D&D 4E How did 4e take simulation away from D&D?

[Fifth Element]

I find that the concept thrown about in the 4E community of "just say Yes" via bending/breaking the rules to sometimes be inadequate to my enjoyment of the game.

There is nothing wrong with the DM allowing players to "attempt" actions, but some of those attempts should fail and some should succeed.

That's what "just say yes" means. It doesn't mean "the PCs can do whatever the players want"; it means they should get the chance to do it, even if it's an action that's not covered by the rules.

For your specific example, I'd rule that it's a minor action (frigging around with the dagger), move (part of the movement) and standard (rest of the movement plus attack) to get a basic attack, with an Athletics and/or Acrobatics check thrown in for the chandelier bit.

I guess the "saying yes" bit here is to be slightly liberal in your rulings (requiring 3 actions), rather than overly conservative (requiring 5 actions). If it's within spirit of your game, let 'em try it.

 

[Fifth Element]

I don't agree with the "just say Yes" crowd that she can climb with no penalty with a sword and shield in hand.

So you don't agree with a hypothetical "just say yes" crowd then? Because that's not what real people mean by "just say yes."

Just saying yes in this situation would be assigning a sufficient penalty (assuming it matters in the situation) to the climb check if a character does it with two hands fully equipped. A smaller penalty would be appropriate with shield only.

"Just say yes" means not saying "no, you need both hands free to climb". It doesn't mean "of course! do whatever you want!"

 

[pemerton]

First off, what is a metagaming power? The powers are what they are. Are you talking about extending the power to do something that it is not supposed to do?

This has been covered pretty thoroughly upthread - roughly, a power which doesn't merely express or correspond to some action taken by the PC in the gameworld, but that also gives the player of that PC some sort of control over the narration of the fictional situation. Come and Get It is the main example being discussed here - it gives the player of the fighter some control over the movement and behaviour of NPCs/monsters which doesn't necessarily correspond to movement caused by actions of the figher PC.

What is wrong with this? "The group will decide what will fly in the narrative. If you use a metagaming power, someone at the table has to make it fit the narrative."

Once in a great while we'll all stare at each other and wonder how the heck the mechanics could create a sensible narrative. Maybe in that case the player will simply do something else. Maybe the DM will come up with some kind of alternative.

Also, why should this be a group activity even if it were to be allowed? Why isn't it the responsibility of the player who is attempting the metagaming activity to state what his PC is doing instead of a group mind consensus of how to entitle every player to get away with whatever hairbrained idea that pops into his head?

There are two reasons for making it a group activity. First, to use some Forge terminology, the fiction in an RPG is a shared imaginary space. Everyone at the table has an interest in what is going on in the fiction, so it makes sense to get everyone to sign off in the event of any conflicts/doubts. Second, it's fun.

The same should often be done with powers. Extending the effects of powers or disallowing powers because of a narrative reason should be extremely rare and done with a bit of caution.

<snip>

Not every player is a narrative genius. It is much easier to play the game with "I do Come and Get It" than "I jump up on the balcony pretending to lose my balance, as the enemies start to swarm me because of the weakness, I quickly recover and slice them all across the throats and drop them.". Requiring actions to have a narrative element and penalizing the player in some way if he cannot come up with a good narrative approach or does it poorly is too restrictive.

Well, one conception of what makes an RPG different from a board game or a skirmish game is precisely that it is a game where the creation and adjudication of a shared fiction is at the heart of the game - with the mechanics being a means to that end. On this conception, what you are saying here boils down to "players who are weaker roleplayers will have a harder time playing an RPG as opposed to a skirmish game" - which is true, but not necessarily a bad thing.

The designers attempt to balance the powers. When players are allowed to modify the game on the fly by merely coming up with a cool narrative, it shifts the balance of the game towards those imaginative players who are capable of taking advantage of it.

The same response applies here - on the above conception of RPGing, it makes sense that imaginative players should be able to get more out of the game than other players. That's part of the point.

But this also goes back to the idea of sharing narrative responsiblity. If the game is cooperative rather than competitive - which my 4e game mostly is, for example - then the more imaginative players will often help out the others, just as the more tactical players will help out the others with the tactical aspects of the game.

I wasn't trying to illustrate an exact count. I was trying to illustrate a point.

<snip detail>

In this adjudication, it was 2 moves, 2 minors, 1 standard, 1 free, an Athletics check, and 2 Acrobatics checks.

