FORKED - Game Fundamentals - Player Trust, Your GM, and Cake

[pemerton]

I think it is almost goes without saying that different rules sets - character build and action resolution mechanics, encounter building guidelines, XP and treasure rules, etc - will lead to different play experiences.

These differences are only compounded by the different ways that individual groups use those rule sets and drift them in various ways (eg tweak the action resolution mechanics, ignore item creation rules or wealth by level guidelines, etc).

The reason some people dislike 4e is that it doesn't give them what they are looking for from an RPG (for the most vocal critics on these forums, that seems to be something like Gygaxian play of the 1st ed AD&D variety).

The reason some people like 4e is that it does give them what they are looking for from an RPG (for me, at least, a system that delivers what it promises on the box - engaging gameplay with a heavy but by no means exclusive combat focus, and strong elements that emerge out of that gameplay).

I think the more strict codification of rules aspects (both 3.x and 4e do this in varying degrees) is a reaction to this phenomenon. "Balanced" rules are an attempt to say to the player (and GM), "Hey, you can trust this system to provide the experience you want, even if GM Bob or Player Dave tries to break it." Obviously it's impossible for the rules alone to create the experience--but it seems that mechanical rules balance is now a naturally assumed starting point for successful role-playing.

If by "balance" we mean "designed to achieve what is intended" then yes, the standards of rules design are improving. Compare 4e to a game like Rolemaster, which offers in-depth characters through its character build rules, but then kills them off willy-nilly (at least at low levels) through its action resolution mechanics. A good RPG should be better designed than that (eg in Basic D&D the impermanence of PCs is offset by the ease of making them up - this is emblematic of good design).

If by "balance" we mean "providing a fair challenge for the players across a wide range of PC build strategies" then I think that D&D 3e and 4e are better designed for that than is AD&D in either edition. But that is not a criticism of AD&D. AD&D was simply not designed to cater to, or reward, PC build strategies (although this changed towards the end of 2nd ed, with an ever-increasing profliferation of Handbooks and Players' Options). AD&D play is simply not about the mechanically-defined PC in the same way that contemporary D&D is - to use various slogans, it's about "challenging the player rather than the PC", it's about "operational/squad-level play", it's about "resource management", it's about surviving the Tomb of Horrors.

I think the trend in D&D design away from AD&D towards character-build oriented play isn't about improvements in any objective sense, nor about recognition that "balance" makes for a better game. It's about changing preferences among RPGers. Put crudely, in my view the degree of overlap between traditional wargamer preferences, and RPG player preferences, is now much lower than it was when AD&D was designed.

Such an idea makes me wonder what this says about us as gamers, and as a society.

I adhere to the school of sociology that says that it's the nature of our sort of society to keep working on technical designs and superseding them. RPG and other game design is not exempt from this. Designers work harder and harder to make sure that their games deliver, in play, the experience that they promise. But what that experience is is obviously different from game to game.

I wonder if rules systems would naturally gravitate, or shift in focus, if the number of good, solid, "lifestyle gamer" GMs increased--GMs with the know-how and sense of fair play to make role-playing sessions fun.

This seems to assume that there is a single "fun" in roleplaying. I don't agree with that. Different players are looking for different experiences from RPGing. While it's obviously worthwhile trying to grow the pool of committed GMs (and I think tigther game design with better written rulebooks helps that) I think this is orthogonal to the question of what sort of experience games are designed to deliver.

 

[Chrono22]

Bad GMs are probably the biggest contributor to lapsed players after Real Life.
I've seen players lose all interest in a game because the few bad experiences they have with a GM color the rest of the game for them.
Does having a ton of new GMs really advance the hobby? Just like with players there are twitch GMs. I don't think this is a clear cut case of numbers = better. Sure, new GMs can add new players. But if a system isn't attracting the kinds of GMs that can retain and attract players rather than repulsing them, what then?

 

[Doug McCrae]

I think the trend in D&D design away from AD&D towards character-build oriented play isn't about improvements in any objective sense, nor about recognition that "balance" makes for a better game. It's about changing preferences among RPGers. Put crudely, in my view the degree of overlap between traditional wargamer preferences, and RPG player preferences, is now much lower than it was when AD&D was designed.

