How Does "The Rules Aren't Physics" Fix Anything?

[xechnao]

You are wrong. The 4e deisgner goals are not to make the game more fun for YOU.

It is to make the game fun for as large a playerbase as they can. YOU cannot pass judgement on their success. They may also have other sub goals which again have nothing to do with you.

No. The designers goal is to make a game that will satisfy certain criteria and by satisfying these criteria to make sales. More fun for a commercial hobby practically does not mean anything actually. It is just a marketing slogan by Wotc that aims to hit any perceived and acknowledged problems of 3e.

 

[HeinorNY]

No. The designers goal is to make a game that will satisfy certain criteria and by satisfying these criteria to make sales.

To make sales they need to make the game fun for as large a playerbase as they can.

More fun for a commercial hobby practically does not mean anything actually. It is just a marketing slogan by Wotc that aims to hit any perceived and acknowledged problems of 3e.

In june, when we actually have the books in our hands, when can judge that.

 

[robertliguori]

I guess what I am saying is that "but the rules don't simulate the world!" is a false contradiction. That isn't what gameplay is for, and the rules are for gameplay.

Again, let me use Call of Duty 4 as my worked example. It is set in the real world, using real weapons. The characters are, ostensibly, real people who can bleed to death, have indigestion, pay taxes and drink beer.

Your character can soak up bullets and so long as he isn't killed and has time to recover, eventually returns to full health. People do not do this in the real world. Even worse, in cutscenes, normal human vulnerabilities return!

The simulationist (apparently) says: "Contradiction! Inconsistent! I cannot buy into the story or the characters as a result!"

This is clearly not a problem for a great many people, as it is a very popular game. But why, if there is a intrinsic, crippling contradiction to it?

Because the three elements are served in different ways, and because it would be far, far worse to have bad gameplay as a result of attention to "realism."

The world is simulated by all the Tom Clancy crap- real world weapons and jargon, etc. The story isn't told by gameplay but by characters, dialogue and plot twists. The gameplay is served by the (very popular) regenerating health mechanic. There are no contradictions here, because the three elements have different needs.

That is why D&D has hit points. To serve gameplay.

If you want simulation, then do it the same way all other gamers everywhere have always done- keep your world and characters consistent whilst the story is told.

Searching for a "reason" for hit points or second wind or anything is fruitless. It has dominated discussion on this forum and it all ends up in the same place- there is no explanation. Sure, people come up with all kinds of great rationalizations for rules (there was one a while back on why Rings were so powerful) but they're unnecessary.

Why are they unnecessary? Because it's a false contradiction to begin with. Just like someone playing Call of Duty 4...don't worry about it. Everyone at your table is going to be aware they are playing the game. They are sitting at a table. There is a bag of Cheetoes. They have to edit these elements out for their imagination anyway if they're going to get any degree of immersion, and it's trivial to do the same for gameplay artifacts and their "intrusions" on the story or the world building.

In other words, don't worry about whether or not you can explain what a Healing Surge is. You don't have to worry about it. Why don't more games have detailed, realistic wound systems? Because they're bad for gameplay. I mean, Phoenix Command had a way of determining how a bullet traveled through the body. It could take several minutes to resolve a single gunshot. Is that fun?

It is not the role of the rules system to tell you what the world is like. That's both impossible (no system could ever reflect the complexities of a world) and counterproductive (in the trying you'd need to sacrifice ease of play and other considerations).

Point the first: I may be misremembering. In what cases to simple bullet wounds in cut scenes inflict crippling injury? There appears to be a distinct corellary between proximity to crashing helicopters and long-term injury in the CoDiverse, and headshots are generally always lethal (to you as well on the hardest difficulty level). Was there a specific scenario in which something happened in a cutscene or scripted sequence that the gameplay lead you to believe shouldn't have happened?

Point the second: There is a difference between rules as Newtonian physics and rules as Aristotelian physics. A good set of rules is like Newtonian physics; they accurately describe the game reality within the vast majority of the cases that come up in play. The CoD mechanic reflects general expectations; if you get shot a little, it is possible that it was a graze and you can duck behind cover and take a moment to recover, but if you get shot a lot at once, the odds of this happening are negligible, and you die. The edge case in this scenario is popping up to get shot, ducking back down, popping up again, and repeating. In this case, the rules fail to accurately describe the effect desired. However, in general, the rules produce the result desired.

In Aristotelian rules, someone gets a bright idea, makes it a rule, then complains when the result that emerges isn't what they wanted. In Aristotelian rules, there is little actual connection between the outcome desired and what the rules actually produce. The D&D leveled-NPC-by-community guidelines, and many aspects of the magic system seem to be Aristotelian, as does the version of the Divine Challenge power from DDXP.

Mechanics aren't just fun or not-fun. I personally find turning Aristotelian mechanics into simulation rules and observing the world that results very fun. Mechanics have to be fun in order for there to be a game, of course; a purely-simulationist CoD4 that implemented realistic bullet injuries, disabled saving, and uninstalled itself upon character death would not be fun to play. However, even within the constraint of 'must be a fun system', rules can still be rated on a scale of how well they, when interpreted, produce the results they were designed for.

