D20 'philosophy' cramping my style

[Cergorach]

Too bad you are ignorant of the rules in this case: Rule Zero.

*starts paging trough his precious core books*
There is no rule zero!

;-)

I make a distinction between a writer writing an adventure that's going to be published and a DM. One is going to have to please hundreds if not thousands of people, the other is only trying to please a handfull of people. I expect a certain professionalism from a pro, i expect that when i tally up all the skill points it's going to fit the rules, if it isn't i expect that the adventure says so and why. If it says that it's all for the story or that it's cramping the play style, i'll (and a lot of other folks) think that it's an easy way out, especially when there are so many simple 'solutions'. If your only a DM and just add 4 skill points to the imp to make it 'work' i wouldn't find it a problem at all. The difference is that one your doing for fun, the other your doing for money...

 

[Will]

As a full-time freelance writer... guffaw.

Man, us writers are such hysterical types.

Drifter Bob: If you're going to be a game writer, I just have one thing to say... SUCK IT UP.

Game writing requires working within a rules framework. That's what makes it game writing rather than, say, 'host a murder' or Choose Your Own Adventure. Or scripting a computer game. If you want to do one of those others, go ahead.

See, the reason you have to work within rules is because ultimately it's not YOUR story, it's not YOUR game. It's the game of someone who bought the adventure. If you make up a bunch of stuff that doesn't fit within the rules, it means the person running the game has no idea if your vision of how things fit together will jibe with what they made. If it does, great. But if it doesn't...

Adding a few ranks of Bluff out of the blue, without using any rules, won't make a big heap of difference. The problem is that people might wonder either 'does he understand the rules?' or 'what else is he making up that perhaps I didn't notice?'

These are bad because they can cause the adventure to implode. The most dramatic would be something like 'Oh. If we combine element A and B, the world ends/we become gods/etc.' Which then requires a patch. Which might lead to another patch. Which then leads to realizing the entire setting no longer makes sense, so we must retcon X, change Bob's backstory, and so forth. The rules to an extent help ensure things are consistant with itself and anything added to the game.

It's bad enough having to look up/remember some rule in the midst of the game (how does grapple work again? Flip flip flip. Oh, right) It's worse to have to make up rules in the middle of the game. (Ok, a balor's whip is sort of grappling but not. Er. How do you escape? Um. Damn, the MM got vague, bastards. Let's treat it like regular grappling) It's much worse to realize that you have to make some far-reaching decisions 3 hours into a game you drove 2 hours to get to.

Oh, and to wrap up... coming in saying that a bunch of people suck and the game you're writing for is kinda crappy and so forth is probably not a recipe for positive thread. Getting huffy because the thread is then not positive is, well, fishing for drama.

Game designers have enough negative crap thrown at them for no reason whatsoever. Seeking it out is a little bizarre.

 

[Pbartender]

Just for the record, the choice to to tack on any ability to any creature is well within the written rules...

Revised (v3.5) System Reference Document, Improving Monsters

ADDING SPECIAL ABILITIES

You can add any sort of spell-like, supernatural, or extraordinary ability to a creature. As with a class level, you should determine how much, or how little, this ability adds to the creature’s existing repertoire. A suite of abilities that work together should be treated as a single modifier for this purpose. If the ability (or combination of abilities) significantly increases the monster’s combat effectiveness, increase its CR by 2. Minor abilities increase the creature’s CR by 1, and truly trivial abilities may not increase CR at all. If the special abilities a monster gains are not tied to a class or Hit Die increase, this CR increase stacks.

A significant special attack is one that stands a good chance of incapacitating or crippling a character in one round. A significant special quality is one that seriously diminishes the monster’s vulnerability to common attacks. Do not add this factor twice if a monster has both special attacks and special qualities.

Make sure to “scale” your evaluation of these abilities by the monster’s current CR.

For example...

Skills: A polar bear has a +8 racial bonus on any Swim check to perform some special action or avoid a hazard. It can always choose to take 10 on a Swim check, even if distracted or endangered. It can use the run action while swimming, provided it swims in a straight line. *A polar bear’s white coat bestows a +12 racial bonus on Hide checks in snowy areas.


This Imp could simply have...

Skills: Mxyzptlk the Imp gains a +4 competence bonus to bluff checks when impersonating cute little girls.

Consider it a 'truly trivial' ability and don't worry about incresing the CR.

I, personally, don't think the D20 rules are nearly as restricting and story-strangling as you might think... Use the rules to help build the story, instead of considering them as a barrier to the story.

 

[Uller]

DB: I don't think the problem is the rules. _Any_ system will have some players who want to to put everything within the framework of the rules. That's what some people like to do. They play the game because the interaction of the players and the rules is what interests them and what is important to them. These people seem "louder" not because of the system but because d20 has something previous versions of D&D didn't have: ENWorld and other forums where they can express their opinions. These people were around with 1e and 2e...I know...I played with many of them.

If anything, d20 should cramp your style LESS than previous versions. With previous versions of the game, there was no way, other than DM fiat, to say that the imp would be better at fooling the players. In d20, there is a simple and concise set of rules for skills that you can use and stay within the rules. Of course, some situations are outside the rules. So what? There is no system that covers every possible scenario and d20 doesn't try. If you wrote in your encounter description that the imp had a +4 circumstance bonus to bluff checks because of all the supporting evidence in the immediate area, that'd be fine. DMs have to do that sort of thing all the time, no matter what system they are running. You seem to be complaining more about the nature of RPGs than d20.

