D&D 5E Changes in Interpretation

[Steely_Dan]

While I found the video in poor taste if it targeted people who like gnomes. I have no attachment to gnomes and thus wasn't offended myself but I could see it being offensive.

I have always dug Gnomes (that picture of Garl Glittergold in the 1st Ed Deities & Demigods is badass!), Druids, and Monks, so was disappointed they were excluded from the 4th Ed PHB 1.

I don't know where gnomes got a bad rap, obviously the designers of 4th Ed weren't aware of the glory of the gnome (svirfneblin rock)!

I like the 5th Ed idea of other races outside the core 4 being in the monster manual, like Minotaurs would have a sidebar about using them as a PC race in a Dragonlance setting.

 

[Hussar]

I have always dug Gnomes (that picture of Garl Glittergold in the 1st Ed Deities & Demigods is badass!), Druids, and Monks, so was disappointed they were excluded from the 4th Ed PHB 1.

I don't know where gnomes got a bad rap, obviously the designers of 4th Ed weren't aware of the glory of the gnome (svirfneblin rock)!

I like the 5th Ed idea of other races outside the core 4 being in the monster manual, like Minotaurs would have a sidebar about using them as a PC race in a Dragonlance setting.

Gnomes got a bad rap because, in what, 30 years of the game, not a single iconic example of a gnome every appeared. Not one. You can point to all sorts of game fiction or just genre fiction where you have icons for every single D&D PHB race and a large number of the "monster" races as well.

But gnomes? They've always been the red-headed stepchild. I like gnomes, I do. I have played one multiple times. But, I can see why they got the cut. What boggles my mind is why people got so upset about it. Then again, Mearl's talked about the Gnome Effect at some length, so, I guess one shouldn't ignore the small minorities that might really like something.

 

[pemerton]

I do understand that this is generally the consensus thought regarding the edition. However, I truly wonder if this stems from a confluence of (i) a lack of conceptualization of the classic "resource attrition" angle within 4e's mechanical framework and (ii) 4e being so potent and consistent at emulating scene-based heroic fantasy/cinema.

<snip>

4e can certainly do this. It does it differently than prior editions (I think I actually prefer it as the mechanical framework for exploration/attrition gameplay as it is cleaner, made more explicit, so the conveyed fiction can be focused on as the delivery-method of the tension, and there is an actual means of conflict resolution - Skill Challenge) but it can do it nonetheless. I think if people would give it a trial-run (if just for the fun of it), they may find it more than satisfactory for the playstyle.

This is not what I mean by exploratory play. To me exploratory play is "You are there, what do you do?", not an abstracted dice game of skill challenges and pass-fail branching.

I have some sympathy for S'mon's response here.

Now, given that I'm a despiser of the "dissociated mechanics" label, and a notorious 4venger, let me explain.

When I use the term "exploratory play", I tend to have in mind play in which the main goal of play is discovering the nature of the gameworld. The gameworld may be hostile to the PCs, but it is not - in the dramatic sense - an antagonist. It is scenery, and the goal of play is to appreciate the scenery.

I think classic D&D has a fair bit of this, with its large dungeon layers, and its mapping, and its prepared expeditions to find suitable targets to hit (as set out by Gygax in the last few pages of his PHB), etc. It's true that the dungeon, at a certain point, also becomes a source of antagonism, but the exploration part is sufficiently prominent and self-standing that it becomes something of an end in itself.

Whereas the sorts of scenarios that Manbearcat describes seem to me to be much more about the gameworld as antagonist. And the focus of play isn't on exploring the scenery, but rather overcoming that antagonist. Exploration is a means to an end.

I have done the sort of thing Manbearcat describes, although - because I personally tend to find the environment as antagonist a bit boring - not on such a large scale as set out above. I mostly use it to introduce a bit of colour and to help pace resource recovery.

