A reason why 4E is not as popular as it could have been

[pawsplay]

See, I don't disagree that 4E's world sim is a facade. I just disagree that it is any more of a facade than 3E, or at least not anymore on any kind of meaningful scale of usefulness.

I'm sure you have reasons for believing as you do. I personally couldn't even make it through Worlds & Monsters before I lost my suspension of disbelief. It seems bloody obvious to me that if fairy rings exist, someone at some point is going to traipse through one and possibly talk to a little person. That you would rate 3e and 4e equivalently in terms of simulating an imaginary world tells me that and similar issues are not salient to you. If you don't care if there's any there there, one dungeon crasher will do as well as the next.

 

[Tuft]

The problem is that, for me, there's a big difference between describing what happens in the game world and grabbing the mini and moving it 2 squares. For me, the former seems cinematic; the latter, less so. I realize that not all people share this point of view.

Not all share that point of view, but you are not alone in it either...

 

[Lanefan]

Where I think there is a demand for simulationism on the world side of things, and what I'm trying to get at in my description of "just in time" GMing and 4e's suitability for it, is what we might call the "reality" of the world, not in the sense of its resemblance to the actual world, but in the sense of its existence independent of actual playing the game, as a self-standing entity that it makes sense for the players to envisage exploring.

The following statement may at first reading sound kinda stupid, but allow me to explain afterwards:

The game world needs to be real in all ways except those in which it isn't real.

That's the "simulation" people want...that obvious but often-forgotten things like gravity, flotation, solids cannot pass through other solids, etc. work as normal (i.e. like on earth) except when there's magic preventing or changing said operation. Thus if the DM says "the birds are singing in the trees as you pass through the sun-dappled edge of the Woods of Avenae" and gives no further description any player can close their eyes and envision exactly what that looks and-or sounds like, because the baseline assumption is that it's the same as the real world until-unless you're told otherwise. If a player asks "what's in the field" and the DM answers "a small herd of cattle, maybe 15 or so" the baseline assumption is that these are normal earth-like cows rather than 7-legged tentacled carnivores that fly and produce purple milk.

Thus, even if the DM doesn't describe the scenery for each mile as your party walks from Torcha to Karnos you can still get a vague idea of it from "you spend 5 days travelling through rolling farmland and occasional quiet villages" and your imagination. This is simulation, at least from my perspective, and it is essential.

The same is true of combat effects; but here it's a question more of where to draw the line - it's quite possible to simulate a combat down to the nth degree, even including magic, provided you have limitless amounts of time and patience. The game recognizes this can't happen, but each system and each edition does it a bit differently; and it's a matter of pick yer poison.

Lan-"my mind wanders, freed from the bounds imposed by reality"-efan

 

[Lanefan]

But, because of the other factor I see in casual gamers, 3E is still a viable choice. Hard-core gamers can play OD&D for 50 years straight if that's their favorite game. Casual gamers need new material to keep their interest.

Disagree.

Casual gamers need a game they enjoy playing enough that it keeps their interest.

What causes a casual player to enjoy a game? Given as how most casual players probably don't bounce from rule system to rule system, I'd hazard a guess that "rule system" would be a long way down the list of answers.

Which makes all systems, in this case, viable choices.

Now casual DMs, on the other hand, are far more likely to find their enjoyment or lack thereof largely linked to the rule system they are trying to run. But these people are pretty rare; they either become more serious or bail out before long.

Lan-"if I can play Victoria Rules D+D for 50 years straight, does that make me hardcore?"-efan

 

[pemerton]

Shadzar & Pemerton: I'm only loosely following the discussion between you two, but it seems to me that you are discussing something that's quite independent of the game system itself, but merely a preference of DM style. I just fail to see how some of these gaming decisions - such as whether or not the DM prepared in advance whether Iyour had a ruler or not, or who that ruler was - is somehow dependent on the game system. Am I reading the conversation incorrectly or is there some other matter at hand?

You were talking about DM preferences when it came to whether or not a DM had already matted out the details of a town prior to PC relevance, were you not? And is that not fairly independent of the game system? As either a player or a DM who has played both systems, I do not see how much of that would differ between 3E and 4E.

My view is that game system makes a difference here, but is not determinative.

I don't think it's determinative, because I've run Rolemaster - a very simulationist set of mechanics - with the same "just in time" approach that I use in 4e. But I believe it makes a difference: part of my reason for moving from RM to 4e was that I hoped to get better results for a "just in time" game from 4e than RM, and I believe my decision has proved right.

For the reasons why 4e helps with this, see this post upthread - the short version is that 4e has mechanical techniques for making the amount of time something takes at the table reflect its thematic importance to the players at the table, which don't require the GM to railroad the players, and also 4e has encounter-building guidelines that let the players have confidence that they are not being unduly reckless with their PCs, without relying on the GM to just coddle them or fiat them a la the notorious Dragonlance no-death rule. And these two features of the 4e mechanics are tightly integrated - in combat by the monster design rules plus the combat resolution mechanics, and out of combat by the default DC rules and the skill challenge resolution mechanics.

I've especially highlighted the "without railroading" in the previous paragraph, because railroading is an obvious threat to the viability of non-sandbox play, of which "just in time" is one version. When I used to do it in Rolemaster, I had to do a lot more guess work to make the encounters work (RM has nothing like 4e's approach to challenge levels) and I occasionally had to suspend the action resolution rules to handle pacing issues, which is always a bit tricky when trying to avoid railroading.

 

[pemerton]

I'm sure you have reasons for believing as you do. I personally couldn't even make it through Worlds & Monsters before I lost my suspension of disbelief. It seems bloody obvious to me that if fairy rings exist, someone at some point is going to traipse through one and possibly talk to a little person.

Two things. First, we established upthread that the "traipsing" reference is from Races and Classes, and also that on this point R&C is in express contradiction to W&M.

Second, from the fact that someone somewhere in the gameworld might traipse through a fairy ring, it doesn't follow that the actual game played is shallow just because no PC ever traipses through a fairy ring and talks to a little person. Presumably many NPCs in the gameworld are also having sex, having children, going to church, etc, but in most of the time in my games sex doesn't come up in anything more than a peripheral way, the PCs don't have kids, and the only time their church visits actually come up in game is when they want healing or other magical benefits. I don't think this makes my game shallow, though, because there are other worthwhile themes to be explored in a fanatsy RPG besides sex, family and organised worship (worhty as these themes might also be).

Now if you regard "traipsing through fairy rings" as a placeholder for all things of any thematic depth that might occur in a fantasy RPG, it would be a different thing. But in my view W&M makes it pretty clear that that is not the intention of the game designers.

4e's world is more of a facade. For that matter, it hardly examines why such a thing as "starleather" is so consitently available and why it has a stable market price. That's 4e for you. It's not necessarily bad. The Final Fantasy games are full of things with ridiculous and arbitrary prices and you can still play and enjoy those games. You would find it difficult, however, to adapt that kind of aesthetic for a supposedly consistent gameworld.

A gameworld can be consistent in salient respects without having a detailed or realistic economy. All that is required is that the economy of the gameworld not be salient. The 1st ed AD&D has some suggestions on how to make the economy non-salient - I don't think it therefore follows that the 1st ed AD&D is opposed to the notion of a consistent gameworld.

The sort of consistency I want in my gameworld is consistency in the broad sweep of history, of myth and of politics, and consistency when this is reduced down into particular (generally non-commercial) interactions with people and places. I want consistency in the difference between devil-worshipping tieflings and demon-worshipping gnolls. I want my sun-cult that combines worship of Bahamut, Kord, Pelor and Ioun to interact in an interesting and evocative way with the more mainstream cults of those various gods, in a way that doesn't strike the players just as arbitrary, but rather helps them engage with the nuances of the mythic history and resonance of the gameworld.

The presence or absence of rules to support an economic simulations is irrelevant to this. When I read The Hobbit or the LotR, if my first observation is that the more-or-less autarkic shire is presented as having a standard of living comparable to that of an England that was one of the centres of world commerce and production - an economically absurd notion - then I have probably missed the point. If the economic absurdity led me to conclude that the world was a mere facade, I think I would have doubly missed the point. Economics is just not a salient consideration for those particular fantasy stories.

That you would rate 3e and 4e equivalently in terms of simulating an imaginary world tells me that and similar issues are not salient to you. If you don't care if there's any there there, one dungeon crasher will do as well as the next.

You seem to be suggesting that anyone who doesn't care about the economics of the gameworld can only be playing a dungeon-bashing game. If you are, I think it's nonsense for the reasons I've given above. If you're not, then apologies for the misunderstanding, but I 've completely failed to grasp the point you're trying to make.

 

[pemerton]

The problem is that, for me, there's a big difference between describing what happens in the game world and grabbing the mini and moving it 2 squares. For me, the former seems cinematic; the latter, less so. I realize that not all people share this point of view.

<snip>

That common critique of mine probably doesn't hold that much water given what combat mechanics are meant to achieve

LostSoul, I agree with you about the difference between "10 feet" and "2 squares". Rolemaster uses only the former, and coming over to 4e and the latter took a while to get used to.

