D&D 4E Fictional positioning and currency rules in 4e.

[Crazy Jerome]

Like I said, though, it sounds like your group has a need that is perpendicular to anything those games have provided- and it's about finding a game that fits that.

Well, I am on record as saying that I think the game our group wants doesn't exist yet. It is why I keep messing around with homebrews, despite game design not being some huge desire on my part. (I cook because I like to eat good food, not because I'm that wild about cooking. I mess around with game mechanics for the same kind of reasons. )

It isn't the crunch of BW that requires the energy, for us, BTW. It is that to make it sing, you have to push the BITs constantly to drive the reward cycle. We know how, and it is fun, but it is not something that we can just kick back and do without investing in it.

Getting back on the main topic, I suspect that good fictional positioning tools are somewhat different for "develop in play" styles, than other options (e.g. lots of character background in a pure exploration game, themed game, or many variations of character development games). So far, I'm aware of three ways that fictional positioning has been handled in DiP:

1. Jazz Improv - improvizational decisions, heavily driven by someone, usually a GM, but with everyone else having lots of "riff" freedom within the driven structure - there is a trap in the room because your thief started looking, and the GM thought it sounded good.

2. Discovery via mechanics - there is a trap in the room because your thief rolled and found one.

3. Discovery via narrative/flags/etc - there is a trap in the room because you wanted your "thief" to try to disarm one.

That's got all kinds of holes in it, but it will do for a rough and ready start. Obviously, there can be some overlap (e.g. mechanical means to exert narrative).

You'll note that all of these techniques set off warning bells for pemerton's issue on the relations of the fiction to the mechanical currency, which might best be seen in contrast: There is a trap in the room or not. You suspect there is due to some fictional clues. You now react to this situation (using whatever is appropriate from your character sheet and in the situation). The trap being there (or rather, suspecting it might be) is a concrete fictional element to which the players can react. Techniques designed to yield other benefits (e.g. I can narrate something appropriately interesting for my character) are doing so by messing with this relationship.

What I have not seen much explored is approaching DiP with the situation being set and the character being the mutable piece: There is a trap in the room or not. You suspect there is due to some fictional clues. You suddenly "discover" that your character knows how to handle this. Or not.

Since I'm approaching the question obliquely, I'd better stop there to check if I'm making a glimmer of sense.

 

[yeloson]

Oh definitely. This actually ties back to a root idea that Vincent has :"Lumpley-Care Principle" - anything that happens ("exists") in the fiction, in the stuff we imagine, does so because the group agrees to it.

Different games work differently in how you organize that agreement- the GM says, we rolled a die, we drew a card, you rolled on a random dungeon room chart, the module you bought says there's a trap in the room, whatever.

Anyway, some good games to look at how they handle DiP and Fictional Positioning:
- Houses of the Blooded
- Universalis
- FATE

As far as "discover your character during play" games that do this include:
- Inspectres
- HeroWars/HeroQuest

I'm sure there's more but I haven't really been into them.

Chris

 

[andy3k]

"As I said, I agree that the character sheet is always the first go-to for my players when it comes to looking for resources to deploy ... What I would like, though, is for the ranger with Acrobatics to pay more attention to the vines than he currently does!"

The two statements above were separated by a lot of text but I think one answers the other. Players utilize cues:

• When my daily power card is turned face up, I have a daily power available
• When the DM puts a red token under my mini, I am bloodied
• When the pointer on the magnet board drops to my name, my turn in initiative order has come up

These cues work because they make something stand out and act as a reminder. If the DM really wants the players to interact with something, they should provide a cue. Whether the PCs and Monsters are represented by tokens or figurines, they stand out from flat map. If the DM would really like the characters to interact with other aspects of the location (vines, magic bird bath, statue, etc.) then maybe you should have them stand out too with their own token or figurine.

You can describe the painting on the wall all you want when introducing the characters to the room but if the painting is a key to winning the battle more easily, and you want the characters to interact with it, there must be a cue. Whether the painting is a 3D object on the flat map, a colorful marker drawing that makes it stand out like a sore thumb, or a card that is placed in front of the characters that closely resembles a power card, the visual cue does what a cue is supposed to do: make something stand out and act as a reminder.

4e involves complicated details, more at paragon, and especially at epic. IF your players do not take verbal cues (spending a whole 3 sentences describing an item or set of items) then blatantly obvious visual cues are the only other way to add DM-generated items to the list of "resources" the party has available to them.