Or maybe the distance was 80 feet and the PC was trying to use his Acrobatics to move more than his normal move by swinging on the chandelier. Whatever. The point is not how to adjudicate this specific example, the point is to attempt to adjudicate special actions as close to the rules for normal actions as possible.

If you make swinging on a chandelier to attack count as nearly two rounds worth of actions and require 3 skill checks it will probably never happen in your game.

I think that page 42 is a central part of the game, and that the whole point of page 42 - which itself includes a "swing on chandelier" example, and strongly implies that it will not take two rounds worth of actions - is to allow PCs to do stuff that breaks the normal rules. This would include using swinging on a chandelier to get a square or two of extra movement. (Compare the use of a successful Acrobatics check to slide down a muddy embankment as a free action - this fairly standard terrain feature establishes, if there was any doubt, that one function of Acrobatics is to permit extra movement if the right terrain is present, just as Athletics permits movement across otherwise impassable terrain like walls and water.)

In general, two things balance page 42 stunts against other options and powers (including skill powers): (i) the need for a skill roll, which in combination with a to-hit roll (in combat stunts) has a big impact on the likelihood of success; (ii) the possibility of adverse consequences for failure, such as falling prone in the chandelier example, or taking damage, which is my default consequence for failure.

 

[pemerton]

I would recommend you look at I.C.E. systems if you really want a system to lay out "everything" you can do...

Rolemaster Classic Iron Crown Enterprises

Having played RM for nearly 20 years (1990-2008), it is suprising how many corner cases or unclear cases it throws up.

I think RM's character generation system is, overall, a wonderful thing, producing richly detailed and diverse PCs. It's melee combat system is overly deadly at low levels, but at mid-to-high levels is very intricate and engaging. Unlike Runequest - it's main rival as a gritty purist-for-system simulationist combat enging - RM requires a melee combatant to make a round-by-round allocation of points to attack and defence. This makes combat very dynamic, and a suitable vehicle for expressing the character and commitments of the PCs involved.

The spell system is intriguing. It also requires round-by-round decision making, not about attack and defence, but about expenditure of power points and the risks to be taken on spell casting rolls. Like many fantasy RPGs, however, magic is ultimately overpowered. And the action resolution system for non-combat, non-spell-casting actions is pretty clunky, and not really up to modern standards.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I mainly agree with the answers others have already provided, but wanted to expand on these two points:

Also, why should this be a group activity even if it were to be allowed? Why isn't it the responsibility of the player who is attempting the metagaming activity to state what his PC is doing instead of a group mind consensus of how to entitle every player to get away with whatever hairbrained idea that pops into his head?

The group is telling the story. I'm not going to let a good idea go to waste just because it isn't in the head of the player acting at the moment. But note this is not always about empowering the player to get away with something. I've aluded in other dicussions to our groups' frequent habit of making high Int/Wis or low Int/Wis be reflected via metagame, in that someone with a high stat/high roll is allowed to benefit from the best idea that can be generated at the table, while the low stat/low roll is penalized by having to take the worst idea presented. And we can be pretty mean.

It isn't about getting away with something. It is about making the shared, imagined space as interesting as we can.

If I as a DM have the BBEG protected behind a group of his allied NPCs and a player attempts to have his PC scale a wall and dive down behind those foes to get to the BBEG to attack him, there is no way that I am going to prevent him from trying that. He might succeed, he might not. But, I'm not going to say "You can't do that" because my storyline indicated that the PCs should not yet fight the BBEG.

The player doesn't have to create a major justification on how he is doing something. The more detail he gives me, the better I understand his idea and the more reasonable of a difficulty that I will assign it. But he doesn't need a major narrative justification to try something, nor will I prevent it if it impacts the storyline in a way that I did not anticipate.

I don't know where you got the implication in my text that requiring a narrative justification was because I was trying to control the storyline. It is quite the opposite--I am trying to get the players to take control of the story line to some extent, and their narration as a reflection of their mechanical choices is how they go about it.

All of the above is why I think the "Narrativism" in GNS is so poorly named. (And yes, I'm aware of Creative Agendas, and have read the later stuff several times.) Little "n" narrativism is a word I refuse to surrender in gaming theory, because "to narrate" is the central component to anything I would call roleplaying.

