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

[JamesonCourage]

I began play with 1st Edition.

reported

Out of context, this is a really funny post.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Me also. For me, I want pre-play choices to provide context/heft (eg am I a knight or a bandit?), but play should be where the consequences of that are really determined.

Don't really see any huge dispute with that. Then again, I've yet to play a D&D game where choices in play didn't matter, so I don't see that this is a particular target for change.

For me, this is preplay. It's not play; not the collective generation of a shared fiction.

There is a distinction between character creation and roleplaying that character, but the former is a rather substantial part of the rpg (and, in particular, D&D) experience.

The AD&D PHB, authored by Gygax over 30 years ago, talks in its opening pages about making changes to improve balance.

Of course. But that's balance, not 4e-style "balance". Of course most rpgs are balanced in some way.

 

[pemerton]

But that's balance, not 4e-style "balance".

I don't understand the contrast.

 

[pming]

Hiya.

I think what Ahnehnois is saying is that 1e/2e "balance" is done by looking at the entierty of a characters campaign career...not by choosing some particular level and seeing how "Class A" measures of to "Class B" in terms of numbers.

In 1e, the 'balance' between a fighter and a magic-user is that MU's suck at level level, are ok at mid levels, and rock at high level, whilst a fighter is good at every level (ok, basicly, anyway...there are other things...but this is one aspect). Over the course of a 2 year campaign with those characters, everything "balances out" rather well from a *campaign perspective*. The added balance is that, because of descrepencies in capabilities between the classes at various levels, it actively encourages an "adventure group mentality"...where you really want a Fighter, a Cleric, a Thief and a Magic-User in your group; trying to "get away" with three fighters and a cleric is likely to either get you all killed, or, at the very least, put you in situations that would be easy with a MU, but because you don't have one, you spend lots of time and money trying to get around that magically locked door. Again...this is how 1e sees "balance"; a balanced party is made up of all classes, because each class is built to be really good at "it's shtick".

With 4e (and 3.x/Pathfinder), this isn't how it's balanced. You can easily get away with a party of three fighters and a cleric, because the fighters can take skills/feats/abilities to compensate for their lack of a thief, and the cleric can do likewise, as well as possibly take spells/domains that grant access to decidedly MU-based stuff...directly *because* each "class" is balanced against the others on a level-to-level, numbers basis.

At least, that's how I see it at any rate.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Ahnehnois]

I think what Ahnehnois is saying is that 1e/2e "balance" is done by looking at the entierty of a characters campaign career...not by choosing some particular level and seeing how "Class A" measures of to "Class B" in terms of numbers.

I think that's one of many possible valid answers.

Balance does not have to refer to combat, does not have to be oriented around single encounters, and does not presuppose concepts like roles and pillars and powers (or even classes and levels). It can be considered in terms of the PCs relative to the challenges they face, rather than to each other. It does not require that all PCs be equally useful in any particular situation, or even over an aggregated series of situations. It does not require that meaningful character choices be removed or limited and does not preclude the possibility of failure.

And, most importantly, the concept is subservient to the nature of the game itself. It can only be balanced given that it does the range of what it is supposed to do and is comprehensible and enjoyable to its audience. So yes, all versions of D&D (and presumably most rpgs) have considered the concept.

 

[pemerton]

Balance does not have to refer to combat, does not have to be oriented around single encounters, and does not presuppose concepts like roles and pillars and powers (or even classes and levels).

<snip>

It does not require that all PCs be equally useful in any particular situation

<snip>

It does not require that meaningful character choices be removed or limited and does not preclude the possibility of failure.

And, most importantly, the concept is subservient to the nature of the game itself. It can only be balanced given that it does the range of what it is supposed to do and is comprehensible and enjoyable to its audience.

OK. These all seems fairly close to truisms. I'm not seeing any special sense in which 4e is "balanced" rather than balanced. (As per the contrast you drew in your post upthread.)

It does not require that all PCs be equally useful <snippage> even over an aggregated series of situations.