But if "2 squares" is a price I have to pay for a system that has the dramatic pacing of 4e combat, I'm prepared to put up with it. And for me at least, battle maps help reduce the disconnect a lot because they give the 2 squares a gameworld meaning that it otherwise would tend to lack (whereas "10 feet" is meaningful to me without a map).

If I was playing without a map I think I'd definitely want to move from squares back to realworld distances.

Of course, thanks to this thread - and pemerton's posts - I see what 4E is meant to do and how it all works together..

That's high praise, and much appreciated!

 

[Bluenose]

If you want more detail on running a business, guess what? The DMG II gives more detail. Sadly, it doesn't revise some of the broken guidelines in 3e. 4e certainly could have done that; instead, the designers of 4e decided to peel off any semblance of a game world economy and set it aside.

4e can be run at a high level of simulation; there is nothing preventing you from doing so. But compared to 3e, first you have to craft on a mundane economy of some kind, replace the rules for making, buying, and selling items, come up with some kind of background or ecology for any and all creatures encountered, etc. 4e's world is more of a facade. For that matter, it hardly examines why such a thing as "starleather" is so consitently available and why it has a stable market price. That's 4e for you. It's not necessarily bad. The Final Fantasy games are full of things with ridiculous and arbitrary prices and you can still play and enjoy those games. You would find it difficult, however, to adapt that kind of aesthetic for a supposedly consistent gameworld.

Can the 3e economic system be improved, while still retaining its basic simplicity? You bet. Will your game world break if you used the posted guidelines? Not necessarily, although I would watch out for the billion chickens. Does that have anything to do with magic or feudalism or any of the above topics? No, at this level, we are simply talking about the utility of specific rules.

Well, here's where we disagree. I'm completely fine with a low level of detail for the economy. I play Pendragon, and the income my knight gets from his manor is very much abstracted. If I want more detail, there are rules expanding on it (Book of Manors, Lordly Domains, or others). But they expand on the existing rules. To do something similar for D&D 3e I'd have to fix the existing rules. The facade you see in 4e for world-building is the same facade I see in 3e, except that 4e isn't pretending that there's something behind it.

 

[Neonchameleon]

If it's obvious than it seems that you, at least, concede the point. Very good, we will move on unless ProfessorCirno posts a rejoinder.

I'm calling what you're saying irrelevant. Something saying "This is a problem, manage it yourself" is doing no more than acknowledging the problem.

The point under contention was whether 3e ever, at any point, even once, purported to simulate a realistic world. Since it stated that it assumes a realistic world, I hope you are ready to concede that point, as well.

And it's absolutely crap at it.

Nonsense. D&D can be "fairly realistic" or nonsensical, just as with comic book RPGs, or Cold War espionate RPGs, or any other genre. You can use the DMG guidelines, as written, and simply by keeping most communities after 50,000 people (as they were during most of the medieval period) you will see the amount of magic and magic items shrink to very manageable levels.

But that's not the problem. The problem is that wizard's tower over there with flying cars and working nuclear reactors. One smart mage with fifth level spells irrevocably alters the gameworld.

Sprinkle the world with metropolises, and you have the Forgotten Realms. But a "fairly realistic" setting is not a function of how magical it is. Eberron is a very magical setting, yet many people enjoy the sense of magic belonging in the setting. I'm not a huge Eberron fan. I was raised on Mystara and Greyhawk, so "medieval drag" appeals to me.

In 27 years of playing D&D, I have yet to find the assortment of spells and magical items an impediment to the existence of a believable world.

You've been playing longer than I have.

No, it's not. The rules look exactly like the world of a standard D&D game.

And are based on "Wizard of Oz" economies. Pay no attention to the mages. Or the druids.

If you want the world to look differently, you will have to modify and prune some elements.

But as it stands, D&D's assumed world has been the basis of many successful, internally consistent campaigns for decades.

Yes. The microeconomics are fine. It's the macroeconomics that make the world break. And PCs look at a micro scale.

Specifically, I ran a level 1-20 campaign and not once did I feel the campaign world was unsupportable simply because it was fantastical. I have never banned a single core spell, class, or feat from my games.

In other words, it can't support it's own worlds except that it can and does.

Forgotten Realms is the equivalent of shrugging, saying "A Wizard (or deity) did it" and moving on.

Simply disliking the Eberron approach or the FR approach does not mean those approaches are not a valid approach to world-building.

Living Greyhawk took a third way which you glossed away; mid power levels, with gonzo elements less common and more isolated in the game world. Greyhawkian D&D with its feudalism and relatively medieval-esque militaries and economies has also been a viable approach, again, for countless campaigns over the past few decades.