This is a very intelligent analysis, imo. OD&D takes a significant step away from wargames with the idea of one figure per player, instead of each player controlling many figures. But, with henchmen and hirelings, it's still not that removed from wargaming. The party is large, almost a small army, as described in Greg Svenson's account of an early Blackmoor session. As in wargaming, figures die easily. Which works, as you say, because it's also very easy to generate a new PC and each player is expected to have a stable of characters.

D&D has continued to move away from the wargame model throughout its history, characters becoming more complex, and PC death becoming rarer. AD&D 1e has death at -10 hp instead of 0 and mentions fudging to save a deserving player's PC. I believe that in this period there is now a stronger culture of starting at higher than 1st level, which is also mentioned in the 1e DMG. 3e has max hit points at 1st level, as well as death at -10. It has more mechanically detailed PCs with skills and feats. However there are now criticals, and damage is higher. Imx, death was fairly frequent in 3e, probably too frequent given the increased complexity of char gen. 3e had, I think, not gone far enough in terms of keeping PCs alive, considering how complex they now were.

Which brings us to 4e, which has characters equally as complex (maybe a little moreso) as 3e, but a lot less fragile. Much higher hit points, particularly at 1st level, while damage is about the same as it was in 3e.


Addendum:
With the acquisition of a stronghold and a small fighting force at name level in OD&D and 1e it almost seems the idea is to start off as a rpg and become a wargame. You start the game controlling a single figure and end it controlling hundreds. Dave Arneson seemed to play a rpg/wargame hybrid. His First Fantasy Campaign is mostly about a literal military campaign with armies of thousands invading the land of Blackmoor. I believe this was the culmination of his Blackmoor campaign. Maybe it's the LotR-esque idea of starting with a group of individuals and ending with mighty armies clashing and the fate of the world at stake. It just works as a story - rising tension, increasing scope.

Very early on, characters in Arneson's game seemed to start as men-at-arms, the equivalent of 1st level characters. But in the manuscript he first sent to Gygax, he has the PCs starting as Heroes, Chainmail's equivalent of a 4th level character. (Gary altered this for OD&D.) So even prior to the publication of OD&D Arneson seems to have moved in a similar direction to that in which D&D later moved, having PCs become less fragile.

 

[Mesh Hong]

A good DM has to heed the advice of Mr Mastadon Farm, and take swatches out of all materials.

 

[ExploderWizard]

You've got it mostly right. For me, the lack of trust in the DM came way before 3e was announced. A couple of years of playing 2e showed me that DMs were not to be trusted.

At first it was easy to trust the DM. He told me what things happened and I trusted them to be right. Then I played in a group with 13 different players(who showed up randomly for games) most of which were also DMs. We started up a list of all the games we were playing(which, including non-D&D games amounted to nearly 30 games) and voted every week to see which one we'd play. Our average session length was 14 hours(in which we'd probably play 3 different D&D games since we'd vote again when we got bored) and then we started up 5 or 6 other D&D games during the week to keep us occupied between sessions.

It was because of that many different DMs and that much gaming that I realized that there was no consistency. One DM would say there was no buying of magic items in his game while another one gave free ones out every session. If you wanted to grab an enemy, one DM would make it an attack roll, another one would make it a dex check, another one would tell you it wasn't possible, another would make it a strength check with a penalty made up by him on the spot, and another one would make it a dex check but if you failed you were likely to take enough damage to kill you.

I was smart enough to do the math and realized that you needed to start gaming the DMs. Bob might not like grappling, so you didn't use it in his game because he's make it hard for you. James might believe that fire spreads at great speeds, so if you set anything on fire in his game, you could expect that before you had time to leave, the entire building you were in would be down on you. Sara might really like spellcasters and be willing to allow nearly any interesting plan you could come up with for a spell. So using a magic missile to cause an entire building to fall on an enemy killing them instantly would work in that game and was a better idea than using a fireball.

And that was just the DMs personality differences. That wasn't even counting the differences in their rules knowledge and their abilities to just make mistakes. One of our DMs didn't know that the enhancement bonus of weapons applied to both to hit and damage back in 2e. A player once bet her that was the rule and if he was right, he was allowed to get any magic item he wanted. He ended up with something stupidly powerful out of that bet.

