Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6936645" data-attributes="member: 42582">It's not really a rebuttal of someone suggesting that low STR makes a weak fighter to point out that the fighter can use DEX instead: the first comment was obviously a statement of generality, not intended as universally true - and pointing out that an alternative path to mechanical effectiveness exists is not disputing the real contention, which is that D&D is a game in which mechanical effectiveness of characters matters. Because overcoming challenges matters.(Not far upthread from your post [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] talks about it being rational for a wizard to boost INT. Likewise it doesn't really rebut that point to note that some wizards can be built who don't use attacks or force saves, and hence who don't need INT and therefore might be better of boosting (say) CON to make Concentration checks, or better off taking some specialist feat. It's an obvious strength of 5e's design that it packs a very wide range of mechanically viable builds into the "traditional" D&D chassis of race + class + feat. But that doesn't meant that any build is mechanically viable, nor that mechanical viability is irrelevant to the typical play of the game.) Tactical skill and relying on teammates might be different matters. If the character has tactical skill, and this manifests itself via (say) warlord-style maneouvres, then again we're just talking about different pathways to mechanical effectiveness. (Analogous to a buffing caster, say.) Lazy-lord type builds rely on their teammates similarly - in the fiction they don't contribute, but at the table they are as mechanically effective as the next characer.If the player has tactical skill, and brings that to the table, but players a mechanically weak character, that is a differnt situation. Maybe we have an optimiser/powergamer who is deliberately dialling things down so as not to overshadow the table? Or maybe we have a wargaming prima donna who not only wants to dominate the tactical element of play, but wants to dominate the "story" side of play as well by having this quirky character suck up all the table time? In the abstract, there is no particular thing we can know to be going on.If the player brings no particular tactical, imaginative, etc skill to the table, and if the character is not bringing any mechanical capacity to the table, then the situation is different again. Maybe the player is a good friend of others in the group?This is true, as I've just discussed. But in the post I replied to, the character was being framed as a burden, so I was imagining the character through that lens: low STR and no DEX to compensate, the player doesn't bring any special tactical skill, the club is a poor one-handed weapon that does only d6 damage, etc.In D&D such a character does not really help overcome obstacles as much as other, more typical characters. Whereas in Burning Wheel such a character could be a perfect vehicle for confronting obstacles. The two games, though both FRPGs, have slightly different focuses for play, which then produce different dynamics of play. One I have already noted: characters that might be weak or inferior in D&D need not be in BW. A second is that BW takes for granted a much higher failure rate for the players than does D&D (and has mechanics and guidelines to try and handle that).This strikes me as a completely different point. There are plenty of mechanically viable D&D characters who are not physically capable (although below-average CON is widely regarded as a burden).That said, let's look at Sam's contribution to the success of the quest. A major form that his contribution takes is providing encouragement and moral/spiritual support to Frodo. (He also cooks a rabbit.) In real life, as in fiction, this sort of support can be crucial for overcoming despair. But how would it work in a RPG. Frodo's player is not going to be in despair, needing Sam's player to buck him/her up. Maybe we hit Frodo with some sort of despair mechanica - but then if Sam's contribution is to remove despair points/debuffs, mechanically that makes him a bard or cleric, which hardly seems right! (In 4e Sam can be a lazy lord, and Frodo likewise, but other versions of D&D don't really support that sort of mechanical build.)D&D players don't really need the sort of meaningful support that Sam provides, and D&D doesn't tend to have the requisite mechanics either (there's no obvious mechanic - say, a "sympathy" mechanic - for modelling Pippin and Merry's influence on the Ents, either).I think that if you sit down to play D&D, wanting a game with the sort of epic grandeur and moral depth of LotR, you are going to have to either (i) use a pretty carefully-built set of mid-to-upper Heroic tier 4e characters, or (ii) rely upon a near-overwhelming degree of GM force to make sure that everything turns out the "right" way.I don't think they added it at all. I think it emerged pretty naturally as a byproduct of the sort of game that D&D is. In a game in which (i) each player's game piece is a single character imagined into a fictional situation, and (ii) the fiction of the situation actually matters to the resolution (completely unlike, say, a board game or most wargames), it's completely natural that people will come to think of the