Farewell to thee D&D

[Halivar]

There's an easy way to answer this question - by answering another question. Is it reasonable to expect that the designers could please everybody with one design? If not, it is difficult to argue that there is any one "the right choice". All choices are right in some ways, and wrong in some ways.

QFT. 4E "fixed" the wizard so that I actually want to play it. It "broke" the wizard so that one of my fellow players does not. After hashing out our differences, we realized that we both clearly understood the changes the same way, but had strongly opposing aesthetic reactions to them. The greater the change, the more extreme the reation. As a software developer, I actually have to agonize over these same issues (iwth regards to customers) every time I work on an upgrade. I may "fix" an issue for 9 customers, but that 10th will flame me like hell, and on our company's web forum, to boot.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

There's an easy way to answer this question - by answering another question. Is it reasonable to expect that the designers could please everybody with one design? If not, it is difficult to argue that there is any one "the right choice". All choices are right in some ways, and wrong in some ways.

This seems like a lazy, facile way to answer that question to me, actually. I guess as facile and easy are somewhat synonyms, that's unsurprising. Perhaps the easy way to answer the question isn't always the best way to answer it, neh?

It's true that no design, even sticking to the extant design, would please "everyone", but I think it's a pretty sure thing that they attempted to please as many people as humanly possible with their design. I personally think they may have succeeded. Certainly they seem to have pleased players who were somewhat less "into" D&D before this, in my anecdotal experience.

 

[Hussar]

/edit

Whoa, really late post. Not worth it.

 

[Mephistopheles]

To Celtavian,

I can relate to a lot of your issues with 4E. Speaking for myself most of the problems I had with 4E were grounded in my expectations, and my expectations were grounded in this game being branded 4E D&D. I've tried to disassociate 4E from D&D and free myself from the expectations I was bringing to the table and I've since found 4E a lot easier to accept. It's a game with many fine qualities but they are not the same qualities that I became accustomed to with previous editions. As a result I've been able to have some fun playing in 4E games when the alternative may have been not playing anything. I still get my D&D fix from playing older editions so I haven't so much lost the game I like to play as I have gained a new game to play.

I wish you good luck with your group and your future gaming. I hope things work out for you.

Also I wanted to thank some of the posters earlier in the thread who put up some links for online references and communities for gaming with older editions of the game. Much appreciated.

 

[ruemere]

I'm just going to ask, being somewhat naive in this...

(1) Why are the specific rules important when you're working with stuff that's more or less off-screen?

Because Game Master is a fallible human being - the rules somehow mitigate this by limiting the scope of his imagination. Ensuring believability of offscreen changes is one of key rules for me - and I strive to achieve that in such a way that every creature, be it a PC or NPC, works in the same way.

(2) While I understand that the "world" exists when everyone is sitting down and playing D&D, I don't understand how it exists when you're not playing D&D. At least, it's no more existing then, than it is for a novel-writer.

Players have characters to roleplay. I have the whole world for the same purpose. They use xp to advance their fighters and mages, while I use their actions to advance my setting while following side stories of NPCs.

It's handy to look at statblock of NPC brother to PC priestess and find out how he is doing during archeological expedition he is managing. His statblock tells me what I can expect of him and limits the results of his action to believable frame (he is out of his depth trying to deal with natives - his interpersonal skills may be decent, but his elven heritage prevents him from fully acknowledging his local partners as fully trustworthy allies - or, in game terms, he may have some Diplomacy ranks, but average Charisma and racial prejudices led him to somewhat aloof attitude... which does not help to make progress).

Meanwhile, sister of the ambassador is racing against time to save her brother since, unknowable to him (and partly to her - well, he knows and he suspects but tries not to worry her) he is suffering from slow degradation of his vessel (body) due to incompleteness of the process involved in the restoration of his health in his youth. Again, her stats determine her chances of success and again, they limit my imagination (i.e. prevent the use of Deus Ex Machina).