For my mileage, "lost in the wintry wilderness", "fell into a sinkhole in the underdark and then subsequent cave-in" and/or "find the lost, sunken temple in the vast bog/wasteland" all require specific elements; (i) pacing through resource attrition and the PC's "desperation agenda" wrought by the former, (ii) the aggregate of a strongly DM-advocated "fictional-unknown" + said resource attrition combining as a "threat-delivery system", player character resource deployment or player ingenuity delivering the PCs from either imminent death or to their intended location.

I'm uncertain why

- "You are there, what do you do?"

cannot be successfully actualized by

- an abstracted dice game of skill challenges and pass-fail branching

I've given my attempt to answer this above. "You are there, what do you do?" can, I think, be handled well be a skill challenge. But its the very nature of the skill challenge to shift the focus to the "what do you do?" Whereas I think of exploratory play as wanting to prioritise "You are there.

I've read several times that 4e doesn't lend itself to exploratory game play and I fail to see it. Maybe it's my playstyle but I found that 4e gives me more tools.

<snip>

One of my game groups is currently going through the Slavepits of the Undercity module.

<snip>

Instead of engaging the slavers, or infiltrating the slave outpost they decided to buy back the girl.

As I mentioned, I tend not to run heavy wilderness scenarios, but I've done this sort of urban thing, generally using sequential skill challenges. That's not what I've had in mind when I've talked about exploratory play, because (as I see it) the main aim isn't exploring the city, but freeing the slave. The city is more of a means to an end - scenery, rather than the dramatic point of play.

In many 4e adventures I have a kind of wrenching sensation when I allow a fight to be avoided, it feels like I'm "going against the adventure". The adventures often reinforce this with admonitions against letting the PCs avoid any fights, because then they'll miss out on the XP they need to fight the BBEG at the end.

My solution to this is to treat the modules as sources of maps, and story elements (NPCs, towns, organisations, etc) but to more or less disregard the pacing and do that myself (levelling up or down, interpolating other scenes, etc, as needed).

In Thunderspire Labyrinth the PCs negotiated with the duergar slavers in the Chamber of Eyes, because they didn't want to have to invade a duergar fortress, and they reached a mutually agreeable redemption price. A very interesting skill challenge with a quite unexpected outcome!

In the Well of Demons they negotiated with the tieflings. I wanted to run a rot grub encounters, and so I decided that the gnolls had placed a rot grub in the drink of one of the tieflings, who - as the PCs were talking to them - trasmuted into a rot grub zombie from MM3. The surviving tiefling, after mourning the death of his companion and realisig that he was severely outnumbered and outclassed, tried to get the PCs in on a diabolic pact. Unfortunately for him, the PC wizard was fanatically hostile to this suggestion, and when the temple was collapsing after the PCs stopped Maldrick's ritual (I added in a collapsing temple skill challenge because it seemed pretty approriate, all things considered) the PC wizard shot him down with a Magic Missile (I allowed a successful Arcana check to "minionise" the lone NPC).

 

[Manbearcat]

@pemerton

I'm thinking on what you have written above and I'm trying to sort out the difference between my "exploratory play" and your own/S'mon's "exploratory play." I'm wondering if perhaps we are talking about two very different things. What I'm invoking above is definitely;

- Environment as antagonist.
- There are clear stakes involved in the conflict resolution of the "environment as antagonist (that may be totally unrelated to "environment as antagonist"...just as the monster in your way is unrelated to getting out of the burning building.)."

Are you and S'mon referring to either;

1) Standard 1e gamist dungeon crawling (enter room, search for traps/secret doors, sort out puzzle/complex trap or door, slay monsters, collect spoils, rinse repeat)?

or

2) You are in a potentially benign environment (wilderness, trade route, back alley). No stakes have brought you there and nothing is imminent. You are just there. Sandbox-ey stuff.

If it is either 1 or 2 then I would agree. There is no antagonist, there are no stakes, there are no conflicts to resolve. "You are there. What do you do?" That is pretty standard fair, mechanics-neutral sandbox-ey "exploratory play" (to use you guys' jargon so we're on the same page). Play on.

