Bring Back Verisimilitude, add in More Excitement!

[Sylrae]

To me, your preferences do count, but frequenlty the problem in this situation is that both of your are, in effect, short-changing yourselves. The preference is too vague to be realized, and often not paying sufficient attention to the potential or even probable consequences of seeking it.

Valid points.

I'll try to be specific: I want the mechanics to match the fluff. If my power works because I'm angry, it should work whenever I'm angry. If I'm tripping someone, I should be able to trip them well: Whenever they aren't sitting or laying down. If I'm punching someone in the face, I should be able to do it any time they're in reach of my fist.

If we're using Vancian Magic, then I want the fluff to match that: The reason you can only do it so many times per day is because you store it in your mind, and casting the spell removes the knowledge of the magic from your brain.

If we're not using that sort of fluff, then I don't want that sort of crunch.

For a "4e Powers" justification, you'd need something like: I can swing my sword normally as much as I want, but I can only shoot lasers with it 3 times per encounter. Why? It only holds 3 shots. Blame the laser battery. How do I charge it? the fight ends. What happens when the fight ends that might recharge the ability?
Is it a flat amount of time without use?
Is it putting it back in the sheath? - (why cant you just sheathe it and redraw it to recharge it then)?
Does it drink the souls of your enemies? - why can't you keep it charged by killing stuff faster? What if Combat ends and you didnt kill anything with it?

Etc. Its hard to justify those mechanics with any explanation. Its vancian-esque limits applied to (often completely mundane) tasks.

You know what used to kill immersion for me? Having heavily armored warriors that have no mechanical means to punish monsters that blithely run by them to smack their robed wizard pal. Oh, well I often just had the monster act like they ought to act given the "reality" of the situation, not how the game said it worked. So understand the idea that the mechanics not fitting the reality of the widget in question can be annoying. But having had to wait almost 30 years to get a version of D&D that effectively addressed my annoyance in this regard, I'm well aware that what people say they want in general and what they mean in particular is not always as closely linked as it first appears.

It sounds like you're describing an AoO. Or taking a 5 ft. step as part of an AoO to block his path, or something. If thats not what you mean, could you clarify? What are you looking for that's missing here?

 

[nnms]

Sim guys are often also playability guys. I've played and ran a game that broke things down into .6 second phases. That's not going to happen again.

People do what at least a reasonable amount of verisimilitude. And pretty much every RPG. 4E has it. It produces play in keeping with heroic fantasy. It works at what it does.

It needs some reforming and adjusting to work for other things people want to simulate though. And then there are a few things it gets in the way of in terms of verisimilitude.

The notion that because we can't perfectly simulate something means that we shouldn't even bother having any elements of it is what I take issue with. Like declaring all attempts at it a crock. Or that if someone has a negative experience of a set of rules, it can't possibly be the rules but must be their failing. That's all pure crap.

For the majority of D&D's history it's been a traditional RPG where you describe what's going on and what the characters are doing and then use the system to resolve things it concerns itself with.

Even if 4E moved away from this approach and turned parts of it into set game procedures, it didn't abandon it completely. People still have expectations of the type of play it produces.

When it first came out, I used to hold up 4E as a champion of "finally leaving all that simulation stuff behind." Turns out I was wrong. It left a lot behind, but it still has some. And one example are the specific defender mechanics.

It is a matter of verisimilitude that a fighter can actually block a monster from getting by him and attacking his friends. It's a plausible part of heroic fantasy fiction that one character might put himself in the way of danger to keep it from getting to others. A fighter's 4E combat challenge & superiority are simulation in nature.

Those mechanics can still exist without being attached to the larger structures of encounter based time mechanics, powers, defined combat roles, and other things people looking for verisimilitude sometimes find too gamey.

As an aside, I think a defender mechanic should be a universal move/mode/stance available to everyone. Sure, someone practiced and dedicated to it should be way, way better at it, but I think everyone should be able to specifically stand in the way of something and try to stay between it and someone else. They might get bowled over and knocked on their ass, but they should at least be able to try. I think it's a plausible part of heroic fantasy for someone who is less than qualified to still put themselves in harms way to protect someone else.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Etc. Its hard to justify those mechanics with any explanation. Its vancian-esque limits applied to (often completely mundane) tasks.

