D&D 5E From Loose to Tight - the Oscillation of Editions and D&D Next

[pemerton]

Can't xp

Covered.

I think it's interesting that there seems to be a persistent gap between what the "4e crowd" (at least on these boards) says they like about the game (martial fiat, to use [MENTION=11821]Obryn[/MENTION]'s terminology), and what others posit as the attraction (tactical skirmish linked by freeform roleplay was the starkest description, from Justin Alexander). Mearls, in talking about D&Dnext "modules" to support 4e players, also seems to have taken tactical skirmish to be the attraction.

Maybe the 4e crowd on these boards are a minority of 4e players, and the bulk really do play it for tactical skirmishing? Or is it another case of WotC's market research not telling them what is really going on?

 

[Manbearcat]

Covered.

<snip>

Maybe the 4e crowd on these boards are a minority of 4e players, and the bulk really do play it for tactical skirmishing? Or is it another case of WotC's market research not telling them what is really going on?

Thank you.

I cannot say for sure. What I can say for sure is that the majority of 4e advocates that I have interchange with (in life and on these boards) have a deep understanding of the ruleset, use it to its fullest, and almost universally invoke its thematic depth (especially martial) before banging the tactical depth drum. So then the flowchart: understanding > experience > advocacy of thematic depth. I've also seen this flowchart quite a bit: misunderstanding or antagonistic predisposition > no experience or inexperience > 4e is just a tactical skirmish game and/or not an RPG and/or not D&D. There is plenty in between those two as well, such as: reasonable understanding > tried it for a year > not my cup of tea.

I think its tactical depth was leveraged most deeply, and to great effect, in organized play so it received the most pub/run. Unfortunately, given the history of the D&D culture's embedded antagonism toward "munchkinism" or "powergaming" from 2e onward, this strength worked to make it an easy target for caricature by detractors. Then the friendless toward the metagame (and the system's mechanical tools to leverage it...specifically those that empowered players) were realized and that too came under fire from the same source; embedded antagonism toward "metagaming" from 2e onward, typically associated with "powergaming" (but in this case used for a Narrative creative agenda).

What the designers think I don't know. It does seem that Mearls is a bright enough gaming designer but his gaming tastes seem to wax and wane...and I wonder if his varying stages of design vision is an impulsive byproduct of that. What their internal market research reveals is a mystery. I have little faith in it in a great many markets. All too often there is a shallow understanding of what is truly going on and a trend is often misrepresented by a 1st order function (a magic bullet) because the "reasoning" of it is easily graphed and therefore accessible to board members...and you can then legitimize your position/salary as analyst/tea leaf reader and get your raise/project funded.

 

[S'mon]

Covered.

I think it's interesting that there seems to be a persistent gap between what the "4e crowd" (at least on these boards) says they like about the game (martial fiat, to use [MENTION=11821]Obryn[/MENTION]'s terminology), and what others posit as the attraction (tactical skirmish linked by freeform roleplay was the starkest description, from Justin Alexander). Mearls, in talking about D&Dnext "modules" to support 4e players, also seems to have taken tactical skirmish to be the attraction.

Maybe the 4e crowd on these boards are a minority of 4e players, and the bulk really do play it for tactical skirmishing? Or is it another case of WotC's market research not telling them what is really going on?

I'm convinced that WoTC don't understand their own game. As a tactical game, it is weak - not because of lack of tactical options, but because
those options are 'disasociated' as Alexander says; or I
would say they are insufficiently Simulationist for the
satisfying 'wargamer' kind of tactical play I like. Eg for 'tactical' play I want to be able to map real-world concerns onto the game and get real-ish results. I want to be defending choke points, using cover and high ground, defeat the enemy in detail - all the concerns of a real world military engagement. B/X D&D does that quite well IMO, 4e is terrible at that.
B/X Rothgar leads his squad of hired swords in defending a dungeon door or T-junction, ensuring his men face the orcs at 3:1 or better odds at the point of engagement. At 1st level he stands behind his men - no point letting an orc get even one swing at you when you have 5 hp and die at 0.
4e Rothgar charges into the thick of the orcs, using Come and Get It to draw in his foes then cut them down with Rain of Steel - because he is Rothgar the Mighty and he is Just That Good. B)