Are we on the same page?

 

[S'mon]

When I use the term "exploratory play", I tend to have in mind play in which the main goal of play is discovering the nature of the gameworld. The gameworld may be hostile to the PCs, but it is not - in the dramatic sense - an antagonist. It is scenery, and the goal of play is to appreciate the scenery.

Thanks, yes - this is a good description. For me the immersive you-are-there exploration is what Edwards calls 'Right to Dream' or Simulation; it is distinct from both challenge-based Gamist play and Dramatist story-construction. It does not necessarily involve challenge (as in pass/fail), or the creation of a compelling story, although often it does - but the enjoyment of exploration is separate from these things.

 

[S'mon]

My solution to this is to treat the modules as sources of maps, and story elements (NPCs, towns, organisations, etc) but to more or less disregard the pacing and do that myself (levelling up or down, interpolating other scenes, etc, as needed).

Yes - the reason I want to run P2 is that it does actually give me support for this approach, although very sketchy compared to the 'fight blocks' - but I won't get that wrenching sensation of 'going against the module'.

I ran Orcs of Stonefang Pass recently, and unfortunately I didn't find any way to cut out any of the 11 sequential encounters, so it took us 7(!) sessions from beginning to end, and felt pretty linear and draggy at times. I want to avoid that in future.

 

[Steely_Dan]

1) But gnomes? They've always been the red-headed stepchild.

2) But, I can see why they got the cut.

I) I disagree (with your whole post, basically), that is more halfings for me and many people I knew/know, as they are a Tolkien deal, gnomes, dwarves and elves are part of world mythologies.

2) I don't, why drop a classic (legacy) race for dragonborn (whose noses are even more phallic, ha!).


I think a big problem with that first 4th Ed PHB (which has many killer things) was just that, cutting gnomes, half-orcs, barbarians, bards, druids, monks, and sorcerers, yet including dragonborn, eladrin (stealing the name from a classic monster), tieflings and warlord.

 

[S'mon]

@pemerton

I'm thinking on what you have written above and I'm trying to sort out the difference between my "exploratory play" and your own/S'mon's "exploratory play." I'm wondering if perhaps we are talking about two very different things. What I'm invoking above is definitely;

- Environment as antagonist.
- There are clear stakes involved in the conflict resolution of the "environment as antagonist (that may be totally unrelated to "environment as antagonist"...just as the monster in your way is unrelated to getting out of the burning building.)."

Are you and S'mon referring to either;

1) Standard 1e gamist dungeon crawling (enter room, search for traps/secret doors, sort out puzzle/complex trap or door, slay monsters, collect spoils, rinse repeat)?

or

2) You are in a potentially benign environment (wilderness, trade route, back alley). No stakes have brought you there and nothing is imminent. You are just there. Sandbox-ey stuff.

If it is either 1 or 2 then I would agree. There is no antagonist, there are no stakes, there are no conflicts to resolve. "You are there. What do you do?" That is pretty standard fair, mechanics-neutral sandbox-ey "exploratory play" (to use you guys' jargon so we're on the same page). Play on.

Are we on the same page?

Yes, that seems right - more (2).

Note that for 4e I am pretty happy to 'Skip* To the Fun!' and pass over the exploratory phase to get to the Big Fight. With pre-3e I find the exploratory phase crucial to building a sense of immersion, which raises the stakes and the tension when the Big Fight or other danger occurs.

In 4e I might often say "You pass down through dozens of catacombs, until... (Fight Scene)". With pre-4e I'd normally have the catacombs mapped and the PCs would spend a good while exploring them, punctuated by fights etc. The exception would be Play by email/Bulletin Board/chatroom (to lesser extent) games, where the pace is too slow for exploration to work well.

*Like pemerton, I find the environment rather boring as an antagonist, and I'm not a big fan of environmental skill challenges of the 'hostile weather' variety; I don't find them interesting.

