Game vs Game System

[rounser]

What is the point of this? "Oh, it's cool because they said so?" You accuse me of being contrary in another, and I can't read this any other way. Why can't it simply be the fact that a magic-based railroad would be equally as impressive to people of that world as the real-world railroad was to us when it was first introduced? Or did you not know that people were actually amazed and impressed by it?

I'm saying it doesn't matter what WOTC says people think of it, because if it wasn't there except as the premise of a module (as GH's spaceship is) then there wouldn't be an issue to talk about. There is an issue, and the lady doth protest too much.

It's actively trying to be pseudomedieval and doesn't incorporate gimmicks... like an alien spaceship crashing on a pseudomedieval world... right.

I'll believe that when me turns purple and smells like Rainbow Sherbert.

GH plays a "straight man" of pseudomedieval toeing-the-line for this kind of genre joke. In Eberron, the genre is IMO incoherent and can't play this kind of joke because it's warped to begin with. That's the price it pays for the pointless extrapolation of D&Disms, the allusions to 1930s pulp (why is D&D doing contemporary setting pulp when it's a specialist in fantasy setting pulp already? the mind boggles), the magitech, and the overall incoherency of genre theme.

GH's is simple - pseudomedieval, backed up by the Chewbacca Defence for all those D&Disms. Eberron designers forgot the essential "look at the silly monkey" element, and actually boasted about how they'd made the man behind the curtain make sense. The man behind the curtain is never going to make sense, and if you made him make sense, then he loses his magic. The Greyhawk way is much better - look at the silly monkey.

 

[The Little Raven]

In trying to be everything to everyone it cannot do this.

Eberron doesn't try to be everything to everyone. Have you actually read it?

 

[rounser]

Eberron doesn't try to be everything to everyone. Have you actually read it?

Not in detail - even the writing style, naming style and artwork turns me off, and I don't own the book (in fact, I find it quite remarkable just how many aspects of this setting seem to annoy me, for entirely independent reasons). I was referring to the kitchen sinking of "everything D&D has a place in Eberron" as trying to be everything to everyone. You may argue that they're not the same thing, but you must admit that fulfilling that script is setting design by marketing department.

 

[The Little Raven]

You may argue that they're not the same thing, but you must admit that fulfilling that script is setting design by marketing department.

But that doesn't make it inherently bad. Eberron, in my opinion, is some of WotC's best setting work, and piqued my interest more than Realms had ever done. I understand it's not for everyone, but that doesn't make it bad, just different.

 

[Imban]

Not wanting to rehash too much of the discussion upthread, but this is a controversial claim. For example, 3E presupposes a world in which Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, Halfllings and Orcs exist, in which meditative martial artists exist in monastic orders, in which nature worshippping shapechangers exist, in which magic-using musicians exist, in which holy warriors exist (and in greater numbers than their anti-paladin opponents), and in which priests tend also to be warriors.

This is not generic fantasy. It is a pre-supposed setting.

Of course, you can house rule bits in and out. But then the same will be true for 4e (as is noted in W&M).

Hm. For me, it's all about how easy or hard it will be to house rule things in and out. Specific things like classifying all spells under fluffy mage orders(*) (admittedly, 3e had issues with spell classification as well, but "I'm a transmuter, I turn stuff into stuff" is conceptually a lot more generic than Emerald Frost, which still combines the disparate domains of "I shoot ice at people" and "I shoot acid at people" even if you rename it), ubiquitous setting-specific naming (basically, the more you hammer home the setting in the rules, the harder it is to remove - 30 instances? Eh. 150? Argh.), and, in general, the intrusion of setting quirks into core mechanical structure (For example, Dragonborn Warlords getting a unique class power choice called "For Lost Arkhosia!" that buffs all non-Tiefling allies who hear it by filling them with memories of their empire's glory days and debuffs all Tiefling and Devil enemies for the same reason - especially if this is a design reason why Dragonborn make good Warlords) all make a system more setting-specific in ways that are resistant to modification.

On the other hand, in 3e, the only real problem you have there is that turning into an animal was generally inextricably bound with being a divine spellcaster, and not available until significant levels had been gained. Everything else listed could be taken or left as you desired - though non-martial Clerics were, to be fair, not part of the core rules.

(*) I forget whether all spells are being classified under one of the orders listed or not. If not, which I'm thinking is likely, it works as a hypothetical anyway.

 

[pemerton]

Hm. For me, it's all about how easy or hard it will be to house rule things in and out.

