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Jon Peterson: Does System Matter?
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8215629" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>I think I'm a bit more sympathetic to you than [USER=16814]@Ovinomancer[/USER] is, perhaps because I spent 19 years playing Rolemaster as my primary system.</p><p></p><p>In RM, for instance, spells are divided into "lists" that - in D&D terms - can be seen to correspond to different spell-casting classes. And so just like you said about a wizard or druid in your D&D game, in RM a character can talk about what spell lists s/he has been traind in; magical tomes can be discovered from which a person might learn a new spell list; etc.</p><p></p><p>This can be contrasted with 4e D&D: in 4e the categories of Arcane, Divine, Primal and Psionic <em>are</em> part of the fiction - that's the whole point of those keywords - but the individual powers don't need to be thought of in in-fiction terms. (An exception to this is some wizard's spells, which can be written down in spell books that are part of the fiction, just like in other versions of D&D.)</p><p></p><p>This is even moreso for martial powers: the fighter in my group's long-running 4e game was a polearm AoE forced-movement specialist, and had a range of powers, enhanced by feats and magic, that let him attack multiple targets and knock them away, lure them in, and/or take them down. At the table each time the player declared an attack he was using a discrete power; but in the fiction there was no reason to think of it in those terms - he was just a super-buff dwarven polearm master doing his thing, wrongfooting and then slaughtering his enemies with his deft polearm work.</p><p></p><p>But now here is where I agree with [USER=16814]@Ovinomancer[/USER]: a system that is going to support the in-fiction approach that you prefer, or alternatively a system that is going to support the more metagame approach found in 4e, needs to be <em>consistent</em> if it is going to do that. And Ovinomancer's point about dragons vs giants in D&D is (for me) a telling one: in the fiction there is really nothing to distinguish between being tail-swiped by a dragon and being hit by a rock thrown by a giant, but in 5e - based on my reading of the SRD - only the latter can knock you flat (and only if thrown by a stone giant at that).</p><p></p><p>Compare this to RM, where these similar attacks are all resolved on a similar table doing similar crits (Impact or Krush) and so all have the same sort of likelihood of causing knockback, or breaking limbs, etc.</p><p></p><p>Even AD&D has idiosyncrasies like the 5e one I just pointed to: purple worms and sperm whales can swallow you whole but dragon turtles can't. Why not? There's no in-fiction logic to it that I can see.</p><p></p><p>To me it seems that D&D uses these special abilities (knockdown, knockback, swallow whole, etc) not to create a sense of what is possible in the fiction but to create particular stories associated with particular creatures. Character abilities are the same, it seems to me - with the ranger's ability to use crystal balls, or a paladin's ability to heal with a touch, being prime examples from AD&D.</p><p></p><p>This is what I found so strong about 4e compared to 3E D&D. Whereas the latter seemed to want to move towards RM - with its skill ranks and combat manoeuvre rules and the like - but still kept the D&Disms that get in the way of that, 4e really embraced the notion that particular abilities, be they on PCs or on NPCs/creatures, are about <em>the story of this game element</em>, not <em>the physics of the world</em>.</p><p></p><p>For someone who liked those aspects of the classic versions of D&D but had little interest in "skilled play", 4e D&D was D&D done right!</p><p></p><p>For rules-as-physics, on the other hand, I would always go to a system like RM or HARP or RuneQuest. But these systems don't produce the gonzo variation of effects you see in D&D precisely because of the consistency of the fiction their systems produce.</p><p></p><p>Another system which has a strong rules-as-physics element to it is Burning Wheel (especially its full melee combat system). In some ways I think BW is easy to drift to for a RM player - it has intricate PC build including the familiar skill ranks, bloody combat with a death spiral, and a general tendency towards universal resolution rather than discrete abilities and sub-systems for each creature or each spell. It still ensures variety in the fiction, like D&D and much more reliably than RM I would say, but via its approach to consequence narration which sits alongside rather than overriding its rules-as-physics aspects.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 8215629, member: 42582"] I think I'm a bit more sympathetic to you than [USER=16814]@Ovinomancer[/USER] is, perhaps because I spent 19 years playing Rolemaster as my primary system. In RM, for instance, spells are divided into "lists" that - in D&D terms - can be seen to correspond to different spell-casting classes. And so just like you said about a wizard or druid in your D&D game, in RM a character can talk about what spell lists s/he has been traind in; magical tomes can be discovered from which a person might learn a new spell list; etc. This can be contrasted with 4e D&D: in 4e the categories of Arcane, Divine, Primal and Psionic [i]are[/i] part of the fiction - that's the whole point of those keywords - but the individual powers don't need to be thought of in in-fiction terms. (An exception to this is some wizard's spells, which can be written down in spell books that are part of the fiction, just like in other versions of D&D.) This is even moreso for martial powers: the fighter in my group's long-running 4e game was a polearm AoE forced-movement specialist, and had a range of powers, enhanced by feats and magic, that let him attack multiple targets and knock them away, lure them in, and/or take them down. At the table each time the player declared an attack he was using a discrete power; but in the fiction there was no reason to think of it in those terms - he was just a super-buff dwarven polearm master doing his thing, wrongfooting and then slaughtering his enemies with his deft polearm work. But now here is where I agree with [USER=16814]@Ovinomancer[/USER]: a system that is going to support the in-fiction approach that you prefer, or alternatively a system that is going to support the more metagame approach found in 4e, needs to be [i]consistent[/i] if it is going to do that. And Ovinomancer's point about dragons vs giants in D&D is (for me) a telling one: in the fiction there is really nothing to distinguish between being tail-swiped by a dragon and being hit by a rock thrown by a giant, but in 5e - based on my reading of the SRD - only the latter can knock you flat (and only if thrown by a stone giant at that). Compare this to RM, where these similar attacks are all resolved on a similar table doing similar crits (Impact or Krush) and so all have the same sort of likelihood of causing knockback, or breaking limbs, etc. Even AD&D has idiosyncrasies like the 5e one I just pointed to: purple worms and sperm whales can swallow you whole but dragon turtles can't. Why not? There's no in-fiction logic to it that I can see. To me it seems that D&D uses these special abilities (knockdown, knockback, swallow whole, etc) not to create a sense of what is possible in the fiction but to create particular stories associated with particular creatures. Character abilities are the same, it seems to me - with the ranger's ability to use crystal balls, or a paladin's ability to heal with a touch, being prime examples from AD&D. This is what I found so strong about 4e compared to 3E D&D. Whereas the latter seemed to want to move towards RM - with its skill ranks and combat manoeuvre rules and the like - but still kept the D&Disms that get in the way of that, 4e really embraced the notion that particular abilities, be they on PCs or on NPCs/creatures, are about [i]the story of this game element[/i], not [i]the physics of the world[/i]. For someone who liked those aspects of the classic versions of D&D but had little interest in "skilled play", 4e D&D was D&D done right! For rules-as-physics, on the other hand, I would always go to a system like RM or HARP or RuneQuest. But these systems don't produce the gonzo variation of effects you see in D&D precisely because of the consistency of the fiction their systems produce. Another system which has a strong rules-as-physics element to it is Burning Wheel (especially its full melee combat system). In some ways I think BW is easy to drift to for a RM player - it has intricate PC build including the familiar skill ranks, bloody combat with a death spiral, and a general tendency towards universal resolution rather than discrete abilities and sub-systems for each creature or each spell. It still ensures variety in the fiction, like D&D and much more reliably than RM I would say, but via its approach to consequence narration which sits alongside rather than overriding its rules-as-physics aspects. [/QUOTE]
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