 

[S'mon]

BTW re Mearls, I've found that the Knight and Slayer are thematically much weaker than the PHB Fighter, again this may indicate that Mearls did not understand 4e when he was designing Essentials. The other Essentials classes seem ok, though.

 

[Mercurius]

Man, that's frustrating. I just spent the last 40 minutes writing a detailed reply to [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] which I accidently deleted. Rather than try to recreate it, I'll cut the point.

I think the issue here is that the kind of "thematic depth" and "martial fiat" that you mention as being your experience with 4E is, as Manbearcat said, the result of deeply understanding the rules, which is of course related to system mastery. The problem, though, is that the true pleasures of 4E are only "unlocked" through an enormous amount of play. In other words, as was the case with 3E, while it is very easy to learn the basics, to really understand the system - and to be able to "fly" with it - requires a huge time investment, which also requires interest and a certain aptitude with rules systems.

On one hand this is just fine - time investment, interest and aptitude should all be rewarded with a deeper, fuller experience of game play. If I want to spend hours on the Char-Op boards optimizing my character, why shouldn't I be rewarded for it? But the problem is that rules mastery in 3E, which largely took the form of character optimization, has been replaced with the kind of thematic depth that both speak of, so that much of what makes 4E really work requires a massive depth and knowledge of the game, which is one of the major reasons the edition hasn't really thrived and is so castigated in the D&D community.

WotC seems to realize this to some degree but I'm not convinced they know how to address it. Next certainly promises a lot - to serve both those interested in rules mastery and those that just want to play casually. The key, though, is if they can "front load" the game enough so that the bulk of it can be grokked relatively easily, but also have enough left over to please the rules masters.

 

[Libramarian]

I'm convinced that WoTC don't understand their own game. As a tactical game, it is weak - not because of lack of tactical options, but because
those options are 'disasociated' as Alexander says; or I
would say they are insufficiently Simulationist for the
satisfying 'wargamer' kind of tactical play I like. Eg for 'tactical' play I want to be able to map real-world concerns onto the game and get real-ish results. I want to be defending choke points, using cover and high ground, defeat the enemy in detail - all the concerns of a real world military engagement. B/X D&D does that quite well IMO, 4e is terrible at that.
B/X Rothgar leads his squad of hired swords in defending a dungeon door or T-junction, ensuring his men face the orcs at 3:1 or better odds at the point of engagement. At 1st level he stands behind his men - no point letting an orc get even one swing at you when you have 5 hp and die at 0.
4e Rothgar charges into the thick of the orcs, using Come and Get It to draw in his foes then cut them down with Rain of Steel - because he is Rothgar the Mighty and he is Just That Good. B)

This is what I want to call tactical play too. Sneaking around the starboard side of the Sea Ghost in Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh and storming it like a SWAT team was a very satisfying tactical experience, even with low-level 1e character options. (If everyone else is calling something else tactical play, I'm willing to call this "strategic" play...but what is the difference there, really?)

Actually this is covered by the psychographic or whatever profiles in the 4e DMG is it not?

After looking it up, the profile that covers this is called "Thinker", while what you guys like about 4e's "tactical play" doesn't seem to be nailed by any of the profiles; maybe a cross between Actor and Power Gamer.

I could swear that I've seen "Thinker" literally called "Tactician" elsewhere.

 

[S'mon]

Man, that's frustrating. I just spent the last 40 minutes writing a detailed reply to [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] which I accidently deleted. Rather than try to recreate it, I'll cut the point.

