April 3rd, Rule of 3

[Andor]

Make a system for the mental realm - with attributes and so on as for combat - and I can see great game play arising. Give that street kid a longing for affection (that works a bit like a Vulnerability, maybe?) that boosts the effectiveness of the Charm. Give that Paladin an Oath attribute (like a feat or something) that must be overcome before the Charm will affect the subject of the oath - maybe working like Resistance, or additional "hit points" to be overcome before the Oath will be compromised.

I've been working up some ideas in this area, but it's hard to get it right. If someone comes up with a good stab in published form, I'll gladly buy it!

There are sysytems that work like this. Herowars/heroquest for example. They tend to be highly narrativist systems. In fact in that system you could run an entire encounter while mixing magical, physical, emotional and social conflicts into the same event. The flipside of that is that you never know what actually happened until the final resolution. It's like 4e HP squared in that effect. When Joe took 8 points from the badguys AP pool in turn 4 was that a sword to the leg, or a reminder of a childhood friendship that brought a tear to his eye? You don't know until it's over and you match the narrative to the game effects. It is an extremely elegant system. Personally I find it lacks something in flavor however.

In the original RuneQuest game the different magical systems of Glorantha had very different mechanical implementations. In HeroWars they have the same distinct fluff, but all have the exact same universal resolution mechanics. The palpable, meaningful differences between spirit magic and mystisicm from the old days is gone, remembered only as a bit of handwaving.

We're drifting into the "What D&D isn't" thread here, I think. D&D has never had, nor attempted to have elegant or sophisticated social conflict rules. That has always been the purview of the GM. And in point of fact no matter what system you are playing or what the rules are it will always be the purview of the GM. The only way around that is troupe style play combined with social mechanics that also apply to the PCs. And you will not find a whole hell of a lot of D&D players, in my experience, who are not going to have a problem with the GM telling them how their character has to act.

Different games have different social contracts between the players and GM. In something like a World of Darkness game, or Heroquest it is perfectly legitimate for a GM to tell someone their character has fallen in love, or had a fight with their spouse. The system has rules for it, and encourages that sort of social conflict.

D&D on the other hand has always had a sort of gentlemens agreement that while the GM might try to kill you at any second (which results in a lot of PCs who act like paranoid PTSD survivors who never, ever sit with their backs to a door) it is also a given that he does not tell you what your character must think or feel about any given situation. He might tell you your characters actions will look very odd to other people in the world, but your actions are your own even if they lead to you getting eaten by a grue.

 

[Lanefan]

Well, its a strength depending on what you're playing. If you're playing at an organized play table where you don't know the Dm or the players, then this degree of vagueness is very, very bad. One table might agree with you, the next might not. There's no consistency.

True, but let's not design the game to suit the needs of organized play; as it is (I believe) greatly in the minority vs. either play among friends or long-term campaign play.

Now, if I, as DM, interpret Charm person in a way that you disagree with, what recourse do you have? I know what has happened at every table I've ever seen - the game grinds to a halt as the DM and the player hash things out and try to find a solution to the vagueness.

However, with the exception of organized play, this conflict only needs to happen once per table per issue; and probably will regardless of what the written rules might say.

While I realize this is a preference thing, I much, much prefer to have things defined in a way that prevents games coming to a crashing halt. If that means that Phantasmal Force goes away, so be it. The game running smoothly is far more important to me than playing amateur game designer.

I read this as saying quite explicitly: if it doesn't have defined borders, it shouldn't be in the game.

If that is not what you mean, please clarify.

If that is what you mean, I feel sorry for your players; as one of the true beauties of the game is that sometimes the only border is the limit of your imagination. Illusions are one such time.

Lan-"imagination has few rules, and all of them are breakable"-efan

 

[pemerton]

There are sysytems that work like this. Herowars/heroquest for example. They tend to be highly narrativist systems. In fact in that system you could run an entire encounter while mixing magical, physical, emotional and social conflicts into the same event. The flipside of that is that you never know what actually happened until the final resolution. It's like 4e HP squared in that effect. When Joe took 8 points from the badguys AP pool in turn 4 was that a sword to the leg, or a reminder of a childhood friendship that brought a tear to his eye? You don't know until it's over and you match the narrative to the game effects. It is an extremely elegant system. Personally I find it lacks something in flavor however.

