Legends and Lore - Nod To Realism

[pemerton]

As far as I understand from previous threads, we're very different in the sense that you find immersion in games like Rolemaster and very little or zero immersion in gonzo heroic systems like D&D.

The most immersive system I've played is Call of Cthulhu. Rolemaster and Runequest are a bit clunkier in some parts of their mechanics, and Rolemaster also requires players to make choices that are capable of being metagamed, and hence are vulnerable to non-immersive wedging.

I tend not to find AD&D immersive whenever its action resolution mechanics (mostly combat) come into play, because I'm often not very sure what's going on in the fiction.

OTOH, I understand that you're not actively seeking "realism" in D&D anyway. So that's OK if you don't accept that anything "realistic" is happening when your PC takes 4 hp of damage, right?

I'm a big fan of realism (or, at least, verisimilitude and genre consistency). I like to know what's happening when my PC takes damage. My experience with playing classic D&D is that I generally didn't know until my PC got dropped. That's probably correctable with better GM narration. In 4e, if it's not obvious what a given bit of damage indicates (sometimes it is - for example, if a giant hits a PC and pushes him a few square, everyone can envisage the fist or club connecting and the PC going flying, action movie style) then I will narrate it as GM.

According to the description of hit points in the 4E PHB, any of the above, as narrated by the group based on fictional positioning.

Agreed, but this is the sort of narration that it is being suggested in this thread (if I'm reading right) is at odds with immersion.

I personally don't see the contrast here between 4e and classic D&D.

As long as the GM does the narration, I also don't see (from the players' point of view) any obstacle to immersion (other, perhaps, than having to write down a change of status).

The reason that I think hit points are at odds with immersion isn't because of how they are tracked in combat. It's because of the effect they have on player decision making. Players make decisions about what sorts of risk to take with their PCs, for example, based on the current distribution of hit points (and, in 4e, surges) in the party. This is a constant feature of D&D play, at least in my experience. But what does it correspond to in the fiction? What are the PCs talking about when the players are saying "I'm nearly at full, but the thief is pretty low, and the wizard will pop if s/he gets hit one more time?" This, for me, is the immersion-breaker. It doesn't come up in RQ or RM, because talking about injuries in mechanical terms is just like talking about them in fictional terms (eg "I've got a -30 penalty to my right arm, so I don't want to do another fight" is, in fictional terms "My sword arm is badly hurt - cut and bruised - and I don't think I can fight very well like this").

Although 20-30 yrs later, you still didn't "learn" (I use quotation marks because I don't mean that pejoratively) to find the hit point mechanic immersive.

I challenge anyone to tell me how the conversation about hit point levels in making party decisions in D&D play is consistent with immersion. What can it possibly mean, in the context of the fiction? And if - as I believe - it's purely metagame, then immersion is per se ruled out, at least during that portion of play.

 

[Argyle King]

But why, then, would you take the Warlock multi-class feat. Or, if you did (because you wanted to play out your paladin's fall from Pelor's grace) wouldn't you expect your GM to set up situations which reflect Pelor's annoyance (eg your rations rot away, it is always cloudy and raining wherever you go, good folk shun you and won't offer you food or shelter, etc). Nothing in 4e that I'm familiar with gets in the way here.
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I'm not saying anything does get in the way. It was simply an easy example for me to pick out; also, it has the added bonus of being a combo which is very good and often used to great effect by people optimizing multiclassing and/or hybrid options.

There are other parts of 4E which bother me far more (unless -as stated in a previous post- I "shut off certain parts of my brain") such as Grab being virtually useless. When I first learned 4th Edition, it seemed strange to me that I could grapple someone using a longbow, and they could still fire without any difficulty. Likewise, it was strange to me at the time that -short of dimensional shackles- there was no way to really pin somebody down or physically restrain them with the intent being to take them prisoner or pacify them. Instead, while I was using my actions to attempt to do so, they were free to attack me; eventually I simply stopped trying and realized that I was better off with the intent of simply killing all enemies.

I'm drifting away from my Pelor example and what it was meant to show though. My point for bringing it up was to showcase that -IMO- the crunchy parts of 4th Edition and the fluffy parts do not always have a very good relationship; that can at times make it difficult for me to have the rpg experience I want. I am somebody who believes that there is indeed a connection between fluff and crunch and that changing one can (and often does) have an impact on the other.

