D20 'philosophy' cramping my style

[Sir Elton]

(This is ignoring Rule Zero. Nobody ever treats Rule Zero like it's a real rule and few D20-heads would ever use Rule Zero as an actual design element.)

Strangely enough, I love Rule 0 and I use it extensively. DM FIAT RULES!

 

[Philip]

I have read about half the thread, but haven't seen the core issue touched. I see DB attempting to solve a potential story problem (characters discovering the little girl is actually an Imp) by using a rules mechanic (and an arbitrarily one at that).

If you are a authoring a module and desire a certain result, just say so in the module text.

"It would make for a better story if you the Imp's disguise is not discovered."

And then the additional rules text:

"You could rule that it has rolled a 20 on his bluff check, or give it a +X circumstance bonus to his bluff roll."

This gives the DM the option and the explanation and is rules legal. If you want direct your 'story' using the 'rules', then by all means the rules you use legal.

I think there is nothing wrong with saying: this adventure/campaign is not suited for barbarians and paladins (I wouldn't buy it though). But I would frown upon a campaign that arbitrarily changed the rules for paladins and barbarians to achieve the same effect.

Arbitrarily making up rules was a big problem with 2e, and such solutions tended to break down when the PCs didn't do what the author expected. The rules of 3e actually give the PCs more freedom to do what the DM has not anticipated and thus participate in the story. Simultaneously it makes life harder for those who write adventures. And I can understand you complaining about that, but that's not a complaint about the system, I think its about you needing more time to achieve the same results. Yeah, sometimes that justs s*cks bigtime.

 

[WizarDru]

Seems pretty simple to me. DrifterBob wants to add a few ranks of Bluff to an Imp. He didn't come into this thread wanting to add a Rogue level or wanting to redistribute skill points or anything like that. He wanted to add some ranks of Bluff to an Imp.

Actually, he was given several solutions, within the rules. He merely didn't like them. Some of the solutions merely required moving the existing skill points already spent on the basic Imp. This wasn't a workaround.

If there's anything to be said about D20 itself here, it's this: Someone should insert a single sentence in a WotC book/SRD entry about how you may change standard skill allotments for monsters if you wish. That's it. In fact, here you go:

I suggest you read the DMG, pages 6 and the first paragraph of page 8. They did.

 

[Remathilis]

Wow. ::blinks::
Ok, my two coppers:

1.) There is a difference between DM and writer. If I'm a DM and want to allow all my PC's to fly (and my goblins to have 1,000 hp) thats fine, but if a module forces that on me, its never getting played.

2.) That being said, I'd probably never notice a +4 to bluff.

3.) Rule Zero isn't a rule, its an Excuse to let the DM do what he needs to keep his game running. Designing things using Rule Zero is kinda defeating the point of having a "In case of poop hitting fan, break glass" rule.

4.) Be wary of good intentions for story. I'll leave you with my favorite example: the Pirate's Cove by AEG. You sneak into a pirates holdout. IF you do it at night, you can bypass/kill 30 pirates as they sleep and only tackle the weak guards. If you go during the day, you face 30 level-3 warriors in addition to the normal traps. Module Level: 3rd.

I never ran it, but I've seen Paladins who don't sneak around at night and this module is a TPK otherwise.

5.) There is no number 5.

6.) All in all, I must say that when you DM, what you do with your group is fine, but be wary of waiving the magic wand of change when you are being published.

 

[knitnerd]

Can you give it a magic item that will give it a bonus to bluff? Then you raise the possibility of the item being destroyed or stolen.

 

[Nisarg]

The point is though, this isn't a card game or even an xbox game. It's basically a story. This is what is supposed to have happened. When armed investigators show up, the Imp, which isn't a really big thinker, and has been winging it up to this point, decides to return to the manse.
The point of this whole thread is that this mentality, which I think is encouraged by the rules set, is tending to push storytellers away from writing material for the game, and people who are rules lawyers into it.

My god, where do I even begin with this thread?

I guess I'll start here: Adventures written as "stories" are usually crappy adventures. This is a problem because many people who want to write adventures are actually frustrated novelists or storytellers, and fail to realise that if you create a "story" with a metaplot so fixed that a simple detect evil spell will make the entire adventure worthless, the problem isn't with the system its with you as a game designer.
In a less rules-heavy system (and to me D20 is pretty rules-heavy, the rules-heaviest I'd play anyways) you would STILL end up with this problem, because rather than casting a specific spell the free-form rules players would just think one up, or think up something else, or do something you didn't expect.

If you want a "story" go write fanfiction, or try your luck at getting your novel about a young imp coming to terms with his sexuality published. Don't write adventures, which are really modules for a game. They aren't stories, they have to be designed DIFFERENTLY from a story.

