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

[shadzar]

And this goes for shadzar's point which I think is a bit misplaced - if you are on EN World you damn well better accept that 4E is a valid form of D&D and not play the sort of semantic games you're advocating. I mean, come on. The common ground is that all forms of D&D, all editions, are valid forms of D&D. 4E might not feel like what you consider D&D to be, but it certainly does to many thousands of people.

Woah there take your sedative and relax.

I am saying if you want to discuss things you must accept the terms being used by the other party. If one says for whatever reason "4th isn't D&D", then discussing 4th in the context of D&D isn't going to work with that person. It is only begging to create a conflict rather than a discussion.

You can try to change their mind, but in doing so your conversation about D&D is likely to turn into an argument or edition war...such as happens here on EN World. Best thing to do is disagree mentally or politely and vocally, and move on to a discussion where the term D&D does include 4th if you want to talk about it, or discus it using the term as defined by the other party and not include 4th edition in the context of D&D.

If you say soy milk is milk, and I refute that saying it is juice as soy has no teet, then we won't be having a discussion about soy milk, as we don't both agree on. Like the pie example floating around. You would go from having a discussion to having a debate over whether "soy milk" is milk or juice.

This will in no way shape or form help you converse about soy milk. So best to find someone who does consider it milk to carry on your discussion of "soy milk", unless both parties want to debate "soy milk" vs "soy juice".

Quite frankly I don't know where you get off telling me what I have to accept or not. There is the precise thing I was saying about discussion with someone who can agree on the terms, or you will only be starting an argument. Now were you wanting to start a fight with me? Because I will tell you flat out, you mean nothing to me, and I make my own decisions. You will not be likely to sway them in the slightest, especially with that approach telling me what I "damn well better" do.

So you have to agre on the terms used in order to common ground to work with.

Where is Danny and that other lawyer? Is that not the case and reasons for LOOOONG draw out contracts and such to DEFINE the terms so that all participating parties can understand them in the context they are being used?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Depending on your style as a lawyer, drafting is either about clarity to avoid misunderstanding or obfuscation to create loopholes & traps.

And some of us can do one while making it look like the other...I've seen some very consise contracts that were nonetheless quite deceptive. I reviewed an HMO contract that was pretty short, and most of the language was lifted right from the relevant Texas statutes about reviewing insurance claims, so it looked good. Until you realized there was no clause in the contract stating the HMO ever had to PAY anything on those claims...

 

[BryonD]

He likes Pathfinder. He doesn't like older versions of D&D. Something doesn't feel the same. Perhaps it's Pathfinder that isn't really like D&D? But that would require accepting that people who don't like it could be anything other than 4e fanboys, and it's much easier to disregard an opinion you don't like by criticising the messenger rather than the message.

Yeah, but it is pretty easy to disregard the messenger when the message is both of his own creation and as completely confused as yours.

Seriously, if this is as well as you understand the conversation, then, there is not much point in worrying about any of the particulars of what you said.

 

[Aberzanzorax]

He likes Pathfinder. He doesn't like older versions of D&D. Something doesn't feel the same. Perhaps it's Pathfinder that isn't really like D&D? But that would require accepting that people who don't like it could be anything other than 4e fanboys, and it's much easier to disregard an opinion you don't like by criticising the messenger rather than the message.

Lol, no.

(Once again, both twisting and escalating the language in inflammatory ways? Thanks.)

 

[pawsplay]

No, actually, both analogies are pretty faithful, albeit for different purposes. Notably, however, in your analogy Bob isn't declaring that the new pie isn't a pie, nor is he declaring that it isn't a Boston Cream Pie, which was the entire point of setting up this analogy in the first place.

Your Bob is just switching bakeries. Which is more or less what I'm advocating: enjoy your pie/cake/whatever, and let's not whine about how this pie isn't real pie because it uses 77% cocoa chocolate instead of 70%.

What if the bakery replaced the pudding with marshmallow fluff, because it's light and fluffy and not so heavy and creamy? Is it still a Boston cream pie? The analogy holds pretty well; I just didn't see any reason to extend it into tangents, as you insist on doing.

You can claim all you like it's "silly" to argue over definitions, but in that case there is a whole of silliness out there, from copyright law to child custody to Passover dietary laws to birthright citizenship to... well, playing D&D. It would be a pretty sorry game if we couldn't agree if a given character were a fighter or not. Let's be totally be clear. You are claiming that words do not have definitions at all. I really wonder how you reconcile that with posting on a message board, considering that nothing you type will signify anything at all except what I choose to read into it.