This I find a bit puzzling, though. For instance, [MENTION=45197]pming[/MENTION] seems to be using something like this notion to explain how AD&D is balanced. ("Useful" covers a lot of ground, of course - presumably we're meaning something like "Useful holding constant a given degree of player skill".)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, there's that and then there's the real problem: beginners who don't know any better. I never used the encounter building guidelines; even as a teenage beginner I avoided them without understanding why (at least not to the degree I do today). However, now that I have some experience and do understand why, I shudder to think of how it would have gone if I had. I doubt I'd still be playing rpgs today.

And that's really my issue with a lot of these debates. It's true that I can keep playing and enjoying my game regardless of what 5e is or 4e was in print, but I don't want bad ideas to kill the hobby as a whole. After all, I might need more players someday.

Well, I don't really know what was a bad idea. If you go back and read the 4e DMG1 Encounters chapter it is really not all that nailed down. It gives some pretty precise advice but it seems clearly in the vein of advice, not purely formulaic rules. There's of course a narrow path there. If you make things too hard and fast then DMs will tend to get locked into thinking they MUST do A, B, and C, but if your advice is too vague then it has really limited value. I think 4e's presentation does have some issues. For instance James talks about 'set dressing' and different ways of going about creating a setting for an encounter, but I think he fails to really clearly come right out and emphasize how unique plot and environmental elements drive encounter design and how this where 4e wants you to focus your effort. The templates, roles, etc that follow actually are pretty helpful in terms of ALLOWING you to focus on story and set, but its easy to just forget about that other stuff and get lost in the mechanics of "well, I'm going to make a Wolf Pack encounter, so I gotta have 5 skirmishers and its going to be medium hard so they need to be level X" etc.

I don't disagree with this, at least not completely. To compare to storytelling on screen, there are a very few people who do truly believe and act as if they are the character, the Daniel Day Lewis types. However, most actors, and almost all other people involved with the process are not completely in character and are effectively "metagaming". I suspect D&D is the same way; a few acting savants and a lot of us who either have other predilections or simply lack that level of roleplaying ability. I know (that despite having a few theater classes under my belt, a psychology background, and being a passable performer in several different persuasions and a skilled liar) I am definitely the latter.

So are we generally metagaming to some extent when we roleplay our characters? Yeah. I guess I do agree with that. Are we suspending disbelief on that count so we can enjoy the story within the game (as we do when consuming any fiction, really)? Probably.

Where I think differently is on when and for what reason to use metagame thinking. For example, I'm metagaming when I add in an NPC specifically to talk to and engage a PC who seems to have been neglected; I'm trying to engage the player as well as the character. I'm metagaming when I speed up or forgo an encounter because we're running out of time in the real world. I'm metagaming when I design an NPC's equipment considering what will happen if and when the PCs get it (which is not likely part of the NPC's thinking process when he buys equipment). But, to go back to the original point, I stop short of this:
I really do try not to do that. And with D&D, dice come in handy. I try to adopt the perspective of the character, but I also frequently roll behind the scenes to determine what an NPC will do (such that his behavior is not solely an extension of my will). Is there still an element of deception in playing an NPC? Yes. Is my will still behind them? Yes. But I don't (to bring this long post around) think that I do, or should do, metagaming to adjust the difficulty of challenges to match the players aptitude at overcoming them, and it is, while likely embedded in some of my decisions, a philosophy that I actively try to avoid.

Yeah, I don't think of it as deception, just art. My players are fully aware of how it all works, they are all highly accomplished GM's in their own right. I can clearly see the gears turning in their heads and they'll sometimes do something basically because they know its going to all work out better that way game-wise (the old, yeah, we'll keep exploring the haunted mine since we know that the DM probably hasn't written up the lost city yet).

 

[D'karr]

They have to do something. They've lost market share.

Reported

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Still, there is a distinction between a one-time prep and the regular recurring game. But I would say that many games other than D&D rely on that one-time event. If you're playing Civilization, it matters which civilization you choose. If you're playing Madden, it matters how you choose and construct your team. They're not all equal. If you're playing Magic, you have to create a good deck before the game starts. If you're into miniatures wargames, you have to create an army. In any of those examples, actual gameplay is dependent on effective preparation, and a wide range of power levels can be created. So clearly this paradigm can create a satisfying game experience.