 

[LostSoul]

I wanted to get back to this after thinking about it a little more.

I think my first post on Currency shows that I don't really understand 4E's Currency any more - I made too many assumptions about my own hack! I'll try to contribute something useful this time...

In fact, it suggests the opposite - because it suggests that NPCs allies deduct XP from an encounter equal to their own XP value, which is quite different from your magic-item approach.

My hack does a similar thing with henchmen and hirelings. They deduct their own XP value from the encounter (100 XP for a standard 1st-level character); henchmen level up at their own rate. I am not sure how this works with 4E, but I like the rule (the one presented in the DMG2, I think).

(It also has the side-effect of rewarding players who are more callous with their NPCs; my hack has a couple modifiers to determine how NPCs see the PCs that deals with this.)

I think my point with the Ebony Fly was that you could reverse-engineer the stats and level/cost pretty easily to get something that would fit with the rest of the game.

There is also the issue that, in some ways, a clever skill challenge that yields some minion allies is not radically different from a clever tactical manoeuvre that uses the vines (or whatever) to achieve some sort of success in a combat. This latter sort of thing is not subject to an XP tax nor does it suck up a magic item slot.

I think this is one of the places where the Currency of the game speaks up and says something: it's better to achieve things yourself instead of relying on others. I like that, since it seems to fit with Swords & Sorcery.

But what about a -2 penalty for Diplomacy with dwarves until the stain of defeat is removed? This is a "condition" that is not very well-defined mechanically, nor in terms of level (and it's certainly not subject to Remove Affliction). It also further distinguishes the dwarven NPCs from the Ebony Fly - there is no magic item I'm aware of that causes this sort of penalty when used/destroyed.

One of the things I did in my hack was to define those things mechanically; a "Martial Loss" gives you a -4 penalty to Reaction (or is it Influence?) rolls, which determine the number of successes needed in a skill challenge. (Reaction is how they feel about you, Influence is if they'll do what you say or not. I wanted to allow characters to be feared and not loved.) I also took the time to make a list of modifiers that the DM applies to checks, and that's where I'd apply the -2 penalty.

And here (post #41) he says

Emily's spectacular insight here is the recognition of fully fiction-to-fiction, ad-hoc, but binding currency rules. "There is a gun present, and it's loaded" is a fact of (let's say) positioning, and "I shoot you" is an act of effectiveness. "If there's a loaded gun present, I can shoot you with it" is a currency rule. It's the same kind of rule, except fiction-to-fiction, as the mechanic-to-mechanic "If my character's rank score is greater than yours, I get +1 to attempts to intimidate you"!​

This reminds me of a discussion I had with one of my players; she was asking how something worked, and my reply was, "That's how it works." I wish I could remember what it was. I'm pretty sure it was something to do with a skill. For example, I've got an elven racial skill called "Elven Eyesight". It allows the character to see forever, as long as there's nothing in the way (up to the curvature of the world, I guess). With that skill you can read the writing on a scroll from hundreds of miles away; without it, you can't.

(The interesting thing about that skill is that there's so much to see that you have to know where to look if you want to find something.)

The currency rule that governs the consequences, for future interaction with dwarves, of being someone who led some dwarves to their deaths under the feet of a Behemoth, are in my view unstated in the 4e rules, and not easily ascertained just by focusing on level, and what follows from level.

I agree. I think you have to do some work to come up with guidelines for different modifiers, like the way that certain actions can have an effect on the Complexity of a skill challenge in my hack. I don't think that I've done anything that wasn't already there; I feel like I've codified some things, so that as DM I can apply the rules impartially and still give fictional positioning its weight in the system.

I'm not 100% sure where you're going with this.

Ah, I meant that, using the way that Wizards do their skill challenge write-ups, you could decide that any Diplomacy skill check by the Dwarf in the skill challenge would automatically result in a failure.


Anyway, I hope that explains where I was coming from. I created all these little lists of modifiers to help me make impartial rulings and to allow the players to make informed decisions. When it comes to GP, I came up with a system to determine how much things cost (based on level). There are a number of these little tweaks I made; I feel like they are implied by 4E's system, but never actually expressed. That may not be the case!

 

[pemerton]

LostSoul, thanks for the reply.

Your codifications sound interesting. I've seen your reaction table (for the complexity of the social skill challenge) but this thread is I think the first time I've seen you post about "martial losses".

