Free Will and Story

[sheadunne]

What spells does my wizard have? Fireball and scorching ray . One of my players has scorching ray, and as soon as she gets the opportunity, I can guarantee fireball will be taken. I have an illusionist character who picks spells that allow her to perform trickery. That's her schtick. These characters might not be worth anything in your esteem, or that of some internet community folk, but they still make for great characters

oh they're classic spells and fun at that, but they usually require a greater investment in spell slots. 1 haste spell does more damage than a fireball, and after you cast it, you don't have to bother casting anything else that combat. You just sit back and watch your spell at work. It's the long game. I find a lot of people want the excitement of the big flashy spells, but they're like crack and players run out of spells rather quickly using them.

Illusionists can be a lot of fun, but they require the right type of DM, otherwise they get ignored and nerfed. I gave one a go for a PF game a little while ago. Did pretty decently but the spell selection was a bit disappointing. They really need to up the selection for the illusion school.

 

[Dwimmerlied]

I think what I'm trying to do discuss my feelings on this idea of taking away spells because they are too powerful. The argument made seems to be that they are over-powered because they potentially make a wizard more capable at any given party role or ability than anyone else. A counter was made that there are good reasons that a wizard won't choose these spells anyway if the role is filled by another character, and I agree with this.

Further, and I think @sheadunne your point illustrates this for me; you need to be analysing the game on a certain level to be doing this stuff in the first place. I honestly didn't know that haste was the more economical spell on a damage breakdown. But I'm still a gamer. So that brings into question how much of a problem it really is for all gamers. No gamer I know offline knows anything about optimisation. They make wizards because they are cool. Some of them like to blast things with balls of flame. Surely you've all met the gamer who loves to play the creepy necromancer that can summon the undead. And honestly, its gonna kill that if its a bad choice because you should optimise. Even with my level of knowledge, character concepts I have would rarely get past the drawing board because they would not be at all optimised, and that sux.

To address more of the debate as I understand it, if most people who game were optimisers, I'd suppose that it would be a good idea to limit character options, because then that would make most people happy. We'd have to stretch our suspension of disbelief to do so, but perhaps that would be necessary. Conversely, where most people don't play like this, I'd argue that you can put all the cool stuff in without being in fear of the optimiser population (who, mind you, will find ways to break everything anyway no matter what you do, because its what they do). And to make certain it all runs smoothly, because we KNOW creative rules will always result in unforseen combinations, we use the "dm fiat".

Now, DM Fiat has never been a problem in my games, but I believe that in these debates, a few people are hijaking it and using it as a dirty word. Anyone who suggests its useful, well they say "nah. thats simply the dm being a power tripper." In fact in my time reading these boards (much longer than my membership), ive seen this argument over and over again. These people disregard the fact that most (admittedly not all) people who use dm fiat have clearly (and perhaps exasperatedly) said that they simply use it to make the game run smoother for everyone.

I can understand the currency of narrative control. Its a nice thing to think about, and personally would not stand against it. I don't like unwieldy mechanics or nerfing imagination as its means to do so.

 

[pemerton]

The "conventional" D&D approach is that the character affects the game world, and the player controls the character, and has absolutely no other influence.

This may be the conventional approach for 3E - I wouldn't really know. It's not the conventional approach for Gygax's AD&D, though - the player by rolling a saving throw can affect the gameworld without controlling his/her PC (for instance, Gygax explains that a successful save against dragon breath by a fighter chained to a rock might mean that the fighter noticed a cleft in the rock and ducked into it).

Also, in classic D&D the player, by having his/her PC collect treasure, can make his/her PC more capable in the gameworld as a direct metagame benefit. That is not an infuence on the gameworld causally resulting from the actions taken by the PC within the fiction (eg no one, including Gygax, supposes that collecting treasure is an ingame cause of increased prowess).

The point of metagame mechanics is to give players the ability to affect the game world, distinct from the abilities of their character.

Yes. Classic D&D has them (saving throws, XP and I would argue hit points are some of the key ones). 4e has them. I'm not competent to judge on 3E, but perhaps it has fewer of them (I don't really undertand its XP system, though at first blush it seems an odd mix of ingame and metagame; likewise its hp; its saving throws are obviously very different from classic D&D saving throws).

Thus, a true metagame mechanic has nothing to do with the character. It is not dependent on what class or level the character is, and the character is not aware of or in control of them. That's why I gave the plot point example.

The character doesn't spend the resource; the player does. But it is a non-sequitur to argue from this to the conclusion that metagame resources cannot be differing parts of PC build from character to character. In fact, in RPG design t's utterly ubiquitous for metagame resources to be built into particular class choices (for instance) for balance purposes. That's why classic D&D fighters have more hp and robust saving throws. That's why thieves in classic D&D have a more generous XP table.

