How do you like your game?

[ProfessorCirno]

Unless that Judges' Guild product actually said what the "curse of a thousand cuts" did to the guy, that's not part of the game - it's part of the setting.

I love that sort of thing in setting detail, but personally I'm indifferent as to whether or not it's written up in the rules.

So it really doesn't say anything about the kind of game I prefer.

Bingo.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I want to have clear rules on what my PC can do. Otherwise, I am unable to make meaningful choices.

NPCs, monsters and cults can do crazy stuff I don't know how they do it. As long as I can meaningful interact with it (and it doesn't just exist to screw with the players, by making it inherently unbalanced). The biggest problem is usually the "balance" here - the monsters can have bizarre effects, but how does it fit in a "level" scheme? A highly constructive approach with strictly defined rules can help, but so can guidelines that describe possible or reasonable effects.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

I like my game with some fava beans and a nice chianti.

I like my game to have strong rules for the players and DM to understand what they can do within the game, but at the same time have the flexibility to do things the rules do not explicitly state and have some idea how to keep those things from breaking the game.

 

[Heselbine]

Really? I rather have the feeling that in 4E, with more freedom for NPCs, it's much more viable to do that. I think a "Curse of Thousand Cuts" would go well in 4E, with a specific plot-o-riffic ritual to stop it (which has to be found, of course), whereas in 3E, you'd use Remove Curse.

If anything, the combat abilities of the PCs are more quantifiable, if you ignore the stunt system.

Cheers, LT.

I remember in the FR boxed set "Ruins of Zhentil Keep" for 2nd edition, there was a need for the adventurers to conduct a ritual at the end to summon a nature elemental. I remember thinking at the time that this was quite cool but would be even better if it actually had some basis in the rules. I found myself thinking "So if there's a ritual for this, what other rituals are there? How can the adventurers find out about them and conduct them?".

In 4th edition, for the first time, we can explain all those long rituals which have until now been an implicit, unexplained aspect of the game. "It's a ritual" now actually means something.

Some people will dislike this: for me, however, internal consistency of a world is key.

 

[Aus_Snow]

In general, I'm wondering where you skew. Do you tend to favor one way or the other? Something in between? Where do your players fall?

I favour complete codification, using a neat, streamlined and flexible system (also with total rules symmetry, but never mind that here.) Some players also prefer that. Others don't much mind either way, I gather.

 

[philreed]

. . . but by the same token, if I say "the jade statue is resistant to all magic" then goddamnit it's resistant to all magic. Period.

Hell, yes.

 

[SavageRobby]

I'm of two minds. On one hand, I like a rules system with both enough structure and flexibility to allow players to try just about anything that they could normally in real life, as well as stuff seen in TV and movies, and have a reasonable way to handle it within the existing rules. However, I don't need explicit rules for everything. ("Whats the modifier for blowing snot on my opponent to try to distract him?" "Hang on, let me look it up.") I find I'm more comfortable handling these kinds of things in a simply structured game.


On the other hand, I like some things to be totally mysterious to players (as well as characters), so an occasion they have a very sense of "holy smokes, how'd that happen?" Players don't always need to know how stuff happens, or what the exact rules mechanic is. The trick with this is player trust. I think players have to trust that you're not out to screw them (unless of course, you're playing Paranoia), so that they pay attention to the "holy smokes" part, and not worry overly about the other shoe dropping like an anvil in a lake. Without that player trust (and I've experience this from the player side), you spend more time worrying how the DM is about to screw you using fiat, rather than playing the game - and that ain't fun.

 

[jdrakeh]

In D&D? In D&D, I prefer descriptions that the rules explictly support, as it helps with internal consistency and playes well with the basic assumptions of the system itself.

 

[Ydars]

Speaking personally as a player; there is a kind of unholy satisfaction in a rule-set that is highly defined. You know how the system works and more importantly, how to exploit it. There are many interesting choices and synergies. Because, I would argue, that D&D IS about "winning" encounters, it is obvious that players will want to know what the ground rules are and this is actually less defined in 4E than in 3.5E; a game that was fun to play but hell to DM because players expected EVERYTHING to follow the "rules".

This is all a far cry from the days when the rules were just a frame-work for the DM to judge the outcomes of player choices; not a strait-jacket to limit either DM or player choice, like they sometimes feel now.

The problem with more intensive, more codified rules is that they lead to less of a ROLEplaying game and more of a rolePLAYING game. The DM and players are so busy enjoying/navigating the rules set that they forget to engage the senses and the visceral and imaginative feast that can be unleashed wherever people sit down to create a shared story. This leads to less evocative but more intellectual games, that are also consistently more exciting but for me, less satisfying. I therefore dislike highly codified rules when DMing, although they do appeal on one level because the frame-work does alot of the work.

The other problem from a DMing point of view is that the essence of story-telling is mystery and the unknown. Magic should be mystical and fey; it should not be predictable and tame; just another word for a kind of science. Monsters should be horrifying and unknowable; not a set of stats from the MM; the world should be exciting and different; not a mish-mash of lame earth cultures. Yet all of the above shortcomings of D&D are more and more likely the more codified the rules become and thus are likely to get worse and not better.

What you want out of a game depends upon how you are feeling; the rules per se do not rule out any style of play, though I would argue that D&D has never been the best system for hard-core ROLEplaying and has always been tactical and therefore rules codification is inevitable.

I would like to see a game that made some attempt to defocus the player obssession with rules and give tangible rewards for background hooks and creating a character. I would like to see mystery and magic and fearsome monsters that will scare the players. I would like to see an original background world that is actually compelling rather than vanilla. Yet if someone did produce such a game, I doubt it would be most people's vision of D&D.

 

[Verdande]

I'm not trying to make any point.

I'm asking people what kind of game people prefer? Hence, the name of the thread.

Sorry, I must have misunderstood. It was late when I was reading that.

If it isn't obvious by now, I prefer the more freeforming 4e. Gamism over simulationism any day, baby.