[EDITION WARZ] Selling Out D&D's Soul?

[Keldryn]

Ask yourself: What does "on par with the challenges for that level" mean?

It means: "This party can, statistically, kill four encounters a day with a moderate and acceptable level of risk." Which creates the mindset: "This challenge is fair, that challenge isn't." Which creates the whole sense of entitlement that really frustrates me about 3e. "I'm x-level so I should have y-wealth and be facing z-CR creatures."

You're making quite the assumption there. Where is this mindset and sense of entitlement actually being displayed? It's not something that I or any of my friends (who all play a lot more regularly than I do) have noticed. My experiences are certainly not taken to be representative of the gaming population as a whole, but... where is this actually happening?

I'm sure you can see where I'm going now, but I'll spell it out in case anyone's feeling lazy: The assumptions behind these recommended wealth levels and CR calculations are mathematical. The whole game's in the dice rolls and the stacking modifiers and the mechanics.

That is only if you are assuming that players and DMs feel bound by not deviating from the CR and WBL guidlines as if they are set in stone. And I challenge that assumption.

Therefore roleplaying is irrelevant to the discussion. Any comparison of editions has to ignore roleplaying considerations and focus on the mechanics before it can be productive. So I felt free to help myself to the oversimplification.

Does anyone object to that characterisation of d20 fantasy? Or fail to understand how 1e was different?

I certainly object to it. 1e was certainly different in that it made it a lot easier for the DM to misjudge a monster's power and walk all over the party with it. At least until I eventually just got a better feel for what each monster's overall power level was. But this "everyone uses the CR and WBL guidelines as written or else the players scream that it's unfair" assumption is as valid as the assumption that everybody played 1e by the rules exactly as they were written.

 

[Keldryn]

Isn't that just part of playing a game though? I hate to bring up Chess again, but to put it in perspective, there is a range within games from a 100% strategic/tactical game like Chess where there isn't any randomness and a player is in complete control of their fate to a game like War (the card game) where there's no strategy and winning/losing all comes down to luck. D&D falls somewhere in the middle. As long as you are incorporating chance, there's always a possibility that a player will do everything right and still wind up "losing". You might be a masterful Monopoly player, but if you get unlucky and land on the wrong squares or draw lots of the negative Chance and Community Chest cards you can still lose.

It seems to me that in a game that is partially based on randomness and chance the possibility of something unexpectedly good or unexpectedly bad happening (and being challenged to cope with the consequences through good play) is part of the fun. Rather than labelling the occasional, randomly generated, negative event as "negative reinforcement" I look at it as a necessary reminder to good players. In other words, occasionally suffering a setback even if they are doing everything right helps good players remember why they bother doing everything right. If they didn't, this stuff would be happening to them much more frequently.

Sure, it's part of the game, but I think it's better when the players can attribute severe consequences to mistakes on their part, rather than just some random event. Because it leads to behaviour where every freaking door in the dungeon takes several minutes to open, nobody walks anywhere without probing the floor with a 10' pole first, characters open every chest by standing behind it and to the side, etc. All of these door-opening, wall-searching, floor-probing, chest-opening, lock-picking, treasure-handling "procedures" that players come up with are the result of everything in the dungeon being potentially loaded with some sort of save-or-die trap. As a DM, it drives me absolutely nuts how pedantic some players are about this, and ridiculous amounts of game time get spent on these trivial tasks.

 

[Keldryn]

Re: Gestalt in 4e:
Gut hunch, based on the ongoing "give the players what they want and they want it all" trend, and extrapolating from there.

I still haven't seen much evidence of this trend in practice, only in discussions on Internet message boards.

Re: WotC research and the 4-PC party:
Over the 25-year-ish long run, we've settled into having usually 4 or 5 players at a time running a party of 6-12 characters at a time, with campaigns lasting 5-12 years. In other words, vastly different from the WotC norm...

