Legends and Lore: Out of Bounds

[LurkAway]

As far as I can see, there is not much more to "out of bounds" thinking than taking the fiction of the gameworld seriously. And, as the quote from the DMG shows, this is already part of 4e (and other RPGs too).

I agree that taking the game world seriously is a primary reason for the DM/players/adventure-writer/designers to be thinking out-of-bounds.

I re-read the article looking for Monte's ultimate point and found "Breaking the rules, circumventing the rules, or ignoring the rules does not take you out of the game" (emphasis mine).

Breaking/circumventing/ignoring the rules is not part of 4E (or not considered to be an 'officially' supported playstyle) as far as I can tell (like the darkfire incident, rules lawyering, etc.) (and in that context, my example was not a good one except for 'Icewall, meet fireball')

This is why upthread I had suggested dividing 5E into basic and advanced. If class roles were implied beforehand and made explicit in 4E, then why not playstyles (DM: OK guys, for this campaign, do you want to play core by-the-book or do you want to play advanced/out-of-bounds?).

 

[pemerton]

I re-read the article looking for Monte's ultimate point and found "Breaking the rules, circumventing the rules, or ignoring the rules does not take you out of the game" (emphasis mine).

Breaking/circumventing/ignoring the rules is not part of 4E (or not considered to be an 'officially' supported playstyle) as far as I can tell

Whereas I think that 4e does support "ignoring the rules" in certain circumstances - namely, via its approach to "say yes" - which is a bit of a mixture of (i) Vincent Baker-style "say yes" (ie only use the action resolution mechanics if there is a genuine conflict to be resolved), (ii) of scene-framing advice (ie don't worry about framing scenes in mechanical terms if nothing much is going to happen in them), and (iii) player narrative control. Both (i) and (ii) are about ignoring the action resolution rules when appropriate, and (iii) is about ignoring the standard, GM-centred world building rules.

Page 42 isn't about ignoring the rules, it is about supplementing the rules to give game-mechanical significance to the fiction, which at least sometimes serves the purpose of circumvention (eg I am in situation X, and I don't have power Y which would let me get out of it, but I can do this improvised thing Z that hopefully will have the same result).

One technique I use in my game, which combines a bit of "say yes" with a bit of page 42, is to allow "minionisation" of NPCs/monsters in circumstances where there is no larger conflict at stake. This has come up twice, so far. The first time, the PCs had just stopped an evil ritual, thereby triggering the classic temple collapse from the backlash of chaotic energy, and were fleeing. With them was a NPC who was half-rescuee, half-prisoner. As I was asking the players to explain what their PCs were doing to escape the collapsing temple, one of them - the player of the wizard - said that he wanted to take advantage of the confusion to kill the NPC with a Magic Missile. There was no reason to resolve this according to the normal combat mechanics - the single rescued NPC had no chance against even the wizard, let alone the combined power of the PC party - but I did think that some of the other players might want to intervene and stop the killing. I therefore had the player of the wizard roll an Arcana check - on a successful check (from memory, against a Hard difficulty) he could "minionise" the NPC and therefore auto-kill him with Magic Missile. On a failure, the NPC would keep his full allotment of hit points, and therefore survive a single Missile strike, giving the other players an opportunity to have their PCs step in if they wanted to. The Arcana check was a success, and the NPC dropped dead, much to the shock and horror of the other PCs (and their players).

The second time, the PCs had captured a hobgoblin war behemoth and taken it to a city that was low on meat rations. The city was next to a small lake below a waterfall, and the players decided that their PCs would kill the behemoth by driving it over the falls (so it could then be butchered in order to feed the city). I ran this as a skill challenge, and one consequence of success on the challenge was that the behemoth was "minionised" and hence auto-killed by falling over the cliff. Again, there was little point in running the situation as a standard conflict - the PCs would have had no trouble taking down a single lower-level elite - but the chance of failure of minionisation did give the behemoth a chance to survive the fall, and therefore to do damage to the NPC townsfolk waiting below the cliff to rope and haul in the body, which would have been an interesting consequence of failure. Luckily, the players succeeded at the skill challenge and so the fall killed the behemoth, and so the NPCs waiting by the lake were safe.