 

[pemerton]

I'm thinking on what you have written above and I'm trying to sort out the difference between my "exploratory play" and your own/S'mon's "exploratory play." I'm wondering if perhaps we are talking about two very different things.

<snip>

Are you and S'mon referring to either;

1) Standard 1e gamist dungeon crawling (enter room, search for traps/secret doors, sort out puzzle/complex trap or door, slay monsters, collect spoils, rinse repeat)?

or

2) You are in a potentially benign environment (wilderness, trade route, back alley). No stakes have brought you there and nothing is imminent. You are just there. Sandbox-ey stuff.

If it is either 1 or 2 then I would agree. There is no antagonist, there are no stakes, there are no conflicts to resolve. "You are there. What do you do?" That is pretty standard fair, mechanics-neutral sandbox-ey "exploratory play" (to use you guys' jargon so we're on the same page).

I think this is roughly right.

But not necessarily mechanics-neutral. I'm thinking White Plume Mountain - where you're expected (for example) to remove doors so you can "surf" them down the frictionless corridor over the pits of super-tetanus spikes. For me, this is exploratory play - because interacting with the scenery is key to the point of play. It's your (1), not (2), because the environment is obviously not benign. But it's not mechanics-neutral. In a conflict resolution game, surfing the doors over the pits should still trigger an action resolution check - on a failure, for example, your PC's beloved hat falls into the pit as you surf over it! - Now what are you going to do? (ie complications, stakes etc).

Whereas to adjudicate White Plume Mountain in that way would, I think, to be missing the point of it. Engaging with the scenery is what it's about, and once that's happened we move on to the next bit of scenery. (Tomb of Horrors is also like this, but I think less interesting - not as whacky as White Plume Mountain, and the "scenery interaction" very often can be reduced to "The thief flies in tied to a rope and looks for traps" - I'm not the biggest fan of exploratory play in general, but find the bomb squad version of it especially tedious.)

 

[D'karr]

Whereas to adjudicate White Plume Mountain in that way would, I think, to be missing the point of it. Engaging with the scenery is what it's about, and once that's happened we move on to the next bit of scenery. (Tomb of Horrors is also like this, but I think less interesting - not as whacky as White Plume Mountain, and the "scenery interaction" very often can be reduced to "The thief flies in tied to a rope and looks for traps" - I'm not the biggest fan of exploratory play in general, but find the bomb squad version of it especially tedious.)

I think I understand what you mean now for "exploratory". What I still don't understand is how 4e hinders, or in some way doesn't lend itself to it.

With 4e I, as the DM, have more tools at my disposal to adjudicate, but the players still retain the "control" of how they decide to "investigate" the environment. I guess I don't see a difference because I've done it (exploratory play) with every edition from Moldvay to 4e.

With your White Plume example, if the PCs came up with the idea of surfing on the doors that can become an auto-success on an extended skill challenge, or it can simply be an use of the "easy" button to bypass the challenge. I can use the mechanics or not, at will.

Maybe that's why I don't find it any different. This is also one of the reasons my players use rituals, a lot. Rituals, many times, allow the players to press the "easy" button. I remember at one time having this "challenge" plotted out of how they would traverse the wilderness and how long it would take. Well, they decided to use the Phantom Steed ritual and all of a sudden that challenge went away. They pressed the "easy" button.

I think one of the misconceptions is that players always want to engage with the environment. There are times that they become hyper-focused on a specific piece of information and become obsessive with the "exploration". At other times they simply bypass it entirely. I simply play it by ear. I call it the "sometimes lava is just lava" effect in reference to the comic strip by Scott Kurtz. Unfortunately my google-fu failed me and I couldn't find the particular strip to illustrate.

When I ask my players what do you want to do, I'm literally asking for the direction and manner in which they want to "explore". If they say something like "we're headed down these catacombs until we find something interesting", that is my cue to bypass all exploration filler, and get to the meat. The meat in this case might be the "interesting" room, or a particular combat. At other times they go, "I'd like to take a closer look at that statue, etc.", that is my cue for switching gears.




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