Keep in mind what I said about everyone has different expectations here. Having fenced for some time, and being more concerned in my "simulation" desires that the results be plausible, rather than directly explained 1:1 by the method used, 4E is a better simulation of what I want than previous versions. It really is. Roughly, the thing I want is results occuring naturally as they would happen in the typical Fafhrd and Gray Mouser story. So all kinds of crazy stuff that that duo does no more than once a fight, heck yeah! And even from a real-world perspective, I know full well from experience that certain moves are practiced hard in case you might get the opportunity to use them. Sometimes you don't.

Granted, my perception of this happens to work particularly well with 4E in part because I don't push every combat to the max. Which means "daily" powers aren't used daily. They are used no more than once per day. And encounter powers aren't used exactly once every encounter. They are used no more than once per encounter. It's a subtle but critical distinction, and of course some people don't play 4E in a way that would let it emerge. And just so you know, the original magic item activation limits chafed me something fierce, to the point that I house ruled them out. I only recently learned that Essentials made that official.

And finally, a lot of the outside angst over 4E "unreality" is missing a key point: The whole set of powers is a bit unreal. But characters have a tiny, sometimes esoteric subset of them. I've got nine players, and it's still tiny. It isn't uncommon for the players of martial characters to pick powers that are somewhat alike. So it may be that the fighter has 2 encounters and a daily that are on a rigorous schedule, but if one of the encounter and the daily are very similar in effect, the "thing" that the character does in the game happens more fluidly. On top of the previous "not more than once" dstinction, it really adds up.

It sounds like you're describing an AoO. Or taking a 5 ft. step as part of an AoO to block his path, or something. If thats not what you mean, could you clarify? What are you looking for that's missing here?

4E marking. My amusement on this point given my experience is how vilified that mechanic is on gamist and/or even "video game" grounds. It is probably one of the most simulation focused mechanics in 4E, though this is obscured by the fact that it also has a strong gamist purpose.

In my very first playtest of 4E, one of our players, a lady who is a not mechanically inclined in games, mainly a social gamer, and only really gets fired up about roleplaying in the simulated world--got the fighter in the random pregen draw. I thought, "oops, with the added complexity here, she will struggle." So in the first fight, I gave a brief discussion of how the 4E pieces fit together. She said, "You mean I get up in their faces and they have to pay attention to me when I do? Alright!" And off she went, playing her 4E fighter tactically perfect with nothing but her conception of the character in mind. We had to remind her how to use the d20 and add her mods, but her character choices were the same ones a veteran would have used.

What people want simulated and why is often surprising.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Those mechanics can still exist without being attached to the larger structures of encounter based time mechanics, powers, defined combat roles, and other things people looking for verisimilitude sometimes find too gamey.

I agree at least somewhat on this point. I've thought more than once that the biggest way in which 4E went too far was making everything so regular. They've already said that one list of separate powers for every class was a mistake, and that certainly contributed indirectly to the issue.

 

[nnms]

I think the sentence "Do you know what killed the immersion for me?" is the key here.

There are things that make people unable to suspend their disbelief any longer.

An enemy can just side step the warrior and walk over the person he was protecting and eat them?

A barbarian has certain abilities when he gets angry, but whether or not he is angry has nothing to do with when he gets the abilities?

Different people do indeed find these moments of immersion death to happen at different points. Does this mean that the causes of them don't actually exist and it's just the person's fault? That Crazy Jerome's disappointment with previous editions in terms of not being able to properly defend people in a believable way was somehow a problem with Crazy Jerome? Nonsense. Herschel was totally and completely wrong about that.

Fortunately, it looks like the designers of D&D Next don't share his opinion. They recognize that things about one version of D&D might be deal breakers for some and the favorite thing of others.

I think that's why they're going modular on this one. I think there may end up being some optional subsystems with specific at the table game mode changes being measurements of duration and others without that.

As for the specific thing. That people championing simulation as a priority never get specific about what they want. I don't think that's accurate. Because they simply have to point to the type of play produced by most RPGs including most versions of D&D.

The specific procedure looks something like this:

1 - Participant (often DM) describes something of note.
2 - Participant (often player) describes how their character interacts with that something.
3 - Check to see if the nature of the interaction requires resolution using the game system.
4 - If so, resolve with game system.
5 - Return to 1.

4E does this for a good portion of its play as well. Where it breaks away from this traditional approach is when the mechanics produce effects that are disconnected from the narrative (a collection of "things of note" that have been interacted with during play).

