Legends and Lore - Maintaining the Machine

[Crazy Jerome]

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 @Mark 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.

Yeah, the idea of "DM as adversary" has always been with us. It's been alternately supported and condemned since Dragon was accepting letters to the editor. I rather think that rather than telling new gamers to do or not do that, it would be a better idea to tell them when and how it was generally appropriate to be an adversary, and when not.

For example, in a game where the players want to explore a world and feel that their characters are challenged by it at times, it is entirely appropriate to get into the mindset of the monsters and play them as they would act. That is, I'm not CJ the DM using these 5 orc tokens to try to whittle down every hit point, with focus fire. Rather, I'm CJ getting into the heads of 5 orc creatures that are bloodthirsty and really don't like the characters. Which means that if your character does something particulary unlucky or stupid, they might kill him in their general bloodthirsty pursuit.

OTOH, in a game where it is understood that the players are going to explore the dungeon and enjoy the tactical challenge of fighting the monsters, it might be the other way around. Sure, you want to color those "orc tokens" to make them as vibrant as you can, but the fun for this group is that the DM will be working as a more or less neutral party, but using the tactics of the creatures to keep the challenge there.

The number and type of orcs to pick in the above might be different, too. You probably don't want to be in the adversarial mindset when making that decision, for either group.

 

[Croesus]

I, as a DM, for instance, can't stand making hundreds of little judgement calls. I don't want to have to consider the ramifications of a decision I've made. I don't want to have to worry about the "balance" of letting them drink potions freely or not. 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. I'd much rather worry about the villain's plot, the elves' architecture, the wacky voice I'm going to use for the idiot henchmen, whether or not Alicia is having fun with her thief, if it's time to order some pizza, etc.

Unfortunately, some systems (3.x, I'm looking at you) deal with these hundreds of judgement calls by having hundreds of rules. So instead of bogging down your game with judgement calls, the rules bog down your game with little, conditional, rarely used rules that no one can remember when the situation comes up. Quick, what are the rules for breaking items? What types of attacks do no damage to items? What types of attacks do less/more damage against items? How many points of damage can a mace take when trying to sunder it? Sometimes a judgement call is so much easier...

I do not want to have to be involved with the mechanics on the micro level during game-play. I want them to do their job and get the heck out of the way of my four hours of fun pretending to be a magical gumdrop elf. The more allowances and permissions I have to grant, the more tedious and frustrating the entire affair is.

Again, if eliminating the "allowances and permissions" requires memorizing (or looking up during play) dozens or hundreds of rules, what have you gained?

I want to run a game. In order to do that, I need a game engine. 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.

Agreed. Though to my mind, the whole point is to design the game in such a way that it doesn't require 400 pages of rules to play.

I'm assuming you're not suggesting a "rule for every occasion". But when designing the rules, there has to be a guiding principal for the design. Monte seems to be suggesting that no rules set can be 100% complete, so better to decide ahead of time which situations work better with fixed rules, and which situations work better in the hands of the GM, then design the system accordingly. Finding the proper balance isn't easy, and reasonable people will disagree on where the line should be, but at least he's showing that the designers understand the importance of getting it right.

One last point - this entire discussion seems to tie directly to the earlier article on system mastery. While I understand that many players enjoy digging into a system and discovering every nuance, many of us simply no longer have that kind of time. Having a system that doesn't require so much effort to learn and - more importantly - actually use is a high priority, at least to me. I'll gladly surrender some control to the GM, if it allows me to focus on the game, as opposed to the rules.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Unfortunately, some systems (3.x, I'm looking at you) deal with these hundreds of judgement calls by having hundreds of rules. So instead of bogging down your game with judgement calls, the rules bog down your game with little, conditional, rarely used rules that no one can remember when the situation comes up. Quick, what are the rules for breaking items? What types of attacks do no damage to items? What types of attacks do less/more damage against items? How many points of damage can a mace take when trying to sunder it? Sometimes a judgement call is so much easier...

