Falling off the 4ed bandwagon

[pawsplay]

Reducing play options doesn't increase creativity any more than reducing rations increases gourmet cooking. Creativity requires tools, resources, time, and mental energy... long casting times reduces the available tools in any situation, cuts resources to a fraction, frequently leaves you in a situation where you must act quickly and haven't prepared, and forces you to spend mental energy on employing the tools you have at all instead of trying to figure out how to use them creatively.

Really, we are discussing the fallacy of the broken window. Time spent figuring out how to get off a ten minute casting time could be spent defeating evil. In theory, 4e was written to discourage lots of sitting around trying to get the most out of wonky, hard-to-use uberspells, and yet...

 

[jgbrowning]

Again the 10 minute version promotes creativity by not being the default obvious option.

No, it limits creativity because any possible creative situation that could involve water breathing in less than 10 minutes cannot happen anymore. You can't have any creativity involving water breathing in less than 10 minutes. No more. All gone. Can't do that.

Any "creative" response that could occur under the 10 minute water breathing scenario is equally possible under a less than 10 minute water breathing scenario.

However, such a "creative" solution has less utility, and is less likely to be used. Much like one doesn't use a screwdriver to hammer a nail, when one has a hammer about.

However, if one doesn't have a hammer, one can't be creative with a hammer. Just like if one doesn't have a less than 10 minute waterbreathing, one cannot be creative with it.

Ok. I'm done talking about creativity in response to utility. Increased utility provides increased creativity. Limiting utility only provides a creativity that is still available under the increased utility scenario.

joe b.

 

[Barastrondo]

Perhaps we could Harrison Bergeron the players as well to get more creativity out of them. It's obvious that those who are hampered are more creative than those who are provided a wider array of useful tools.

No, I think I see the point. The whole group must get more creative at the moment of truth, if they're denied the access to one creative player who was allowed time to prepare a versatile amount of tools beforehand. You have to search for an answer to the question "what do we do?" at the moment of truth, because the answer wasn't predetermined when one player picked his spells for the day.

The difference to some extent is the difference between deckbuilding and at-the-table play, to borrow a metaphor from Magic. The better you build your deck, the fewer variables you're unprepared for. That said, during play the deck is functioning as you built it rather than being spun into extemporaneous new configurations. Part of the creativity went when you were picking your cards, and the rest is doing your best to execute the plan you had in mind back then. When you picked water breathing, that's when you were planning for the contingency: when there's a sudden "oh no, he's drowning" and you have water breathing in your hand, the actual act of casting it is no great act of creativity.

That said, deckbuilding is itself a creative act. Whether you put more stock in the creativity of coming up with solutions with whatever's at hand or in the creativity of anticipating problems and carrying the tools to deal with them all is really a matter of play style.

 

[jgbrowning]

No, I think I see the point. The whole group must get more creative at the moment of truth, if they're denied the access to one creative player who was allowed time to prepare a versatile amount of tools beforehand. You have to search for an answer to the question "what do we do?" at the moment of truth, because the answer wasn't predetermined when one player picked his spells for the day.

The creativity induced by the lack of a tool should not be confused with the creativity allowed by access to a tool. Even when one has access to a tool, one can be just as creative as those who lack it while having all the additional creativity of having it by simply choosing to not use the tool.

There is no creativity gained by not having a tool that is not also available to those who have the tool and choose not to use it. The guy with the 1 round waterbreathing can say "I need to save my spell for later, let's figure out some other way to save the poor sod." The guy without the 1 minute waterbreathing cannot and cannot use waterbreathing in any creative manner that involves a time frame of less than 10 minutes.

All the creativity possible in the 10 minute version of waterbreathing is a subset to all the creativity possible in the 1 round version of waterbreathing.

And I know I said I was done talking about it, but I wanted to respond to someone else who's in the biz because I didn't want to appear rude.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Reducing play options doesn't increase creativity any more than reducing rations increases gourmet cooking. Creativity requires tools, resources, time, and mental energy... long casting times reduces the available tools in any situation, cuts resources to a fraction, frequently leaves you in a situation where you must act quickly and haven't prepared, and forces you to spend mental energy on employing the tools you have at all instead of trying to figure out how to use them creatively.