I think it is telling that your examples are NOT RPGs. In fact 2 of them are solo computer games, and the third, M:tG is OBSESSED with equality of opportunity, and goes to great lengths to remove from play inherently imbalancing factors (IE rare cards that give advantages in too many situations). M:tG can fairly be said to be ABOUT deck-building skill anyway, the actual play of the game is a rather abreviated affair that usually takes 5-15 minutes between skilled players. In fact M:tG is pretty much all meta-game. It is in any case NOTHING like D&D.

But there's also the verisimilitude factor. Does your character have to live with the character creation choices you've made? Yes. But so does a person. The genes you have and your early life experiences and social upbringing absolutely affect your level of opportunity in later life. And good fiction grabs those inequalities and runs with them.

Odd how you talk about maximizing choices, yet anything that falls out of your very narrow process sim agenda is instantly rejected. Where did the breadth of options go there?

I also don't see how the first example affects the range of choices later on. AFAICT, even in the second example, people have a pretty full range of choices later on.

As far as I can tell, the idea that all these character creation choices should be equal originated with 4e, and I'm hard-pressed to find any other examples, nor do I see why it would be desirable (nor do I like that the term "balance" has been co-opted to mean that").

Nonsense. The idea existed from the very first in D&D. The mere fact that Gary had to constantly try to defend the flaws in his game design WRT balance clearly shows that it was both desired and considered from the very beginning of the game. I was there playing in 1975, I can tell you without any shadow of a doubt the question that arose first was "why should I play a human wizard when an elf would be better?"

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Footnote in a scene? yes. That is where the difference lies I suppose and one of the additive reasons I did not sign on with 4e. 4e boils everything down into game elements important to the scene, and letting 'authorship' take over for the overall campaign.

Many DM's don't design for the scene alone, shifting the point of the game from the story to the challenge 'scene' I suppose and using story to link the scenes. For me the importance was the overall world, not the individual scenes.

You WAY overblow this stuff you know. Have you actually PLAYED 4e? With at least a couple different groups maybe? Or are your opinions all just some sort of theorycraft, or you fell in with a group of rabid tactical skirmishing wargame fanatics and you have literally never played a well-rounded game using 4e rules? Your insistence on this strange warped view of the game just kills me. Nothing else you say carries any weight when you're so far out on something like this.

4e is just another D&D. Much like every other game of D&D things largely DO happen in what can be described as 'scenes' or 'encounters'. Not all of them can be classified as combat, not all of them can even be exactly defined as to what their borders are in time or space. However, games ARE largely episodic. This is at least partly simply a natural outgrowth of practical factors in game play.

The other day the DW party I'm playing in arrived at a town (largely glossing over boring travel). The result is that what they did before the trip and what they did AFTER the trip (question some people in a tavern) naturally became separate scenes. Later the PCs traveled to a mine where they explored the entrance and dealt with a trap, another scene, then they explored a bit, had a combat encounter, explored some more, another combat encounter, and then a negotiation. Then they returned to the town and there was a final scene where they negotiated a reward. Notice, these are all simply narratively derived scenes. In each case some boring mundane stuff that isn't even covered in the rules in any detail happened (traveling or traversing mine shafts). In 4e this would have gone exactly the same. In DDN it will go exactly the same. There are interesting areas of the world separated by geographical space. The space provides a sense of scale, tone, mood, and a sort of pacing.

Anyway, my point is that all versions of D&D talk about encounters, they exist as a major element of design either implicitly or explicitly. Nobody is going to run D&D as a stream-of-consciousness. Even the real world feels like a series of scenes to us when we think about it. I remember eating breakfast, then taking garbage to the dump, then shopping, then doing some book keeping, going to dinner with a friend, then playing a DW game with my friends. Each of these feels much like an isolated event, but in fact the whole day was really a series of equal moments all strung together. Its just that the 2.5 hours of playing DW feels like one scene and the 20 minutes of eating breakfast another. In fact though even when I was eating I was already cleaning up my paperwork for later and separating recycling. In reality it wasn't one linear sequence of events, and there was 3 hours of reading What Wise Men Fear wedged in there too, but where do I put that? Its how our consciousness works. We break things down into chunks so we can assign them labels and tell a story about them.