense. I find I appreciate the combat more, when it has a context within the world.

For instance, fighting on a ship could make it so that movement on a deck that is perpendicular to the ship is either difficult or easy, and can alternate every round. Or that throwing sand in an enemy's eyes, or bluffing them into a weak position, or creating your own trap are all viable strategies and tactics. The thing is, the power system is written in such a way that a creative player could easily duplicate the effects of powers they do not know, if they have a lenient DM. The balance of 4e rests on the supposition that a class has a role, and the role imposes limitations, so that any player can shine in their own way. Trying to bypass these limitations by using your brain and imagination is part of how DnD has functioned since the beginning- but this type of play ruins the power system.
So, is 3.5 better for worldbuilding? No, but I believe it is better at bringing the world into play.