Flavour First vs Game First - a comparison

[Raven Crowking]

Many of the contentious 4e mechanics - healing surges, daily and encounter powers, etc - are obviously not meant to simulate anything at all.

My point exactly. They exist independent of a "flavour" framework, which may or may not be tacked on later. If one describes 4e as being based on a mechanics-first approach, it is the mechanics by which its merits are determined. A+ on the mechanics.

However, if one is not as concerned with the mechanics (perhaps because one doesn't need to be able to intuit higher mathematics to utilize a role-playing system), then the mechanics-first approach can damage one's enjoyment of the game. As it does mine.

YMMV.


RC

 

[GlaziusF]

4E My character is whacked to within an inch of his life - the rest of the party thought him dead until he somehow got up after a fight. Using 4E mechanics, I'm back to full strength the next day if not a fraction earlier with no magical healing whatsoever. Great for getting me as a player back into the action without holding the rest of the party up from the adventure. A solid mechanic. In terms of flavour, absolutely, diabolically artificial.

First of all, you can be up and running in 5 minutes after you've been "beaten within an inch of your life", assuming you have either 4 healing surges or a slightly smaller number and a friendly leader archetype. Faced with your own initial story of what happened - "I was a pile of mangled limbs 5 minutes ago and now I can do cartwheels" - why do you conclude that the underlying mechanic must be flawed, rather than admit the possibility you need to tell a new story?

Consider this: hit points do not represent what you think they represent - they are not a spectrum between perfect health at full and a mangled pile of limbs and organs at -CON. That's what they may represent for NPCs after facing the business end of a bugbear ranger with serrated swords, but for PCs hit points are simple: they're your will to fight. This isn't Journey to the West, where Goku and Gojo pound on each other for 20 hours before one of them starts to get tired - fights take seconds, perhaps a minute or two. You don't die at 0 hit points, you pass out because you can't take the shock. Sometimes, yes, people can't recover from a shock and the body shuts down. But when you go from full hit points to single digits you only take the single bleeding wound that represents your getting bloodied - perhaps it's the only strike that even lands straight on.

That's my story of hit points.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

*snip*
That's my story of hit points.

Well, that's one interpretation. The other is you still have mangled limbs, but you keep going on, because you're soldiering on.

Hit Points (as found in D&D since its first edition) will probably be always require some "careful" handling.

However, there is (IMHO) a big difference between abstracting hit points (because wound location/severity simulation runs into a lot of difficulties in actual practice) and saying fighter powers are not magical, but sure as heck seem supernatural, because they are not magical in the traditional way.....just don't think about it.

Actually, I think it's just that we have grown too accustomed to hit points to think much about them. The physical state of your character is important for your immersion, since it decides about how he might react and looks.

If you have been just damaged brought to -3 hit points and bled for two rounds, and then have been fully healed by a heal spell - are your clothes still covered in blood? If you're down to 50 % hit points, are you limping or tired, or still running around as if nothing happened?

Having to decide whether your character is tired or not, or is covered in blood or not, and having to decide whether your fighting techniques are super-powered or the mix of skill and luck (controlled by the player, not the character) can be both very important to your "immersion" in the character.

 

[I'm A Banana]

LOST ANOTHER ONE



I'll be back later. But in summary:

In order to enjoy a game of D&D, people need to evoke a fantasy story. Otherwise, I'm just going to go play checkers instead of spending $90 and blowing 4 hours and trying to coordinate 6 peoples' schedules. I can have fun with checkers just fine. I enjoy checkers. D&D is worth the effort because it lets me do something checkers can't let me do: evoke a fantasy story.

If D&D were all about game-first design, it would be checkers, and then I'd just frickin' play checkers.

 

[Set]

My apologies if this has already been covered, as I haven't read the entire thread yet (working on it though).

I see this as a false dichotomy.

For me, form follows function. For it to have a flavor other than unpalatable, it has to work as a game. For it to work as a game, it has to be tasty, and all of the flavors need to meld together pleasingly into a complete and consistent dish. I don't think the two can exist without each other, although there are games that certainly seem to have tried, and, no great surprise, they tend to fall down. (Everway, for instance, a game of pure flavor with only the most cursory nod towards the concept of mechanics.)

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

LOST ANOTHER ONE

Try to hit at least CTRL-A -> CTRL-C to mark and copy all text before hitting submit. Even better (if you keep having the problem) - write in notepad before replying!

 

[GlaziusF]

Well, that's one interpretation. The other is you still have mangled limbs, but you keep going on, because you're soldiering on.

Hit Points (as found in D&D since its first edition) will probably be always require some "careful" handling.

In 4E, that other interpretation is wrong. Nothing about it fits the way people recover from those kind of injuries. You are not slowed if you have a mangled leg, you are not weakened if you have a mangled arm, and it is not easier for you to take a bleeding wound and/or pass out, as it would be to a character who was devastated by injury but only just got to the point where they were up and walking.

Furthermore, it would be wrong to amend the mechanics to reflect these sorts of injuries, as there are many powers which slow or weaken their targets but do less damage to compensate. Why even bother using those when doing enough damage takes care of that on its own? It would also be wrong to say "well, my character can run just fine even though his knee's bent the wrong way because he's that much of a trooper". You can go fine through that but when some hobgoblin wings you with a flail it slows you down? No.

