Game rules are not the physics of the game world

[Thaniel]

It's not that simple. In myth, the "bar" of what sets gods and men apart is much lower than it is in D&D. Anyone remotely close to the power of a 20th level character's abilities (much less accomplishments) would already be a demigod, by virtue of birth or deed. And if we're talking about divine beings, then I would agree that it would seem bizarre if Odin fell off Sleipnir and broke his neck without some sort of chicanery going on.

But to us, raised with our mortal superheroes and legacy of a monotheistic culture, it's ok for D&D characters to have far more power and still be mortal. So, I don't think there are any epic heroes with comparable power to a 20th level D&D character, which is what Kamigaze Midget asked for. I'd love to see a counter example.

Although, Barbarossa sitting in a cave somewhere waiting for the final crisis to come so he can save Germany sounds likea an epic destiny to me, so I think someone like him or King Arthur with a similar myth is as close as we're going to get.

There was a website made a while back that explained how everyone that has ever actually lived could have been at most Level 5. It was very well thought-out and calculated. I recommend reading it.

Unfortunately, I've been trying to google it, but I can't find it. Maybe someone else knows the link.

 

[AZRogue]

Oh, and if an NPC needs to fall off a horse and die from a broken neck, then that's what he's going to do. I would honestly be shocked if a player had a problem with something like that while I was reading off description. Unless the PCs are currently interacting with him, he's window dressing. I know I wouldn't pipe up if a DM I was playing with decided to kill an NPC during a session. Never would have bothered me in 1E, 2E, or 3E. Honestly, it would never, even have occurred to me. Oh well, different strokes and all that.

 

[I'm A Banana]

But is such a thing truly necessary to devote space in the DMG to when common sense should tell me that people get old and out of shape if they don't practice? Maybe I'm a lazy DM, but to use John Snow's example, if I'm running a game in Westeros with Robert Baratheon and I have to stat him out, I'm not going to build him in his prime and then use the rules to downgrade him according to the rules (unless there's later time travel wackiness to be had). I'm just going to build him as he is now.

I mean, the RAW don't support dying early of a heart attack, cancer, or even bleeding to death, IIRC, either. Would you cry foul if NPCs were described as dying in those methods as well?

If they were realistic 'mere mortals,' probably not.

If they were dragon-slaying epic heroes who have tea parties with the gods, hell yes.

 

[Thaniel]

I found the link. Very interesting read.

http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations/misc/d&d-calibrating.html

 

[Terramotus]

If they were realistic 'mere mortals,' probably not.

If they were dragon-slaying epic heroes who have tea parties with the gods, hell yes.

Well, let's be a little bit more clear about things. Obviously if someone is flat-out buddies with deities they could cure cancer, and presumably would have a 5th level cleric buddy anyway to cast remove disease. Magic makes all of the arguments moot because at 20th level death is as simply fixed as a stubbed toe. Let's leave out all of the arguments on how prevalent magic is in the specific setting.

Let's posit a theoretical 20th level fighter. He's the greatest warrior who's ever lived, and has carved a kingdom for himself. He's killed dragons and hydras and all sorts of monsters. He's unique in having achieved that level, and is a legend whose name will live forever.

However, there are no clerics who have remove disease, or at least none close enough that are willing to help him (they didn't like being conquered, dontchaknow). Sure, he's met the gods, and maybe slept with the Goddess of Love a time or two, but he has no divine rank, and none of them are willing to heal him (or are maybe prohibited by cosmic rules).

The DM tells you that he's died of cancer. Do you cry foul at that because cancer isn't in the DMG?

I found the link. Very interesting read.

http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations/misc/d&d-calibrating.html

Awesome link, thanks. I think I had read that a long time ago but had forgotten about it. I'm guessing that E6 was based off of this or similar work. It will be interesting to see how 4E changes those numbers.

 

[pemerton]

In the game world, I (as my character) learn that a man who has actually taken on DRAGONs single-handedly, traveled to other planes of existence, brokered deals between other-worldly ambassadors, all without breaking a sweat, breaks his neck falling off his horse on a casual afternoon ride... I'm never riding a horse again. They are far too dangerous. There is a reason to fear them. To say "ho hum. sh%% happens" in character breaks all semblance of verisimilitude. This is the point. "sh%%" like this does NOT happen to people who kill dragons for a living. At least not in any game that I would ever want to be a part of.

This makes no sense to me.

Suppose you learned, instead, that the person had been killed by a kobold. This is actually possible (if extremely unlikely) under the D&D action resolution rules (the NPC rolls all 1s, the Kobold all 20s including confirmed crits). Does that mean your character would be more afraid of kobolds than dragons? Or just infer that the person had an unlucky day?

Presumably the latter. Why should it be any different for the horse?

After all, people in the real world who fight fires for a living, or fight wars for a living, can still be killed in casual riding accidents. Great physical prowess does not entail invulnerability.