What is going to happen to those two NPCs? Will they succeed? Will they fail? Time will tell, and their paths finally cross the paths of the party, they will have long stories to tell.

Novel writers don't, generally, need RPG rules. Why should a game world need RPG rules during times in which you're not using it to play a game?

Ah, but I do play. It's just that it is not as detailed as RPG session. It's a roll-a-week, look at the stats and then think what would they do and how they would react given the development.

Right now I have several key NPCs, each one of them controls portion of game world and, by actions of such NPCs the rest the world progresses. Their progress is tracked by gazetteers I write from time to time to record changes.
Finally, I am also, using two-three random tables, add completely random stuff (like a minor tectonic tremor, outbreak of small-scale disease, particularly successful crops) to further breath more life into the world.

It is not much work but it requires consistency and consequence. That's why unified system works best for me (and why Profession and Craft skills are a boon to me).

Regards,
Ruemere

 

[pemerton]

i do not think that is a fair characterization of what he is saying.

I think he wants characters that have different power distributions throughout a story. In 4E the distribution is the same with approx the same efficacy from all classes in most all situations (which is not to say they play the same).

He wants classes where he might be less effective in parts of the story and incredibly potent in specific instances.

The real questions is. People (including me) want an aesthetic where the scope of a magic-users ability can exceed the scope of a mundanes ability in specific instances.

What is the best mechanic to do this?

4E does not do this very well and frankly it was not trying to; that is the antithesis of the game design goal they had (and i am not real familiar with the rules but they do seem to be very good at approaching their goals). 4Es solution was to make the scope of all classes the same throughout the story. This of course does homogenize things a bit (which is not to say that classes play the same but that the variable distribution throughout the story has been ameliorated somewhat).

3E does do this but with some potential drawbacks that have been mentioned and for some people is way too extreme.

I thought 1E did a good job but of course there were some similar issues that 3E had though probably not as severe.

<snip>

How would you make rules such that you can have wizards capable of extreme feats go adventuring with non-magic users and still have all players have a good time and share in the narrative with some equality.

Mustrum's idea of providing for varying distributions of narrative control is one idea (I put forward a similar suggestion for HARP in the Guild Companion last year.)

Other ideas are being put forward by Lost Soul in his very excellent "Emergent features of KoTS" thread.

Thinking about the issue in general terms: in AD&D a wizard is, in a functional sense, forced to hoard a particular resource (namely, turns in combat in which the wizard makes little or no contribution) in return for being able to spend the hoarded resources all at once (by occasionally casting very powerful spells). The most common complaint about this mechanic is that it is boring (all that sitting around doing nothing between spells) and unreliable (because the GM can always fail to provide you with the encounters that would make your spells worthwhile).

The solutions would then be to get rid of the boredom - by giving the player something active to do in the course of hoarding the resource - and to get rid of the unreliability - by shifting the metagame control from GM to player.

In 4e, some monsters have hints of this sort of design - their first attack does comparatively little but it sets up their second attack to be a killer - but I haven't especially noticed it in the wizard power lists. But Warlocks seem to have something like it with their curses and pact boons - little actions performed round by round build up to a sort of crescendo of power. It is possible to envisage other versions of this (and maybe they are there but I haven't noticed them yet).

Skill challenges can also perhaps support something like this - the wizard player can use Hard Arcana checks to aid another, thus contributing +2 bonuses to his/her allies, increasing the number of successes, and then (with the permission of the other players) narrate the success as resulting from the culmination of the wizard's magical power.

The main challenge to this sort of design, I think, is to keep play interesting for the resource-hoarder. If this breaks down, then nova-ing, imbalance of narrative control between players, and/or the 15-minute day, are all lurking dangers.

 

[pemerton]

In mechanics it's way closer to WoW than D&D.

In mechanics it's also as close to HeroWars (skill challenges, healing surges) as it is to OD&D (some legacy terminology and basic framework for class roles and combat mechanics). But I don't see anyone going around saying that D&D has become HeroWars. 4e is its own game - but its designers have paid attention to what is good design in other games also.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Players have characters to roleplay. I have the whole world for the same purpose. They use xp to advance their fighters and mages, while I use their actions to advance my setting while following side stories of NPCs.