 

[xechnao]

To make sales they need to make the game fun for as large a playerbase as they can.

No. To make sales they need to convince people to buy and succeed in making a trend. They simply dressed with the "fun" word the redesign of potential problems of 3e. And the redesign of problems their initial redesign created (playtesting).

In june, when we actually have the books in our hands, when can judge that.

Judge if D&D succeeds? Perhaps in June, perhaps a bit later, perhaps never. There are time frames and thresholds put by those in business. We simply may never know.

 

[Andor]

My fun is not badwrongfun. Your fun is not badwrongfun. If (and it has not firmly been established yet) 4e moves in a direction that make it less fun for me to play then 3e or other games then the designers will have failed in their goals for me. That will not prevent you or anyone else from playing with great joy. And neither of us are wrong.

You are wrong. The 4e deisgner goals are not to make the game more fun for YOU.

It is to make the game fun for as large a playerbase as they can. YOU cannot pass judgement on their success. They may also have other sub goals which again have nothing to do with you.

I'm wrong in deciding what I do and do not enjoy? Are you seriously claiming the right to walk into my house, up to my gaming table and tell me that I'm playing wrong, am not actually enjoying the game I'm playing, and have to play it your way to truly enjoy myself? If so that is simultaneously the ballsiest and stupidist thing I have ever read on the internet.

I am a portion of the D&D player base. WotC and TSR have been given a great deal of my money over the years. Obviously they would like to keep getting my money. If 4e does not inspire me as $ worthy they they will have failed to retain me in their player base, and guessing from some of what others have posted I won't be the only one lost.

If they manage to add new customers in greater proportion than they lose old ones it will still be a net gain but not the ideal situation. Obviously the ideal situation from their point of view is to add all those new customers while retaining all of their existing base.

I cannot pass judgement on their success? I certainly can where my private spending is concerned and also for as how I play. Can I pass judgement on their commercial success? No, of course not, and nor can you. In fact it's possible that WotC themselves don't have that right, but their success or failure will be decided by a Hasbro exec who will terminate the RPG line if the fail to generate profits on the scale of Pokemon.

Which, in case you're unfamiliar with the profit margins of RPGs, ain't gonna happen.

I never claimed the right to determine the total success or failure of 4e, and never claimed that my playstyle was the only right one.

So what the hell was the point of your post?

 

[HeinorNY]

No. To make sales they need to convince people to buy and succeed in making a trend. They simply dressed with the "fun" word the redesign of potential problems of 3e. And the redesign of problems their initial redesign created (playtesting).

But who would put up such a scheme? The game designers? The Rouse? The Hasbro suits?
I'm feeling so silly now, I really believed Mike Mearls was just trying to create a nice game. I'm a fan of his work you know, well at least I "was", now that I know what they are planning to do.

 

[Professor Phobos]

Unless of course what you call playability makes the game less fun for me.

I'm not saying your wrong, I'm just explaining why I think you have what I consider a faulty expectation. It's like expecting a cat to bark like a dog. It'll never track.

I guess I just don't understand where you developed this idea, and why you persist in holding to it. If it's preventing you from enjoying a game, why not discard this preconceived notion?

There is no need to include such rules in a game, but it you do put them in they should make sense, in the context of the world they portray.

You go on to ask what is so hard to understand about this sentence. Let me highlight what I fail to understand. I'm also going to assume this statement extends to other rules- if there are rules for injuries in a game, they should make sense in the context of the world, and so on. (gunfights, negotiations, whatever)

There is no need to include such rules in a game, but if you do put them in they should make sense, in the context of the world they portray.

I don't understand why you think rules are supposed to portray a world. It just doesn't make any sense to me how that expectation could be maintained. It especially doesn't make sense to me in the context of a message board primarily devoted to Dungeons and Dragons, which has never done anything like this or even attempted to do so. D&D rules have never made sense in the context of the world they portray.

Again, I think it's an unrealistic and counterproductive expectation, and I heartily recommend you discard it, because I think it narrows the range of gaming available to you so greatly it isn't worth keeping. Just shrug your shoulders, go kill some dragons and don't worry about it.

 

[xechnao]

But who would put up such a scheme? The game designers? The Rouse? The Hasbro suits?
I'm feeling so silly now, I really believed Mike Mearls was just trying to create a nice game. I'm a fan of his work you know, well at least I "was", now that I know what they are planning to do.

What scheme? That trend is Wotc's number one priority for D&D? Or what trends generally are and how they function? :\

 

[hong]

You mean like what RPGs I choose to play, based on how they match my expectations? Yes that's exactly what I intend to do, thank you.

If I was WotC's pimp, I would be pained by the implications of this. However as I am WotC's bitch and not WotC's pimp, I will agree, choosing an appropriate ruleset (and zeitgeist) that matches your expectations is an important part of having fun.

 

[hong]

hong's method are outdated and not scientific. He should make the eight year old niece drunk, and then watch how and if she still accepts playing a game of Faery's Tale.

FOR SCIENCE!!!

I'm not listening! You're not real, DandD! Not real, I tell you!!!1