D&D 4E 4E: DM-proofing the game

[Reynard]

In 4E, if I want to run a social encounter, I know for a fact that there is a range of basic competency among the players characters and I can set encounters that play on this whereas I'm not the only DM that has been frustrated to realize that nobody in the party at 10th level has any skills in Diplomacy.

The fewer rules for social interactions, the better. Players and DMs should be able to sit across from one another and negotiate those aspects of the game without the system getting in the way.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The fewer rules for social interactions, the better. Players and DMs should be able to sit across from one another and negotiate those aspects of the game without the system getting in the way.

I disagree. If you follow that train of thought you might as well throw out rules for social interaction altogether, and end up back in 1983 or whenever. Whilst huge, clunky rules don't benefit anyone in any situation (including combat), there's nothing wrong with through and elegant social interaction rules, because it means that characters who are supposed to be "good socially" are, even if the player behind them isn't great at that.

So long as all characters have something to do in a "social encounter", then it's fine to have rules for them.

Your unsupported argument could be used about any system in the game, including combat, by the way. Just simply replace the term "social interactions" with absolutely any other interaction.

 

[AllisterH]

The fewer rules for social interactions, the better. Players and DMs should be able to sit across from one another and negotiate those aspects of the game without the system getting in the way.

I've always disagreed with this position with regard to social skills/rules.

We don't expect our players across the table to be physically capable of the tasks their characters can do, so why do we expect the players to be socially capable of the tasks their characters can do?

 

[Reynard]

I've always disagreed with this position with regard to social skills/rules.

We don't expect our players across the table to be physically capable of the tasks their characters can do, so why do we expect the players to be socially capable of the tasks their characters can do?

But we do expect them to be able to engage in the miniatures skirmish aspect of the game. There's no "tactics" skill that lets the player say "I am going to do whatever gets me the best tactical advantage" and make a roll to see if it happens. Pushing minis around the board is part of play and based on player skill; so is dealing with NPCs. The same thing is true for deciding on which spells to prepare for the day, what resources and supplies to bring on an expedition or how to solve a logic puzzle to open the door to level 6 (or whatever).

 

[Reynard]

Your unsupported argument could be used about any system in the game, including combat, by the way. Just simply replace the term "social interactions" with absolutely any other interaction.

Tis is true, depending on the kind of game you are playing. If you were to make combat a simple negotiation, however, you move from a tactical game to a different kind of game. that's not a bad thing, but it isn't traditionally what D&D is. Likewise, turning social interactions from negotiations to tactics changes that aspect of play significantly and away from what D&D traditionally is.

 

[Professor Phobos]

Something amusing about the whole quest system argument is that in the original thread, it was criticized by some as giving the DM too much power to railroad the party. Now we are seeing it brought up again, but as a way to marginalize the DM. Now, this could point to a cadre of posters who are willing to twist any tidbit to illustrate how 4E is going to ruin the game, but I figure what it really demonstrates is that different elements of the game piss off different people in different ways for different reasons, and that, IMO, is a good thing.

Yeah, there seems to be competing camps. Some people are shouting about how 4e grants too much power to the DM. Others are shouting how it lobotomizes the DM. Some are happy or unhappy about one or the other.

It's odd.

 

[Mallus]

You can have rules that work better or worse in the different types of environments.

I don't think any system works worse in a high-trust environment.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

But we do expect them to be able to engage in the miniatures skirmish aspect of the game. There's no "tactics" skill that lets the player say "I am going to do whatever gets me the best tactical advantage" and make a roll to see if it happens. Pushing minis around the board is part of play and based on player skill; so is dealing with NPCs. The same thing is true for deciding on which spells to prepare for the day, what resources and supplies to bring on an expedition or how to solve a logic puzzle to open the door to level 6 (or whatever).

There is also such a thing as "social tactics", and I think that's what a good social encounter system is about. In 3rd edition, by RAW all you needed was a Diplomacy Check. The DM was supposed to give some modifiers to the check dependend on circumstance, but that was all just guesstimating and there are no real guidelines behind it.