<snip>

D&D has never had, nor attempted to have elegant or sophisticated social conflict rules.

<snip>

In something like a World of Darkness game, or Heroquest it is perfectly legitimate for a GM to tell someone their character has fallen in love, or had a fight with their spouse. The system has rules for it, and encourages that sort of social conflict.

D&D on the other hand has always had a sort of gentlemens agreement that while the GM might try to kill you at any second (which results in a lot of PCs who act like paranoid PTSD survivors who never, ever sit with their backs to a door) it is also a given that he does not tell you what your character must think or feel about any given situation.

Very interesting post!

4e does have social conflict rules, namely, skill challenges. And they raise the same considerations in adjudication that you mention for HeroWars/Quest. I think it is important to try to fill in some of the narration as the scene unfolds - if you leave it all until after the event, the players have got no basis on which to bring their abilities to bear on the scene. But you need to maintain enough flexibility to allow room for the scene to develop to whatever its culmination ends up being.

On the scope of GM narration of PC emotional responses, I'm fairly careful in this regard, but occasionally the only way to adjudicate a power usage or a skill check failure is to take some modest steps into this terrain.

I would be surprised if D&Dnext goes as far as 4e in these respects, given the general hostility to skill challenges, and to 4e's fortune-in-the-middle resolution.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Who have you got in mind?

@Balesir has never said that 4e played the same as 3E or classic D&D. Nor have I - since 2009, when I started playing 4e, I've repeatedly explained how it was because of 4e that I started GMing D&D again.

@Hussar has frequently, and for far more than "a few short months", posted about the difference he finds between 4e and 3E - eg 4e let's him run his "chosen of Kord" PC with the blessed gruel spoon.

It's not the big gotcha you seem to think it is to find people saying that 4e plays differently from 3E.

I think if someone goes back and looks, they will find that there were many instances that amounted to "4E is not D&D", and this was rejected, usually along the lines that someone was stilling doing the activities of D&D they always had. Then an argument might start about "what is D&D," and it will be clear that there is no agreement.

I play 4E the same way I played D&D all along. 4E and BECMI happen to do that better than anything else--because they are somewhat different but not completely different.

 

[pemerton]

I play 4E the same way I played D&D all along. 4E and BECMI happen to do that better than anything else--because they are somewhat different but not completely different.

Would you agree that this can be true, without it being the case that 4e is no different from 3E? Or even stronger, that what you've said - in virtue of the "do better" component - entails that 4e is different from 3E?

 

[Hussar]

On the noting differences tangent: I'll admit to possibly giving the goalposts a nudge from time to time. OTOH, for me, what it usually comes down to is someone saying something like, "4e does X completely differently than what came before." to which I reply, "well, no, it really doesn't because of this and that." In other words, I'll say that 4e is the same as what came before and I'll say it's different from what came before, depending on what we're talking about.

What I generally see is, "4e is bad because it's different than what came before" but, if you say, "4e is good because it's different" then everyone jumps up and tells me that 4e is no different than what came before. IOW, 4e is only allowed to be different from what came before if that difference can be cast in a negative light. At no point can any of the differences ever be considered a positive.

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I read this as saying quite explicitly: if it doesn't have defined borders, it shouldn't be in the game.

If that is not what you mean, please clarify.

If that is what you mean, I feel sorry for your players; as one of the true beauties of the game is that sometimes the only border is the limit of your imagination. Illusions are one such time.

Lan-"imagination has few rules, and all of them are breakable"-efan

Well, no. I have no problems with going beyond the borders, but, the problem comes when the borders are so vague that no one at the table has a baseline to work from. If I create an illusion of X, is it believable or not? Well, it might be, it might not. It totally depends on DM fiat. So, the spell goes from being virtually useless, to being over powered, and everything in between.