Anyway, that's my take on ignoring and supplementing/circumventing the rules within 4e. My general view is that when the rules of a game are well-designed, there shouldn't be much call to actually break them - that is, to set up a situation that brings them into play, and then ignore or change their deliverances. In 4e, for example, there should be little or no call to override the action economy, the rules for setting DCs and damage, and the like - these are all at the heart of the game's action resolution mechanics. I guess it in part depends what one thinks the action resolution mechanics are for - but when used in 4e's "say yes" style they're for delivering exciting and engaging fantasy heroics, and so to break them would be to opt out of exciting and engaging fantasy heroics, which seems a bit contrary to the point of playing the game. (Other games have action resolution mechanics aimed at somewhat different purposes, and in those games "breaking" the rules at least sometimes might make sense. I think AD&D is probably an example of such a game.)

And because of the "looseness" of fit between mechanical resolution and fiction in 4e, there is no need (at least in my experience) to break the rules in order to give effect to the players' enagement with the fiction (via page 42, etc). You just have to follow the page 42 guidelines (as supplemented by terrain powers etc both in DMG2 and on the WotC site).

 

[LurkAway]

I therefore had the player of the wizard roll an Arcana check - on a successful check (from memory, against a Hard difficulty) he could "minionise" the NPC and therefore auto-kill him with Magic Missile.
<snip>
I ran this as a skill challenge, and one consequence of success on the challenge was that the behemoth was "minionised" and hence auto-killed by falling over the cliff.

The idea to minionise... was that your idea as a DM, or did the players suggest that to you because they assumed it was roleplayable?

Monte wrote "why shouldn’t the design of the game also be bigger than the rules? Why shouldn’t those kind of assumptions be taken into account? It puts the responsibility back in the hands of the players, rather than the DM or the designer. Success or failure lies within their own hands again."

His focus seems to be on the players allowing themselves to initiate out-of-bounds thinking.

For example, in the healing surge thread, you mentioned the paladin who cited the Raven Queen as ending the polymorph spell in 1 round. That would be in-bounds roleplaying to me because that's within the rules. Out-of-bounds roleplaying would mean something like a player who proactively asks the DM if his wizard can increase the duration of a polymorph casting via concentration, longer casting time, etc. and the DM rolling with that one way or another (expending a surge or action point, concentration/arcana check, etc.). I don't know whether or not this is an ideal example in context of the article, but it's what came to mind.

However, if the player doesn't feel empowered to ask "DM, may I..." based on fictional positioning, then it's not out-of-bounds roleplaying in the way that I think Monte is referring to.

To me, that's much about expectations and perceptions of what the rules are for, and is the DM and adventure module on board with that.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Wrong, like so many of his rulings... it got errated:
Target

He just "ruled" that a door cannot be lighted... but the rules say he could have also allowed it.

He also always forgets the save for sliding/pushing creatures on dangerous terrain...

Rat Bastard DM!

 

[Hussar]

/snip

But that's the thing, I shouldn't have to tell the players this and it is best for them in turn if they don't expect such metagame information direct from the DM. It is far better that the players take such action themselves and if they know it could be unsolvable, they will be more inclined to do this. If they are expecting there to always be a solution, that is when you really run into hours of head-bashing.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

But, that's the crux of the problem right there. How does the player know that this specific time is the one where the problem is unsolvable? He isn't going to know that until he's tried everything to get through it.

That's what wandering monster checks are for!

In the traditional big exploratory dungeon, when the PCs came across an obstacle they would IME either solve it pretty quickly, or leave it and go do something else. Standing around wasting time earned no XP and attracted wandering monsters./snip

That doesn't really follow though. How long does it take to try options? Wandering monsters were once check every 10 minutes (traditionally 1 in 6, sometimes 1 in 10). I'd get a wandering monster every HOUR on average.

I can try an awful lot of things in an hour.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

But, that's the crux of the problem right there. How does the player know that this specific time is the one where the problem is unsolvable? He isn't going to know that until he's tried everything to get through it.

In that kind of game, that is the wrong question. You don't know that this problem is the one that is unsolvable. There isn't a quota of unsolvable problems. Rather, you know that a few problems will be unsolvable, and a few more won't be worth your time. So when a problem seems like it is wasting time, you quit mucking with it. If it really interests you, you file it away for later. If it doesn't, you move onto the next one and don't worry about it. Heck, maybe the consequences of not dealing with it will prove more interesting than solving it would have. It is the difference between the game having puzzles versus the game being a puzzle. If it has puzzles, you can interact with them to the extent that you find it fun. When it stops being fun, stop interacting with them. Doesn't matter if the current problem that stopped being fun was actually unsolvable or not.

