Legends and Lore - Maintaining the Machine

[LurkAway]

Threaten nothing. A reasonable human being, going into a war zone and presented with healing potions, would invent potion helmets. It only seems silly to us because we don't live in a world with healing potions. Our real-world aesthetic sense is clashing with game-world logic.

Making potion drinking into a minor action allows the game designers to gloss over that clash, so we can have old-fashioned potions in bottles and not think too hard about it.

The market economy doesn't have enough potions circulating around to create a potion helmet industry. A party could have it custom crafted by a blacksmith. Would have to invent rubber tubes with durable sealing wax. And every time the helmet was smacked, I'd make a roll to see if the contraption holds. And if the PCs get that far, then all the power to them. But this silliness has never happened IME.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

To me, this column is getting at something I feel no edition of D&D has really understood: DM judgement is both potent and finite.

Must spread XP. Excellent point.

3E and 4E understood the finite-ness of DM judgement, but not its potency. They set out to lift the burden of constant adjudication, but ended up trying to eliminate any need for DM judgement at all.

Although I slightly disagree by edition because of another great point you make:

Here's another thing to consider: An ounce of flavor text is often worth a pound of rules crunch.

Consider the venerable fireball. What happens if you cast it into a barn full of hay? Writing up rules to address this question would be a formidable undertaking.

Or you can say, "This spell creates a tiny glowing bead that streaks to its destination and detonates in a 20-foot-radius burst of flame."

3E fireball includes rules for setting things on fire and melting soft metals. 4E fireball has no such rules, but instead has the following flavor text: ""

I'd say it leaves more up to the DM to determine what happens in his game. I don't think the books do enough to guide the DM into making these decisions, but ht eframework is there.

This has also furthered the notion of the DM as arbiter

I can agree with you up to here (minus the "machine operator").

and in a sense the opponent to the players. This, in my opinion, is directly related to the unacknowledge massive elephant in the room that, whenever it is brought up, causes quite a fuss: the influence of video games on tabletop RPGs. In a video game, the players is fighting "against" the machine; the GM, such as it is, is the program itself. For a generation brought up on video games, the GM is the enemy--the operator of the machine or program that you, as the player, are trying to win. This, I believe, has influenced the basic assumptions that later generations of role-players--those that have been playing for 15-20 years or less, even more so those that have been playing for 10 years or less--have about the role of the GM, and the relationship between the players and the GM (and, really, the individual and the world, but I'll leave that for now).

But here I disagree. I started solely within the "tabletop generation" but as technology became available I was also part of the "videogame generation." I never once, during any video game, felt like I was fighting against the machine. And I never got that sense from any other videogamers over the years.

I did get that adversarial sense from the early table-top games I played. I believe the adversarial relationship in those games came from a combination of differing viewpoints when the rules left the GM to adjudicate mixed with maturity level over how those differing viewpoints were shared and resolved. For me 1E AD&D was extremely adversarial, but I think looking through today's lens it would have been much less so. Older posters (looking at you old man [MENTION=5]Mark[/MENTION]CMG ) who I've spoken with personally have confirmed this viewpoint IMO because they did not encounter the same issues I did because they were at a different maturity level when they encountered them.

If I had my druthers, 5E would be designed around only the primary elements I mentioned above as core, with secondary and more so tertiary elements being optional, even within a specific context. That is, if a group or the DM wants to consult the rules-as-guidelines in a given situation, go for it; but this approach shouldn't be hardwired into the basic game, but rather optional.

I can agree with this, although I think it already exists. I think they could do a better job explaining this to everyone and I think these articles are a start at attempting to explain just that, not just a look forward to 5E as some speculate.

Not all DMs find the same things tedious. Not all DMs find the same things hard. You can't categorically say that DMs need rules for attacks but no rules for how "fast" each action is. Some DMs say that drinking a potion takes a round. Some DMs say you can do it fast enough that it's not really an action. I, as a DM, for instance, can't stand making hundreds of little judgement calls. I don't want to be asked for permission -- "can I shut this door and still attack on my turn?" is not something I want to have to make up my mind about. I want the system to basically deal with these tedious little meaningless choices without me. A game engine consisting almost entirely of "Do whatever you want!" is useless to me. Why did I spend $150 on your 3 books and read about 400 pages? To be told to do whatever I want? What I want to do is think about bigger things than action economy. Now, it's important to me to be able to do what I want anyway.

Must spread XP.

But, that's not what he said. You seem to be taking his words farther than he did. You're the one who extended this to "action economy" and "only", not him.

He did say, "It can provide rules for common actions (attacking, casting a spell, and so forth), but the system can't provide concrete arbitration for every action."

He also said "Why not give the DM the power (and guidelines) to adjudicate actions on a turn, and let the game system handle attack rolls?"

Which is where some could be worried over the direction he's taking. If the guidelines look much like the common actions listed in the current rules, then so be it. Although I don't understand the need to call this out in an article. If the guidelines are more akin to the "guidelines" provided in the 1E DMG for Magic Item Creation (for example) then I would be much less happy with the direction he is taking.