To an extent, but unfortunately I can't agree fully even with this reasonably innocuous remark, because part of what you mean here by "house ruling" is "adding to or deleting from lists of game elements" like monster lists, race lists, class lists, spell lists etc. And when a game is built so as to withstand this sort of addition or deletion, that already imposes design constraints which inhibit the flexibility of the system. And it can lead to problems, and potential incoherence.

For example, D&D is one of the few fantasy RPGs I can think of where there is no mechanical limit on the number and range of spells that can be known by a given PC Wizard (compare RM, HARP, The Dying Earth, RQ, Fantasy Hero, HeroQuest/Wars, and I think Ars Magica also has rules about the number of disciplines/flavours/techniques/whatever that a given mage can have access to). Thus, no spell in D&D can be balanced on the basis that, by taking account of the fact that in learning it a Wizard is denied access to some other spell (and hence some other ability). Contrast Fighters and their Feats in this respect.

Similarly, no adventure can safely be designed on the assumption that the party going through it have a certain suite of abilities available to them. (Although, in fact, the core rules are themselves balanced on certain very definite assumptions about clerical healing and magic item access: hence the problems with coherence that can emerge.)

What I see in 4e is an attempt to revisit these aspects of the game from the ground up, and actually put forward a system (including character build and action resolution mechanics, a gameworld with both mechanical and non-mechanical but still highly system relevant aspects) which will coherently support what the designers take to be the most popular D&D playstyle.

Specific things like classifying all spells under fluffy mage orders(*) (admittedly, 3e had issues with spell classification as well, but "I'm a transmuter, I turn stuff into stuff" is conceptually a lot more generic than Emerald Frost, which still combines the disparate domains of "I shoot ice at people" and "I shoot acid at people" even if you rename it)

I personally don't see the latter combination as any less generic than "I'm a transmuter, I both open locks (but not being a diviner, I can't tell you what's behind them) and transform into an eagle" - but to a significant extent this is a matter of opinion.

ubiquitous setting-specific naming (basically, the more you hammer home the setting in the rules, the harder it is to remove - 30 instances? Eh. 150? Argh.), and, in general, the intrusion of setting quirks into core mechanical structure (For example, Dragonborn Warlords getting a unique class power choice called "For Lost Arkhosia!" that buffs all non-Tiefling allies who hear it by filling them with memories of their empire's glory days and debuffs all Tiefling and Devil enemies for the same reason - especially if this is a design reason why Dragonborn make good Warlords) all make a system more setting-specific in ways that are resistant to modification.

The vocabulary of the setting becomes less flexible, true - although in 3E it was still there to an extent: Dwarven Waraxe, combined with a race called Dwarves having a benefit in Dwarven Waraxe proficiency, does suggest a world in which Dwarves are proficieint with axes; and those same Dwarves having an AC buff againt Giants does suggest a world in which Dwarves and Giants don't get along.

For me as a GM and player I regard this sought of vocabulary as very tolerable - the tradeoff here is between playability for the new (who benefit from having a gameworld vocabulary handed to them) and the experienced, I can understand why the new get prioritised.

On the other hand, in 3e, the only real problem you have there is that turning into an animal was generally inextricably bound with being a divine spellcaster, and not available until significant levels had been gained. Everything else listed could be taken or left as you desired - though non-martial Clerics were, to be fair, not part of the core rules.

I said that:

3E presupposes a world in which Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, Halfllings and Orcs exist, in which meditative martial artists exist in monastic orders, in which nature worshippping shapechangers exist, in which magic-using musicians exist, in which holy warriors exist (and in greater numbers than their anti-paladin opponents), and in which priests tend also to be warriors.​

If I drop all the non-human races, and the Monk, Bard and Paladin classes, I have a rather variant 3e game. No more non-human humanoid opponents; as a result, no more Alter Self in its current form; a very different adventure style for 1st level PCs (no more Kobold or Goblin hunting), etc. This can be done, but at a certain point wouldn't I be better off playing the Conan RPG?

But if you're prepared to make that level of change to a 3E game, why not just drop Dragonborn and Tieflings from 4e? The degree of required surgery looks from here to be no worse.

 

[Imban]

To an extent, but unfortunately I can't agree fully even with this reasonably innocuous remark, because part of what you mean here by "house ruling" is "adding to or deleting from lists of game elements" like monster lists, race lists, class lists, spell lists etc. And when a game is built so as to withstand this sort of addition or deletion, that already imposes design constraints which inhibit the flexibility of the system. And it can lead to problems, and potential incoherence.