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=6685059]LurkAway[/MENTION] - good questions!

The idea to minionise... was that your idea as a DM, or did the players suggest that to you because they assumed it was roleplayable?

The player wanted to kill the NPC. The mechanical resolution was my idea. (I think this is how page 42 is envisaged as working, at least as written - the player frames a request in terms of the fiction, the GM takes lead responsibility for mechanical implementation).

in the healing surge thread, you mentioned the paladin who cited the Raven Queen as ending the polymorph spell in 1 round. That would be in-bounds roleplaying to me because that's within the rules. Out-of-bounds roleplaying would mean something like a player who proactively asks the DM if his wizard can increase the duration of a polymorph casting via concentration, longer casting time, etc. and the DM rolling with that one way or another (expending a surge or action point, concentration/arcana check, etc.). I don't know whether or not this is an ideal example in context of the article, but it's what came to mind.

The same player, the first time his PC faced an undead creature, wanted to cow it by speaking a prayer to the Raven Queen. I resolved this as a Religion check - I can't remember the DC, but I remember that I staked combat advantage on a success against damage on a failure, either psychic, as his morale weakened, or necrotic as the undead got the advantage (I can't remember now which, because the check was a success and so the damage didn't come up).

I've used a similar "stakes" approach for other page 42 stuff, especially involving that player, who likes to have his PC pray to the Raven Queen for all sorts of things. (Page 42 itself doesn't talk about staking damage, but healing surge loss is part of the skill challenge mechanics, and their are feats and powers that involve a type of staking - eg get a benefit but grant CA - so it seems a natural enough way of going.)

I think that this would count as "out of bounds", but I don't count it as breaking the rules. I agree with you that the polymorph duration thing isn't the sort of thing Monte is talking about. And in 4e terms, it's not page 42 - it's "saying yes" to a player's narration of a game mechanical event that it would normally would be the GM's prerogative to narrate. (This is category (iii) of the three meanings of "saying yes" in 4e that I noted upthread.)

Monte wrote "why shouldn’t the design of the game also be bigger than the rules? Why shouldn’t those kind of assumptions be taken into account? It puts the responsibility back in the hands of the players, rather than the DM or the designer. Success or failure lies within their own hands again."

His focus seems to be on the players allowing themselves to initiate out-of-bounds thinking.

But does Monte envisage the players having authority over the mechanical implementation of their ideas? I'm not sure, but I don't think so.

if the player doesn't feel empowered to ask "DM, may I..." based on fictional positioning, then it's not out-of-bounds roleplaying in the way that I think Monte is referring to.

To me, that's much about expectations and perceptions of what the rules are for, and is the DM and adventure module on board with that.

I like the balance that 4e strikes here, but I'm sure it's not the only viable balance. Page 42 and its associated apparatus - damage expressions, DCs, action economy, etc - do two things, I think. First, they give the GM the necessary support to mechanically implement "out of bounds" thinking by players. Second, they give players the necessary assurance that going "out of bounds" won't just end up hosing them, which (in my experience, at least) can often be the case in an RPG with a heavy handed GM.

So I agree it's about expectations, perceptions and what the GM is on board with. But I think the mechanical framing can help a lot with that, by offering support to all the participants to get the right sort of expectations. At least in my view, page 42 is a big step away from "mother may I".

Your comment about adventure modules is on target, I think. A lot of 4e modules are written, to an extent at least, in a "page 42" vacuum. I think they contrast poorly, in this respect, with modules like (just to pick some examples) the Penumbra d20 modules from Atlas, the Eden Odyssey d20 modules, and the sample adventures at the back of the HeroWars GM's book - all of which contain various sorts of suggestions to the GM about the range of approaches players might take, and give suggestions on how the mechanics of the game might handle those approaches. What's good about this sort of stuff is that, even if the players do something else again, the GM has examples and ideas to make the improvising the mechanical resolution of out-of-bounds play easier than it otherwise would be.