So, yeah, I learned not to trust DMs. When all the articles came out introducing 3e they had a similar theme: We are going to have rules for all of those small things that didn't have rules for them in 2e. You won't have to make up rules for grappling, we'll give those to you. You won't have to decide exactly what effect that "cloud of acid gas" has on walls or doors, we'll have rules for that. My thought was "FINALLY! Now when I play 3 different games I won't have to remember 3 entirely different sets of rules."

For such a large group rotating so many different games I can see the confusion that a rules light system could bring to the situation. To me this issue is less about trust and more about information overload brought about by too many DMs running games concurrently. If each individual DM remained consistent and fair within his/her own multiverse then I don't see how trust was lost.

If the expectations of the player base included having all the games running with the same rules in play and the DM's had all agreed to this decision then I could certainly see a breach of trust. If the expectation was there and never properly communicated then the DM's are not at fault.

The whole deal with the bet and the magic item indicates a rather immature playing group. Did all this craziness go on with an adult group?

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

That wasn't 3e, though: that was the internet.

Yes, it was. 3E was just the ammunition. 3E didn't kill trust in the DM, people on the internet did.

I think this is true. As Majoru Oakheart amply documents above, pre-3e D&D varied widely in practice from DM to DM. 3e's standardization of lots of formerly loose rules indeed seems to be a response to that problem. The information exchange permitted by the internet, however, leveled the playing field much more than any sort of rules standardization did.

Standardizing rules isn't the problem I'm referring to. Tightening the rules is OK, IMO, although I'm with billd91 in that I wouldn't go so far as to call the rules light versions of D&D before 3E a problem.

What I'm talking about is not trusting the DM to use his creativity outside of the ruleset to develop engaging stories, interesting challenges, deep mysteries, and ingenoius masterminds. This isn't a direct edict of the 3E ruleset, but the sense of entitlement players developed to have the DM explain all of his plans within the rules as written. I'm not referring to grappling or the effects of particular spells, I'm talking big picture.

 

[Woas]

Do people find this trust issue crop up in other RPGs?

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

Do people find this trust issue crop up in other RPGs?

The only other RPG I've seen the trust issue come up in is Rifts, but for a different reason. You really have to trust your GM to provide a good game for such a wide split of power. And you have to trust the uber-powered characters players not to trump your fun.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Does having a ton of new GMs really advance the hobby? Just like with players there are twitch GMs. I don't think this is a clear cut case of numbers = better. Sure, new GMs can add new players. But if a system isn't attracting the kinds of GMs that can retain and attract players rather than repulsing them, what then?

Then how does a system find and attract quality DMs? How can a gaming company define and attract quality DMs? Are you all right with never playing because there isn't a DM available to run a game or because all the slots are filled?

 

[ExploderWizard]

Then how does a system find and attract quality DMs? How can a gaming company define and attract quality DMs? Are you all right with never playing because there isn't a DM available to run a game or because all the slots are filled?

Quality GMing comes from doing. There is no mass production that will duplicate this.
A game company can do it's share by creating and producing a good game. Good game masters are developed over time. Experienced game masters on the staff available to answer questions in some way
(such as a messageboard) really help.

In a game such as a typical roleplaying game where so much of what goes into actual play comes from the creativity and input of the participants instead of the written game contents, there is no factory standard
of quality from which to grade GM's.

Once standardized game contents begin dominating play we see meaningful participant input, including DM quality, to factor into actual play on a somewhat lesser scale.

One thing that can hinder the development of good GM's is too strong a system RAW. While supposedly providing a good backbone to lean on, a complex and powerful set of RAW can have the opposite of the intended effect on brand new GM's. Such a newbie running a game for a group of savvy veteran players can be overwhelmed easily. If the rules cover everything and the players know it all by heart, then the GM
can easily get caught up in system and never learn how to make sound rulings.

It is kind of like learning to drive in a new car that starts with a button push, auto navigates to a destination and parks itself. When handed the
keys to an antique stick shift and asked to drive a few blocks the driver is lost.