A better example would be for me to cite the math which the game and game world is built around. I fully understand the reasons for PCs and monsters being built differently. I really do not even have a problem with the concept that they are built differently, and I will go so far as to say I think that is often a good design choice because there are details you need to know for a PC which may not be relevant to a monster (or NPC.) However, there are times when those differences and the different branches of game math which are born from those differences creates odd situations.

I remember one of the first games in which I went from 1-30. Part of the campaign took the party into The Nine Hells. I forget exactly which level it was (I've played a lot of D&D since then, so the details are fuzzy,) but there was a giant black gate which was the barrier between the level of hell we were on and the next one. Our goal was to seek an audience with Asmodeus, so we need to walk to his layer. Supposedly the gate was this super material we could not break -based on fluff; a few at-wills later, and the party was on the other side.

Likewise, even the fact that we could casually stroll through The Nine Hells and physically walk to where we needed to go without really having any serious problems seemed odd. It wasn't for a lack of the DM trying to challenge the party; we simply just crushed anything which tried to impede us. It was jarring because all of the uber-devils and lords and creatures which were supposedly terrors to behold were just steamrolled over. It was difficult to understand why anyone in the game world would fear them if the powers available to heroes were so much better than what the villains had. At the conclusion of that campaign, my character ended up intimidated Orcus into submission; he became my warlord's butler (no, I'm not making that up.) Killing him seemed too easy, so I challenge myself to see if I could subdue and intimidate him. The GM allowed it because 'realistically' (based on in-game events and such) he felt that Orcus probably would have been terrified after the encounter with the party.

Granted, back then a lot of powers were not yet given errata, and the monster math was weaker than it is now; I do not deny that was part of the issue. Still, the most recent game just wrapped up, and -even with using the new material- the same result was achieved: the PCs easily crushed most things in their way.

I suppose a good fiction example would be to say that I would find it equally as jarring if Frodo had not needed any help at all in LoTR. Imagine if he had simply just walked to Mt. Doom -slaying any orc which had gotten in his path with barely an effort- and destroyed the ring. Likewise, imagine if he had been capable of simply just breaking the ring after everyone had said how impossible it was to destroy it. It wouldn't make any sense, and I feel it would have made it difficult for me to enjoy the story. Though, that's simply my opinion, and I have no doubt that such a sequence of events would not be jarring at all for others.

There have been times too when (to touch on the Orcus battle again) an enemy who was said to be a scourge of the world and feared throughout the land could barely break through a door or a wall. Meanwhile, the PCs barely sneeze and blow the hinges off the thing. The discrepancies between what is stated and how things work out in actual play often made enjoying the game difficult for me before I took a step back and started playing D&D 4E with a different state of mind.

 

[LurkAway]

What are the PCs talking about when the players are saying "I'm nearly at full, but the thief is pretty low, and the wizard will pop if s/he gets hit one more time?" This, for me, is the immersion-breaker. It doesn't come up in RQ or RM, because talking about injuries in mechanical terms is just like talking about them in fictional terms (eg "I've got a -30 penalty to my right arm, so I don't want to do another fight" is, in fictional terms "My sword arm is badly hurt - cut and bruised - and I don't think I can fight very well like this").
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I challenge anyone to tell me how the conversation about hit point levels in making party decisions in D&D play is consistent with immersion. What can it possibly mean, in the context of the fiction? And if - as I believe - it's purely metagame, then immersion is per se ruled out, at least during that portion of play.

Yes, immersion IS ruled during that portion of play when players step back and talk metagame. However, players have a choice to speak in character or speak out of character about hit point levels. Myself, I wouldn't assume that in classic D&D for whatever gaming group that players must have x amount of out-of-character conversations about hit point levels such that it completely wrecks immersion for the whole session for everyone.

 

[Tymophil]

Err, isn't that what the flavor text attached to each power was? I mean, take the base wording for the Cleric's Divine Glow power.

"Murmuring a prayer to your deity, you invoke a blast of white radiance from your holy symbol. Foes burn in its stern light, but your allies are heartened and guided by it."

Seems like that does exactly what you're suggesting, no?

