"Fun"

[wedgeski]

Forget the guards, forget the stupid rations - the real issue is the "there's no fun to be had outside of a (combat) encounter" idea, which is idiotic advice in something claiming to be an RPG.

Which was invented by a poster earlier in the thread, and which you have now exaggerrated and reinforced. The DMG, however, is NOT saying this.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Tabletop role-playing games are neither console nor online role-playing games. They are not television programs, comic books, novels, plays, poems, memoirs, documentaries or any other medium. Tabletop role-playing games are their own medium, unique unto the world, and as such should not play to the strengths of other media; they should resort to their unique and distinct strengths, and not at all attempt to instead make inferior versions of other media by way of aping them- which is what D&D 4.0 does, and demonstrates that neither the designers nor anyone else at Wizards of the Coast understands what tabletop role-playing games are, let alone how to make full use of their unique qualities to best effect.

The strength of table top role-playing game does lay in the freedom they generate on what you can do. The DM can react to the players, the players react to the DM. This kind of open-ended interactivity is what sets it apart from other media.
The elements of story-telling found in role-playing games still rely on the same tropes of TV series, novels and even computer games with a story. You still need bad guys, twists, hooks, red herrings, conflicts and all the other things that make a story interesting. And getting into details that do not affect the story are still elements that can often be boring and uninteresting.

I see no need to play this v4.0 game; everything it does, I can do in a superior fashion by logging into World of Warcraft, firing up Mass Effect, or breaking out a copy of Decent. This is the folly that Melan (at the RPGSite) labeled "The Tyranny of Fun", and it is a short-sighted fool's errand that will prove to be bad for the hobby in due time.

So, you'd play 4E without a GM?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Except perhaps *listening to* another player describe her PC carrying a heavy backpack full of clay over to the pottery wheel for 20 minutes, then discuss with another potter the weather, his family life and different varieties of clay for another hour.

Don't make me link to a Web site where people do nothing BUT discuss such things, because I totally will.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

So, a movie can't be dseep if it isn't wall to wall dialogue?

This post stood out to me, because I saw it a lot when I first started coming here and was still on the wall for 4e.

Hey, get this? There are choices between the two extremes.

That's one of the two issues people have with this statement. The idea that 1) Nothing is fun except encounters, and 2) If you don't have an encounter, YOU WILL NEVER HAVE AN ENCOUNTER AND THE WHOLE GAME IS JUST TALKING, OH LORD, WHY DOES THIS GAME EXIST IT'S SO BORING, I SURE WITH I COULD KILL SOMEONE.

But the thing is, that's a stupid scarecrow argument, a retarded logical fallacy, and falling onto it means that, not only is your argument flawed and worthless, but you can't argue it yourself. And people are seeing this argument in the DMG itself. That's why they're raising their eyebrows.

 

[hong]

That's one of the two issues people have with this statement. The idea that 1) Nothing is fun except encounters, and 2) If you don't have an encounter, YOU WILL NEVER HAVE AN ENCOUNTER AND THE WHOLE GAME IS JUST TALKING, OH LORD, WHY DOES THIS GAME EXIST IT'S SO BORING, I SURE WITH I COULD KILL SOMEONE.

But the thing is, that's a stupid scarecrow argument, a retarded logical fallacy,

Indeed, it's a stupid argument and a retarded logical fallacy. Hint: "encounter" subsumes talking.

 

[Ydars]

Well said ProfessorCirno!

I did not say that a wall of dialog equals deep; I just said that some of the deepest things in life are found in moments of stillness. Yet it is also true that some of the most boring and frustrating things in life are also moments of stillness.

In an RPG; a DM should try to move the game in a way that means that everyone is engaged. Sometimes action also acheives this, but much of the time, action without reason is meaningless.

 

[Serendipity]

Instead, we've got badwrongfunism forever enshrined in the DMG, and thus, if goal are met, a whole generation of D&D players that don't waste time on unfun stuff like talking to guards, exploring dungeon coorridors or managing "real" resources.

In fairness, it seems that every edition of the DMG (including the first) had moments like this where you have to just take a step back, and ignore the developer on their soapbox.

 

[Corinth]

The strength of table top role-playing game does lay in the freedom they generate on what you can do. The DM can react to the players, the players react to the DM. This kind of open-ended interactivity is what sets it apart from other media.

This is correct.

The elements of story-telling found in role-playing games still rely on the same tropes of TV series, novels and even computer games with a story. You still need bad guys, twists, hooks, red herrings, conflicts and all the other things that make a story interesting. And getting into details that do not affect the story are still elements that can often be boring and uninteresting.