I also like your point about the currency rules "speaking up and saying something". (Which is a point that Vincent Baker makes as well, when I think about it.)

I think the fictionally-grounded currency rules in my game rely fairly heavily on a shared understanding among the players - for example, that the choice to be a Demonskin Adept brings with it certain consequences (some of those consequences are suggested in the Paragon Path writeup, but there is nothing there about how to tie them into the mechanics other than via the indicated features and powers).

Does this reliance of the game on the GM and players to bring this stuff into play count as a strength ("the moment of judgment" and all that) or a weakness (I'm reminded of a comment by Ron Edwards somewhere about the difficulties of a system that punts all the hard work to the social contract)? I'm not sure.

 

[LostSoul]

Does this reliance of the game on the GM and players to bring this stuff into play count as a strength ("the moment of judgment" and all that) or a weakness (I'm reminded of a comment by Ron Edwards somewhere about the difficulties of a system that punts all the hard work to the social contract)? I'm not sure.

I would suggest a weakness. I think the game would be stronger - on the fictional positioning level - if there were distinct ties in the system to character actions/goals in the Heroic Tier and Paragon Paths. Once we hit Paragon Tier in my game I wanted to make a distinct tie between what the PC was doing and their (desired) Epic Destiny; the rules for this are pretty half-assed at the moment, but I think the framework could apply to Heroic -> Paragon as well as Paragon -> Epic.

What I have right now is that, for example, the PP "Planeshifter" that Dhalia Doomfey is on leads into her chosen Destiny of "Planeshaper"; based on that choice, that determines what she needs to do in order to gain a level, once she has enough XP. Since "Planeshaper" is all about finding and controlling an Astral Seed, she needs to research that, costing GP and time. Actually finding an Astral Seed will be necessary to hit level 21, but even if she finds it before then she'll need to research (ie. level up) how to manipulate it.

I think the key here about the moment of judgement is that it's open-ended enough - like the "Choose 2" elements in Apocalypse World - to allow for individual interpretation. I think you want a tie, but you want a flexible tie that suggests certain actions but does not require any specific one (or groups of one).

 

[pemerton]

I would suggest a weakness. I think the game would be stronger - on the fictional positioning level - if there were distinct ties in the system to character actions/goals in the Heroic Tier and Paragon Paths.

<snip>

I think the key here about the moment of judgement is that it's open-ended enough

We haven't introduced any distinct rules for the transition between tiers, but some of my players took it up to an extent in any event, in one case with a bit of prompting from me.

For two, this played out entirely ingame: the sorcerer who wanted to become a Demonskin Adept started collecting demon skins; while the wizard who wanted to become a Divine Philosopher retrained his multi-class from cleric to invoker, relating this to other changes that had been going on for the PC (in particular, a change in religious devotion from the Raven Queen to the trio of Erathis, Ioun and Vecna).

For the fighter, who was tossing up between Warpriest and Pitfighter, it was a mix of metagame and ingame. At the metagame level, there was a lot of comparing of mechanical benefits and so on. But at a certain point I decided to push for the player to make a choice - so when the PCs came across a ruined manor with some witches living in it, which included a pit trap dropping down into a fight with spiders, I had the chief (and most prophetic) witch declare to the fighter that if he wanted to be a pit fighter, he should see how he fared in a pit fight - before then activating the lever to open the pit. As the fighter proceeded to get pretty badly mauled by the spiders, the player decided that this was a sign to the PC from Moradin that he wasn't destined to be a Pit Fighter. He opted for Warpriest instead (and retraining his multi-class from warlord to cleric).

The other two PCs are Questing Knight and Radiant Servant (but probably to be swapped for Battlefield Archer following the most recent cleric errata - the PC is a hybrid cleric-ranger). For each, the paragon path follows on pretty naturally from their core heroic activities - paladin of the Raven Queen, and cleric-archer of the Raven Queen. The paladin PC has quite a degree of fictional positioning built up around him, coming out of play involving both mechanical and purely fictional material, but the paragon path hasn't really been part of this (although we now have to work out a quest). The ranger PC has far and away the least ficitional heft in the game, and the player makes the least contribution in this department - least background, least contribution to and engagement with fiction in play, least use of page 42, most amount of time away from the table during sessions. Given this, I'm happy enough that the paragon path be one like Radiant Servant or Battlefield Archer that requires minimal additional fiction to be brought into play.

I would expect the paragon-to-epic transition to play out similarly.