Now that this design critique is cleared up, let me also say that anyone who's going to scream bloody murder because you give +6 bluff to an Imp is also pretty much a cretin. However, the easy way to fix this is not to call it an Imp. Make it a new monster that is statistically identical to the Imp in every way, but with a +6 in bluff. This is something that will no doubt piss off the rules-lawyers to no end because it makes them impotent to complain (you aren't breaking the "rules" of the official published imp because its not an imp anymore) and at the same time it highlites just how anal they really are.

Nisarg

 

[Christian]

Ol' Monte Cook ranted about this over a year ago ...

 

[Nisarg]

I think we'd all agree that it would be wrong for a player to "magically" add 4 ranks in Bluff to his character.

So why then would it be okay for a DM to do the same? Especially when there are so many options to get the same effect legally (circumstance bonuses, higher intelligence, class levels, etc.).

Because the DM is god. If you don't like, don't play his game. He doesn't have to answer to you.

Perhaps you are not familiar with the RPG food chain: players are at the bottom, along with publishers, distributors, the rules themselves, mountain dew salesmen, and the pope. The DM is at the top. Its not so much a chain really, I guess, as it is a really big pile with the DM at the top.

Now, that said, the DM does have certain responisibilities. However, his responsibility is NOT to play by the rules. He IS the rules.
The DM's main responsibility is to make sure the players enjoy themselves, which is matched by the player's responsibility to be abjectly and totally obedient to his absolute power. If both sides of that social contract live up to their responsibilities, you will see that a really good time is had by all.

Occasionally, this social contract is broken by a DM who thinks the adventure is supposed to be about him, or that its a chance for him to showcase his "storytelling" abilities, making the NPCs or the plot of the adventure more important than the PCs. That's bad.
Just as often, however, the social contract is broken by pissant little rules lawyers who have clearly not been introduced to the RPG food chain. In MY version of the food chain, those particular players are very quickly eliminated by what I like to call "natural selection".

DMs: Remember that the game is about your player's characters, not about you!
Players: remember that what you know about the rules is worth NOTHING, if the DM doesn't wish it!

Follow these simple rules, and a fine time you will have a-roleplaying the live-long day.

Nisarg

 

[Nisarg]

As for video games, I've written a few of those myself. You as a player have NO IDEA what is going on in the background. In most cases, it's nothing like what you think. More "cheating" goes on in video games than in any RPG.

DB

Ok, that's it.. sorry if later on this question already got answered, but I'm up to page 7 and so far Drifter Bob has claimed that he's designed video games, written "various" rpg materials (and sometimes got paid up to 15 cents an hour for it!) and that this imp question is for a "project" he's working on for a publisher that is going to be a massive campaign with various dungeons taking players from levels 1 to 6...

..and yet he refuses to name the product, or the publisher, and he has yet to name a SINGLE published product of his.

So please, Drifter Bob, now that you've made all these claims to fame, you surely couldn't have any problem telling us the name of the "various" RPGs/adventures/sourcebooks you've ALREADY PUBLISHED? Just, you know, so we don't think you might have lied about that.

Nisarg

 

[Drifter Bob]

I never ran it, but I've seen Paladins who don't sneak around at night and this module is a TPK otherwise.

Why the HELL would a paladin refuse to sneak around at night? Due to 'fair play? Any paladin who did that in my campaign would die very quickly, thus improving the gene pool of paladins to come. Just becaue you are lawful good doesn't mean you eschew basic common sense tactics.

6.) All in all, I must say that when you DM, what you do with your group is fine, but be wary of waiving the magic wand of change when you are being published.

The problem is that the rules do not encompass every situation, and in the subset of circumstances they do cover, they do some much better than others. Some they actually tend to distort into absurd "Hanna Barbaric" directions. Add to this the fact that fanatic canonical devotion to every 4 bluff points worth of rules is demanded by a significant proportion of the D20 audience, a proportion which is pandered to by all the publishing companies especially WOTC, you end up with a situation where childish, or more accurately teenagerish geek stereotypes which were the foundation of the assumptions of a lot of the finer points of th rules get perpetuated.

So you get lame, phony seeming sophomoric adventures that nobody likes, and they then blame the publishers. A vicious circle. I don't care what anybody says, I've played DnD in various forms for 25 years, with hundreds of different groups of people literally all over the world (well, Europe, Latin America, Canada and USA) and I can categorically say that the rules DO shape the game, and this DOES prevent nuance and realism and verisimilitude from reaching adult levels.

I have ha da lot of fun playing DnD, but invariably that was in heavily house ruled, (generally low magic) campaigns run and played by people who didn't give a rats ass about what the offical version was and could think for themselves.

This is also, IMO, why a lot of the better novels were never able to succesffuly be converted to D20. It's a large part of why I vastly preferred the original cthulhu game, for all it's faults, to the D20 version for example.


DB

P.S. and no, I will not cite examples of what I'm talking about, if you don't know already you are in denial and will never get it.