Some more recent WotC modules are better on this front. For example, Tomb of the Winter King (that comes with the Monster Vault) gives suggestions on how social skills can be used in combat to do "damage" to the Winter King (by demoralising him). It's a modest start, but it's a start nevertheless.

Anyway, I hope this post goes a bit further in explaining why I think that good rules don't need to be broken (but can benefit from supplementation), and also why I think that 4e is not the fictional-positioning-killer that it is sometimes painted as (including by implication, I think, in Monte's column).

 

[billd91]

Actually, you could completely do this via character abilities...

Roll knowledge check to see what sorts of creatures could aid in defeating the Kraken. Success! Medusa's gaze can turn anything to stone!

Receive Magic Items/Divine Boons (depending on if we're a low magic campaign or not)

Use a ritual to find the location of Medusa.

Skill Challenge - Use Stealth, Acrobatics and Athletics to get close to Medusa. Failure! She's detected you, roll initiative!

Use a combination of various powers and abilities, including some magic item dailies, to defeat Medusa and take her head (which is a Story Item per MME).

Use the story item to defeat the Kraken! Gain 10,000XP!

Yes and no. You aren't actually using your PCs' abilities to defeat the kraken directly. That's what I think KidSnide was getting at. You're using PC abilities to get the extra abilities you need to solve the problem (which, in turn, may require another side quest to get the abilities you need to get the abilities you need, and so on...).

As with anything in campaign design and running, you don't want too many of these cases to exist. That gets frustrating for players. But any game that won't incorporate them because every challenge needs to be solvable by the PCs and what they have now isn't a game I want to play.

 

[Skyscraper]

A lot of great stuff in this thread.

I combine my voice on the rule-of-three: it's a good way to help avoid being caught in a dead end with players that don't know what they should do. THis is especially useful in investigation-type adventures. I used this recently where a crime had been committed at a temple, and the PCs were hired to find the perpetrator: first clue was tracks, second clues was an eye witness (if they thought about asking neighbors) and third clue was an object left in the room. I was open to additional PC ideas and in fact they found their way through another unexpected way (used a connection the rogue-PC had). The point of the rule-of-three is to have enough stuff up that one of them might come up if the PCs can't think of something else. I use this a lot, in different forms (and not necessarily in the "three" number either), i.e. I lay a lot of elements about and wait to see towards what the PCs will be carried as a result of their actions. And my goal is not for the PCs to follow one specific predetermined path, it's pretty open-ended. My campaign doesn't have an ending yet.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I run a lot of mystery, even in games that are on the surface more action-hero fare. The players in our group all like a lot of mystery in the game. Heck, if we were playing a Conan knock-off, it would be Conan with a side of Nero Wolfe.

One thing I have noticed about rule-of-three thinking adapted to roleplaying is that the rule-of-three as usually discussed assumes a few things about the game. It assumes that there is going to be a correspondence in how the clues feel in the game compared to reading about the clues in a story. It assumes that one clue will be sufficient to "solve" the problem, and three are provided merely to make sure that the players get one without it being too hamhanded. And so forth. Mainly, it assumes that the characters will be engaging in a bit of a detective story, but the players will be "reading" about it. For standard D&D play, those are probably good assumptions. Conan isn't normally even a Mickey Spillane type, much less the more cerebral examples. This is often mystery color instead of mystery in fact.

To include a lot of mystery, and give the players a sense of being in a mystery, you need a lot more than 3 clues. You need a lot of clues, many of them subtle, and none of them capable of providing the complete answer (short of amazing insight by a player). Among other things, this gives the players a sense of "hey, something strange is going on here," before they have any real idea what that something is. Mystery has to build.

When adapting to this style, however, you could do a lot worse than to start with rule-of-three. Simply come up with three big clues that satisfy the standard rule-of-three. Make sure all three are substantially different. Then take each clue and break it down into several parts, and scatter them out over the time and place of the rough expected story arc of the mystery. If the players get most of the parts of one of the big clues, they'll get the answer soon thereafter. (If you aren't careful, this will seem like a standard rule-of-three mystery with a lot of frustrating hoop jumping, however.) A better result is that they will get some of the parts of each clue, and guess the answer before they can prove it. This will naturally lead to a faster pace as they get near the answer, and will be very satisfying for players that like to do this kind of thing. The plethora of clues (clue parts) will give their characters plenty of time to use their abilities.