When the procedures start referencing other procedures rather than a description that is part of the narrative, you can get a massive immersion breakdown. You've left the traditional RPG procedure and switched the personhood perspective of the player from 1st to 3rd. And not just a 3rd person perspective on the narrative, but on the entire game procedure itself.

I brought this up in another discussion (with Pemerton, I believe) when we were talking about combat being too long. I noted that when combat gets too long, the first thing that happens to speed it up, is that the procedure that reconnects the results of 4E powers to the fiction (that is, actually narrating it) gets dropped. Instead the mechanics reference other mechanics and play proceeds like a board game without the mechanics being connected directly to the fiction.

So in the above 5 point procedure, at number 4, the number 5 part gets dropped. A participant does not then return to 1 and narrate the result. Instead, the game system continues with it's next process and produces more results. Somewhere along the way, people may remember to reconnect it to the fiction or do so in their heads without expressing it to other players. However, the ratio of described changes to the shared fiction to system references drops dramatically and entire system call procedures can start, operate and complete without being called by or returning information to the narrative description of the participants.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

4E does this for a good portion of its play as well. Where it breaks away from this traditional approach is when the mechanics produce effects that are disconnected from the narrative (a collection of "things of note" that have been interacted with during play).

When the procedures start referencing other procedures rather than a description that is part of the narrative, you can get a massive immersion breakdown. You've left the traditional RPG procedure and switched the personhood perspective of the player from 1st to 3rd. And not just a 3rd person perspective on the narrative, but on the entire game procedure itself...

Point of order: There is an assumption here (I think) that the only way to get immersion is to stick to 1st person and have procedures in the game that mirror the actions of the character. This is certainly true for a large number of people who value immersion. (And near as I can tell, almost universal for those who immerse "deeply," but that's problematic.)

However, technically immersion is imagining the game world as the character, not as a game piece or as an explicit protagonist in a story (e.g. such as from the point of view of a narrator of the story). And however "shallow" the immersion may be in practice, the verisimilitude of the story certainly contributes to that effort. And just note hear that people that I've run games for have often immersed more readily (albeit shallowly) in third person than first person. It's more comfortable sometimes, and easier to create a shared, imagined space.

Yet, when you model processes, you often get results that are incongruent with the results. All systems, even those highly focused on immersion, do this to some extent. Deep immersionist talk about having to get over the hump so that the offending mechanics can be ignored. Turn by turn movement in a tabletop RPG is often cited as an example. Two characters charge each other, but because Bob moves first, he moves across the room to hit Joe who stands there. The participants just imagine that Bob's initiative was more determinant that it was, or that Joe moved a bit too, or any number of such rationales.

If a particular such item is one you can't get over, then you'll often switch to mechanics that model results instead. For example, you might have a declaration phase, then everyone moves simultaneously. If Bob and Joe both declare a charge, they both move and meet somewhere in the middle. (Note, no assumptions made about how abstract or detailed this is. It could--and has--gone many ways.)

This is all separate from choosing to bypass immersion altogether and go straight for narrative conceits that are applied to the mechanics, presumably to keep the story flowing. Here, immersion has been dropped in order to produce a different aspect of verisimilitude: Namely, that when a big action hero smacks a bunch of nearby orc fodder, the story doesn't get bogged down in procedures or even result resolution (any more than necessary).

You can see this as a startingly fashion in Burning Wheel's Range and Cover and Fight mechanics (for skirmish and close melee important contests, respectively). They use scripting, and you must script several moves ahead. This leaves your character often making off-beat moves in the resulting action. Howeer, this very effectively models what BW wants to model--not the simulation of the process of a capable warrior confronting his enemies, but the simulation of the uncertainty and risk of combat--where people are only semi-predictable.

If your goal is to simulate something, the traditional process task resolution is not automatically the correct answer.

 

[nnms]

If your goal is to simulate something, the traditional process task resolution is not automatically the correct answer.

I quite agree. In fact, I think I disagree very, very little with what you wrote.

The type of play I'm describing is what people on story-games might call "trad" (short for traditional). It's a description of how the majority of RPGs have functioned during the majority of years RPGs have been around. A continue process of description, reaction, resolution and feedback leading to more description.