Which just makes it harder to run the game.

I know that the biggest shift in play for me, going from 2e to 3e, is spending a fraction of the time in arguments. It was a regular thing for the game to come to a screeching halt in 2e IME. Something came up virtually every session. In 3e, the issues because much, much more corner case and came up once in a while, if at all.

This was one of the best improvements 3e brought to the game. I finally got a ruleset that worked out of the box. I've been a 3e proponent far, far longer than I've liked the 4e ruleset and there's a bunch of reasons for that. But, the biggest reason is that the 3e system defines in very concrete terms how things are supposed to work.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Would you agree that this can be true, without it being the case that 4e is no different from 3E? Or even stronger, that what you've said - in virtue of the "do better" component - entails that 4e is different from 3E?

Certainly. And that is also true of 3E compared to earlier editions, despite some of the claims people have made. The only way that 3E is "just like early D&D, only cleaned up and better" is if you had a certain slant on D&D in the earlier versions, which 3E has now done a better job handling.

The problem in this discussion (and really from the launch of 3E, and maybe even 2E) is that apparently some people have a rather constricted view of what D&D can do, should do, can do well, has done well, most people have so used it, etc. (This is the root of the mistaken, "if you had played it in the old days, you wouldn't believe X" comments.) Others have wider views. Furthermore, those with the wider views are not always consistent with each other, or equally wide. It is quite clear that some of those with the more narrow views do not believe those of us with the wider views. They think we are mistaken, lying, remembering D&D through rose-colored memories, caught up in nostalgia, changed preferenes without realizing it, etc. I think they are provincial--with all the flaws and charms that entails. It brings to mind Tolkiens' comments to his critics in that later edition of LotR.

It's also true that if you drew a Venn diagram of what each edition did well, and then what it did adequately, and then what it did relatively poorly ... you'd have an unholy mess of a diagram, but I digress. Those differences in results are differences in the various systems. It would, however, take a Venn diagram (or maybe several) to do such a comparison justice. There is a line drawn through the editions, where one can roughly trace the evolution of the game, but it is a line drawn by a sidewinder rattlesnake crawling through snow after pulling a 72 hour shift, while hopped up on LSD. You can follow it, but it doesn't always go anywhere consistent.

This is why I can, for example, make a comparison between 4E and BECMI and be perfectly serious. For others, this will sound like I'm saying that an apple and a truck are alike because they both happen to be red. There are parts of BECMI that I took advantage of, not least because of my preferences in fantasy stories, that are not something that everyone appreciates.

And through it all lurks the dispute on the importance or lack thereof of immersion. There just really is no getting around that, anymore than we could conduct trade between the various English-speaking nations while pretending there was not difference in currency. If acknowledged, it can be coped with, but it has to be acknowledged, from both sides, for there to be clear results. So far, that has not happened.

 

[Lanefan]

I know that the biggest shift in play for me, going from 2e to 3e, is spending a fraction of the time in arguments. It was a regular thing for the game to come to a screeching halt in 2e IME. Something came up virtually every session. In 3e, the issues because much, much more corner case and came up once in a while, if at all.

This was one of the best improvements 3e brought to the game. I finally got a ruleset that worked out of the box. I've been a 3e proponent far, far longer than I've liked the 4e ruleset and there's a bunch of reasons for that. But, the biggest reason is that the 3e system defines in very concrete terms how things are supposed to work.

Difference in style, perhaps; as when I jumped from playing 1e to 3e I found 3e to be bogged down in rules, while at the same time various things (Illusions, I'm looking at you and failing my save) had been so reduced as to be - well, not completely useless, but nowhere near as much fun.

That, and taking away bouncing lightning bolts, expanding fireballs, etc. - the risk was removed in favour of nice simple rules. (caveat: 2e may be to blame for some of these changes, but I first saw them in 3e)

Yet there were still arguments, I'd say just as many as in 1e. Only difference was they were arguments about rules interactions rather than arguments about what the rules should be; and I prefer the latter because out of those arguments you and your table slowly build your own game rather than just quibble about what someone else built.

