4e--can you write a novel using it?

[Celtavian]

I've yet to see a movie or read a fantasy novel where the swordsman had moves that were only usable once per day however.

This varies from story to story and genre to genre. Usually really tough abilities are used as surprise or a last resort type of ability. It depends on the book.

I find the encounter and daily powers allow for those surprise "I just used my best attack for the day" type of literary device. You see this quite a bit in fantasy books. It is usually just some arbitrary decision by the writer as to what limits there are on the power to build tension.

I find using such abilities in a 4E story builds tension as well. If the wizard is out of his daily powers and the fight is taking so long with his encounter powers you can incorporate instances where the party feels truly pressed and is out of resources.

For example, our wizard missed with this force orb. Rather than cast another as he might do in 3rd edition which makes an ability seem entirely too easy to execute, he was truly disappointed.

Rendering that into a story is great. The wizard takes aim. He unleashes a powerful force orb at the monster attempting to kill his companion. The force orb springs from his fingertip and sails towards the monster. The wizard's face is a strained mask of hope that is shattered as the monsters dodges to the side and the force orb harmlessly impacts the ground. The fight goes on and he feels he has let his companions down.

Or something like that.

The real question is: Can the action of the story follow the rules of the game without breaking the immersion of the reader?

They haven't created an edition of DnD that could do this. I doubt 4th edition is going to be perfect for story telling, even though it is better.

I've read quite a few DnD novels. I rarely saw them requiring wizards to memorize spells in 3rd edition novels. Drizz't couldn't even have been made using 3rd edition rules into as effective a fighter as he is because he is a dex-based fighter with a low strength.

Most writers for Dnd know this and throw out the conventions when writing and just do what suits them. Once the writers create something, the designers attempt to render it into game rules like they did with the Chosen of Mystra and the like.

WotC doesn't force the writers of their books to follow the ruleset too closely. Otherwise they wouldn't be able to tell a very interesting story. Even the best story hour writers often ignore the conventions of the DnD system or create their own monsters and house rules to render a particular creative idea into the ruleset.

4th edition will be no different. It may be friendlier for story telling, but it isn't perfect.

Honestly? I doubt it. When our heroes carve their way through 50 orcs in 18 seconds and then suddenly need to spend 2 minuetes surrounding Johan der uber-orc before they manage to collectively beat him down we as the readers are going to stop and go "Oh. Those earlier orcs were minions. Johan was a Bloodrager with 194 hitpoints." Immersion broken.

No. I doubt it greatly. Because they did the exact thing you're talking about in a 3rd edition based Drizz't book. He mowed down tons of regular orcs, and then met an orc that was a physical match for him.

What you just stated above is a staple of fantasy. I find it funny that you think 4th edition is going to break immersion doing it.

Do you read much fantasy literature? I have to ask because the above seems so out of touch with the fantasy literature I've read.

There are times when Launcelot mows down 200 plus knights in one battle, yet he meets up with Tristram or Gawaine and has an all day fight in the Arthurian legend. Lord of the Rings has Boromir and the Fellowship mowing down orcs like they are knocking down practice dummies at the dojo, and yet the one orc with the big spear runs in the room and pushes through them and almost kills Frodo.

What you stated above is such a common trope of fantasy that for you to use as an example of breaking immersion kind of amazes me.

 

[cangrejoide]

What you stated above is such a common trope of fantasy that for you to use as an example of breaking immersion kind of amazes me.

The intent of the poster is rather obvious. I chalk this one up for yet another edition-wars/trolling attempt.

 

[Particle_Man]

Can anyone name a piece of pre-4e D&D fiction which paid even the most minimal lip-service to the Vancian casting mechanic, which is probably the single most prominent and unique mechanical feature of pre-4e D&D? (No, Vance doesn't count!).

Terry Practhett, "The Colour of Magic". Later Discworld novels had magic work differently, however.

And put me in the "4e works just dandy for novels" camp.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I'm not sure you want to defend 4e by using an actual video game as an example of something.

Never played the video game, did not know there was one. I read the book.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Yeah, that's how we thought it worked in Call of Cthulhu, at the end of our last campaign.

We ended up dissolving into goo fifty minutes later.

(The fact that it turned out that we didn't have a complete copy of the ritual might have had something to do with it, of course).

You was luck, lucky I tell you. A misplaced phtang and you could find your much worse off that being a bit of gray goo.

 

[Lizard]

i hope this post made a little bit of sense.

joe

Not really, since the things you picked are things which happen in fantasy literature all the time.

Healing surge:

"Brog! Are you alright?"
"Bah! You think that pathetic pig-spawn could hurt me?" He tried to hide his wince of pain, and failed. Nonetheless, he forced himself to his feet, slightly favoring his wounded leg. "A scratch. Now, let's get on with it. We've got work to do."

Rituals:
"Are you sure about this?"
"Sure I'm sure. Look, my father was a wizard..."
"You never mentioned that!"
"We didn't get along. I didn't like him, he didn't like me, now let's drop it, OK? Anyway, I did pick up a few things...enough to make sense of this scroll, at any rate. First, we'll need holly leaves..."

(Or just look at Cugel the Clever, the canonical example of learning magic the hard way....)

No game-based novel REALLY capture the way games play; if they do, they'd be crappy novels. Novels<>games. Furthermore, a novelist gets to pick and choose which things happen in his books; if there's a particularly 'gamey' thing which he finds hard to justify...it doesn't happen.

 

[JLowder]

No game-based novel REALLY capture the way games play; if they do, they'd be crappy novels. Novels<>games. Furthermore, a novelist gets to pick and choose which things happen in his books; if there's a particularly 'gamey' thing which he finds hard to justify...it doesn't happen.

A bad piece of fiction tied to an RPG is one where you can hear the dice rolling in the background--that is, the rules seem to explicitly and overly cause the characters to act in certain ways. (Unless, of course, you're trying to write metafiction about the character's or author's relationship to the game.) A good piece of fiction uses the game mechanics the same way any good story uses, say, the laws of physics. They're always there, and they help shape the action, but there's no need to foreground them without a good narrative reason.

You can write good fiction around any RPG system. You can write terrible fiction around any system. It all depends upon the author's skill and the freedom the editor or publisher gives the writer. If the editor demands the fiction illustrate certain game rules, the fiction's likely to suffer. If the editor takes the stance that the fiction doesn't need to support the game rules, but rather should try not to break the rules in really obvious ways, you're more likely to get a good story. And a good fiction editor knows when to let an author bend the game rules for a story in the same way a good GM knows when to close a rulebook and let something happen in a game, simply because it's too cool or interesting or creative an idea to be foiled by an inflexible system.

Cheers,
James Lowder
www.jameslowder.com