My run has been about 20 years now, since I was 12, and we pretty much quit running more than one character per player at about the age of 14. Had a few groups of 6 or more players in the high school years, but after that it's been pretty steady at 4 or 5 players with one character each, with most "campaigns" fizzling out before the 6-month point -- and that's playing once or twice a month. My experience (and my friends') is certainly closer to the WotC norm that yours, it would seem.

 

[Ourph]

I don't see how failing to use the WBL guidelines stop the other parts of the game system from working properly. If you're giving out less treasure than what the WBL guidelines suggest, then you know that a monster of a particular CR is most likely going to provide a greater challenge than its specified CR.

Not true. CR is based on a number of factors, some of which are affected by what equipment the PCs have and some of which aren't. The modification isn't a straight ratio for all monsters. A DM deviating from the guidelines has to consider a monster's challenge level, in most cases, from the ground up, adjusting for the way lack of equipment affects the challenge of that particular monster.

I disagree with that. Plenty of AD&D monsters required +1 or better weapons to hit, +2 or better weapons to hit, etc through +5 or better weapons to hit. Monsters with a very high number of hit dice pretty much assume that your PCs will have some magic armour or they will be dead in pretty short order, since AC doesn't scale up with level like hit points and the attack matrices do.

I think you're missing my point. I'm not saying equipment didn't matter in AD&D or that there wasn't an assumption that higher level PCs would have higher level equipment. But that assumption wasn't in any way built into the rules the way the WBL/CR/EXP systems are linked in 3e. The interaction of equipment, wealth, level and challenge were abstract at best (IMO they were simply hand-waved and left for the DM to adjudicate). This is not a critique saying "1e did it better" but a statement that "1e did it different" and is meant as a response to a comment that seemed to be saying that 1e and 3e did it basically the same way.

 

[Ourph]

The assumption I want to challenge here is the assumption that the DM needs to look at that at all....In this paradigm the DM makes no judgment about who will be facing what encounter. It's the players who decide that.

I think you are somewhat overstating your adherence to the "Darwinian World" model here. I find it impossible to believe anyone generates a world completely at random and without consideration for the types of challenges they expect their players to engage. You wouldn't sit down to DM a game for a party of 6th level characters and tell them there are 3 local areas where adventure can be had and that they are 1) a nest of 3 giant rats plaguing a local farmer; 2) an lone Ogre that's been holding up people on the main road; and 3) an invading army of demons, thousands strong, led by Orcus himself. There's nothing in there for a 6th level party to sink their teeth into, it's either too easy or beyond their abilities. As a DM creating a world, you engage in judgements about what the characters will face all the time, in your case you just give them a menu to choose from rather than only preparing one meal. But presenting a menu where nothing is "edible" for the players in question leaves them with no choice at all, which is worse than only having access to a single choice.

There is no assumption (either in my post, the 1e rules or the 3e rules) that the DM will make sure the players only take on challenges where it's possible for them to be victorious, but there is definitely an assumption that the DM will prepare at least SOME challenges which are neither too easy nor too difficult for the PCs and that he will make it at least possible for the PCs to recognize the challenges which are beyond their abilities before they stumble into them. Doing so requires estimating the PCs abilities vs. the challenge represented by monsters and NPCs. As I said before, 1e gave the DM some tools to do that and 3e expands on and adds to those tools. Doing so doesn't require that the DM use those tools to build a "victory factory" campaign any more than AD&D required that Otyughs be encountered ONLY on dungeon level X.

The paradigm you are railing against is driven by the personality and preferences of individual players and the current gaming culture. The way the rules are used reflects that, but the rules themselves don't enforce it or dictate it.

 

[Numion]

I think you're missing my point. I'm not saying equipment didn't matter in AD&D or that there wasn't an assumption that higher level PCs would have higher level equipment. But that assumption wasn't in any way built into the rules the way the WBL/CR/EXP systems are linked in 3e. The interaction of equipment, wealth, level and challenge were abstract at best (IMO they were simply hand-waved and left for the DM to adjudicate). This is not a critique saying "1e did it better" but a statement that "1e did it different" and is meant as a response to a comment that seemed to be saying that 1e and 3e did it basically the same way.