The whole subjective/objective thing is a trap: language isn't evidential. Read some Wittgenstein, some Chomsky, then come back if you think you're ready to argue a radical subjectivist viewpoint. If you want to take the position that D&D is anything someone calls D&D, you're going to have a real problem if you can find two people who don't agree on what is and isn't. Simply because two people can't agree on a definition doesn't mean they couldn't use one. There are one or more useful definitions of D&D for any given conversation.

When someone says, "4e isn't D&D to me," they are telling you something important. You may or may not be able to persuade them to believe otherwise, but you can't make them, and you certainly can't prove they are wrong. If enough people say it, the working definition of D&D falls into contention.

 

[Aberzanzorax]

Let's also add Heidegger's "Thingness of Things" and the philosophy of the asian tea house to the "definitions are meaningless and way more complicated than we give them credit for." I mean, sure, it is true. Meanings are like mathematical "sets" with unions and intersections and all that...and even so, they have "non permeable" boundaries that are more akin to bell curves than solid lines, as a whole.


Or we could talk about our own impressions, realistically, on a non-philosophical level.

 

[pemerton]

I dislike the (positional) tactical mastery of 4e. It's one of the the design choices that leaves me cold towards the system as a whole.

Interesting. Can you say more about why? (eg is it the maps/minis baggage that comes with it?)

 

[pemerton]

As your previous reply right before this one, the "tactical mastery" is why it doesn't need those things, because MANY miniature wargames don't need a rich story to be enjoyed.

But 4e isn't a wargame. It's an RPG. And - judging from the copy on the back of the PHB - "The World Needs Heroes!" - and from the text of the PHB and DMG, which talk about the players creating PCs who are heroes who become paragons who go on to realise epic destinies, it is an RPG which is focused on the players realising the stories of their heroic PCs.

The way you say it about "on time GMing", seems like there shouldn't even be a GM and just a deck of cards to draw an encounter from then go back and make a story out of whatever happened. Make sure they are mixed proportionally for the group with the proper amounts of combat and non-combat encounters.

This comment suggests to me that you don't have a lot of experience in playing non-simulationist RPGs. It's also pretty dismissive, suggesting to me that (as a GM) I'm not able to produce any more interesting, engaging or coherent play than would arise from a deck of combat scenarios. I don't know whether or not the RPG sessions you run bear much resemblance to a game of Talisman. Mine don't.

"Just in time" GMing - I'm borrowing the phrase from a poster on these boards whose username I can't recall at present - or, as it's called on the Forge boards, "No Myth" RPGing - is about the GM setting up a situation and letting it unfold in response to the players' decisions. While there might be a general backstory that sets the parameters of that unfolding, plus mutually understood genre conventions that impose further limits, the details are worked out during the course of play and in response to play. It's a non-sandbox alternative to the railroad.

Here is a link to an actual play report of a "just in time" exploration scenario that I GMed. I think you'll see that it couldn't have been run without a GM, and bears no connection to GMing from a deck of cards.

And here is a favourite quote of mine from Paul Czege, describing GMing in this style (assuming that he's not exaggerating too much, his game is a bit more hardcore than mine). You'll see that there's bascially no resemblance between the sort of experience that players get out of situation-based GMing, and the sort of experience that you get from playing a game of Talisman:

Let me say that I think your "Point A to Point B" way of thinking about scene framing is pretty damn incisive . . .

There are two points to a scene - Point A, where the PCs start the scene, and Point B, where they end up. Most games let the players control some aspect of Point A, and then railroad the PCs to point B. Good narrativism will reverse that by letting the GM create a compelling Point A, and let the players dictate what Point B is (ie, there is no Point B prior to the scene beginning).​

I think it very effectively exposes, as Ron points out above, that although roleplaying games typically feature scene transition, by "scene framing" we're talking about a subset of scene transition that features a different kind of intentionality. My personal inclination is to call the traditional method "scene extrapolation," because the details of the Point A of scenes initiated using the method are typically arrived at primarily by considering the physics of the game world, what has happened prior to the scene, and the unrevealed actions and aspirations of characters that only the GM knows about.