You've mentioned Cortex a couple of time: Marvel Heroic RP very obviously uses metagame resources to balance across different PC builds (lower dice roll proportinately more 1s and hence generate more Plot Points, to balance for the lower totals and lower effect dice).

Burning Wheel permits players to spend build resources on Traits that earn metagame points (Persona Points, which can be spent for bonus dice or death avoidance). Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed has the same thing, where a player can use build resources (in that case, feat slots) to acquire a feat that will accrue metgame points (Hero Points, I think they're called).

What you have in 4e is some conventional, some metagame, and no clear distinction between the two. One power might be clearly metagame (i.e. something that the character cannot do), and another might be an ability of the character. Thus, no one really knows what a lot of the rules even mean. Certainly, for diehard fans its easy enough to rationalize these mixed in-game/metagame rules, but that lack of transparency and all the consequences thereof are kind of a problem for the rest of us.

In my view this is a distinctive and appealing feature of D&D. You have mechanics which can be treated as metagame or ingame from moment to moment of narration. Hit points and (non-3E) saving throws are time-honoured examples. 4e adds skills and some powers to that list.

Marvel Heroic RP does the same things, interestingly. For instance, during a Transition Scene Plot Points can be spent to activate a Specialty (the closest thing that game has to skills) so as to produce a Resource (a bonus die for future dice pools). Is spending the Plot Point a player action only, or a PC action too? That seems to me to depend completely on how it is narrated at the table. Suppose I (a player) spend a Plot Point to activate my Covert Specialty in order to get access to a passkey that will get me into the secret HQ. I narrate this as me scrounging around, digging up my old contacts, and eventually persuading one of them to make me a fake passkey. In that narration, it seems to me that spending the Plot Point is not just something the player did, but also something the character did: expenditure of the Plot Point correlates to effort spent within the fiction by the PC to acquire the Resource. But another narration might be "As I'm walking home in my secret identity, I notice a wallet lying on the ground. I pick it up, and luckily within it I find a passkey belonging to a low-level employee of secret HQ." In that case, spending the Plot Point is clearly happening at the player level only.

Neither narration is obviously preferable. Each makes sense within the fiction, and each gives the GM opportunities to develop future complications (fake passkey vs stolen passkey).

The 4e warlord is versatile in the same way. Consider a power that grants an ally a bonus action. This can be narrated as taking place ingame ("The inspired PC pushes harder, urged on by the valiant commander.") It can be narrated as purely metagame - this is how some lazylords play. And some PCs might flip back and forth - eg the "princess" warlord might sometimes be pure metagame, but when she screams for help or issues a biting rebuke then the bonus action actually has the PC's action as its ingame cause.

I guess I don't see what "all the consequences" are that are "a problem for the rest of us". If you're happy with metagame abilities you're already happy with introducing material into the fiction that did not have, as its fictional cuase, any PC's action. With 4e you just keep doing that when the inclination strikes you.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I suppose it goes back to the question, how many times do you take back fighter damage because it's overpowered?

I've done it. And there are some nonmagical abilities I've revised for being overpowered.

DMs traditionally take it personally when their narrative is under attack.

That is a natural tendency for many people. However, I would argue that a large part of good DMing is learning not to do that.

Since casters are primarily the ones impacting their narrative

Not my experience (NME?)

 

[Ahnehnois]

You've mentioned Cortex a couple of time: Marvel Heroic RP very obviously uses metagame resources to balance across different PC builds (lower dice roll proportinately more 1s and hence generate more Plot Points, to balance for the lower totals and lower effect dice).

It does. And this is an important point. There are two big differences (with 4e). The first is that these are different games with different expectations. The term "fighter" in a D&D context carries certain expectations with it, as do a laundry list of other terms. Not that expectations can never be violated, but they are important.

The other is that the Cortex games are simply better. Because there are no pre-existing expectations to the contrary, they are free to create mixed in-game/metagame characters, as long as they do it well. And their implementation is much simpler and more direct. When I read a Cortex game ability, I can tell what it will do mechanically, and I can tell what it represents (whether it be the character's aptitudes, or some less tangible factor). They're not wasting space and spreading out abilities over hundreds and thousands of pages of rulebooks; everything has a purpose. And everything is explicitly costed, without a confusing resource management scheme or restrictive class and level-based structure to obfuscate that.