Yes, they give you a flavour text, it is a step in the right direction. This is a feature I point people to when they say that D&D4 is a "rules only" system.

Unfortunately, the designers did not emphazise that heartening and guiding is related with other mechanism (hp, bonus to hit, etc.). Flavour text was a step in the right direction, but, in my humble opinion, it should have been doubled with a flavour text or examples, describing those effects, in the rules for the DM and players alike. For exemple, it should have made clearer that there is a strong link between confidence and hit points. In fact, designer notes were needed for both beginners and veteran alike. I miss them in D&D4... For example, they would have been useful to point the veteran to those flavour texts like you did.

Moreover, in the introductionary adventure (Keep on the Shadowfell), there should have been lots of advices/examples/situations/scenes where the link should have been strikingly evident.

In fact, I think the designers of D&D4 were overconfident. They seem to have thought that the new edition of D&D would be accepted smoothly... They included some rules/mechanisms that meant a shift in some basic features of D&D (AC, powers, hp, etc.) and did not stress the shift...

In a nutshell, my point is that D&D4 has many (most) of the ingredients required to build a believable fictionnal reality... But it takes quite a fair amount of energy from the user (GM and player) to make them surface.

 

[Tymophil]

Years of game development thinking! Oh, wow!

I have to admit that my sentence is quite ridiculous...

Let's not pretend that game development is science, alright?

If you are a quantum physicist and you miss years of quantum physics research, you might lack some FACTS that your fellow scientists have access to.

How does this transfer to the realm of gaming development where almost everything is based on matters of preference? Or did the 4th Edition reveal some FACTS about roleplaying that were hitherto unknown to man?

I think the parallel with science is quite interesting, as it seems to me that Monte Cook missed some concepts, paradigms. Science can move on by using new paradigms that can model in a better way facts that are observed (sometimes observed a long time ago). Quantum physics is also, and maybe just that, new paradigms...

Monte Cook take on realism is, in my very humble opinion, outdated. Thinking that because damage from different weapons are different, then there is realism in a system, is, for me, outdated... This is an outdated paradigm, it does not reflect in any fact, it is just something that seems to make sense if you cling to the paradigm (that is backed up by no fact) that swords are more dangerous than spears...

The more I read his prose, the more I hope he will take no part in the making of the new edition of D&D.

 

[Tymophil]

What you're struggling to put your thumb on here is that 4E features dissociated mechanics to a degree previously unprecedented in D&D. While such mechanics can often be explained post hoc, this process of explanation is distinctly different from that found in roleplaying game mechanics.

You are somehow right, I have read this article and did not give it enough credit.
Why? Because I believe it is possible to move the lines: transform a dissociated mechanism into an "associated" one, but stating what kind of "model of reality" you're using.

For example, if hit points are simply a measure of your health, then an attack versus Will should not affect it. If you can attack Fortitude, Will and Reflex, then the definition of Hit Point should emphasize that it reflects health, confidence, stamina. I would draw a strong line between the three defences and the hit points. By doing so, a dissociated system can lose its (perceived) dissociated feature.
This something that was often done in AD&D first edition Dungeon Master Guide. Gary Gygax spent lot of energy to convince the reader that it was a good thing to distinguish Intelligence from Wisdom for example.

This is the central problem I see with Cook's essays. He's artificially conflating two radically different concerns:

(1) The balancing act between the accuracy of a simulation and the ease of using that simulation. (In general, the more accurate you make a simulation the more difficult and complex it becomes to use. So there's a trade-off. Like most trade-offs, there'll be a sweet spot. And that sweet spot will vary from one player to the next.)

(2) The distinction between associated and dissociated mechanics.

To be fair, this is a confusion often found among fans, too. But a lot of the dissatisfaction with 4E comes from #2. And if you try to solve that problem by tweaking #1, you won't solve it.

That is what I meant by stating that Monte Cook position was outdated. You are right, I did not give enough thought and, therefore, importance to dissociated mechanisms.

 

[Balesir]

Logically, none. The claim to importance is all widespread popularity of preference. Immersion is the pizza of gaming. It is entirely possible to have weeks, months, and years of excellent eating with no pizza whatsoever. And there are plenty of meals that would be actively harmed by including pizza with them. But people wants their pizza.