For example, D&D is one of the few fantasy RPGs I can think of where there is no mechanical limit on the number and range of spells that can be known by a given PC Wizard (compare RM, HARP, The Dying Earth, RQ, Fantasy Hero, HeroQuest/Wars, and I think Ars Magica also has rules about the number of disciplines/flavours/techniques/whatever that a given mage can have access to). Thus, no spell in D&D can be balanced on the basis that, by taking account of the fact that in learning it a Wizard is denied access to some other spell (and hence some other ability). Contrast Fighters and their Feats in this respect.

This is true, but I can't think of any spells that would not have a place in a game world or homebrew because of this, when I look at the current list of spells in 3e D&D.

(snip)

What I see in 4e is an attempt to revisit these aspects of the game from the ground up, and actually put forward a system (including character build and action resolution mechanics, a gameworld with both mechanical and non-mechanical but still highly system relevant aspects) which will coherently support what the designers take to be the most popular D&D playstyle.

If you mean this in the Forge sense, I'm going to have to respectfully note that I've yet to play a "coherent" game design that I've liked. All of them seem to be about strong support of a playstyle that's not mine and no support for what I actually want to do, whereas D&D has always been broad enough to accomodate many (but not all, of course) playstyles.

I personally don't see the latter combination as any less generic than "I'm a transmuter, I both open locks (but not being a diviner, I can't tell you what's behind them) and transform into an eagle" - but to a significant extent this is a matter of opinion.

Conceptually, transmuters turn stuff into stuff, abjurers cast protective spells, diviners do divination, illusionists work with illusions and things not wholly real, evokers create energy effects, conjurers summon or create physical objects, enchanters mess with minds, etc. Practically, because D&D is wide enough to admit a thousand or more reasonable concepts for spells, not all of them are going to fit nicely into eight classifications and you're going to get some wonky results, such as Mage Armor being Conjuration and Shield being Abjuration. I maintain that at their core, the majority of the eight schools have solid concepts, whereas "lightning and force" and "cold and acid" are disparate, and raise the questions of "Why not fire and lightning" or "why are force blasting spells seemingly randomly distributed among the "lightning and force" and "thunder and force" mages" where the typical questions the 3e schools raised were for individual spells. (Well, okay, Conjuration picked up the ability to create energy effects in splatbooks and that was stupid, and Necromancy admittedly can be accused of combining disparate fields, but the majority of them...)

The vocabulary of the setting becomes less flexible, true - although in 3E it was still there to an extent: Dwarven Waraxe, combined with a race called Dwarves having a benefit in Dwarven Waraxe proficiency, does suggest a world in which Dwarves are proficieint with axes; and those same Dwarves having an AC buff againt Giants does suggest a world in which Dwarves and Giants don't get along.

Well, yeah. It suggests that this is the default, and that's quite tolerable - I mean, if you don't like it in your setting, blam, you rewrite Dwarves and it's all well and good. In typical play, I don't think the choice to play a dwarf was contingent on the AC buff vs. Giants.

For me as a GM and player I regard this sought of vocabulary as very tolerable - the tradeoff here is between playability for the new (who benefit from having a gameworld vocabulary handed to them) and the experienced, I can understand why the new get prioritised.

It's more tolerable so long as it's vocabulary, but once you get into a cascading series of effects, it can be a right pain to work out - Dragonborn making good choices for Warlords because they get unique access to a power called "For Lost Arkhosia!" that has effects which only make sense within the context of the setting would be a lot more of a mess than just editing a race's statblock alone.

I said that:

3E presupposes a world in which Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, Halfllings and Orcs exist, in which meditative martial artists exist in monastic orders, in which nature worshippping shapechangers exist, in which magic-using musicians exist, in which holy warriors exist (and in greater numbers than their anti-paladin opponents), and in which priests tend also to be warriors.​

If I drop all the non-human races, and the Monk, Bard and Paladin classes, I have a rather variant 3e game. No more non-human humanoid opponents; as a result, no more Alter Self in its current form; a very different adventure style for 1st level PCs (no more Kobold or Goblin hunting), etc. This can be done, but at a certain point wouldn't I be better off playing the Conan RPG?

But if you're prepared to make that level of change to a 3E game, why not just drop Dragonborn and Tieflings from 4e? The degree of required surgery looks from here to be no worse.

The Conan RPG, I will note, is *based on D&D.* If anything, doesn't that reinforce my point by showing how much 3e D&D is a game system rather than a specific game, since I'm not just throwing it out the window and playing RuneQuest or what have you?

---

In addition, the latest Design & Development article on magic items is another thing that's difficult, if not functionally impossible, to reconcile with the sort of homebrews I've seen. By heavily constraining the available design space for magic items and putting ill-explained and hardcoded restrictions on some and not others - for instance, only cloaks can give a primary benefit, while only rings are restricted by character level, they've made one of the heaviest blows against my ability to use 4e as a toolkit-esque system so far. While it's still possible that it's not as constrained as I fear, that single article essentially unsold me on 4e - I no longer really even wish to try it out.