I think the issue here is that the kind of "thematic depth" and "martial fiat" that you mention as being your experience with 4E is, as Manbearcat said, the result of deeply understanding the rules, which is of course related to system mastery.

Well my experience with Rothgar that sold me on the potential of 4e was my first ever experience playing the game. I was in no sense a master of the system. In many ways it was a terrible session - the GM had a bad flu, the guy doing Initiative disliked me and kept leaving me out of initiative order; when I found out, the GM didn't even let me count as Delaying! I left early and I never played in that campaign again. Still, it made me want to GM 4e!
I have to say though that it took me nearly 2 years after that to achieve a decent level of GMing mastery with 4e; my first campaign 2009-2010 never really worked right IMO, though there were plenty of fun bits. So I do think you have a point - 4e is not an easy game to understand, and the worst thing is that WoTC don't/didn't understand it - many of their adventures and much of their GMing advice is the absolutely the opposite of what you should be doing (remember that Guards at the Gate thread?) I think a novice GM who takes the right bits from the 4e DMG has a good shot at getting it right, but an experienced GM used to either 3e Linear Adventure Path or Old School Random Sandboxing play who tries to do either of those in 4e is not going to have a great time.

 

[S'mon]

This is what I want to call tactical play too. Sneaking around the starboard side of the Sea Ghost in Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh and storming it like a SWAT team was a very satisfying tactical experience, even with low-level 1e character options. (If everyone else is calling something else tactical play, I'm willing to call this "strategic" play...but what is the difference there, really?)

Actually this is covered by the psychographic or whatever profiles in the 4e DMG is it not?

After looking it up, the profile that covers this is called "Thinker", while what you guys like about 4e's "tactical play" doesn't seem to be nailed by any of the profiles; maybe a cross between Actor and Power Gamer.

I could swear that I've seen "Thinker" literally called "Tactician" elsewhere.

Ah yes, the Sea Ghost was great fun! I just ran that for the first time a couple years ago.

Re "while what you guys like about 4e's "tactical play" doesn't seem to be nailed by any of the profiles; maybe a cross between Actor and Power Gamer" - I guess it would be closest to Actor; it seems related to Dramatist play from the threefold model (GDS). It's the experience of being Leonidas, or Mad Max, in a world that runs on movie tropes and you ARE a Hero - the crunch says so!
But I agree that none of the Robin Laws playstyles seem to address this exactly. Most of the 4e DMG's non-rules non-setting stuff was an emergency copy/paste from 3e "Dungeon Mastering for Dummies", so it's probably unsurprising there was no real THIS IS WHAT 4E CAN DO!! section. Worse, though, there NEVER HAS BEEN such a section in any WoTC book. The closest I see is some discussion by eg Chris Perkins. Mostly I need to read the Sly Flourish blog, or (better) bulletin board posts by the likes of Pemerton and Ethan Skemp, to see it done right.

 

[pemerton]

I think the issue here is that the kind of "thematic depth" and "martial fiat" that you mention as being your experience with 4E is, as Manbearcat said, the result of deeply understanding the rules, which is of course related to system mastery. The problem, though, is that the true pleasures of 4E are only "unlocked" through an enormous amount of play.

Well my experience with Rothgar that sold me on the potential of 4e was my first ever experience playing the game.

I bought the 4e core books when they were released in mid-2008, and started my campaign in Jan 2009 (after my previous, Rolemaster campaign reached its conclusion).

I'm happy to accept that I had a deep understanding of the rules (based on reading the books closely, and following [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION]'s threads on these boards), but I didn't have any play experience with the game when I started GMing it. And I didn't have any trouble getting the sort of game I wanted. (I used Night's Dark Terror, an old B/X modue, as the source for my material.)

it took me nearly 2 years after that to achieve a decent level of GMing mastery with 4e

<snip>

4e is not an easy game to understand

<snip>

I think a novice GM who takes the right bits from the 4e DMG has a good shot at getting it right, but an experienced GM used to either 3e Linear Adventure Path or Old School Random Sandboxing play who tries to do either of those in 4e is not going to have a great time.