I think he intends that middle ground, not an extreme.

I think he is too, I just hope we're not both wrong.

 

[I'm A Banana]

That's not the kind of game I'd play where players "threaten" to invent potion helmets in order to get potion drinking as a minor action.

This is a good point, too, because a DM's fiat is subject to a sort of "player approval" like this.

If you make drinking a potion a full-round action, and it's a judgement call, it'll only take a few sessions before a player tries to get you to change your judgement by inventing something like a healing-potion beer hat.

If you make door-shutting a full-round action, and it's a judgement call, it'll only take a few sessions before a player invents some sort of automated door-shutting mechanism.

Judgement calls are subject to the influence of the player and the whims of emotion. If I am feeling bad for Billy because he hasn't rolled well tonight, I might let him drink a potion as a free action. If I'm feeling touchy because Aimee killed my BBEG during his soliloquy, I might make her take a full-round action to do the same thing. The more judgement calls I make, the more likely one of those judgements will result in a player getting frustrated. Aimee might get (legitimately!) annoyed that I punished what to her was a fun idea. Billy might (legitimately!) feel coddled and not challenged when I felt bad for his crappy rolls all night.

A lot of nostalgia for the days in which DMs essentially made up games from scratch seems to miss the fact that DMs are pretty human. Even Monte Cook makes bad calls from time to time. A set of rules to rely on (that are nonetheless changable at a whim) can help ameliorate that problem.

 

[JamesonCourage]

I understand the desire for gritty realism, but that just seems obtuse.

Then again, you seem to be taking his statement to a rather illogical end. That seems to be simply missing his point at best, and rather disingenuous at worst.

Him not wanting a "beer helm" seems much more in line with genre conventions than preferring "not to have a game where characters act in a logical and inventive way" to me. But hey, that's just me. As always, play what you like

 

[LurkAway]

Judgement calls are subject to the influence of the player and the whims of emotion. If I am feeling bad for Billy because he hasn't rolled well tonight, I might let him drink a potion as a free action. If I'm feeling touchy because Aimee killed my BBEG during his soliloquy, I might make her take a full-round action to do the same thing. The more judgement calls I make, the more likely one of those judgements will result in a player getting frustrated. Aimee might get (legitimately!) annoyed that I punished what to her was a fun idea. Billy might (legitimately!) feel coddled and not challenged when I felt bad for his crappy rolls all night.

Again IME issues with "feeling bad" and "feeling touchy" and "getting frustrated" and "annoyed" and "coddled" and "felt bad" are non-issues or minority issues. I can never recall IME anyone getting upset and threatening to invent beer helmets because they didn't get their way. Perhaps I've been lucky to be in relatively emotional mature groups, or the DMs were fair, or both, I don't know. I stand by my original statement that making a potion a minor action primarily to avoid beer helmet syndrome is not the D&D experience I know. YMMV and it's always interesting to see how that in effect

 

[I'm A Banana]

I stand by my original statement that making a potion a minor action primarily to avoid beer helmet syndrome is not the D&D experience I know. YMMV and it's always interesting to see how that in effect

Well, it's not so much to avoid beer helmet syndrome as it is that players are clever and will often try to fairly gain an advantage, if they can. I've played with a few players who would be inclined to try that, just because it's fun (and I'd be inclined to allow it, because it is fun, even if it's a little silly. ).

If the DM is the one making the rules, then a call can have all sorts of unexpected ramifications in the game. Versus if the rules are there, but changable, the rules have an expected ramification, and if you change them, they tell you what might happen.

 

[Anselyn]

If I am feeling bad for Billy because he hasn't rolled well tonight, I might let him drink a potion as a free action. If I'm feeling touchy because Aimee killed my BBEG during his soliloquy, I might make her take a full-round action to do the same thing. The more judgement calls I make, the more likely one of those judgements will result in a player getting frustrated. Aimee might get (legitimately!) annoyed that I punished what to her was a fun idea. Billy might (legitimately!) feel coddled and not challenged when I felt bad for his crappy rolls all night.

Don't you and your players have memories? House rules can just be a shared and remembered consensus that in this game it normally takes a full round to ...

The "normally" also allows for variation for when you know that you're looking at the exception that proves the rule. i.e. dangling from a rope in a blizzard.

 

[Luce]

Potion Helmet

Somebody already did.
From Dragon 282 (PC Portraits)

I think there was another April article detailing this consent in more detail in an older issue, but I cannot remember which one it was from the top of my head.

 

[LurkAway]

Here's another:
Potion Dispenser - Xbox.com

Advertised as a "An official hands-free mana and health potion dispenser, perfect for the adventurer on the go"

If that's what your players want in their world, go ahead, have fun

 

[Umbran]

Threaten nothing. A reasonable human being, going into a war zone and presented with healing potions, would invent potion helmets.

Yeah, that's right! We reasonable human beings would put the potions up on the helmets! It makes all kinds of sense, given that the head is such a good target, and will have so many people taking shots at it with both sharp and blunt weapons, that those delicate glass vials of potions on our heads would be...

... well, maybe not.