"Scene framing" is a very different mental process for me. Tim asked if scene transitions were delicate. They aren't. Delicacy is a trait I'd attach to "scene extrapolation," the idea being to make scene initiation seem an outgrowth of prior events, objective, unintentional, non-threatening, but not to the way I've come to frame scenes in games I've run recently. More often than not, the PC's have been geographically separate from each other in the game world. So I go around the room, taking a turn with each player, framing a scene and playing it out. I'm having trouble capturing in dispassionate words what it's like, so I'm going to have to dispense with dispassionate words. By god, when I'm framing scenes, and I'm in the zone, I'm turning a freakin' firehose of adversity and situation on the character. It is not an objective outgrowth of prior events. It's intentional as all get out. We've had a group character session, during which it was my job to find out what the player finds interesting about the character. And I know what I find interesting. I frame the character into the middle of conflicts I think will push and pull in ways that are interesting to me and to the player. I keep NPC personalities somewhat unfixed in my mind, allowing me to retroactively justify their behaviors in support of this. And like Scott's "Point A to Point B" model says, the outcome of the scene is not preconceived.

How does it feel? I suspect it feels like being a guest on a fast-paced political roundtable television program. I think the players probably love it for the adrenaline, but sometimes can't help but breathe a calming sigh when I say "cut."​

 

[Lanefan]

Well, like I said upthread, 4e doesn't seem to be designed to be played in a world/story built by the GM. It seems intended to support "just in time" GMing - ie the GM sets up situations and the players play through them. This sort of play doesn't need a rich setting. It does need an "atmosphere" and "vibe" - as the OP noted. And this is what PoL supplies.

With this short paragraph you've just crystallized something that's bugged me about 4e since before Day 1 but that I just couldn't quite put a finger on until now.

"the GM sets up situations and the players play through them" works only as long as a) the DM can keep finding situations to set up, and b) the players are willing to play through them and not bother with the rest of the game world. It falls apart if [a) the DM runs out of situations and turns the players loose] and-or [b) the players want to step outside the presented situations] and the DM can't or won't world-build on the fly. (very few can)

For a single-path-down-the-rails campaign or a one-off adventure this is fine; what more do you need? But for a campaign where the players and-or DM actually want to engage with the game world beyond the adventures, it's not enough. And to make it enough a DM not only has to do the usual world-building she'd have to do anyway but also has to fight the game's system at the design level in order to do it.

This is even more disappointing in that to me Worlds and Monsters set 4e up to be a world-builder's game.

Lan-"just-in-time DMing only works until the party gets there early"-efan

 

[pemerton]

Early on Mearls said that 4E may not be the system of choice for people who like to world build.

Well, it's nice to know that when I read the system I reach the same conclusions as it's designers!

4e doesn't seem to be designed to be played in a world/story built by the GM. It seems intended to support "just in time" GMing - ie the GM sets up situations and the players play through them. This sort of play doesn't need a rich setting. It does need an "atmosphere" and "vibe" - as the OP noted. And this is what PoL supplies.

In case this was amiguous or incomplete - of course "just in time" play will deliver a rich setting at the end of play. It's just that the richness results from play. It's not an input into play.

A fairly trivial example from my game yesterday: The PCs have been opposing the minions of a yellow-robed wizard for some levels now. They have known him as "Golthar". In yesterday's session they learned from some witches of a yellow-robed wizard named "Paldemar". Those same witches told them that "Golthar" sounds like a Goblin name.

One of the PCs speaks Goblin and Common, and has a strong History skill. The player of that PC asked me whether the roots of "Golthar" in Goblin are the same as the roors of "Paldemar" in Common. I hadn't though about this before, but answered "yes" - thus, in effect, confirming the players' hypothesis that the two yellow-robed wizards are one-and-the-same person.

I made this decision because I felt, at this stage of the campaign, there was little to be achieved by keeping the players in the dark. I had introduced the dual identity into my background notes thinking that it might produce some interesting play. For various reasons, however, it has never come up until now, and at this point the PCs have access to divination magic that would make a question of dual identity nothing more than a bit of a gp sink for them (component costs) and a bit of a time sink at the table (as we lose play time solving a problem whose solution is foregone). Hence my decision to make the call that I did, and in the process to add a minor detail to the linguistic facts of my gameworld.

Over the course of multiple sessions, decisions like this produce a rich gameworld. But they are the result of play. They are not a prelude to it. This is what I think 4e is best suited to.

I'll pit our 4e homebrew against all comers in an Iron Setting competition, if something like that should ever happen on ENWorld.

<snip>

I can see 4e not inspiring people to world-build. That can't be argued. But the practical difficulties in world-building for 4e (still) elude me.

4e inspires me to design scenarios and situations - more, probably, than my party will get to, though the levelling-up rules help keep some of my designs viable for future use. But more and more these days I play with only some broad background ideas, filling in the details as I play (in the way described above).

Can you say more about how you approach your world design, and how it relates to your actual play?