I am both a hard case about this and a big old softie. I insist that there be narration, if the thing accomplished is to be of interest to the evolving story. I'm not at all particular about the narration being accomplished by the person with the dice in their hands. I'll ask for details, color, emotion, and so forth on five seconds of action, and then gladly skip a whole section of an adventure, if it proves boring. I never fudge rules or dice, but rarely have a character die, because I will simply preempt the situation or roll before fudging arises.

I'm pretty much convinced that good pacing and good narration is what a roleplaying game is always trying to achieve. It simply takes an understanding of those two skills, the system being used, and a good mix of system with the particular players around the table--for the story they are trying to tell.

And I find myself in these gaming forum theory conversations wondering about the gap that seems so wide to me, but apparently seems so narrow to others. It is as if every improvement or variety in a set of rules is greeted with both excessive disdain for restricting the actions available and also excessive reverence for replacing judgment.

I once built a set of pantry shelves with no tools but a handsaw, a hammer, some nails, a square, and some sandpaper. I now own several power sanders. I am working on some built in shelves, and the facers are rounded. I used a piece of sand paper to finish the rounded edge, even though I used the power sanders to do a lot of work. I think if I took the frequent forum advice, I'd either not build the shelf with the rounded edge because then I could not sand it 100% with power, or I'd not use the power sanders for the flat parts because they were not a good choice on the rounding. Why not use the more sophisticated tools for what they do well, and still use the old stand bys where they make sense?

 

[KarinsDad]

There are two reasons for making it a group activity. First, to use some Forge terminology, the fiction in an RPG is a shared imaginary space. Everyone at the table has an interest in what is going on in the fiction, so it makes sense to get everyone to sign off in the event of any conflicts/doubts. Second, it's fun.

There are also reasons to not do so.

Most social settings like playing an RPG have strong personality types and weaker personality types. I've discovered in over 3 decades of gaming with hundreds of different people that stronger personality types will often dominate any gaming social setting, even without necessarily realizing that they are doing so.

My own personality is one where I want every player to explore options, good, bad, or indifferent, without censor from the group, without peer pressure from the group, without the strong personatility types, especially the intelligent or experienced strong personality types dominating the action.

I want each player to shine.

Because to me, it's more fun for each player to make their own narrative (and tactical) decisions than it is for the group (usually one or two players) making their narrative decisions for them, even if that results in some type of mistake.


I would theorize that quite a few people who have strong opinions here on the boards might also be strong personality types at their games. They might often be the intelligent people who are often more tactically or narratively capable. I would think that it's precisely some of these type of people who argue so strongly for group think in the game. Cause when they have group think, they get to partially control the action without being the DM.


So my suggestion is: let everyone shine at the table. Don't allow the stronger personality types to often dominate the weaker personality types, either with cross table tactical suggestions, or with cross table narrative suggestions.

My own teenage daughter at our games is so excited and into the game that she will often say in combat (or out of combat) "do this, or why don't you do that, etc.". If it gets out of hand, I will say to her "it's not your turn, it's Sally's turn, let Sally play her own PC, on your turn, you get to play your PC".

Group think tends to become "the same players over and over" individual think, so I tend to oppose it just on principle.

I also hate the concept of psychic PCs (i.e. the group of players decides something for one PC to either do or say, without discussing it in character).

That's not roleplaying either. It's group think playing. Yuck!

If you make swinging on a chandelier to attack count as nearly two rounds worth of actions and require 3 skill checks it will probably never happen in your game.

I purposely made that example 40 feet of distance, 20 feet fall, etc. because unless the DM allows for a charge action (with a minor of getting out a weapon part way within it) or the player uses an action point, it will be a minimum of two move actions and a standard action. I was trying to push the envelope beyond a simple swing on a chandelier into the realm of "how does this work within the rules?".

If one were to "just say yes" to bend the rules and allow it within a single round, it might be cinematic, but it might also be viewed by another player as "how come he always gets away with this type of bending the rules, just because his PC has Acrobatics?" (or more precisely, because he is a more imaginative player).

I don't mind cinematic activities, in fact they are often a lot of fun. But I like them to be as close to the rules as possible in order for all of the players to understand that as DM, I am not trying to show favoritism towards the more imaginative players. As DM, I should be impartial.

 

[Barastrondo]

That's what "just say yes" means. It doesn't mean "the PCs can do whatever the players want"; it means they should get the chance to do it, even if it's an action that's not covered by the rules.