I think I found 4e easier to understand because to me it signalled a whole host of departures from some traditional ways of playing D&D (like the adventure path or the dungeon/sandbox), and seemed very obviously influenced by indie ideas around thematically laden characters confronted by situations the GM has deliberately designed to speak to those thematic concerns.

This was a GMing approach I had stumbled towards on my own over the course of 20-ish years (starting with the mid-80s Oriental Adventures). You have to ignore a lot of traditional GMing advice to get there (for example, a lot of traditional advice lambasts metagaming and emphasises world-building over encounter design). I was helped in understanding what I was trying to do, and subsequently in recognising how 4e could help me do it, by my discovery of The Forge in 2004.

I think WotC were too coy in the 4e books, not sufficiently willing to explain how best results from the game required keeping some aspects of the past - like an adventure path, good encounter design matters; like a classic sandbox, player freedom of action is crucial - but abandoning others. For instance, part of the payoff of the ease of monster building and encounter design in 4e is that you don't have to plan out a railroad in adventure path style: you can respond to the players' choices, and the resolution of past scenes, in framing the new ones. And part of the payoff of points-of-light is that it creates a backdrop in which thematically responsive encounters can be framed on the fly without disrupting the verisimilitude of the setting.

EDIT: [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION], we cross-posted. Thanks for the kind words. I agree that Chris Perkins' DM Experience column has good stuff in it, but it's a pity that it is confined to that format, which I don't think has the same sort of uptake or impact as a rulebook would.

I've never seen DMing for Dummies so didn't know about the cut-and-paste you mention. I can add, though, that the Robin Laws stuff from DMG2 is cut-and-pasted from his HeroQuest revised, and it shows badly: the two games are different enough in their mechanics that adaptation was required to make HQ techniques work in 4e.

 

[Manbearcat]

I think the issue here is that the kind of "thematic depth" and "martial fiat" that you mention as being your experience with 4E is, as Manbearcat said, the result of deeply understanding the rules, which is of course related to system mastery. The problem, though, is that the true pleasures of 4E are only "unlocked" through an enormous amount of play. In other words, as was the case with 3E, while it is very easy to learn the basics, to really understand the system - and to be able to "fly" with it - requires a huge time investment, which also requires interest and a certain aptitude with rules systems.

There are many things about 4e that I appreciate greatly. However, I would say that at its absolute core is friendliness toward the metagame. The AEDU framework is emblazoned with thematic, flavor-rich, mechanically-rich powers; exploits (martial), evocations (primal), prayers (divine), spells (arcane) etc. It provides players with never-before-seen (especially martial characters) abilities to impose the vision of their archetype upon the fiction; and some taboo, metagame means to do so (author and director stance). This culminates in powerful narrative sculpting capabilities from the PC-side of the game. From the GM side, you have metagame scene framing tools (non-combat and combat), carrots (milestones/APs, quest xp embedded in advancement), and outcome based design which gives the GM unprecedented control in consistently conjuring the challenges/pressure/adversity that they're looking for the PCs to respond to.

As an aside, this is the primary reason why I see nothing in 5e that appeals to my group's sensibilities. It seems that, once again, the metagame is absolutely taboo...and the game is built around that premise.

I think there are three ways to have immediate understanding of the fundamental design framework of 4e;

1) Exposure to indie gaming systems that promote this friendliness toward, and leveraging of, the metagame (this could be through play or just reading).

2) An evolution of playstyle that is burned out on a creative agenda that states flatly that the metagame is a subversive concept within the RPG credo. A playstyle that has slowly (or radically), organically moved toward overt metagame tools/props/concepts; failing forward, fortune in the middle, bangs and kickers or any player authored thematic story element (hence the thematic preparation and efforts at coherency in my games), metagame carrot incentives (FPs, APs, etc), etc. A playstyle that has appreciation for and understanding of the pacing of a scene-framed game versus an open sandbox or an adventure path.

