Are Rituals Vaporware?

[Lizard]

Indie RPG relying on DM fiat instead of rules ?

Look at Burning Wheel where the GM is a lot more constrained/guided by the rules than in all editions of D&D.

I think you misinterpreted me. That was precisely what I meant -- in some out-of-mainstream games, the DM *is* explicitly limited, as "Indie" games tend to be very focused and often have only a limited set of possible conditions to resolve. (Not all "indie" games do this, of course, but I didn't want to say "In every other RPG" and have some wiseass say "Well, in this obscure game no one outside of a few hoity-toity intellectuals play, this isn't so, so there!")

20+ years of arguing on the internet, I've learned to try to avoid absolutes most of the time.

 

[marune]

How so?

Rules for damage done to walls based on material and thickness are trivial.

Let's talk about the impact of those created walls on the local economy of a pseudo-medieval kingdom for example

(You don't have to actually come up with a detailled answer on this).

 

[Fifth Element]

I don't consider them a Revolutionary Enhancement Such As We Have Never Seen Before, and I get irked when people present it as such.

If someone is presenting them as such, it should be clear to everyone they don't know what they're talking about. Don't let that irk you. One lousily-written review shouldn't provoke so much ire.

 

[marune]

I think you misinterpreted me. That was precisely what I meant -- in some out-of-mainstream games, the DM *is* explicitly limited, as "Indie" games tend to be very focused and often have only a limited set of possible conditions to resolve. (Not all "indie" games do this, of course, but I didn't want to say "In every other RPG" and have some wiseass say "Well, in this obscure game no one outside of a few hoity-toity intellectuals play, this isn't so, so there!")

Sorry for the misunderstanding, it's late and sometimes my English-as-second-language fails.

Well, it's not as much easy in games like D&D than games like BW to have powerful generic rules.

Why? BW is about conflicts, D&D is about challenges.

Conclicts require heart-breaking decisions from the player while challenges require sound strategies/tactics from the player.

That's very different.

 

[hong]

I don't consider them a Revolutionary Enhancement Such As We Have Never Seen Before, and I get irked when people present it as such.

1. Point me to where anyone here called them a Revolutionary Enhancement Such As We Have Never Seen Before.

2. They remain noncombat information, which is what was asked for and what was provided.

3. For anyone who's never played BECMI or 1E, then the fact that the rules state outright that a character's place in the world changes substantially as one increases levels will probably feel very much like a Revolutionary Enhancement Such As We Have Never Seen Before. It never hurts to have such things in 2-column 9-point serif type.

4. Despite apparently not being a Revolutionary Enhancement Such As We Have Never Seen Before, paragon paths have managed to spur people to consider things which have never really been a part of D&D before. Like this, say. Unless we are now limited to including only Things Lizard Considers To Be Real Roleplaying, of course.

. . .

Now as for rituals, the only railroading that can happen is if they happen to take 2 hours to cast instead of 6 seconds and so foil certain tactics that the player doesn't consider cheesy but the designers do. Otherwise, you might as well say that a 3E party with no wizards has been railroaded.

 

[pemerton]

Fundementally, by excluding them, it is a means of saying "This aspect of your character is unimportant; it does not need any system of resolution." It puts them in the same category as rules for, say, how long you can go without urinating.

That is true to an extent, but in my view including them at character build but then ignoring them in adventure design, encounter design, action resolution and reward mechanisms is doing excactly the same thing, except it also adds in a trap for the unwary at the character build stage.

If in fact the DMG and/or PHB discuss the possibility of rich character descriptions, which might include references to blacksmithing or whatever (and at present I don't know whether these will be in there or not) then non-combat PC background will be as important in 4e as (for example) being the son of a Duke was in 3E (a non-mechanically-modelled important aspect of the story). This certainly need not be nothing. Depending on how other aspects of the system work (eg what the constraints are on skill use in skill challenges and how these relate to player roleplaying) then these sort of "flavour" considerations might end up being mechanically quite important.

You could actually build a barkeep or a blacksmith or a town guard and have their statistics and game abilities reflect, to a reasonable extent, their personalities.

When it comes to NPCs we have quite different opinions. Their ingame reality can reflect their personalities and abilities without needing mechanically modelling, because I (as GM) can simply stipulate it. Putting aside some corner cases in which NPCs become treasure (eg players hire a blacksmith to forge them masterwork weapons) I don't need mechanics to handle this. And when NPCs do become treasure, I probably want to handle that via the wealth-by-level guidelines rather than via crafting rules.

As to your other points -- certainly, other games often have better rules for non-combat activity than D&D. 4e could have cranked up that portion of the game, based on all the things learned from 3e; instead, they decided that what happens outside the combat round basically doesn't matter.

Here I think you're again exaggerating. Skill challenges are obviously a huge part of the 4e mechanics, and not concerned primarily with the combat round. Unless I'm radically misunderstanding them, they make non-combat activity more central to the D&D play experience than it has ever been in any previous edition - and, indeed, probably more central than it has ever been in virtually any mainstream fantasy RPG.

 

[pemerton]

All editions of D&D are somewhat "schizophrenic" on the supported playstyle issue, it seems to me that 4E will be a lot more sane/focused.

Agreed. I think 1st ed AD&D varied between gamist play and a type of heavily-GM-fiat-dependant simulationism, while 2nd ed (at least if its campaign worlds and modules are anything to go buy) degenerated into a type of high-concept simulationism that actively encourage GM railroading to prevent the gamist play that some aspects of the mechanics obviously seemed aimed at facilitiating.

do you agree with me if I say that D&D 4E can maximize a high-Exploration Gamist agenda ?

Sure. I also think (and if memory is correct you disagree with this) that it might support a high-exploration, somewhat vanilla narrativism better than most mainstream fantasy RPGs.

I think Ron Edwards is definitely on to something when he notes that it is not coincidental that T&T, Marvel Superheroes and Champions (the latter with a bit of drifting) could all toggle between supporting gamist and narrativist play. The mechanical facilitation of player control is the key to both playstyles.

I know that he also goes on to emphasise the different role of reward mechanisms in the two playstyles (and eg notes how The Dying Earth has a reward mechanism designed to turn the throttle down on gamism and up on narrativism - whereas 4e may well go the other way). But until we see how Quest XP, skill challenge XP etc are handled, who has power to initiate and narrate these, etc, it is a bit early (in my view) to write off narrativist 4e.

 

[Nytmare]

In terms of rituals, I can see that they could be very cool, or they could just a smattering of the once-vast array of spells available to casters, slapped with a fairly inelegant mechanic so that player creativity cannot in any way interfere with DM railroading.

Why is it that when players brute force their way to the story they want it's called "player creativity", but when a DM does it it's called "railroading"?

 

[pemerton]

Conclicts require heart-breaking decisions from the player while challenges require sound strategies/tactics from the player.

That's very different.

Not wanting to go all Hong on you, but sometimes tactical decision-making can itself involve heartbreak (or, at least, emotion and theme). That's why I haven't written off narrativist 4e.

 

[marune]

Not wanting to go all Hong on you, but sometimes tactical decision-making can itself involve heartbreak (or, at least, emotion and theme). That's why I haven't written off narrativist 4e.

I haven't written off too, but I won't look for it in during challenges, but more in the overall flow of the campaign, i.e. what will the next adventure be about ?

IMO, in a typical D&D 4E challenge, the player should assume the classic author stance : 1) find the best action (tactically) 2) justify it in-character.

Adding an extra thematic constraint still pose a problem for me