Unless you want to put those resources into the hands of the PCs, in which case you are worse off than you started. Actually, in my view, the ability to endlessly produce a magical effect is a much larger obstacle to world-building, because it makes it impossible to build any world in which magic is rare and mysterious. If I were going to adapt 4e to my preferred style of game worlds, I would have to replace the wizard's zot powers with... I don't know, crossbow powers or something.[/QUOTE]

If we agree that magic in 3.5 had the potential to completely unbalance the world or setting in terms of power/money/resources, etc., then I can see how 4e makes it more difficult to unbalance things, since power is fed to the players in a trickle, and in very limited ways.

However, I can't understand how that makes world building in 4e more "flexible". It seems like the complete opposite to me, especially for DMs who managed 3.5's magic system in creative ways to avoid unbalancing.

It is trivial to add unbalanced settings. It is non-trivial to work out what will be unbalanced and prune it. Needing to manage the system in creative ways makes certain you can't have a world which doesn't have such work-rounds. And thus reduces flexibility.

The problem is that, for me, there's a big difference between describing what happens in the game world and grabbing the mini and moving it 2 squares. For me, the former seems cinematic; the latter, less so. I realize that not all people share this point of view.

Who says you can't do both? I do. And if you are going to use a battlemap at all, grabing a mini and moving it 2 squares is a lot more cinematic than not moving it 2 squares. Once you're using a battlemap at all (and they are useful as visualisation aids), if you are not moving minis around on the battlemap you aren't moving them far in the situation because they are still in the same 5 foot square. Without push, pull, and slide rules, if the tarrasque hits you as hard as it can with its tail you are thrown back no more than four feet because if it knocked you any further you would be in a different square. Never mind un-cinematic, that's not even approaching gritty realism.

Second, from the fact that someone somewhere in the gameworld might traipse through a fairy ring, it doesn't follow that the actual game played is shallow just because no PC ever traipses through a fairy ring and talks to a little person. Presumably many NPCs in the gameworld are also having sex, having children, going to church, etc, but in most of the time in my games sex doesn't come up in anything more than a peripheral way, the PCs don't have kids, and the only time their church visits actually come up in game is when they want healing or other magical benefits. I don't think this makes my game shallow, though, because there are other worthwhile themes to be explored in a fanatsy RPG besides sex, family and organised worship (worhty as these themes might also be).

Indeed. This is a world away from economy-destroying magic. The fundamental difference being the things you mentioned above are things PCs avoid (including traipsing through fairy rings). Economy or world-building wrecking magic is a goal of many mages - and is core in 3.X

A gameworld can be consistent in salient respects without having a detailed or realistic economy. All that is required is that the economy of the gameworld not be salient. The 1st ed AD&D has some suggestions on how to make the economy non-salient - I don't think it therefore follows that the 1st ed AD&D is opposed to the notion of a consistent gameworld.

Indeed. But there are so many spells in the 3e PHB from wizards, clerics, and druids that are salient to the economy that you need to effectively eliminate greed from the motivation for spellcasters. And that is, to me, the problem.

Well, here's where we disagree. I'm completely fine with a low level of detail for the economy. I play Pendragon, and the income my knight gets from his manor is very much abstracted. If I want more detail, there are rules expanding on it (Book of Manors, Lordly Domains, or others). But they expand on the existing rules. To do something similar for D&D 3e I'd have to fix the existing rules. The facade you see in 4e for world-building is the same facade I see in 3e, except that 4e isn't pretending that there's something behind it.

Absolutely. The biggest problem with 4e worldbuilding is that it's on two separate currency systems - one for magic items, one for commoners. Which doesn't matter much. Very little needs fixing because the whole game is in a different realm. Which is about the same way as it works in 1e. 3e tried to merge the realms and it simply doesn't work.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

Disagree.

Casual gamers need a game they enjoy playing enough that it keeps their interest.

What causes a casual player to enjoy a game? Given as how most casual players probably don't bounce from rule system to rule system, I'd hazard a guess that "rule system" would be a long way down the list of answers.

Which makes all systems, in this case, viable choices.

I agree that it's not the rule system. It is new and interesting material that seemed to keep casual players coming back. If year after year the only way they could play an elf was as a character class, they would become bored and move on to other non-gaming interests.

I've observed that D&D is on the forefront of non-gamers minds as THE roleplaying game. They don't know anything about any other TTRPG. Casual gamers are similar. They know D&D. They know "roll a twenty-sided die and ask if I hit." Other systems require a deeper knowledge of the industry that they don't want to bother with. All IMO, of course.