 

[pemerton]

If you mean this in the Forge sense, I'm going to have to respectfully note that I've yet to play a "coherent" game design that I've liked. All of them seem to be about strong support of a playstyle that's not mine and no support for what I actually want to do, whereas D&D has always been broad enough to accomodate many (but not all, of course) playstyles.

Well, my contention is that D&D doesn't accomodate a wide range of playstyles. In AD&D, it's lack of action resolution mechanics fostered a system of direct player-GM mediation of actions, which in turn fosters abusive GMing (for which D&D has a reputation that in my opinion is deserved).

In 3E, the character build and action resolution system are clearly intended to foster a sort of gamist play. But the "per day" system of powers gives control to the GM, because it is the GM who determines the passage of time in typical D&D play. Hence the game system causes needless headaches for gamist play, and we get the complaint about the 15-minute adventuring day, and the domination of the game by spellcasters (whose players keep insisting they need to rest to get their spells back - this is fair enough for them, but sucks a bit for the other players who get constantly outdone in the gentle competition for spotlight that is the main manifestation of D&D gamism).

I'm not sure if I'm using "coherent" in the Forge sense or not, because I'm a bit hazy on some of their terminology. What I intend is that the game system (both mechanics and world) support the sort of play that most players of the system want. My opinion is that D&D has a lot of elements which give either the GM, or the game designers, more control than the typical D&D player wants. In my opinion, this is a legacy of AD&D's failure (or perhaps, refusal) to substitute mechanics for GM judgement.

4e is getting rid of a lot of this stuff: no more alignment, a reduction in needless backstory that empowers the GM at the expense of the players when it comes to encounter design and resolution. This is not making the game less generic, in my view. Nor is it making it more generic. It is simply following through on the very successful strategy that 3E adopted (in a clear about-face from 2nd ed's approach) of empowering players at the expense of GMs, and both GMs and players at the expense of designers.

All sorts of games will still be playable. PoL is a highly adaptable framework - for example, the point of life could be a guild headquarters and the darkness the surrounding neighbourhood. From the point of view of game design, PoL as articulated in W&M has (as far as I can see) only 2 key features: (i) the world is unknown - and thus apt to be designed by GM on the fly as needed (this empowers GMs at the expense of world building designers, and also levels the playing field for players, who can't benefit from reading up on the copious backstory); (ii) the PoL are safe until the players choose for their PCs to cause trouble (this empowers players at the expense of GMs, by creating one environment in which adversity comes about only at the choice of the players, rather than the GM; in so doing, it also has the potential to solve a problem with verisimilitude about the passage of time, by allowing arbitrary amounts of time to be spent between levelling without either the GM or the players having the unilateral power to turn that downtime into playing time).

This is true, but I can't think of any spells that would not have a place in a game world or homebrew because of this, when I look at the current list of spells in 3e D&D.

One example from an earlier edition comes to mind: Enchant an Item. In 3E, this spell in fact was broken out into several feats, presumably because it was felt that balance required their being an opportunity cost to its acquisition.

Another example is the difference in spell lists between Clerics and Wizards, which some people at least maintain is a form of balance in order to prevent anyone getting access to an overpowered suite of spells.

A recent FRPG which uses opportunity cost as an interesting balance mechanism for spell acquisition is HARP. (Although sometimes seen as RM lite, HARP is more sophisticated than RM in this respect.) A consequence of the mechanic is that an interesting range of magical abilities is available, which can be balanced against other character development options in the game (such as skills and feats) because all are acquired using the same currency.

D&D's traditional method of spell acquistion puts pressure on this sort of approach because either (i) Wizards end up with abilities that overshadow every other class, or (ii) for reasons that are hard to explain in a non-metagame way, magical abilities are not available that tread on other classes's toes, or (iii) those magical abilities exist, but the GM manipulates the story and the gameworld so as to prevent the PC wizard getting access to them.

All of these are featrues of the mechanics which help produce a non-generic fantasy RPGing experience when playing D&D.

Which is not to say that HARP, or RM, or any other system is generic. I'm writing from a general perspective of generic-skepticism.

Conceptually, transmuters turn stuff into stuff, abjurers cast protective spells, diviners do divination, illusionists work with illusions and things not wholly real, evokers create energy effects, conjurers summon or create physical objects, enchanters mess with minds, etc.