The best and most feasible application of "just say yes" is actually more sort of a "just say 'yes, and...'" or a "just say 'yes, but...'", or maybe a "just say 'yes, if...'" It's not about rolling over: it's about an actual dialogue with the player that just saying "no" doesn't encourage. You encourage the player to create and contribute, but you still adjudicate.

Of course, this comes up a lot also in questions like letting players contribute to building the world. So for instance, a player may propose "My father is the head of the assassin's guild where I trained." The school of thought that favors saying yes, with conditionals, is based on the belief that saying "sure, whatever" or "no, won't allow it" are not as interesting as saying "Yes, and some of his goals are not in accordance with yours." When you go to rules questions, it's similar: "yes" or "no" are not necessarily as interesting as "yes, but it will be hard" or "yes, but there may be interesting side effects."

 

[pemerton]

And I find myself in these gaming forum theory conversations wondering about the gap that seems so wide to me, but apparently seems so narrow to others. It is as if every improvement or variety in a set of rules is greeted with both excessive disdain for restricting the actions available and also excessive reverence for replacing judgment.

I know what you mean (well, I think I do!), and in some ways would like to be a bit more relaxed in my approach to posting. And yet every now and then when I try to relax, and am less precious about the way I describe my game or my approach to GMing, I find myself blindsided by some post that makes all sorts of assumptions about the nature and rationale of RPGing that I feel just aren't applicable to my game.

And so then I armour up again!

An example going on right now on the industry forums involves ( . . . drum roll . . .) skill challenges.

I'm being told that skill challenges both (i) are not really and different to ordinary skill checks, but (ii) involve arbitrary limits on successes vs failures. In that sort of environment, I'm going to strongly emphasise that the limits on successes vs failures aren't arbitrary, but rather are a tool for regulating the introduction of complications into the situation by the GM, and the responses to those complications by the players (using their PCs as vehicles). And because I'm trying to establish this basic idea that there is a difference between on the one hand runing a skill challenge in 4e, and on the other hand running the use of thief skills to search a room or ranger skills to traverse a swamp in AD&D, I'm not inclined to also talk about the role of GM judgment in setting up the challenge, in varying the parameters of adjudication on the fly, and in making calls about consequences as part of the process of resolving it and not just planning for it.

 

[pemerton]

There are also reasons to not do so.

Most social settings like playing an RPG have strong personality types and weaker personality types.

<snip>

I would theorize that quite a few people who have strong opinions here on the boards might also be strong personality types at their games. They might often be the intelligent people who are often more tactically or narratively capable. I would think that it's precisely some of these type of people who argue so strongly for group think in the game. Cause when they have group think, they get to partially control the action without being the DM.

Well, I'm the GM in my game. And I help out my players with narration when they can't or won't help themselves, because (being in many ways a pretty traditional group) my players expect me to bear the ultimate responsibility for the coherence of the fiction.

As for the issue of dominant personalities - that is a recurring issue in running and playing a roleplaying game. But in my experience, at least, its impact upon the quality or individuality of narration when metagame mechanics are used is not where it is at its most problematic.

 

[KarinsDad]

Well, I'm the GM in my game. And I help out my players with narration when they can't or won't help themselves, because (being in many ways a pretty traditional group) my players expect me to bear the ultimate responsibility for the coherence of the fiction.

Well, the coherence of the fiction is your responsibility, but helping the players out with their narration is not (unless you are solely talking about NPCs interacting with them, or talking about reminding them of some important details that they learned 4 weeks ago, in which cases, those are your responsbility). But if you are talking about giving them ideas on what to say or do, then no, that's their responsibility.


In our group, we take notes and they help some, but we forget a lot of the finer and more obscure details. It is imperative that the DM know his own campaign and remember the important elements of the story (and remind us of them). It's not important that the DM help us out with our narratives, even the crappiest of us (which I admit to being with regard to narration, I tend to cut to the chase as opposed to on the boards here where I tend to pontificate).

The players are too busy having a blast interacting with the NPCs, kicking the snot out of the bad guys, and telling jokes almost nonstop in order to remember a lot of what has gone on in the game previously. Our DM probably pulls his hair out over it, but many of his more obscure campaign elements aren't that important to the players. Having fun and focusing on the story arc du jour is what is important. Remembering the details of earlier parts of the story is too much like work than fun.