I really don't mind there being hundreds of little conditional rules for me to use if I need them. Of course, there are useful rules and less useful rules, well-designed rules and less well-designed rules, rules that add to the fun, and rules that detract from the fun. The item damage rules in 3e (and 4e <- DDI Link) fall mostly under the "too detailed to be effective" bucket of rules.

Of course, the crux of the matter is, "if I need them." There being item hit points in 3e and 4e doesn't mean I can't just say that the fighter's axe breaks the door down in two hits, or that if you try to hit the goblin's mace, you'd probably disarm him before you broke it. And in 4e the only thing stopping me from disarming the goblin is that I can't disarm if I don't have that power.

The item HP rules, while they're not great rules on their own, are a pretty great example of a good silo. If I want those rules, I can use them. If I don't want those rules, I never have to interact with them.

An example of a bad silo, for instance, might be the 3e poison rules, where ability damage had a multitude of cascading effects that made me interact with rules I would have never touched were it not for the poison. Or the 3e grapple rules, which, despite being pretty complex, came up whenever a critter with a tentacle or a big mouth got involved in combat.

Detailed little rules-corners don't take anything from those who prefer to run with more DM judgement calls, as long as they are self-contained. Item HP is a good example, because I don't have to use that rule at all, but those who want to use the rule to determine with more precision how long it takes to hack down that door have it.

 

[Wiseblood]

I wonder if he intends to break combat off.

Combat rounds are X. They are approximately this long Y. You are in combat when these conditions are met. When you are not in combat there is normal time. Movement is relevant in both situations.

Action economy IMO has overreached it's usefulness. It works for resolving attacks or casting a spell or perhaps even moving around. It does not handle everything well and trying to shoehorn things into these categories strains verisimilitude. This is because it does not differentiate between things of varying difficulty. Opening door A takes a minor action opening door B (stuck) takes a move action or a standard action. Without including the varying degrees it's kind of silly to include just some of them. Your environment (controlled by the GM) is almost constantly changing. If you want to open the door during a fight the DM should fill in that blank. It's not really different than determining if it is locked which the DM had to decide too. Every rule printed must serve to make the game more playable, not more leverageable.

 

[LurkAway]

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.

Or maybe yes?

The village of Hommlet has expanded into a kitschy adventuring tourist town. Here you can buy your potion helmets and other gear for "adventurers on the go". There is a McDunneld on the way to the Temple of Elemental Evil (newly rennovated!). McDunneld offers a combo of Last Meals and side of Last Will and Testament forms. You can even bring your kids to the McDunneld playground & orphanarium.

Small adventuring guilds across the land have been bought out and consolidated into a global corporation ("AG Inc") with offices throughout the Feywild, Shadowfell and Astral. With annual membership, you get a subscription to Adventure Quest Classifieds and teleport ritual to the WWL (World Wide Library), a spirit library where you can look up recent monster reports, known monster abilities, and ancient legends, plus foldout maps to find your nearest AG Magic Store and AG affiliated organizations.

So pack away your Mordenkainen Instant Luxury Tent and head off to Hommlet. Buy your potions (must be all-magical all-natural organic AG brand not those no-name brands with the preservatives and artificial flavors), fill up your AG Potion Helmet (guaranteed to work in almost 10% of all Encounters! warranty not included), strap on your AG Instant-Unsheath-A-Sword-Omatic, and tuck your in Group Telepathy and Attack Coordination Amulet. Because when you're a busy Adventurer, there's simply not just enough time in a round to do only 1 thing at once.

After all, it's only logical to be shouting attack strategies to your comrades, waiting to hear and listen to their response amidst the chaos and noise of battle, while simultaneously unsheathing your sword, sipping your potion, moving, dodging and ducking lethal blades, defending with parry and shield, and counterattacking, and staying focused on saving your life and felling your fearsome opponent in a very fight to the death.

So ya, let's add a potion helmet to that!