It's handy to look at statblock of NPC brother to PC priestess and find out how he is doing during archeological expedition he is managing. His statblock tells me what I can expect of him and limits the results of his action to believable frame (he is out of his depth trying to deal with natives - his interpersonal skills may be decent, but his elven heritage prevents him from fully acknowledging his local partners as fully trustworthy allies - or, in game terms, he may have some Diplomacy ranks, but average Charisma and racial prejudices led him to somewhat aloof attitude... which does not help to make progress).

Meanwhile, sister of the ambassador is racing against time to save her brother since, unknowable to him (and partly to her - well, he knows and he suspects but tries not to worry her) he is suffering from slow degradation of his vessel (body) due to incompleteness of the process involved in the restoration of his health in his youth. Again, her stats determine her chances of success and again, they limit my imagination (i.e. prevent the use of Deus Ex Machina).

What is going to happen to those two NPCs? Will they succeed? Will they fail? Time will tell, and their paths finally cross the paths of the party, they will have long stories to tell.

It is always important to define the "theme" and personality of the NPCs, and then translate them to rules representation that also fit the PCs.

I think in many cases where you don't know what the outcome of an off-screen NPC interaction is, you can just flip a coin. If you think a certain thing is more likely, you can use dice. But do you need actual statistics?
For your example of the archaeological expedition or the attempt to heal the weakening brother, wouldn't you need to set both the NPCs skill values and their DCs? Doesn't this mean you actually already decided the likely results beforehand?

Of course, sometimes NPCs might just "accidentally" stumble into a situation where they need a skill you haven't thought of yet. But a fallible DM could _really_ have forgotten that skill (it happened to me even as a player sometimes), and it would have made sense for the NPC to have it, but he doesn't! Of course, if you didn't make this mistake, will it still turn out to give you the results that will benefit the story?

Of course, the latter thing is probably narrative thinking. From a simulation perspective, things don't have to go according to a "story". They just happen how they would happen in a fictional world.

My complaint about that approach is that it risks too much. The chance of ending up with a less interesting story-line is not outweighed with something beneficial for me as a player or as a DM.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Thats a really good idea. Too bad WOTC went with the binary design. A power is either active or on cooldown.

Actually, it's not a good idea at all balance wise. If a power gave you -2 for each additional time you used it then those who have a higher bonus to hit get even MORE benefit from a single stat than from anything else. Not only does it give them a higher chance to hit, but more uses of it.

In a system like this, it means that there is a "point of no return" where a power is useless. If you have 2 encounter powers and one gives you -4 to hit and the other one doesn't but they do about the same damage, it is almost a universally bad idea to use the first one. If you use 4e exactly as written but apply a -2 for each successive use of an encounter power, after a single use of most powers, it is a better idea to use an at-will attack(or a different encounter power)). This makes the powers usable by most people once per encounter anyways while giving anyone who is bad at math a "bad" option to pick from as well.

The other option is you make the penalty different, affecting you less somehow, which encourages the opposite: Using the same power over and over again. Which causes battles to degrade back to the 3e: I swing. You swing. Which was the reason to create encounter powers in the first place.

The mechanics were designed to encourage a certain type of play that people wanted to see(a variety of different options usable each round as any class, easy to understand choices, quick turns, no bad choices).

 

[vagabundo]

and I strive to achieve that in such a way that every creature, be it a PC or NPC, works in the same way.

Whats stopping you from stating out your NPC fully in 4e?

I think the default that WotC choose is correct, most DMs want a quick resolution to those questions. But there are class templates for NPCs in the DMG and, if it is a really important to you, just follow the PC rules.

The rules in the DMG are just tools that a DM can pick up and use, what tools you use is completely dependant on your playstyle. If you have more fun with completely, correctly PC stat-ed NPC then more power to you, but 4e does not preclude it.