3) No exposure to RPGing and the D&D cultural meme that metagaming is subversive to RPGs.

I had both 1 and 2. I got what 4e was either aiming at or fell into (most unlikely) immediately. There was no system mastery required to produce what I was looking for. I'm better now than I was at the beginning but the game that we're playing now is not too far from the game that we started with.

If you do not possess either 1 or 2 within your background and strictly played 1e gamist sandbox/dungeon-crawl, 2e massaged story/DM force AP, 3.x/PF process sim sandbox, then 4e conceptually and mechanically may look like you've got a different horse hitched up to your worn old wagon. However, after a little bit of exposure (and maybe some disagreement with the subversive metagame philosophy), you may find it an elegant, user-friendly way to get where you want to go. Or not.

This is what I want to call tactical play too. Sneaking around the starboard side of the Sea Ghost in Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh and storming it like a SWAT team was a very satisfying tactical experience, even with low-level 1e character options. (If everyone else is calling something else tactical play, I'm willing to call this "strategic" play...but what is the difference there, really?)

I think its a mix of both. Strategic to put the odds in your favor and tactical in the moment of conflict to secure victory.

In my book, solely strategic would be such that the fight is utterly won without any steel drawn or resources deployed during a scrape (such as drowning a dungeon with an endless decanter or dimensional shifting a heward handy haversack bomb, etc).

Actually this is covered by the psychographic or whatever profiles in the 4e DMG is it not?

After looking it up, the profile that covers this is called "Thinker", while what you guys like about 4e's "tactical play" doesn't seem to be nailed by any of the profiles; maybe a cross between Actor and Power Gamer.

That works for me. If there was a Seer or Oracle (something that implies metagame leveraging), that should be in the mix.

I think a novice GM who takes the right bits from the 4e DMG has a good shot at getting it right, but an experienced GM used to either 3e Linear Adventure Path or Old School Random Sandboxing play who tries to do either of those in 4e is not going to have a great time.

I absolutely agree with both of these points.

I think I found 4e easier to understand because to me it signalled a whole host of departures from some traditional ways of playing D&D (like the adventure path or the dungeon/sandbox), and seemed very obviously influenced by indie ideas around thematically laden characters confronted by situations the GM has deliberately designed to speak to those thematic concerns.

This was a GMing approach I had stumbled towards on my own over the course of 20-ish years <snip>. You have to ignore a lot of traditional GMing advice to get there (for example, a lot of traditional advice lambasts metagaming and emphasises world-building over encounter design). I was helped in understanding what I was trying to do, and subsequently in recognising how 4e could help me do it, by my discovery of The Forge in 2004.

Same backgrounds for both of us. Its no coincidence that our ultimate testimonies are the same.

If I take the formor naval commander PC that I spoke of earlier (in this thread? Or maybe in another?), I can frame scenes around him that either overtly call on that thematic material (homeless and unappreciated vets, pirates, corrupt beaurocrats, begrieved families who have lost their beloved father/husband who died in battle for his brothers-in-arms/country, fallen heroes needing a second chance, anything relating to sailors/boats/ships/ports/navigation, etc) or imply it and I know that my player is going to take the reins over and sculpt what comes next. I don't have to force any story and I really don't have to work too hard at playing out the color of the thematic material or making it over-the-top. We've got common understanding and he's got the thematic underwriting/machinery within his PC and the backing of the mechanics/resolution tools to take things over and off we go. This is why I work hard pre-campaign to make sure I'm on the same page as my players thematically and with regards to their genre expectations. If I know those things through and through, it is unbelievably easy for me to compose something off the cuff, throw it at them and know they will recognize it as relevant to their characters and the rest of the session will emerge coherently from their resultant decision-making.