 

[Croesus]

I really don't mind there being hundreds of little conditional rules for me to use if I need them. Of course, there are useful rules and less useful rules, well-designed rules and less well-designed rules, rules that add to the fun, and rules that detract from the fun. The item damage rules in 3e (and 4e <- DDI Link) fall mostly under the "too detailed to be effective" bucket of rules.

Of course, the crux of the matter is, "if I need them." There being item hit points in 3e and 4e doesn't mean I can't just say that the fighter's axe breaks the door down in two hits, or that if you try to hit the goblin's mace, you'd probably disarm him before you broke it. And in 4e the only thing stopping me from disarming the goblin is that I can't disarm if I don't have that power.

The item HP rules, while they're not great rules on their own, are a pretty great example of a good silo. If I want those rules, I can use them. If I don't want those rules, I never have to interact with them.

An example of a bad silo, for instance, might be the 3e poison rules, where ability damage had a multitude of cascading effects that made me interact with rules I would have never touched were it not for the poison. Or the 3e grapple rules, which, despite being pretty complex, came up whenever a critter with a tentacle or a big mouth got involved in combat.

Detailed little rules-corners don't take anything from those who prefer to run with more DM judgement calls, as long as they are self-contained. Item HP is a good example, because I don't have to use that rule at all, but those who want to use the rule to determine with more precision how long it takes to hack down that door have it.

Yeah, pretty much any rule that changes stats in 3.x is a pain, whether poison, certain creature abilities, or even templates. Probably seemed like a good idea when they designed the system, but mostly failed when judged by cost/benefit.

Which is why I do disagree slightly that having easy to ignore rules for little, conditional situations is preferable to a few simple guidelines for the GM - every rule has a cost associated to it. I have to read the rule, make the decision whether or not to ignore or modify it, look past it to find the rule that I do want to use. Why read 400 pages of rules if I'm going to ignore half of them as too unimportant to bother remembering.

One way to split the baby on this is to begin with a simplified rule set which incorporates GM judgement calls as the default, then offer optional silos (good way of describing these) for the areas where folks would prefer details. As you point out, if the silos are not integrated deeply in the basic rules, adding or ignoring them is easy, and would allow each group to customize the game to suit their tastes. Yet we would all be playing the same basic game.

Personally I find it easier to start with a simple system and add complexity where I want it, as opposed to starting with a complex system, then stripping out the pieces I don't want. YMMV

 

[avin]

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...

Must spread XP...

 

[LurkAway]

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.

What if there were less decision points for the DM?

Let's say a PC can do 1 action per round by default (attack, drink a potion, draw a sword, etc.) (Yes, I know this dregs up the controversy about 1 action = 1 round)

If you do a 2nd action, imagine that you're doing both actions simultaneously. You don't need to decide how fast each action is respectively, only if they can be multitasked in parallel.

Then in the majority of the time, by default, without DM micromanagement, you can combine 1 action with 1 move, because it's usually easy to move while acting. In fact, in real-life combat, it's highly recommend to be weaving or ducking or sidestepping while attacking. You can attack while moving, draw a sword while moving, drink a potion while moving, etc.

If your only action is to be moving, then you're not doing a double move per se, you're still doing 1 action, but you're able to move faster/farther because you're focusing only on the one task.

Anyway, as a DM, you can be hands-off as long as the PC is moving while doing 1 action. You only need to adjudicate if the PC wants to do 3 things at the same -- talk, move, attack is almost always OK but a DM could draw the line if the talking turns into a soliloquy -- or substitute something else for the move -- attack while opening a door or attacking while full-out running, in which the default answer may usually be 'no' but needs human intelligence to account for context?

 

[I'm A Banana]

Which is why I do disagree slightly that having easy to ignore rules for little, conditional situations is preferable to a few simple guidelines for the GM - every rule has a cost associated to it. I have to read the rule, make the decision whether or not to ignore or modify it, look past it to find the rule that I do want to use. Why read 400 pages of rules if I'm going to ignore half of them as too unimportant to bother remembering.