 

[Hussar]

KM - on the Action Points issue, I was referring to 3e, not 4e. But, even in 4e, it's highly unlikely that all creatures will have action points, thus the rules already divide between PC and NPC.

And, I know I said eating. Never post when tired. I meant sleeping. There are no rules requiring a PC to sleep. Does that mean that no one in your campaign setting sleeps?

 

[pemerton]

some of us think that if stabbing someone in the gut is resolved in one case by an attack roll, and in another case with another mechanic that can lead to completely different results, that this is inconsistent enough to destroy the enjoyment of the game.

I have acknowledged that expressly in every post in which I have replied to you. I'm very happy to acknowledge it again. As I've said several times, I do not think that this is really what is at stake in this discussion. That is, I hope we can get more profit out of this discussion than simply telling one another how we like to play. I think we could profitably analyse those playstyles, and some of their implications.

Now I don't really object to anyone who doesn't share that particular playstyle, but you're not really going to be able to convince me that I'm not running the game in at least one of the ways it was meant to be run, or that it would be somehow better for me to run it in a different way.

As just noted, I have never remotely suggested either of these things. I have simply suggested that by calling those who run the game differently "cheaters", "rule-breakers", "ignorers of rules", "lazy", "doers of things merely for convenience", etc, you are (i) describing their playstyle in a pejorative fashion; and (ii) not actually addressing the respect in which their playstyle differs from your preferred playstyle.

If people tell me to make up most of the rules, or if one player can "quarantine the action resolution and character build mechanics to situations that involve the PC, for the sake of gaming pleasure," I'm not.

See, here you (i) mischaracterise the playstyle I am talking about by saying it is about "making up most of the rules", and (ii) further mischaracterise it by suggesting that it distributes narrative power among the players in a way that is unfair or unequal.

IMO, that doesn't really help the discussion proceed.

I was describing my subjective feelings on the matter. I have tried to make it clear that the perjorative terms are exactly what I feel, and not a condemnation of the gamestyle from any sort of objective point, but from my, personal, relative, POV.

My own feeling is that greater clarity can be achieved by describing alternative approaches to play in neutral ways that capture their essence. Thus, I don't describe your playstyle as pedantic or pointless (which a narrativist might experience it as), but as one in which the character build and action resolution mechanics are true descriptions of the entire gameworld. This may be a mouthful, but it I think it does get to the essence.

It's perfectly fair of me to say that, for me, "quaranting the action resolution and character build mechanics to situations that involve the PC, for the sake of gaming pleasure" feels exactly like "cheating."

Yes. That is quite different from saying that it is cheating. And it acknowledges that there is a cogent approach to play that you do not enjoy. Again, I don't doubt your non-enjoyment. But I think this discussion can make more progress once everyone recognises the cogency (for their practitioners) of multiple playstyles.

I hope you accept that I really am not questioning your sincerity. It's just that I think this thread has raised interesting issues, but (IMO) getting to them requires putting personal preferences to one side, at least when it comes to framing (as opposed to expressing preferences for) the different playstyled.

Turning, now, to those issues. First, the sense of "cheating" or "ignoring the rules":

Like if someone who I played Scrabble with could spell words without using vowels, but everyone else had to use vowels.

With respect, that analogy is utterly inapt. In what way does the rules model I've put forward treat one player differently from another? Of course it treats the GM differently - in most standard implementations, the GM will have more narrative control over non-PC game elements than the players do - but that is pretty mainstream for an RPG. It is certainly true of D&D.

Under your approach (as I interpret it from your posts), for example, no player is permitted to choose the result of a dice roll, whereas when the GM resolves matters between NPCs s/he is allowed to choose those results (eg to declare without rolling that the apprentice succeeded on a spellcraft roll to decipher the scroll, then failed on the roll to avoid having it backfire).

But I assume you don't regard yourself as open to the Scrabble-vowel objection - and nor should you. It is equally inapplicable to the rules model I put forward in my post.

Thus, I can understand that play under my model would break your sense of immersion. But I can't understand - at least via the Scrabble example - how it would feel like cheating.

Here is one way I can make sense of the "cheating" idea: Suppose part of the point (challenge?) of the game - or, perhaps, the whole point - is to get everything in the gameworld to come out via the action resolution mechanics. So for a GM or player to simply specify some feature of the gameworld without engaging those mechanics would be to obtain, by simple stipulation, what is in fact meant to be achieved by applying those mechanics. A bit like trying to win at solitaire simply by setting out all the cards in a winning position, rather than playing it through.

Does this capture something like your thought?

If it does, I wonder about a couple of things: how does it fit with the GM's right to decide what the dice say in certain cases (as per above examples)? and how does it fit with the player's right to specify sex, hair colour, eye colour etc of his or her PC? If stipulation is permissible in respect of these matters, why not in other cases? This last question is not meant to be rhetorical, but to try to identify the criteria on which you are drawing what is, for your preferred playstyle, a crucial distinction.

