Wyrmshadows said:
Don't see this at all. Recognizable to the players is not recognizable to the characters unless the characters have encountered said creature before. There is no meta-gaming at my table so memorizing a monster manual won't save you. If I catch someone overtly and shamelessly metagaming I will severely dock them EXP.
This is already changing the rules (there will be no rules for XP-docking in the DMG, I'm pretty sure). I was really talking about the RAW (as I am predicting them to be, based on information available so far).
Of course, if you really forbid metagaming then you will also have to drop APs from the game, at least, and also other aspects as well (like the default assumption that PCs are safe in a PoL if their players have not chosen to seek adversity).
Wyrmshadows said:
This isn't going to be Elder Scrolls Oblivion where no matter what's going on outside, the town is going to be a safe zone. That is pure videogame conceit and has no place in an PRing game that presumes an interactive setting with proportionate action and reaction.
Ah, I see you are also intending to abandon that default assumption.
Wyrmshadows said:
Moral questions are posed in the context of events and situations set up by the DM often as a consequence of PCs actions or inaction.
In many RPGs the players also get to establish context, events and situations, and determine what counts as a successful resolution of them.
Wyrmshadows said:
The DM still contains the key to the cosmology
Well, the RAW describe a cosmology for the game. Of course any given group might choose to play with a different cosmology.
Wyrmshadows said:
The PCs can decide that eating babies is good and that rescuing innocents is evil but that won't stop the rest of the world from differing on these points if the DM has decided that eating babies is evil and aiding the innocent is good.
<snip>
Moral ambiguity can add great depth to a game however once things cross into either good or evil, it is the DM who will show the players how the setting (and its folk and mortals) reacts to their actions. A lack of alignment mechanics does not shift all good and evil into a state of post modern subjectivism.
The history of moral philosophy is really OT, but I would note that the greatest moral subjectivist in European philosophy are Thrasymchus (a protagonist in the Republic) and Hume (an eightenth century Scottish philosopher) - neither is a postmodernist.
On the substantive point, I don't see what the relationship is between the GM controlling the moral universe of the game, and avoiding ambiguity or subjectivism. To me, all this would seem to guarantee is that the players are hostage to the GM's subjective (and potentially ambiguous) moral sensibility.
Btw, part of the logic of mechanics like those for social challenge resolution is that the GM does not have sole control of NPC reactions in the game world.
Wyrmshadows said:
POL is not a campaign setting, it is a design philosophy.
Yes.
Wyrmshadows said:
Players are on equal footing by reading up on the setting they are playing in and getting a sense of the setting.
This is not really consistent with the PoL design philosophy.
Wyrmshadows said:
Getting in the way of player excellence!?!?! I never realized how much my 23+yrs of DMing has been the history of shattering the dreams, hopes and ambitions of my poor players. I guess I should just tell them that I am hanging up my exclusive DMing cap so as to do a little more narrative cooperativism.
You seem to have misunderstood my post. I have never met you, as far as I know. I have no idea how you GM, nor what your players make of it. Indeed, with respect, I have little interest in these things.
I am doing my best to desribe the design logic, and implications for play, of 4e. Part of that is the support, by the game, of mastery of system excellence (this contrasts with the notion of "excellent play" that Gygax elaborates in the 1st ed AD&D rulebooks, which is linked no to system mastery but rather skill in operational play).
Wyrmshadows said:
System excellence is something that the designers should worry about. IMO players working toward system excellence sounds like code for munchkin "beat the system" gaming which is another thing I will not tolerate at the gaming table.
I'm not sure what you think complex character build and action resolution rules (of the sort that 3E introduced into D&D) bring to the game. But rules mastery, and play based on that rules mastery (or system excellence, as I put it in my earlier post) is one natural such thing.
Wyrmshadows said:
I will always determine the degree and frequency of adversity,
OK. This is not what W&M (sidebar, p 20) indicates to be the norm for PoL in 4e.
Wyrmshadows said:
Subject to the above, this will mostly be under the GM's control in 4e, although there are complications (eg the players, by choosing to engage a situation in a certain way, may be able to transform it from mere background or backdrop into an encounter).
Wyrmshadows said:
In 4e, as in 3E, there will be detailed rules for XP per challenge, and XP required per level.
Wyrmshadows said:
the use of dice or role-playing in order to overcome challenges
In 4e, as in 3E, there will be detailed action-resolution rules. Btw, how do you use "role-playing", as opposed to dice, to resolve combat in 3E?
Wyrmshadows said:
Rule 0, the penultimate rule of the game allows me to do supercede anything in the rules to the benefit of my (and my player's) campaign and preferred playstyle.
What do you regard as the ultimate rule?
And I'd note that not every gaming group allows the GM sole prerogative to determine what ruleset will be used to RPG.
Wyrmshadows said:
I don't see where you are getting your conclusions.
Well, I've indicated all the features of the game I'm inferring from. These have all been stated publicly, either in W&M or in the various blogs and so on cited on the ENworld newspage.