This I disagree with, as I disagree with the idea that there is anything at all to do with storytelling that is required. Instead, it is closer to history and real life. The world is treated as if it were real, in the same way that Peter Jackson treated Middle-Earth as if it were history, and the characters therein treated like real people (in all the glory and horror that real people can be; heroism is not something restricted to fiction). It is inconvenient, anti-climatic, at times cruel or kind without apparent reason, and ambiguous in a way that only this approach can achieve. Tabletop role-playing is at its best when it focuses upon the wholesale immersion into a secondary world (to borrow Tolkien's label), living there (as it were) and learning from their experiences in the same general principle that the children what visit Narnia learn from their adventures therein.

Why? Because tabletop role-playing games are capable of being more than glorified hackfests on rails, and that which is most excellent (in the proper sense of the word, "arete" in the Greek, from which "hero" and "heroism" properly derive their meanings). Because the paradigm explicit in 4.0 produces a false sense of achievement, like giving a child an award for finishing a hurdle race when he had to jump a few inches off the ground, and that can't be had in campaigns where everything is matched like its staged that way and set up in places that feel more like Potemkin Villages or pieces of the Hollywood back lot than a living, breathing place that exists on its own and independent of the players' characters- who are not artificially-inflated into precious, unique snowflakes but instead win and earn their place through a combination of player skill and genuine effort in-character against opposition that is not (in rules, at the very least) different from them. The most excellent that this hobby has to offer cannot be reproduced by any online of console due to it being derived from the unique qualities of the human mind; as it produces an experience superior to Classical Drama (which is the best that other RPG media can hope for) when done right, and to not reach for that greatest quality is (as the kids say) an epic failure.

If I want the experience of a different medium, then I will go to that medium and not waste my time (and others) with misusing a tabletop role-playing game for that purpose- use the right tool for the job. If I want to tell a story, I will write one. If I want to engage in railroaded hackfests, I will find a suitable console title and go to town. If I want a lot of theorycrafting, I will log into World of Warcraft and talk shop in Guild Chat with my guild's raid and class leaders. If I want to see a lot of mindless violence and explosions, then I can find a lame action film to kill the time. If I want to engage in a secondary world, living out a second life as best I can and making the most of what I've got to work with, then I call up the crew and play some tabletop role-playing game or another.

I apologize for the long-winded response. The unspoken assumption that tabletop role-playing games require any form of story-telling in the mode of most fictional work as a medium is wrong, and at times I must correct that notion.

So, you'd play 4E without a GM?

No. I won't play 4.0 at all. I would sooner play The World of Synnibarr at the creator's table.

 

[hong]

This is correct.

This I disagree with, as I disagree with the idea that there is anything at all to do with storytelling that is required. Instead, it is closer to history and real life.

It is?

Why? Because tabletop role-playing games are capable of being more than glorified hackfests on rails, and that which is most excellent (in the proper sense of the word, "arete" in the Greek, from which "hero" and "heroism" properly derive their meanings). Because the paradigm explicit in 4.0 produces a false sense of achievement,

Of course it's a false sense of achievement. Elves aren't real.

If I want the experience of a different medium, then I will go to that medium and not waste my time (and others) with misusing a tabletop role-playing game for that purpose- use the right tool for the job. If I want to tell a story, I will write one. If I want to engage in railroaded hackfests, I will find a suitable console title and go to town. If I want a lot of theorycrafting, I will log into World of Warcraft and talk shop in Guild Chat with my guild's raid and class leaders. If I want to see a lot of mindless violence and explosions, then I can find a lame action film to kill the time. If I want to engage in a secondary world, living out a second life as best I can and making the most of what I've got to work with, then I call up the crew and play some tabletop role-playing game or another.

... or you could just kill the monsters and take their stuff. Saves an awful lot of faffing around.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

If I want the experience of a different medium, then I will go to that medium and not waste my time (and others) with misusing a tabletop role-playing game for that purpose- use the right tool for the job. If I want to tell a story, I will write one. If I want to engage in railroaded hackfests, I will find a suitable console title and go to town. If I want a lot of theorycrafting, I will log into World of Warcraft and talk shop in Guild Chat with my guild's raid and class leaders. If I want to see a lot of mindless violence and explosions, then I can find a lame action film to kill the time. If I want to engage in a secondary world, living out a second life as best I can and making the most of what I've got to work with, then I call up the crew and play some tabletop role-playing game or another.

A different medium means that is not me (or my pretended self whose action I control) that is part of the story. It's someone else, and I am just watching.

There can be scenes with a guard that can be meaningful. If they tell me something about the city (the guard is friendly, gruffy agressive, helpful, does not let me pass), or if they tell us something about the character ("I greet the guard friendly" "I look at the guard as if he was just an insect" "I am nervous"), but, just like in a movie, this scene doesn't have to be repeated. It's just enough to give color to my character and make other players understand the character - it's establishing the PC. But repeating it doesn't serve any more purpose and won't increase the enjoyment of the game. The only thing required for immersion now is keeping the established attitude up.

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All that said, the example in the DMG isn't perfect. More information or contrasting "fun" with "unfun" could be done better.