In 3E it's more open for interpretation, yes, in that you can get wounded badly enough that you can't recover from it for several days or even a week. But in 4E you can recover from even the worst combat wounds with a good night's sleep. The two possible explanations are a) no combat wounds are ever severe enough to heal in more than a day or b) this is Fist of the North Star where no matter how many bones snap and muscles tear dudes are in one of two states: combat-ready or exploderated. And explanation B is inconsistent with the presence of badstats other than exploderation.

If you have been just damaged brought to -3 hit points and bled for two rounds, and then have been fully healed by a heal spell - are your clothes still covered in blood? If you're down to 50 % hit points, are you limping or tired, or still running around as if nothing happened?

In 4E, the answers are: your clothes were never covered in blood to begin with, unless it was the blood of your enemies. "Bloodied" does not mean you bathed in the stuff, it means you took a single wound that bled or otherwise exposed you to environmental damage effects like drifting mushroom spores or tiny but voracious sharks. If you're shocked into unconsciousness by a blow that shaves off the last of your hitpoints and a cleric drops Cure Serious Wounds on you (or, uh, Clarion Call of the Astral Sea, that being the other utility that reliably restores more than half health) then you're back to consciousness and your wound closes over. If you're down to 50% hit points you have been battered around a lot but only taken a single wound that actually mattered. Angelic Presence wears off when you're bloodied - enemies previously trembling in fear realize they can actually hurt you. Dragonbreath recharges right away when the dragon gets bloodied - it's content to take things in moderation but the shock of one of those overgrown monkeys in a tin can actually _hurting_ it gives it an adrenaline rush. And lastly, if you run out of healing surges and have to move around on a local or global scale when you're bloodied, you're not actually slower or less aware than you previously were. You can try to play it up a little bit for effect, but don't be that guy in a knee brace who sets down his crutches and does the Roger Rabbit.

Having to decide whether your character is tired or not, or is covered in blood or not, and having to decide whether your fighting techniques are super-powered or the mix of skill and luck (controlled by the player, not the character) can be both very important to your "immersion" in the character.

Yes they are. But sometimes you can make the wrong decisions. For example, a fighter who shatters Orcus's exarch's skull with his mailed fist and says "oh, I'm just an ordinary guy" is like Scrooge McDuck saying "ach, I'm no' rich, laddie". Just because you don't shoot off pretty sparklies that doesn't mean you don't have a Destiny waiting for you, just as powerful in its own way as the archmage-aspirant wizard who pinioned the exarch's arms with glowing bands of mystic force.

 

[Reynard]

How about the 1e rules for Druids and Monks having to fight for every level beyond a certain point? These are entirely flavour based mechanics, and damned good flavour at that. The idea of the Grand Druid is fantastic.

Until it comes time at the table when the entire group has to stop and let John do his Druid challenge to level up. And then get shafted because John failed his challenge and loses a level. Not a huge deal in 1e since levels weren't quite so important, but, still a pretty large time sink.

The thing I take issue with in this assessment is the suggestion that John doing his Druid thing somehow robs the other players of their enjoyment of the game, that the players aren't sitting around the table enjoying being spectators for one of their friend's potentially most awesome game moment. I've done one-on-one fights/negotiations/love scenes/etc... as a DM, with all the other players still sitting at the table, and when it has been important to the player involved, it has almost invariably entertained and engaged the other players regardless of the status of their character at the time.

Just because D&D is a group activity doesn't mean that the group of PCs have to be involved in every situation for the group of players to enjoy it. Spotlight scenes/fights/whatever can be overdone, of course, and the DM needs to pay attention to whether he's boring his other players, but in my experience players start drifting off into la-la land, reading game books or watching TV when its not their turn in combat a lot more than they do it during another's player's spotlight time.

 

[Greg K]

The thing I take issue with in this assessment is the suggestion that John doing his Druid thing somehow robs the other players of their enjoyment of the game, that the players aren't sitting around the table enjoying being spectators for one of their friend's potentially most awesome game moment. I've done one-on-one fights/negotiations/love scenes/etc... as a DM, with all the other players still sitting at the table, and when it has been important to the player involved, it has almost invariably entertained and engaged the other players regardless of the status of their character at the time..

This has been my experience as well.

 

[Spatula]

However, there is (IMHO) a big difference between abstracting hit points (because wound location/severity simulation runs into a lot of difficulties in actual practice) and saying fighter powers are not magical, but sure as heck seem supernatural, because they are not magical in the traditional way.....just don't think about it.

It's funny you mention hit points, which are the original and ultimate "don't think about it" game construct. Yes, they are abstract because it's simpler than explicitly modeling hit locations and damage. But that doesn't require that HP dramatically increase over a character's lifespan, which results in 10th level fighters that "are not magical, but sure as heck seem supernatural, because they are not magical in the traditional way..." (magically and supernaturally tough, that is)

The HP explosion leads to all sorts of silliness, which has been gone over for close to 30 years now, so I won't rehash it here. Note that 4e actually removes a few of the HP/realism roadblocks. The big one is, surges ensure that healing received is relative to your HP total, so you don't get the diconnect when a cleric uses a CLW first on the 10th level fighter and then on the 0th level peasant (the static amount of healing provided by the cure spells being just as much of a game construct as surges are). And being restored to full HP with a night's rest removes the issue where the fighter takes twice as long to recuperate from zero than the wizard - although any % would have worked just as well for this purposes (such as, "you get back 25% of your total HP with each night's rest").