I think there's a reason why lots of people like it and see it as their preferred way to play. And given that it is the mode of play introduced by the earliest forms of D&D (and even in 1968 with the publication of what might be considered the first RPG, Modern War in Miniature) when you leave this particular process, it just rubs some people the wrong way.

I'm definitely not saying it's the best way to handle RPG play. I'm just saying it's the "classic" way. And lots of people want it. So when mechanics and game procedures either abandon it or purposefully work at cross purposes to it, people are going to react negatively.

I hope this answers your questions about what the "simulation" people want from their play. They want a version of D&D that contains the type of play that started the industry and proliferated across hundreds and hundreds of game titles over the year.

Not innovative enough? Not cutting edge? Not modern? Some times change for changes sake isn't worth it.

And as a side note, here is example play text from Modern War in Miniature by Michael F. Korns. Arguably (Major David Wesely certainly credits it as so) the first example of a published RPG in 1968, 6 years before OD&D.

Player: I’m picking up my sub-machine gun and my grenades and running over to the ditch beside the bridge. I want to keep looking for the Americans in the houses while I’m running.

Judge: There he is again! He just stuck his head around the corner of that white building about 30 meters in front of you. Here, he’s looking around again.

Player: Am I in the ditch now?

Judge: Yes, you’ve been here about 2 seconds now.

Player: All right, then Im firing my Schmeisser at him in a long burst.

Judge: THERE IS A SUB-MACHINE GUN FIRING ON THE BOARD.

Judge: Your schmeisser is kicking chunks out of the edge of the building all around him... It is hard to say whether you hit him or whether he pulled his head back.

Judge: An M-1 HAS FIRED ON THE BOARD.

Judge: That rifle round hit you in the side. It knocked you a little farther into the ditch; you’re bleeding from the mouth too.

Judge: You can see who did it now. The American is on your left about 12 meters away running at you with his bayonet.

Player: Can I still move?

Judge: Yes, but you are almost unconscious.

Player: I’m turning around and firing the rest of my schmeisser’s clip into him.

Judge: THERE IS A SCHMEISSER FIRING ON THE BOARD.

Judge: He’s coming up fast. Your bullets are jerking around in an arc towards him as you turn. Seven meters, four meters, one meter. I’m afraid you’re dead.

They're even using miniatures in this game and scale terrain made with model railroad techniques. So it is definitely not incompatible with a battle map or miniatures.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

nnms, a big part of my long point is that focusing on process has never been 100% even in trad. Heck, it isn't even in games that are a lot more focused on simulation than D&D has or ever will be. Even games that never thought twice about avoiding the slightlest whiff of metagaming, were quite happy to switch to result modeling over process modelling. This is because models built on nothing but process never work.

You can almost define a lot of the differences in D&D versus Rolemaster or RuneQuest as where all those purely trad games decided to draw the lines between process versus result modeling.

The very first group that wanted to "innovate" away from core D&D were the people who wanted to push process heavily.

So my point is that while I happen to like a lot of the narrative and other non-simulation techniques (some form of fate points not least of all), I'm perfectly willing to see some of those factored out into options and even made non-default on many occasions.

But I am not willing to concede that the answer to every simulation preference is "just model the process the character goes through, and it will all work great!" Not only do I know I wouldn't like it, I'm also pretty sure that most of the trad simulation guys won't like it, either. Process models tend to freeze assumptions about particular verisimilitude goals into mechanics.

 

[Felon]

So what? Just because me and the OP might have different ideas about what things should be represented to get the verisimilitude we want, that means that neither of us want something legitimate and verisimilitude is a crock that should be tossed out?

You pick an element and you design a game mechanic to produce it. What does it matter if I say we should represent the passage of time and moment by moment pacing and another person says we should represent the dramatic structure of a three act play? Both of our preferences don't count because they're not the same?

What it means is this: everyone's wants cannot be catered to, therefore at some point, the individual must yield and meet part-way on the issue of verisimiitude, which in the context of a game is really just a matter of rationalization.

 

[nnms]

What it means is this: everyone's wants cannot be catered to, therefore at some point, the individual must yield and meet part-way on the issue of verisimiitude, which in the context of a game is really just a matter of rationalization.

That's a very, very different thing that the claim that the whole concept is a crock and that if someone finds the rules hamper immersion for them than it must be the person with the problem and never the rules.

I don't think the core experiences of playing D&D are all that disparate. I actually think that a lot of it can be catered to with options that a group can swap in and out for a particular approach that they like.