 

[Aaron L]

I'm sorry to hear that you may not write your adventure, Drifter Bob. I never wanted yo attack you. My point was ONLY that when simple methods exist whithin the rules to increase the skills of a creature, you should follow the rules.

 

[Drifter Bob]

This isn't so much about me and my personal experience as whether the apparent necessity to make everything conform to the rules, to balance everything so that players have every ability king arthur does etc., is tending to change the game. I was only describing my own situation to shed light on what I see as a problem.

Don't worry about me, I'll be fine. I really appreciate all the friendly comments though, and for what it's worth the ideas on how to fix the little problem I had.

I realise my tone was rather cranky on this. Maybe I'll float a few more examples out as I run across them and let y'all think about how they can be brought into the rules system.

The point though is really this:

A) do the rules as currently written encourage this tendancy to try to make everything fit into the rules even when it doesn't

B) does this tendancy in the D20 audience contribute to a "smoothing over of corners" in the literary side of adventures and other game material.

The only reason I brought this up is because I think it is threatening to the ultimate future of D&D. I'm not the only person who sees this, it's widely held opinion among a lot of people. I hope it's not true, but if it is, I hope something can be done about it. I don't want to see D&D nose dive again.

DB

 

[James Heard]

My point is that coming into a situation where you're asking for criticism and then choosing to claim that such criticism is somehow an assault on one's creative process is ten times less admirable than any error you might make on your own. Whining about the process, the fans, and the industry in general isn't up there on a list of 'good things to do if you want sales'. Actually making a statement accusing people of somehow engendering some impulse to not buy something though? That's just sorry. Considering the trivial matter of fixing the 'problem' though, combined with the attitude? Let's see, general lack of professionalism and what seems to be a truly dismal understanding of the rules...why should anyone bother buying from someone like that?

 

[Will]

'I don't want to see D&D nosedive again'
Er, when did it do that? And based on your comments in this thread, I find your concern a bit ... hard to believe.

I will again point out that whether players and DMs cleave to the rules is a completely separate issue than _writers_ cleaving to the rules. The first is a matter of discussion and 'what makes a fun game.' The other is a matter of appealing to a wide audience and giving them what they expect and can _use_ with a certain degree of surety.

 

[GSHamster]

The thing about rules is that they help predictabilty. Predictablity allows you to make decisions. If you can't predict stuff, you can't make meaningful decisions.

(Note that I'm not talking "your adventure plotline has no surprises" predictable, I'm talking "a large truck takes a longer time to stop than a small car" predictable.)

I think something that DMs forget is that players have a extremely limited view of the world their characters inhabit. They are restricted to only what the DM tells them, and due to the sheer volume of information, the DM cannot tell them everything. To a player, the environment is only partially observable.

So how does a player make decisions with only partial information? They rely on rules to generate a larger view of the world, a view which they can use to make meaningful decisions. So if a DM changes the rules arbitrarily, the players cannot rely on the rules to predict stuff, and thus it makes it harder to make meaningful decisions.

For example, in combat, a player knows that a goblin only does about X damage unless there a special circumstances (that the player can look for). So maybe a player will take actions that leave her character open to attack because she knows she probably will survive the attack. If one specific goblin does 10X damage, but in all other respects behaves and looks like like a normal goblin and there is no special reason for the extra damage, the player can no longer predict how a goblin will behave. And this means that next time the player fights a goblin, her reaction will be skewed, because she has no idea what to expect from the goblin. She can't fight strategically, because strategies rely on being able to predict how the enemy will behave.

That's why it's not a good idea to change rules arbitrarily. It breaks prediction, and prediction is important in determining the suitability of decisions.

 

[Pbartender]

I really appreciate all the friendly comments though, and for what it's worth the ideas on how to fix the little problem I had.

Hey, thanks... Glad to be of help.

You might want to take a look at the Rat Bastard DM forums (follow the link in my sig)... Most of them would be really interested in some of your ideas, and could provide you with some really novel solutions to your problems.

The point though is really this:

A) do the rules as currently written encourage this tendancy to try to make everything fit into the rules even when it doesn't

B) does this tendancy in the D20 audience contribute to a "smoothing over of corners" in the literary side of adventures and other game material.

A) I think you, and perhaps great many other people, are looking at it a little backwards. Instead of making what you want to do fit the rules, find the rules that fit what you want to do. In my experience, if you look a little, D20 covers most situations pretty well, and if there is something that doesn't fit, you can almost always find something that's similar and adapt it to the new situation. For example, while you were saying, "This encounter doesn't work right because Imps can't bluff very well," everyone else was saying, "Well then, how can we make Imps bluff better without otherwise significantly changing the encounter?"

B) I don't think so. I think that's only a problem for the people who aren't looking at the rules closely enough. Not to mention the fact that there are a great many 3rd party publishers that are creating optional rules to make that 'literary' side work within the rules. That is, what I think, the great thing about the D20 rules... It a growing, evolving ruleset that is expanding to cover all those situations the original rules miss or gloss over. I don't think I've ever seen so many plot-oriented adventures out and about for D&D as I do now.