Really, we are discussing the fallacy of the broken window. Time spent figuring out how to get off a ten minute casting time could be spent defeating evil. In theory, 4e was written to discourage lots of sitting around trying to get the most out of wonky, hard-to-use uberspells, and yet...

A lot depends on point of view, I never liked D&D (prior to 4e) utility magic, the blam and the effect goes off never seemed to be really magical since it did not evoke the ritual stuff you read in myth or other fantasy stories.
I like the 4e ritual system and that it actually takes time because you have to create your ritual space and do the stuff. At the table from a player prespective it is pretty much similar in term of time to narrate and the only real differene is that you cannot use the ritual as an insta-fix for something unlike the spells in older systems.

 

[Fifth Element]

No, I think I see the point. The whole group must get more creative at the moment of truth, if they're denied the access to one creative player who was allowed time to prepare a versatile amount of tools beforehand. You have to search for an answer to the question "what do we do?" at the moment of truth, because the answer wasn't predetermined when one player picked his spells for the day.

I think this is very well put.

I also see Joe's point, and in a sense he is correct. However, I don't think it's significant. In RPGs you have a theoretically infinite number of things that players and characters can do. If you take away some portion of those options (by increasing casting time to make some spells not as useful in this sense anymore), then you still have a nearly infinite number of things that players and characters can do.

So 4E has moved the creativity to play, rather then prep, as Barastrando described. The wizard will have to think on his feet rather than think ahead. That is a difference in playstyle, but to call it "less creative" is not valid.

 

[Dice4Hire]

Regarding water breathing, and 3.5 vs 4E, It is easier to let the water breathing sit in the 4E spellbook and be accessible than in the 3.5 one.

10 minutes is a lot better than a full day. In 3.5 I allowed my players to have "open slots" that the wizards nd clerics and such could fill on the fly in the games, to get past the problem of not having the correct spll for the situation, so the game could flow better.

Of course this just made the melee types more obsolete, and made the casters better at being able to upstage them.

I am glad that casters have been brought down several notches. Now the party as a whole needs to be creative, not jsut he caster side.

 

[Mark]

If my friends and I agree that I am going to facilitate a creative exercise over a weekend in an otherwise empty office building and then I begin telling them that they can only use chairs without wheels on them, the lights can only be on for ten minutes every hour and they cannot use pens, I am not increasing their chances at being creative.

 

[Barastrondo]

All the creativity possible in the 10 minute version of waterbreathing is a subset to all the creativity possible in the 1 round version of waterbreathing.

This I agree with. But is it more or less likely to manifest itself? If it's less likely to show up because the 1-round waterbreathing is the sensible default answer, then overall you have fewer groups coming up with different uses of the resources available to them, even though they all have a wider range of resources available. The potential is there, but the question of whether it's actualized is a decent one. And I think that's what drove the design decisions of 4e — the thought that you can reduce the number of potential specific solutions to see a wider variety of innovated solutions.

Of course, the overall true benefit is that there's a wider variety of potential and actualized solutions to the whole "what will our play experience be like?" question of gaming. But that's kind of tangential (even if I think it's the best thing about there being such a variety between 3e and 4e in the first place).

 

[jgbrowning]

So 4E has moved the creativity to play, rather then prep, as Barastrando described. The wizard will have to think on his feet rather than think ahead. That is a difference in playstyle, but to call it "less creative" is not valid.

I don't think I'm understanding what you mean. In order to use waterbreathing, a 4e wizard most definitely must think ahead, not on his feet. Nothing's been moved from prep to play. The only difference between 3e and 4e waterbreathing prep-wise is the memorization of the spell for the day (which can be completely removed if a scroll is available) and that's come at the loss of never being able to use waterbreathing in under 10 minute's time (5 I think with a scroll).

joe b.