The problem when these conceptual arguments get conflated with 4e is that it'd effectively a built-in straw man. Metagame mechanics (and even systems that don't make a metagame/in-game distinction) can work. Tactical games can work. A gamist competitive approach and approach to PC balance can work. Thing is, when I think of those things, I don't think of 4e. I haven't read everything that WotC ever wrote about 4e, but to me the idea that 4e is "tactical" or "gamist" or "storygame" or "balanced" etc. etc. is not so much what the designers were thinking, they're more excuses that someone came up with well after the fact for things that were written by people who didn't know what they were doing at the time. So I think it actually makes more sense to talk about MHRP than about 4e, because the former is at least a reasonably well-executed version of what it is.

I guess I don't see what "all the consequences" are that are "a problem for the rest of us". If you're happy with metagame abilities you're already happy with introducing material into the fiction that did not have, as its fictional cuase, any PC's action. With 4e you just keep doing that when the inclination strikes you.

Thing is, the inclination doesn't strike me. That's not what I'm looking for in a D&D game.

To extend a parallel discussion, why make life so hard for the DM and the players? There's all this talk about balancing character options, which I see occasionally being an issue in play but not that often. As a DM, I can fix balance issues. But what comes up more often is questions about what the rules mean, and what's going on in this shared reality we've created. When a player asks "what does this feat mean? Is it something I trained for? Is it natural talent?" or "what does my character feel when he's using this ability?" or "how am I 'out of rage'?" I need to have an answer! Simply having game mechanics and letting the DM (or players) figure out what they mean in the game world whenever the "inclination strikes" is not an acceptable solution to me. It's what [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] would call "lazy design", in my view.

Perhaps we should coin a new term for "Mother, what am I?" style play?

 

[pemerton]

these are different games with different expectations. The term "fighter" in a D&D context carries certain expectations with it, as do a laundry list of other terms. Not that expectations can never be violated, but they are important.

The other is that the Cortex games are simply better. Because there are no pre-existing expectations to the contrary, they are free to create mixed in-game/metagame characters, as long as they do it well. And their implementation is much simpler and more direct. When I read a Cortex game ability, I can tell what it will do mechanically, and I can tell what it represents

<snip>

Metagame mechanics (and even systems that don't make a metagame/in-game distinction) can work. Tactical games can work. A gamist competitive approach and approach to PC balance can work. Thing is, when I think of those things, I don't think of 4e.

These seem to be mostly biographical facts about you. Which isn't to say that they're unimportant (especially for you!) but I don't feel that they shed much new light on 4e. After all, I am a long-time D&D and Rolemaster GM, and I had no trouble working out what 4e was about, and have no trouble making sense of 4e PCs. When I first read through the PHB I could tell what the PCs could do mechanically, and what it represented.

Concrete example: how is a Warlord's Inspiring Word more opaque than (say) She Hulk's "Break the 4th Wall" ability?

The player of the fighter in my 4e game played a paladin in our earlier RM campaign, and played a druid/monk and (I seem to remember from stories he's told) a wizard in his prior 3E campaign. He hasn't had any trouble working out how to play a 4e fighter, and when he uses Come and Get It with his Black Peak Halberd no one seems to have any trouble imagining what's going on - it's classic fantasy polearm deftness, like Monkey and Sandy back in the TV show when we were kids.

Now my ease with 4e from the first time I read it is mostly just a biographical fact about me (reflecting in part my familiarity with some of the Forge-y design principles that inspired it, I suspect). And fact about my players are just more biography. But for me this tends to reinforce my sense that there is nothing inherently flawed with 4e's game/metagame interface if I can so easily come to grips with it, and my players also (one of whom has played only Rolemaster before 4e, and others of whom have played D&D and a bit of Top Secret back in the day, but not a particularly wide range of RPGs).

 

[N'raac]

Because it's not specializing for the wizard? I mean, Fly and Invisibility are both pretty bog standard spells and not exactly eating up a whole lot of resources.

You get two free spells at each character level and limited spell slots. If you can use one to match what another character can already do, or to do something your teammates can't do, which is the better choice? Invisibility is not Inaudibility, but if played as such, the wizard gains power.

Arcane Eye, AFAIC, is a basic spell that every wizard should be bringing out. Why? Because, as a scout, in 3e, it's flat out better than the rogue can ever hope to be. I mean, true, I need to have Darkvision to go with it, but, then again, so does the Rogue. At minimum, I get 2100 feet of exploration out of this spell with zero risk. That's a heck of a lot better than hoping the rogue doesn't botch his stealth check or doesn't meet anything with scent or tremorsense.

Rogues can hear and pick objects up. And rogues last more than 1 min/level. In my games, the players tend to augment existing capabilities with spells like this - let's send an Arcane Eye out to determine where the Rogue's attention is best focused (but not at L7 - the wizard generally wants a flashier spell), and turn the much stealthier Rogue invisible to further enhance his own capabilities.

See, this? This right here? This is what I'm talking about. The DM is disallowing spells, not because the player did anything wrong or outside the rules, but simply because the DM "changes the spell on the spot" to create a more "reasonable" effect.