I'd like to posit that you functionally ignore at least half the existing rules in your own game in that way now.

How many different monsters do you use? If you're 4e, and you use 5 different types for every combat, never repeating, you're looking at (5 monsters * 10 encounters / level) 50 different monsters of each level, or (30 levels) 1500 monsters over the course of an entire 30-level campaign, or (10 levels) 500 monsters over the course of the duration that most groups functionally play for.

There are 4,750 monsters in the DDI. Someone with a DDI sub (the cheapest way to get into D&D) has to sort through over three times as many rules as they are using in the span of a 2-year game. It's 9 times as many for your usual 10-level campaign. That's a lot of rules that you have to decide you're not using.

And that's assuming no monster is a homebrew (monster building rules make it so you can ignore 100% of those pre-made monsters), and that every encounter from 1-30 is a combat (no quest XP or skill challenge XP).

Or maybe we'll look at classes. A player gets something like 35 powers over the course of 30 levels. With 5 players in a campaign, your party makes use of about 175 powers between them. There are 8,723 powers currently in the DDI (once again, the cheapest way to get into the game): nearly fifty times the actual rules you'll ever use.

DDI's got a lot of options, though. Lets say our DM fails his cost/benefit analysis check (less options! more money!) and just buys the core books. He's got almost 500 monsters, so he'll get to use everything in that book, and he'll have to use some of it up to three times. That's a lot of mileage! And I hope he likes leveling up his critters, 'cuz about half of those are heroic tier. He's still got four times as many powers as his players will ever use, and an entire extra 3 classes sitting around gathering dust (probably at least one of the strikers).

No matter the game you play, you are going to ignore vast swaths of the rules, either because they never come up in your game, or because they're not great rules for most groups. Ignoring the rule is trivial. I bet more than half of 4e players aren't even really aware there IS item damage. A bigger percentage have never used it anyway. Encumbrance probably gets a similar treatment. You are never going to use every race, class, monster, and house rule out there. There is an abundance.

And it is up to the DM to determine what rules they need when they need 'em.

I get the argument that the rules should generally be useful rules to the majority of DMs to be present in a rulebook, but having rules you never touch doesn't hurt you any more than having monsters you are never aware of. As long as it is self-contained, and doesn't bang on to a dozen different other sub-systems, it's an option you can use, that you never have to use.

 

[DEFCON 1]

In response to all the talk about 'potion helmets' and the like... that's the end-result of the proliferation of magic items and the forms in which these magic items take. To be honest... in the standard D&D worlds where there are magic armors, weapons, implements, cloaks, jewelry, helms, boots, gloves, and all kinds of miscellaneous stuff... potions actually make very little sense as an item unto itself.

If you're an adventurer who needs to carry magic effects, or an artificer who is creating magical effects... putting said magic into liquid form held within a glass bottle with the express purpose of someone needing to drink it to activate the magic... is really quite ridiculous. Nobody would actually do that. The odds of the bottles breaking, or the time lost having to unstopper and imbibe said potions are just not worth the time and effort.

Even if by some reason alchemy was cheaper than other types of magic transference... eventually people would realize that more expensive methods are just better... and over time costs would drop on those more effective methods. Until eventually potions would become as unused by the populace as audio cassettes are today.

There is absolutely no reason why a creator of healing magic would ever put his magic into liquid form. He'd spend his time and money on R&D to go straight to making magic tattoos, or magic jewelry, or whatnot be able to hold the healing magic, able to be activated by the person wearing said item by a thought or a vocal command or some sort of biorhythm. THAT'S an item that adventurers would find useful and spend their hard-earned money on... not some energy drink that he'd never in a million years ever try to actually use in the middle of a swordfight.

Now does this truth run counter to the tropes of fantasy? Sure thing. I know many of us would hate to give up the idea of potions. But quite honestly... anyone who would create magic that was expected to be used DURING a fight, just would not make potions. They just aren't the best use of time and money.