They want it greasy and dry, with little fish and not. With red sauce and white. With onions, mushrooms, and green peppers and none or only some of those. They want it deep dish, ultra thin, and everything in between. And get 6 random gamers together, count yourself lucky if 3 different types of pizza will satisfy them.

So Monte was also very much on the right track saying that a certain amount of the nods must be supplied by the individual group. There just is no way for Joe to have anchovies embedded in his D&D throughout and Jane to never deal with them at all. Something has always got to give.

Nice analogy - shame I need to "spread the xp love"!

I guess my main respones is "When people want pizza, why don't they get it from a pizza parlour instead of demanding that MacDonalds should do pizza?"

 

[Balesir]

I challenge anyone to tell me how the conversation about hit point levels in making party decisions in D&D play is consistent with immersion. What can it possibly mean, in the context of the fiction? And if - as I believe - it's purely metagame, then immersion is per se ruled out, at least during that portion of play.

Even though I don't prioritise immersion while playing D&D, I think 4E's "bloodied" condition actually can help with this a good deal. In 4E other players will pretty much never need to know anything about another player's character's hit points except "are they/you bloodied" and "are they/you hors de combat (<0 hp)". And I think both of these are very easily "justified" in the fiction:

- Bloodied is when the damage becomes visible; before bloodied the creature looks no different from when it started the fight, but when bloodied it has scratches, bruises and other signs of damage. Or maybe just its hair is mussed up - or Captain James T. Kirk's tunic is torn, now...

- At <0 hit points the creature is out of the fight; not, necessarily, literally unconscious, but no longer able to act.

Simples...

 

[Argyle King]

Nice analogy - shame I need to "spread the xp love"!

I guess my main respones is "When people want pizza, why don't they get it from a pizza parlour instead of demanding that MacDonalds should do pizza?"

I think this is a good question to ask. It ties into what I was getting at with a few of my posts both here in this thread as well as ones I've made elsewhere.

For me, my answer was that I was lead to believe McDonald's made pizza -to keep with the same analogy. The vast majority of my rpg experience at one time had been D&D and virtually nothing other than D&D. I was vaguely aware that other games existed, but I mostly assumed that most ways of rolling dice and playing a rpg were pretty much that same. I did have a very brief period of playing Rifts when first introduced to the hobby, but the GM of the game I was in did most of the rolling for players and my time with the game was very brief, so I did not see a lot of how it worked at the time.

So, honestly, my education level concerning games and game design was very poor at that time. Looking back on some old posts I made concerning D&D, I can now admit to myself that I held a lot of opinions about what I thought I liked due to not knowing any better. While some of 4th's changes were things I did not like (some were things I did like too,) they helped me to discover (through being so different from what I knew in 3rd) that there was more to pretending to be an elf or slaying a dragon than simply rolling a d20, and that styles of mechanics might actually change the flavor of the game.

I suppose my personal answer is that for years I had been eating chicken nuggets and thinking they were pizza. I had been told it was pizza. Not ever having pizza, I had no idea that McDonald's chicken nuggets were not pizza. Now that I've had pizza, I am aware that it tastes nothing like chicken nuggets, but there was a time when I would have never known the difference. Had somebody told me I was eating what I thought was pizza the wrong way, I would have argued with them and defended my chicken nuggets as being the real pizza.

It would not surprise me to find that there are others right now who are eating 'chicken nuggets' and believing they are in fact pieces of 'pizza.'

 

[LurkAway]

Even though I don't prioritise immersion while playing D&D, I think 4E's "bloodied" condition actually can help with this a good deal.

As someone who does value immersion, I would disagree with that vociferously.

In 4E other players will pretty much never need to know anything about another player's character's hit points except "are they/you bloodied" and "are they/you hors de combat (<0 hp)".

AFAIK, many 4E groups treat 'bloodied' as a pure metagame construct with no simulationist element, and I agree that this would usually have to be true (which is exactly why it's non-immersive for me).

- Bloodied is when the damage becomes visible; before bloodied the creature looks no different from when it started the fight, but when bloodied it has scratches, bruises and other signs of damage. Or maybe just its hair is mussed up - or Captain James T. Kirk's tunic is torn, now...

In addition to above, this eliminates the possibility of drawing first blood on the 1st round, then deducting morale/luck/stamina/karma hit points afterwards.