5)Recognize that no game system is perfect, but that the only way game systems get BETTER is if people point out their flaws so they can be analyzed and corrected.
D&D 4E Forked Thread: 4e And 4th Wall, was multiclassing - is Arcane Initiate too powerful?
- Thread starter Lizard
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5)Recognize that no game system is perfect, but that the only way game systems get BETTER is if people point out their flaws so they can be analyzed and corrected.
You are correct I'm misuing the term "fourth wall" -- I don't know of a word for "Those Ed Wood moments when you see the cameras in the shot". Call it an "Outtake moment" -- when you see the actors acting and then suddenly they all break down laughing and drop character and sometimes switch accents.
4e, to my mind, goes out of its way to remind us, at all times, that it's a game. Economics is only one aspect. Power which ignore the nature of the target (why is a massive quadruped as easy to knock prone as a biped? And see the thread on "Come and get it!") is (are?) another. Auto-scaling difficulties is a third. Marking is a great big huge throbbing fourth, probably the worst because it's such a major part of combat and so bloody impossible to rationalize. And so on. Any one individual thing can be argued about, debated, and picked to pieces, but the sum total of them puts a severe strain on suspension of disbelief. As a DM, my job is partially to narrate the mechanics, to turn the die rolls and hit points into flavorful descriptive text that makes the world come alive, and 4e constantly fights back. It works against me, rather than with me.
4E is just as much a simulation as 3E, there are just as many rules and mechanically it's nearly identical, the difference is what is being simulated. 3E simulated a party of specialists who rely on each other for healing, protection and support on an adventure, 4E simulates a bunch of ubers who can do everything and don't need magic to heal them as they just shrug off damage between scenes.
As for OP, I don't know of a resale value being specified for 3E, but often DMs used what got put into 4E anyway as that is sensible, why do you think it got put into 4E? Some adventures would specify resale price, such as Age of Worms which states the merchants pay 95% for gems, 30% for equipment.
Now admittedly the sale price makes somewhat less sense in 4E than it did in 3E since identify doesn't cost 100GP for a merchant, just 5 minutes time, and there aren't spells to put fake auras on items so there is less risk to the merchant, and items can be resized, so that female orc breastplate which a merchant would NEVER EVER EVER be able to resell for anything but scrap could actually be used for something.
The issue to me isn't selling to merchants; both 4e and 3e make it clear that if you sell to a merchant or do your selling "off screen", you'll be shafted, and this is both acceptable and "realistic" -- ask anyone who'se sold Magic cards to a vendor.
The problem is that 3e leaves open the possibility of PCs finding non-merchants to sell to, while 4e (at least for rituals) comes right out and states "No one will pay more than half price; anyone who might be tempted to already has their own ritual books and dedicated scroll makers. Sucks to be you." The reasoning, from a game balance perspectice, is obvious -- there's no limits on scroll manufacture. If you have clients, turning mastered rituals into scrolls is easy money, and since 4e dropped the wealth limits by town, there's no end to what you could make. So, instead of more elegant solutions, 4e just slams down an absolute. (Of course, the DM can ignore it. The DM can ignore any rule he doesn't like, in any system, in any game. It's a meaningless answer, as it effectively says all criticism, whether of a crude means of solving a game balance problem or of a broken power/spell/monster, is null.)As I said above, though, I don't want to get bogged down in economics. Nitpicking particular details isn't my concern here. Others have said "4e lets you be a HERO!" Well, fine. A hero defending WHAT? A world which pretty much only exists to let him look heroic defending it?
My ability to care about defeating the Big Bad in a game is directly proportional to my ability to care about the world I'm allegedly saving, to immerse myself in this alternate reality. Maybe I'm wrong, and in the hands of a skilled DM, I will find 4e to be just as immersive as 3e was. It just seems to me that in 4e, the DM has to do a lot more work to make the world "come alive", to hide the edges of the sets and keep the mikes out of the shot, because the game rules are more intrusive than ever.
Well, I deleted the picking on pieces (marking is impossible to rationalize? really?), but I could just as easily conclude this:
That all the "simulationist" putting together modifier after modifier and constant fiddling with minutae slows things down incredibly and exposes the inner workings of the game, putting a severe strain on suspension of disbelief. As a DM, my job is partially to narrate the mechanics, to turn the die rolls and hit points into flavorful descriptive text that makes the world come alive, and previous editions fought back, constantly interrupting the narrative with meaningless trivia and rules-lawyering. 4e works for me, rather than against me.
IMO if any edition broke the fourth wall by "exposing the scaffolding" it was 3/3.5, where pretty much everyone had to know all sorts of little rules to even build an effective character. Fourth edition's much more like a movie set... do some things come off a little contrived? Well, yes, but have you ever paid attention to a movie or read a story?
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To continue the movie analogy, hiding the unreality of the experience is both the director's job and the actors' job. For instance, the director hands the actors an empty mug and says "Drink out of that as if there's coffee in it." The actor can be uncooperative when the cameras start rolling and chuck the empty cup at the camera and yank the boom mic into the shot.
Similarly, players can be immersed in an unrealistic system if they put in their part---If they're not constantly pestering the DM with things like "Well, I'm going to look for another buyer, and another, until I find someone who would pay the same price I would." They know, just as the DM knows, that the absolute idea that all buyers are going to pay the same price is ludicrous, but they're intentionally bringing that to light instead of sticking to the script.
I've been operating under the assumption that the sales rules are default rules for adventurers hocking unwanted goods, and that only someone intentionally making hay on an internet forum would read them to not permit exceptions for sales roleplayed or contextualized in such a way that its logical for someone to pay a different amount.
Its like arguing that in 3e, a 10 foot chain is always 30 gold pieces, NO EXCEPTIONS. Buying a chain from the newly opened Super Chain Discount Emporium? 30 gold pieces. Buying a chain from a slimy duergar adventurer "supplier" who lives in the Underdark and is the only person with a chain within 10 miles of monster infested tunnels when you need the chain RIGHT NOW and the duergar knows it? 30 gold pieces, 'cause that's what the book says.
Its like arguing that in 3e, a 10 foot chain is always 30 gold pieces, NO EXCEPTIONS. Buying a chain from the newly opened Super Chain Discount Emporium? 30 gold pieces. Buying a chain from a slimy duergar adventurer "supplier" who lives in the Underdark and is the only person with a chain within 10 miles of monster infested tunnels when you need the chain RIGHT NOW and the duergar knows it? 30 gold pieces, 'cause that's what the book says.
Gort
Explorer
Agreed. They're not rules, they're just guidelines. If they don't work for you, change them.
Nail
First Post
So, here's your problem.
You don't like PCs making magic items. I get that.
All the protestations about "not realistic economy" are just window dressing to your central concern.
Now you know what you don't like, you can change it in your game. Remove the ritual "Enchant Magic Item" (or increase its level) and your golden.
LostSoul
Adventurer
I think gamism becomes too "obvious" when you are no longer role-playing; you no longer have a character, you have a game piece. You can do this in most RPGs, though in most of them your experience will suck and you're better off playing Heroscape.
The line for too dry simulation is hard to draw. I'd probably put it down to the point where you're no longer spending most of your time role-playing; you're spending most of your time thinking, "What is the world like?"
An example would be long, drawn-out combat systems that take forever to resolve in order to get a realistic result.
And I think the line for too much "narrativism" is the same as gamism; it's when you're no longer playing a character, you're sitting around trying to do the group storytelling thing. (This is what Universalis feels like in play for me.)
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