It's not 'rules bloat' if the rules serve a purpose.

Agreed. The problem with RM (and other games for which I'm using RM as a placeholder or metaphor), however, is that because the (non-rhetorical) question asked above is never properly answered, no proper (purpose-governed) restriction is put on the growth of the rules. And, of course, once we restrict the scope of the mechanics for some purpose, we seem to have opened the door to the idea of metagame constraints on rules and their scope. And then you and I are apperently just drawing the line in different places.

Maybe not - it may well run deeper. Regardless of that, I think that the threat of pointless rules bloat really is one of the "risks to fun" that confronts your playstyle. (Just as breaking immersion is one of the "risks to fun" that confonts the narrativist playstyle.)

Turning, now, to a different issue, namely, whether or not D&D contemplates the sort of playstyle I am trying to articulate, in which the action resolution and character build mechanics are not the physics of the gameworld:

I'll even cite chapter and verse:

"Normally, NPC's should obey all the same rules as PC's" (DMG pg. 16)

I'll note the presence of the word "normally". It does run your way, but not entirely your way.

"NPCs should live and die -- and fail and succeed -- by the dice, just as PC's do" (DMG pg 16)

That can't be meant literally, but perhaps only in the context of combat with the PCs. Otherwise, I could never do what you and others have suggested, and set up plots which do fit within the parameters of the action-resolution mechanics, because actually rolling the dice may not give the right result (see apprentice scroll reading example above).

"You might not think it's right or even fun unless you obey the same rules the players do...if there's a default method of DMing, that's it" (DMG pg. 18)

For the same reason, that can't be meant literally. Note also that it refers to a default, not a requirement, and it notes the presuppositions on which the default holds, and which obviously some posters on this thread do not share.

"NPCs gain experience points the same way PCs do" (DMG pg. 107)

I don't have my book in front of me, but from memory that is referring to NPCs fighting alongside PCs (eg Cohorts) and is not a more general statement about advancement (thus, I do not think there is a general presumption in the game that all high-level tower-dwelling wizards were once dungeon-delvers).

"The NPC classes showcase the difference between PCs and the rest of the world" (DMG pg. 131)

That strikes me as orthogonal to the issue, unless you are saying it implies that this is the only difference. I agree that 3rd Ed D&D has a default assumption that NPCs and monsters follow the same character build mechanics as PCs. Earlier editions did not, though, and 4e is expressly abandoning this particular feature of 3rd ed.

Furthermore, bits on NPC traits, on building an immersive setting, and the entire section on generating towns, suggest, no, the rules don't go away when the PC's aren't on the scene.

I don't see how the suggestion arises myself, at least if by "rules" you mean "action resolution mechanics" (with respect to 3rd Ed, I don't dispute the point in relation to character build mechanics).

I think that overall you're right that there is a suggested default position of mechanics = physics, but for the reasons I've given I think it can't be meant quite as literally as it is stated, and once we allow for that, plus for some of the qualifying language (like "normally" and "you might not think..."), then I don't feel that it dictates your approach to play. And from everything I've seen about 4e, I think that the designers have realised that D&D doesn't have to be played you way (though obviously it can be), and are setting out the rules with that thought more clearly in mind.

 

[Lanefan]

Level-atrophy (decaying skills) rules:

But is such a thing truly necessary to devote space in the DMG to when common sense should tell me that people get old and out of shape if they don't practice? Maybe I'm a lazy DM, but to use John Snow's example, if I'm running a game in Westeros with Robert Baratheon and I have to stat him out, I'm not going to build him in his prime and then use the rules to downgrade him according to the rules (unless there's later time travel wackiness to be had). I'm just going to build him as he is now.

Fine, but how do you know "how he is now" unless you know "what he was then"?

As a side note: the ideas presented so far for level-atrophy have been very good, but are missing one thing I'd like to see: that some skills decay while others do not. For example: how, rules-wise, can we arrive at someone who was once a 15th-level Fighter who had Whirlwind Attack as a feat, who has forgotten just about everything about fighting (i.e. functions now as about a 2nd-level) *except* Whirlwind Attack, which he still practises every morning? Or, another example: a once-Wizard who achieved 14th level and learned how to cast Teleport Without Error (or whatever it's called now). Ex-Wiz has forgotten just about everything about wizarding - couldn't scribe a scroll now to save his life - but still studies TWE every morning and can still cast it...uses it every time he needs to go into town,in fact.

In other words, can the rules handle a situation where skills don't decay at a convenient level at a time, but instead decay piecemeal?

Back to main topic: All I want is the rules to be consistent. Inevitably, that leads to rules bloat within a given game; as every time the DM makes an ad-hoc ruling, the precedent thus set in effect becomes a rule for that game. Inevitably, that also leads to there being no functional difference between PCs and NPCs other than PCs have players attached.

Lanefan

 

[S'mon]

I'm wondering if the next time I advertise for players I need to put "No rules-as-physics players" in the ad?