A social encounter should probably involve "tactical" aspects like:
- Do I try to bluff, intimidate or "diplomance" my way in? (Or even think about which skill is appropriate at each stage of a social encounter?)
- Who do I "manipulate" first so I can get to the one harder/more important to convince?
- Which member of the group is best suited to deal with which NPC part of the encounter?
- What do I offer to make the other guys more positive to my side (money? help? Not killing him?)
- What piece of information or which past event can I use to my advantage? ("We rescued the princess dog, after all!" "It would be very unfortunate if people where lead to believe that you had an affair, just because they learned that you visited her two times a week at night and didn't leave before dawn...")

I don't know if the 4E system will really address such things - nobody besides the designers and playtesters have seen it yet. Maybe their system works entirely different (and it might suck for it, or be great) But I definitely see possibilities to making a social encounter just as tactical as a combat encounter is.

 

[king_ghidorah]

I am not conflating them. i don't care about the cards at all. i am talking about the problems inherent in pre-determining the rewards for a quest before the PCs complete it. Either a) the rewards can in fact change based on the way the PCs go about the quest, in which case the mechanic is useless, or b) the rewards can't, in which case the DM loses his ability to properly adjudicate the actions of the players and is therfore marginalized.

Since the quest card is just a notation of conversations in-game, there is no mechanic separate from what happened in game. Writing "the Baron promised you 500 gold for killing the McGuffin" is no different from having the Baron promise the characters 500 gold for killing the McGuffin. Except that rather than expecting the PCs to remember, you give them a note to help them remember.

Are you arguing that no reward be specified in game? The players meet with the Baron and says, "kill the McGuffin. Maybe I'll give you a reward, maybe not. Depends how I'm feeling." (If that's the case, hey, that's what you put on the quest card.)

Maybe you want to have the baron make a promise, but you know he's a dirty double-crosser, and he's planning on killing the PCs as soon as they come back. You still get to have him promise the 500 gold, and you still give out the quest card, and you still get to have him be a dirty double-crosser. And the PCs will protest about the promise, just like they would have based only on RPing the scenario. THERE IS NO LOSS OF NARRATIVE CONTROL.

What you do get is a persistent reminder of what they were doing and why they were doing it, because some groups just don't take very good notes.

You are creating a problem where none exists because:

1) Quest cards have no mechanical aspect to them. They are just notes to keep the party on track.

and

2) because of this Quest cards don't do what you say they do.

 

[king_ghidorah]

Yeah, there seems to be competing camps. Some people are shouting about how 4e grants too much power to the DM. Others are shouting how it lobotomizes the DM. Some are happy or unhappy about one or the other.

It's odd.

The problem is the unknown. People project their own fears an concerns onto it.

WotC is going to continue to push organized play, either through groups such as RPGA or through the DI, consistency of rules will continue to be a concern. They want to make it easy for anyone to hop into a game in order to promote a consistent experience that people will identify with the brand. This means well-defined, consistent rules. This does not necessarily mean a loss of the amount power DMs actually have in they game: they will still control the game. But it does mean that there will be restrictions on how DMs use their power, since the player-DM contract changes, with an assumption of DMs having certain rules to follow. This is a reasonable concern for DMs like Reynard.

Back when I first started playing and DMing in 1980, the DM was often described in terms of having absolute control over the game. When I started playing other games, I found that the level and type of rules, the type of genre, and even the group changed the social contracts. That didn't bother me, but it did involve rethinking the job I did. By the time I was running Hero System games in the late 1980s, the approach to what I did was very different -- discussions of what were possible, proper outcomes of the rules, etc. were more common. The GM-player relationship was less hierarchical, and our interactions more focused on mutual enjoyment of the game.

I though that was a good thing, and brought it into the World of Darkness games I ran in the 1990s, and even more so in the Feng Shui games I ran, that involved a fair amount of player narrative control in combats and a focus on fun over balance or even narrative.

By the time I came back to playing D&D in 2000, I brought all of that to the table, as did my players. So the idea of DM as part of a collaborative group is not a problem to me, nor is the role of DM as sole authority. But I acknowledge that this is a taste thing. Different levels of DM freedom to control the game result in different games. And the D&D DMing style I started with created a very different experience with the way I ran Feng Shui or D&D 3e.

Reynard's concerns have a real basis, though I don't agree that what he reads into some of the articles posted actually reflects what was said, and thus don't agree that there is any particular reason to believe yet that 4e will strip DMs of more power than previous editions have.