characrters in terms quite differently from how one thinks of the boot in monopoly, or Urza in M:tG.In another thread, when I mentioned "character as byproduct", another poster (I think [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION]) seemed to take this as a dismissal or trivialisation. But it's not that at all. The relationship between doing things on purpose and having them emerge as byproducts, and the connection of those matters to value, can actually be pretty complicated. Jon Elster has pretty good arguments that there are some valuable things that are essentially byproducts: for instance, some of the valuable things about friendship (having people you can rely on; having people you can spend time with even though there's no real common project that you want to engage in - you're just "hanging out"; etc) can probably only emerge as byproducts of deliberate action (say, asking someone to come with you to a movie; inviting someone over to your house for dinnner). I'm not at all sure they can be deliberately cultivated (eg a person who deliberately cultivates others s/he can rely on is typically a user/bludger rather than a friend, and isn't really experiencing what is valuable about friendship).When it comes to RPGing, setting out to make story and character central to your game is very different from having them emerge more-or-less organically. And even if you set out to make those things central to your game, there are very different ways to do that. For instance, the 2nd ed AD&D PHB says (roughly) "Make up some interesting stuff about your character - eg quirks that explain his/her ability scores - and then roleplay those, thereby creating a fun and interesting experience at the table".Burning Wheel, by way of contrast, says (roughly) "Build you character using these elements - including these Lifepaths, which have mandatory stuff on them so you have to take the bad (say, the trait Base Humility) with the good (getting the advantage of having been trained as an Arcane Devotee who might therefore be able to use magic) - and then choose some beliefs for your character, and then play those traits and beliefs to the hilt when the GM puts stuff in front of you which (i) challenges your beliefs, and (ii) puts your traits and beliefs into conflict with one another, and with those of the other PCs."At least in my experience, BW produces experiences at the table that are as fun and interesting as you'll get from a 2nd ed AD&D character, and pretty rich swords-and-sorcery style story by FRPGing standards - but no one has to deliberately set out to make that so. It emerges as a byproduct of the players doing the things they're told to do, and the GM doing the things that s/he is told to do, by the game's rulebooks.Personally, I think the indie-style games like BW are actually closer, in spiritual if not literal descent, to Gygax's D&D than is 2nd ed AD&D, which I think is a completely different game that just happens to use some of the same resolution rules. Part of that is because they share, and implement, a similar understanding of the relationship between deliberate action and valuable byproducts as features of gameplay - though the particular actions (ie the things players do in playing the game), and the particular byproducts, are not necessarily the same.I don't really see how this bears on the topic of the thread.A character might be nothing but his/her statistics and abilities, and yet the game not be a tactical minis game.A BW character is nothing but his/her statistics and abilities. But those statistics and abilities include 3 beliefs, 3 instincts, a series of traits which include various more-or-less free descriptors as well as mechanical abilities like feats, a series of relationships, affiliations and reptuations, a set of lifepaths which determine NPCs eligible to be called upon via the character's Circles ability, etc.And BW is not, is nothing like, and could never be played as, a tactical minis game.This is the point that I was trying to make in the post to which you replied. The thought that an interest in mechanics as the main vehicle for, or mediator of, gameplay must be connected to a lack of interest in anything but wargaming is just false. So I'm surprised to see you making this assumption.The equivalence, or connection, that you seem to be assuming is not borne out in my own case; it's not borne out by most of the 4e enthusiasts who have posted, or continue to post, on this board; it's not borne out by fans of Vincent Baker games or their derivatives like DitV, Dungeon World, etc. It's an assumption or contention that I most often find being made by people who think of mechanics as being limited, more-or-less, to the ones Gygax made up (to hit bonuses, damage rolls, movement rates, climbing and swimming checks, maybe a search mechanic and a reaction roll mechanic for some non-combat resolution), but who want their game to have more story depth than those mechanics alone will give you, and therefore assume that mechanics are an obstacle to story depth.Of course it's possible to have story depth without gameplay being mediated by mechanics. In my experience, well-GMed CoC (and other BRP games) can deliver this.But that's not the only way to do it. Because the mechanics that Gygax made up aren't the only RPGing mechanics out there.</blockquote>

Verification