D&D 5E D&DN going down the wrong path for everyone.

[UngainlyTitan]

For me what I am looking for is "Can the system simulate heroic fantasy". Rule of Cool trumps laws of physics in my own personal evaluation of things. I tend to look at movies like "Die Hard" or a good James Bond or Indiana Jones flick and go "WOW that's COOL" and only rarely "Man that's so unrealistic" (although the second does happen sometimes)

This can be done, with modest additions to Next, IMHO, The addition of Action Points, Book of Nine Sword type maneuvers but the latter will change the power level and thus will not be playable with standard characters and encounter rules.
Suitable DM advice would also go a long way and perhaps an easy to use stunt system. This would me happy and other who like me love 4e for ease of DM'ing, cinematic nature and stuff like that. I am not sure if would be enough to satisfy others who like to drift the game in a more narrativist direction.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I really wanted to give 4e a chance. I had no problem with the meta. But I just don't feel it. I don't see the verisimilitude some 4e players claim it has. This is not a critique, it's more of a question where did you find the verisimilitude. Maybe I haven't looked in the right place.

I think ONE answer, mine at least, is that verisimilitude isn't "in the rules", it never really was. In 4e when the fighter goes up against the giant and uses Tide of Iron verisimilitude would come out of the narrative, which the player is free to construct. So instead of the game trying to say "you can't really do that" as 3e would do with all sorts of penalties to pushing a giant back, 4e just says "fine, that's cool, you decide how it happens" and that's what you do. The DM could (and I'd generally argue should) require some sort of explanation. He might also help supply one, but the players should have the narrative authority to do do it. The fighter player might say something like "as the fighter threatens to skewer the giant's foot with his longsword the huge creatures stumbles backwards in an attempt to open up the distance between them so it can get a clear shot".

Now, consider 3e in the same situation, the PC gets a penalty to push a giant, but the rules don't help you when you STILL SUCCEED, the same verisimilitude issue didn't go away. You have to describe the whole thing in the fiction. Yes, you can say "well, its harder to push giants", but if the idea is construct cool stories around your successes and failures it doesn't really matter. The successes should be frequent enough to provide good forward momentum to the story and make it fun for the player, but in other respects it just isn't relevant. In fact from a standpoint of FUN its probably better if the more dangerous and exciting tasks succeed often.

This ties into Pemerton's sort of techniques in that the key aspect of the game there is what the players decide to do or signal that they are interested. in. If a player decides his character is interested in pushing giants off the bridge, well, then lets make some interesting narrative about that! Not that the character will necessarily succeed, but success/failure is much more about mixing it up and making the story telling interesting than it is about the believability of the story. At least that's how I see it.

 

[Manbearcat]

At least that's how I see it.

This is going to come as an enormous surprise but thats how I see it too Good post but can't xp.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

This is going to come as an enormous surprise but thats how I see it too Good post but can't xp.

Whaddya know. Me too

I tried to XP him, but I'm still on cooldown as well.

 

[Campbell]

This is going to come as an enormous surprise but thats how I see it too Good post but can't xp.

Covered.

 

[billd91]

In fact from a standpoint of FUN its probably better if the more dangerous and exciting tasks succeed often.

In the long term, that has not been my experience. When we look back on our history of playing, the spectacular events (bad as well as good) are often the ones that stick out as noteworthy, not the routine ones. And part of what has made events spectacular has been their improbability. When something succeeds often, it's routine rather than noteworthy. It no longer stands out and fades into the background of memory.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

In the long term, that has not been my experience. When we look back on our history of playing, the spectacular events (bad as well as good) are often the ones that stick out as noteworthy, not the routine ones. And part of what has made events spectacular has been their improbability. When something succeeds often, it's routine rather than noteworthy. It no longer stands out and fades into the background of memory.

While I can certainly understand the sentiment, IMHO the most memorable stuff is when the players come up with some cool/crazy/unexpected/ridiculous idea or spin on things and the game runs off in some cool direction. Even if the players roll many unlikely combinations of dice that by itself won't make an interesting session. Fundamentally, IME it comes down to an exercise in creativity of some sort (maybe story telling, maybe inventiveness). While getting lucky is certainly not a bad thing and is exciting its unpredictable and often won't happen at a point where something interesting is going on, or it will often arbitrarily close off the most interesting options.

IMHO I'd always use checks to determine HOW things happen, but not so much to decide what happens.

 

[D'karr]

Jeann1eary
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[LostSoul]

I think ONE answer, mine at least, is that verisimilitude isn't "in the rules", it never really was. In 4e when the fighter goes up against the giant and uses Tide of Iron verisimilitude would come out of the narrative, which the player is free to construct.

One of the things I like about 4E is that the DM can say, "Yeah, no, I don't see it." Since powers aren't really reflective of what the PC is doing, I think the DM can step up and make sure that verisimilitude is respected. (I'm pretty sure that [MENTION=27160]Balesir[/MENTION] has the exact opposite attitude!) One of the things I don't like about 4E is that it doesn't ask you to justify your actions in game-world terms. I think that, if you do that, the game becomes incredibly rich and immersive thanks to the ease of adjudicating non-standard actions.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

(snip) Good post but can't xp.

Ditto.

Thanks, [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION].