April 3rd, Rule of 3

[Crazy Jerome]

EDIT: and interestingly enough, this is YET ANOTHER example of something that 4E fans spent the past several years PRAISING but now want to obfuscate.

I'm going to take this opportunity to go on record to say that I think you are entirely incorrect here, but that I see no particular use in arguing the point.

 

[BryonD]

You said "A few short months ago any slight hint that 4E was a different game than prior versions was a mortal sin and insult of the lowest form".

Saying that 4e feels like D&D doesn't imply that 4e doesn't differ from 3E (nor, for that matter, any other). Games can mechanically differ and still have the same feel.

Indeed, this is the whole underpinning rationale of WotC's D&Dnext design.

There's also the point that not everyone - certainly not everyone you replied to in this thread - has treated the slightest hint of difference as mortal sin. I, for one, have reapeatedly posted since 2009 that 4e brought me back to D&D. If you want me to explain (again) how its differences from 3E and 2nd ed AD&D did this, I'd be happy to follow up with another post.

This comment was not aimed at you personally.
And by the same token I've proclaimed that the difference between 3E and prior editions is absolutely critical to my attraction to it. So I'm somewhat in the same camp as you here in that I don't see consistency as a defacto praiseworthy thing.

But, you individually aside, I'll stand by two points:
There ARE people in this thread who did make it clear that the "not like prior" claims were personally offensive to them and
The theme and mood of the pro-4e zeitgeist has markedly shifted on a few points, this being one of them.

 

[BryonD]

I'm going to take this opportunity to go on record to say that I think you are entirely incorrect here, but that I see no particular use in arguing the point.

Noted.

It still happened.

But noted.

 

[BryonD]

And, no, BryonD, you cannot "easily" open a lock with a spoon in 3e. Not unless you reject the rules or really, REALLY bend the idea of "improvised tools".

No. You are twisting what I said.

Look, we agree here. 3e dictates to you how things will happen. That's the whole point. That's where the strength lies. You want to do X, the rules tell you how you will do X. If you cannot, for some reason, do X in the manner the rules prescribe, then you cannot do X. End of story.

I cannot trip someone by having them stumble in a hole in 3e. I simply cannot do that because 3e does not give me, the player, the ability to effect that in the game world. 4e does. 4e allows me to take a stance beyond actor stance.

Agreed. That was my point.
4E says here is the effect: Target trips.
And you make up a story to backfill *why*.

Now, in 3E you CAN make someone trip into a hole. But you must have some source of effect to make that happen. I certainly agree that you can't cause someone to stumble into a hole in a manner that wasn't caused by the character. I think that is a great positive thing.

Now, this is not a good or a bad thing. It's simply different. I find it greatly liberating to not be entirely tied to the prescribed actions dictated to me by the rules.

But that is bogus there. You are not REMOTELY "tied to the prescribed actions dictated to me by the rules". Your character can take ANY action they want. They might fail. But they can do whatever they want.

*That guy over there stumbles into a hole* is not an action. You have now left roleplaying and character acting behind and moved into authorial powers. Nothing wrong with loving that. But it is a whole different thing.

It's not a case of one set is better than another. It is a case that they are different and allow different things.

I agree 4E is very much different.

 

[pemerton]

You pick the cause and then the game tells you the effect.

<snip>

In 4E you look at your powers and pick an effect. You use Come And Get It on a skeleton, it moves. You use Come And Get It on a guard, he moves. You use Come And Get It on an ooze, it moves. The EFFECT is established. You look at a list of potential EFFECTS and then you go back and think of narrative justification.

In 4E you pick and effect and then think of a cause.

<snip>

In pre-4E you pick a cause and the rules tell you the effect.

Your characterisation of 4e is, in my view, not entirely accurate. As I've posted numerous times in other threads, 4e's keywords matter here. They make an important mechanical contribution to fictional positioning in 4e. (For example, the reason that Fireball but not Icy Terrain can set a building on fire is that one, but not the other has the [Fire] keyword. Mutatis mutandis for freezing a stream so that you can walk across it.)

Your characterisation of pre-4e is, in my view, also not entirely accurate. In pre-3E D&D, saving throws generate an effect for which a cause within the fiction must then be posited (Gygax, in his DMG, gives the example of a fighter chained to a rock surviving a dragon's breath because at the last minute he found a niche in the rock, or the chains broke).

And in both classic D&D and 3E, the ingame character of hit point loss cannot be narrated until after the effect (in particular - was it fatal or not?) is known. (And given that a high-level fighter might survive that dragon's breath even with a failed save, presumably hit point narration can go beyond ducking and grazing to finding niches in rockfaces or breaking chains.)

That is not to deny that there are differences. For example, 4e follows 3E - and thereby departs from classic D&D - in its treatment of Fort, Ref and Will saves (renamed defences). And 4e departs from 3E and classic D&D in taking the fortune-in-the-middle style of hit points and saving throws and making them part of the "active" as well as the "passive" side of action resolution (so players can spend metagame resources not only to have their PCs survive the actions of others, but to have their PCs perform actions against those others).

Now, in 3E you CAN make someone trip into a hole. But you must have some source of effect to make that happen. I certainly agree that you can't cause someone to stumble into a hole in a manner that wasn't caused by the character. I think that is a great positive thing.

I personally don't see why the absence of metagame mechanics on the "active" side is so great, but its presence on the "passive side" (via hit points) is untroubling.

To put it more bluntly: as I've noted in the past, given your apparent preferences I don't really understand why you're not playing either Runequest, or (if you think the absence of metagame plot protection for PCs would be too gritty) HARP. In HARP, Fate Points can be spent either "actively" or "passively", but in virtue of being a Fate Point mechanic rather than a more "embedded" mechanic like hit points, classic D&D saves, or (some) 4e martial powers, it makes the fiction/metagame distinction crystal clear.

 

[Hussar]

But that is bogus there. You are not REMOTELY "tied to the prescribed actions dictated to me by the rules". Your character can take ANY action they want. They might fail. But they can do whatever they want.

*That guy over there stumbles into a hole* is not an action. You have now left roleplaying and character acting behind and moved into authorial powers. Nothing wrong with loving that. But it is a whole different thing.

Sure it is. I, the player, decide that that guy over there stumbles in a hole. I, the player, have caused that to happen. I, the player, am not limited to a specific role predefined by the mechanics.

You said it yourself. My character can try anything he wants to do. But, I, the player, can never, ever, have any effect on the gameworld other than what my character can do. Thus, my actions are entirely proscribed by the mechanics of the system. The mechanics determine my chances of success and pre-determine what impact I, the player, am allowed to have in the game world.

The problem here is that you equate role playing to a very limited style of play that you do and refuse to accept that role play can include more things than just character acting. I get that you like character acting. That's fine. But, character acting is most certainly not the be all and end all of role play.