Lanefan

 

[Sunseeker]

Difference in style, perhaps; as when I jumped from playing 1e to 3e I found 3e to be bogged down in rules, while at the same time various things (Illusions, I'm looking at you and failing my save) had been so reduced as to be - well, not completely useless, but nowhere near as much fun.

That, and taking away bouncing lightning bolts, expanding fireballs, etc. - the risk was removed in favour of nice simple rules. (caveat: 2e may be to blame for some of these changes, but I first saw them in 3e)

Yet there were still arguments, I'd say just as many as in 1e. Only difference was they were arguments about rules interactions rather than arguments about what the rules should be; and I prefer the latter because out of those arguments you and your table slowly build your own game rather than just quibble about what someone else built.

Lanefan

Personally I've found arguments about rules highly situational. In one game I played in which almost everyone was VERY well versed on the rules, there were rarely arguments about how A interacted with B. There were some creative discussions on how A or B should be interpreted though, even in a rules-heavy system(3e and 4e). Other games tended to have more rules arguments when there was only one rules lawyer, and often because that guy had a different idea of how A interacted with B than the DM.

Some tables with very low rules familiarity didn't have arguments because nobody at the table knew well enough, so we usually just made something up on the fly.

I don't think systems are prone to generating arguments so much as the people at the table are. Some people are just argumentative. Some aren't.

 

[Zireael]

The way I've seen D&D narrated before 4E, each individual hit point has been a mix--some physical state, some defensive skill, some luck, some divine favor, and so forth. But that means every hit point incorporates an element of physical state. If you lose a hit point, you take a wound.

That may be how some prefer to narrate that, but as far as I know, none of that has ever been established by any rules.

Well, that's a fair point, but it's a role-playing game. Why does everything have to be set in stone instead of people using their imagination?

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The idea somebody had earlier - the one with spending XP on non-magical healing (other than resting) is a good idea.

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Pre-4e non-physical damage is usually a status effect. Stat damage/drain, stunned, fatigued, shaken. These are not healed with cure spells.

Non-magical, morale based hp effects were also frequently done through temporary ht points. So the Sarge might give you a pep-talk that get you through the fight, but it doesn't last all day.

I, personally, don't have a problem with the possibility of morale based healing as long as it's not as powerful or prevalent as magic or skill based healing. A feat to 'man up' and do an adrenaline based self heal in combat for a fighter would be fine. Although if it's adrenaline aren't temporary hp a better model? An inspiring speech or presence power that works similarly would also be fine.

But frankly it makes more sense for that sort of thing to fix status effects (like fatigued/shaken, not so much petrified) than to fix gaping wounds.

Yeah, but if it was clearly stated that hp are not only and/or not always "gaping wounds", then the situation would be solved.

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Oh, and I can't xp Firelance, even though his post on pg. 10 just hit the bull's eye!

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I like healing surges in this regard, but when you have like, 54 of them, it does really water down the idea of them making you more heroic. To this end, I would like to see a massive reduction on healing surges. Perhaps only say, 4 of them, for anyone, healing for say, 10% of your health. Healing magic remains the primary source of healing, unconnected with healing surges. Characters retain Healing Surges for things like Second Wind's, Action Points, Heroic Effort, ect... All moments that will make your character more feel more awesome.

That's a brilliant idea.

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But what does a "massive damage episode" or "coup de grace" represent in the fiction?

If the PC dies, it is clear enough - the PC was skewered, decapitated, throttled, whatever.

But if the PC survives, then it must be the case that the blow missed, or grazed, or merely stunned, or something of that sort. That is, the in-game intepreration of the hp damage can't be settled without knowing the result of the saving throw against massive damage, or without knowing how many hp the PC has left after the damage is applied.

It will still be the case that no PC who is not dead has ever been skewered by a lance.

Or the lance/whatever might have missed the critical organs. Or a friendly cleric/whomever patched the guy using bandages and/or stitches before he died. Lots of ways to explain this.

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Have read only up to page 12 of the thread. More to be (hopefully) added tomorrow.