I believe this is exactly what I'm referring to. See, N'raac, it's not about ignoring the game mechanics at all is it? The player here is playing exactly by RAW and RAI. There's no ambiguous language here. The player used the spell in exactly the way it was intended - to blind large crowds. And the player gets screwed over because the DM doesn't approve of his carefully constructed encounter being trashed by the caster. How do you explain this? The player hasn't done anything wrong, yet, his spell is being changed by DM fiat for no other reason than the DM disapproves.

So making Teleport LoS because you think it's a problem is great, but don't nerf a spell that Hussar likes? To me, if you're going to change any spell "because it's unbalanced", you also let the player change his spell, as the ground rules have changed. Beyond that, I'm OK with the glitterdust spell. You were telling me how powerful Teleport was and I disagreed with your interpretation. I would, however, suggest that any spell considered a "must have" at its level should be looked at again for signs it is overpowered. I see very few of these in practice, though.

I've seen enough "I do whatever I damn well please" players that I have no desire to game with those again either. There's a lot of space between the extremes of "everything I wish to do must be approved by the GM" and "my character goes insane and attacks the party booga booga". I have no desire to play at either extreme.

 

[Ahnehnois]

These seem to be mostly biographical facts about you.

That is partially true (and it would be rather hard for any of us to dissociate from our experiences). And, indeed, person experience (or lack thereof is a driver behind) some of the broader discontent with some of these issues. However, the idea that the Cortex approach, while emphasizing metagame elements, is simpler and more coherent is important and independent of my perspective.

 

[Starfox]

To address more of the debate as I understand it, if most people who game were optimisers, I'd suppose that it would be a good idea to limit character options, because then that would make most people happy. We'd have to stretch our suspension of disbelief to do so, but perhaps that would be necessary. Conversely, where most people don't play like this, I'd argue that you can put all the cool stuff in without being in fear of the optimiser population (who, mind you, will find ways to break everything anyway no matter what you do, because its what they do). And to make certain it all runs smoothly, because we KNOW creative rules will always result in unforseen combinations, we use the "dm fiat".

In a group of all power-gamers balance is generally not an issue. Everyone will pick a high-power option. But for the non-optimizer crowd, balance is a bigger problem IMO. Either because one of the players is a better optimizer than the rest (perhaps without realizing it) or because one stuck gold in his build without realizing it, the power curve between different characters can vary wildly. So casual players are actually more dependent on a game having a structure that is inherently balanced.

On the other hand, a more casual game group might not care so much about balance, and feel it is ok that the wizard is the director while everyone else is an actor.

 

[Starfox]

the player by rolling a saving throw can affect the gameworld without controlling his/her PC (for instance, Gygax explains that a successful save against dragon breath by a fighter chained to a rock might mean that the fighter noticed a cleft in the rock and ducked into it).

As meta-powers go, this is very modest, but

Suppose I (a player) spend a Plot Point to activate my Covert Specialty in order to get access to a passkey that will get me into the secret HQ. I narrate this as me scrounging around, digging up my old contacts, and eventually persuading one of them to make me a fake passkey. In that narration, it seems to me that spending the Plot Point is not just something the player did, but also something the character did: expenditure of the Plot Point correlates to effort spent within the fiction by the PC to acquire the Resource. But another narration might be "As I'm walking home in my secret identity, I notice a wallet lying on the ground. I pick it up, and luckily within it I find a passkey belonging to a low-level employee of secret HQ." In that case, spending the Plot Point is clearly happening at the player level only.

Again, this is pretty modest metagame influence. I can easily accept much more metagame-y abilities. In my homebrew, I have a Mastermind schtick like this:


Mastermind

Limit Break (This means it is an ability that can only be used with some preparation, or as a culmination of an action sequence)

You are a true mastermind, always one step ahead of the opposition. You make secret master plans that insure your success. You are able to bring hidden resources into play at any appropriate time. This is more common amongst villains than among heroes.

At any point during a scenario, you can reveal yet another well-placed resource. This can be followers, equipment, a secret weapons cache, a hidden vehicle; the only limitations are that you must have access to the resource and be able to motivate it as a part of your secret master plan. If this involves some action you secretly took earlier in the scenario, based on information you did not yet have at that point, so much the better. - this is where Masterminds really shine. For example, it is completely reasonable for you to have placed a tracer on the villains car in scene 1, even tough you did not know he was the villain until scene 3, and then use this tracer in scene 5 to find his whereabouts.

A master plan will never solve a plot, but it allows you to have the resources and preparations you need to set up interesting scenes and tackle difficult challenges. The main use is to avoid lengthy pauses when you have to stock up on information, gear, and resources.