Imprisonment is Abjuration, but barely indistinguishable as a game effect from Forcecage or Polymorph or some combination of the two.

Practically, because D&D is wide enough to admit a thousand or more reasonable concepts for spells, not all of them are going to fit nicely into eight classifications and you're going to get some wonky results, such as Mage Armor being Conjuration and Shield being Abjuration. I maintain that at their core, the majority of the eight schools have solid concepts, whereas "lightning and force" and "cold and acid" are disparate, and raise the questions of "Why not fire and lightning" or "why are force blasting spells seemingly randomly distributed among the "lightning and force" and "thunder and force" mages" where the typical questions the 3e schools raised were for individual spells.

So in one version the spell group concepts look arbitrary, in another the lists underneath them look arbitrary. I happen to prefer the first, because at least the arbitrariness can be given some sort of sensible ingame explanation (ie it so happens that the magic schools evolved like this). I can see how some would prefer the second. I don't see an important difference of degree.

(Well, okay, Conjuration picked up the ability to create energy effects in splatbooks and that was stupid, and Necromancy admittedly can be accused of combining disparate fields, but the majority of them...)

In the PHB, we are told that "Conjurations bring manifestations of objects, creatures, or some form of energy to you" while "Evocation spells manipulate energy or tap an unseen source of power to produce a desired end. In effect, they create something out of nothing." The Conjuration issue was there from the start (and in 3E Fire Arrow was a Conjuration spell).

Well, yeah. It suggests that this is the default, and that's quite tolerable - I mean, if you don't like it in your setting, blam, you rewrite Dwarves and it's all well and good. In typical play, I don't think the choice to play a dwarf was contingent on the AC buff vs. Giants.

So why would the choice to play a Dragonborn be contingent on its flavour feat against Tieflings? Anyway, once we are debating whether something can be generic while having a default flavour setting, while something else is not generic because it mixes flavour with its mechanics, I've lost track of what's at stake.

It's more tolerable so long as it's vocabulary, but once you get into a cascading series of effects, it can be a right pain to work out - Dragonborn making good choices for Warlords because they get unique access to a power called "For Lost Arkhosia!" that has effects which only make sense within the context of the setting would be a lot more of a mess than just editing a race's statblock alone.

I don't really see the difference from the Dwarves vs Giants thing. Is the thought that in the Dragonborn case it links in to the reason for playing a Dragonborn Warlord? But in that case someone might play a Dwarven Fighter to get access to Dwarven Waraxe proficiency for free - which only makes sense within the context of a setting in which Dwarves prefer axes to spears or swords.

The Conan RPG, I will note, is *based on D&D.* If anything, doesn't that reinforce my point by showing how much 3e D&D is a game system rather than a specific game, since I'm not just throwing it out the window and playing RuneQuest or what have you?

RuneQuest is also based, to an extent, on D&D - it uses 3d6 for stat generation (except SIZ and INT, I think). Conan moreso, obviously. But Conan is an extremely different game from D&D - for a start it has a tightly integrated Fate Point mechanic, no alignment, and an extremely different XP and monetary reward system. When I talk about D&D I mean D&D, not other systems which happen to use somewhat similar character build and action resolution mechanics.

In addition, the latest Design & Development article on magic items is another thing that's difficult, if not functionally impossible, to reconcile with the sort of homebrews I've seen. By heavily constraining the available design space for magic items and putting ill-explained and hardcoded restrictions on some and not others - for instance, only cloaks can give a primary benefit, while only rings are restricted by character level, they've made one of the heaviest blows against my ability to use 4e as a toolkit-esque system so far. While it's still possible that it's not as constrained as I fear, that single article essentially unsold me on 4e - I no longer really even wish to try it out.

I haven't read this yet, but it sounds like it might confirm a prediction I made in this thread.

 

[SSquirrel]

Running on the fly is not exactly a trait common to people who are just getting into the game. Making assumptions based on what experienced players do is not the best way to design a game's core books if you want to get new players involved more quickly and easily. Just because D&D has had minimal "new DM" aids in it's core books doesn't mean that should remain the case.

Sorry Mourn, but I never said there's shouldn't be example stuff in the books. I'm very much in favor of things lie that. I'm just saying that you don't have to go super in depth just to get started. For years, the only things most folks probably saw was the rulebooks and maybe they were lucky and could pick up Dragon occasionally. Most people who play the game either started out by winging it and designed more later as they figured things out or they were shown the ropes by a friend. Short of the people who were maybe very into writing things up anyway and had definite ideas of what they wanted before they started playing, I don't think many new DMs sit down and just develop a bunch of stuff before any first session.