No, "1e did it mostly not at all".

The advice to gauge advercaries were so vague to be basically useless. Now, a good DM has little trouble in determining the level of challenges he wants in 1E. In the same way, a good DM can throw away the wealth guidelines in 3E, and wing it just like in 1e. The difference in the systems lies with newer DMs.

I've had two players from my group run campaigns in 3E (n00b DMs), and they had very little problems using the CR/EL system to gauge opposition. It's mainly anecdotal evidence, but in other systems most of the new DMs I've seen muck it up. (I don't have delusions that my players had learned to be good DMs because of playing under me - it was mostly the system).

 

[Ourph]

Sure, it's part of the game, but I think it's better when the players can attribute severe consequences to mistakes on their part, rather than just some random event. Because it leads to behaviour where every freaking door in the dungeon takes several minutes to open, nobody walks anywhere without probing the floor with a 10' pole first, characters open every chest by standing behind it and to the side, etc. All of these door-opening, wall-searching, floor-probing, chest-opening, lock-picking, treasure-handling "procedures" that players come up with are the result of everything in the dungeon being potentially loaded with some sort of save-or-die trap. As a DM, it drives me absolutely nuts how pedantic some players are about this, and ridiculous amounts of game time get spent on these trivial tasks.

Different strokes I guess, but IMO taking those precautions is what "doing things right" is all about. Rather than considering the opening of a door a "trivial task" I enjoy it that each door* in my games feels like a challenge to the players and requires the same type of consideration that daily spell selection or planning an attack might. Treating every door as just a mundane portal seems like a waste of potential challenges and suspense to me.

*caveat - This applies to doors in dungeons and other places of adventure. The front door of the local inn isn't going to be trapped and the players know this.

 

[Ourph]

No, "1e did it mostly not at all".

Why the "No"? "1e did it mostly not at all" is exactly what I said. :\

 

[Numion]

Why the "No"? "1e did it mostly not at all" is exactly what I said. :\

I got confused writing the post

But my point was:

1E:

Give 'standard' wealth --> Minimal guidelines for gauging opposition
Give 'monty / stingy' wealth --> Minimal guidelines for gauging opposition

3E:

Give 'standard' wealth --> EL guide for ultimate balance
Give 'monty / stingy' wealth --> Minimal guidelines for gauging opposition

So any way you look at it, adhere to wealth guidelines or not, 3E offers more or at least the same as 1E. It's not logical to fault D&D for losing it's strict EL guide when giving different treasure, when 1E never had that EL guide to begin with.

But then again, after writing a post where I'm thinking decision analysis terms does make me wonder about the soul of the game

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

I'm not saying that the dice shouldn't be able to make major changes. I just don't like setups where the players have no reasonable way of anticipating and/or avoiding what is about to happen, something springs on them, the player or DM rolls a die, and due to an unlucky roll, the PC dies, loses a point from an ability score permanently, loses a level permanently, or what have you. And I'm not just talking from the perspective as a player, but also as a DM. I think it punishes the players unfairly for essentially playing the game the way it is meant to be played. Looking at it in terms of operant conditioning, it's just the application of a negative stimulus at random intervals. If you believe that players should be rewarded for clever ideas, playing in-character, making smart tactical choices, retreating when outmatched, and the like (which are all pretty clear examples of positive reinforcement), then why would you believe in inflicting severe consequences the die came up a 1 or 2 while the player wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary? The player isn't doing anything wrong, he is just doing what he is normally rewarded for but every once in a while he gets punished for it instead.

Sometimes you lose even when you do everything right. And to me fair goes out the window when the dice come to the table, they have no concept of fair.

Suppose your players do some wonderful things to overcome major obstacles in a very creative way to advance to the golem guarding the wizards chambers that they are after, and then the party fighter moves into combat and rolls four straight ones and gets killed quickly, or something like that. That is unfortunate, but that is how it happens. I don't think that is punishment at all, it's just the way the dice bounce.