Legends and Lore - The Temperature of the Rules

[Vyvyan Basterd]

Where it gets tricky in 3E/4E is deviating from those odds. It is so tempting to adjust the DC by increments of 5 up and down, but that doesn't leave much room for expectations.

So now can write guidelines as a competent character giving a task where results under pressure matters:

DC 9 - slim possiblity of failure, but otherwise routine
DC 12 - easier than normal
DC 15 - normal problem, will success more than fail
DC 18 - harder than normal, could go either way
DC 21 - can pull it off, but risky

4E after Essentials does give a handy guide in a very compact form. It's a handy chart I always keep in front of me. It lists DC by all 30 levels and by three grades of difficulty (Easy, Moderate, Hard). An understandable misconception some have is that the Level in the chart is meant to be the character's level. I don't believe they explain the concept very well, but the table is meant to give you difficulty by challenge level.

They should (or maybe they do for those who've read it more thouroughly, I just took the concept an ran with it) build examples from this table to flesh out the concept. Using the doors as an example, the misconception is that the DC to open a stuck wooden door increases as your character increases in level, resulting in the same relative difficulty as he becomes more competant. Instead, a normal wooden door should be a low-heroic tier challenge and being stuck could be a Easy difficulty. An Epic-tier character should not even need to roll to unstick this door. Building upon that, a jammed door could be Moderate and a locked door could be Hard. And building on the Challenge Level a reinforced door could be upper-Heroic, an iron or stone door Paragon challenges, while specific portals such as the Gates of Heaven or Hell could be Epic challenges while all still falling under the general guidelines of one Difficulty chart mechanic.

What I think is needed is better guidelines for common types of checks made under each skill and attribute with examples by Difficulty and by Tier. As an experienced DM I may have skimmed past such discussions in my readings of the Essentials books, but I do not recall as good of guidance as I would hope to see for newer DMs.

 

[LurkAway]

What I think is needed is better guidelines for common types of checks made under each skill and attribute with examples by Difficulty and by Tier.

Sounds good, but not by Tier in a simulationist edition of game I hope.

 

[pemerton]

I don't believe the intent was to ignore them, I just think they've been under-utilized.

I agree with this.

 

[pemerton]

I'd say that BW is a traditional game

<snip>

It sure isn't "addressing premise", and only is "Story Now!" if you take the plain English meaning of the term versus its more technical one.

The guidelines on PC building, on setting and situation building (in the Adventure Builder), and on adjudication of action resolution all seem pretty non-traditional to me.

And the advice in the Burning THACO on how to adapt classic D&D modules looks fairly "story now".

I look at BW as an attempt to make a more traditional gritty action resolution and character building set of mechanics (a bit RQ-ish in general flavour) deliver a "modern" play experience by (i) changing the guidelines on situation building and resolving failure, (ii) tweaking the advancement rules to give players an incentive to have their PCs face a range of challenges, including near-impossible or impossible ones, and (iii) linking both (i) and (ii) to player-defined priorities (via the belief and character-trait mechanics).

Does that make any sense?

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

Sounds good, but not by Tier in a simulationist edition of game I hope.

We're talking about D&D in this thread, so I assume even if we are talking about a simulationist game we are also talking about character levels being involved as that has always been the case in D&D.

If so, then yes, but only because I mean nothing more when I mention Tier in my post than shorthand for "range of levels" because the chart I reference actually lists each individual level from 1 to 30. And guidelines, as opposed to codified rules, should give the DM an idea of what range the challange level falls in, IMO.

If we are talking about a simulationist version of D&D (or any game for that matter) that does not use character levels, then no.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

4E after Essentials does give a handy guide in a very compact form. It's a handy chart I always keep in front of me. It lists DC by all 30 levels and by three grades of difficulty (Easy, Moderate, Hard). An understandable misconception some have is that the Level in the chart is meant to be the character's level. I don't believe they explain the concept very well, but the table is meant to give you difficulty by challenge level.

...

What I think is needed is better guidelines for common types of checks made under each skill and attribute with examples by Difficulty and by Tier. As an experienced DM I may have skimmed past such discussions in my readings of the Essentials books, but I do not recall as good of guidance as I would hope to see for newer DMs.

Right. Then the problem becomes that you have to look at the chart, because the chart relates the needed difficulty of that kind of task to character of an appropriate level. I agree fully that this has been misunderstood, and that you are supposed to relate the difficulty to the fictional game element (only picking elements that matter to even worry about). However, this is a level of indirection in the thinking that a lot of people have trouble with. (It's not a problem for me, having taught myself pointer logic in the C programming language. )

You can streamline the math so that you can replace the chart with a calculation and/or memorize the chart more readily. Some people have done this. That doesn't change the thinking process, however.

Think about it this way. The order of operations in 4E when assigning a DC to a fictional element:

1. This thing is an X (e.g. stout wooden door, whatever).
2. That is an appropriate challenge for characters of level X.
3. Look at chart. Get the DC. (Or do the calculation.)
4. Determine if this is inside the range of difficulties that characters should even care about or not. If not, bypass it or replace it. Otherwise, characters interact with it.

Or, alternately (and I think this is the way most of us that like 4E do it):

1. This thing is DC N.
2. This is easy, medium, or hard for characters of this level (from chart of calculation).
3. So narrate what kind of thing X is that fits that criteria.
4. Characters interact with it.

The second version replaces the indirection in the process with indirection in the approach. (That is, rather than worry about the conditional possibilities of X not mattering, we go straight to it mattering, which moves the indirection to the narration.)

Whereas the order of operations in what I proposed (and what BW does, and many other games) is:

1. DC 15 is the baseline for a creature competent in that skill. (Stays the same all the time, and no chart or calculation needed.)
2. Easier or harder than that is shifting up or down by 3, a number of times based on roughly how easier or harder you think it is. (Easy calculation.)
3. If not sure, compare it to some other examples.
4. Characters interact with it.

At start, this is more time consuming. It mirrors what Balesir was talking about with establishing parameters during play, however, in that the more you do it, the easier it gets. Once you are comfortable with the ranges, there is no indirection from the fiction. If a stout wooden door is DC 15 to budge, then that is the baseline. A weak wooden door is DC 12 and a ramshackle door is DC 9, and a termite-ridden door is lower than that, and thus not a challenge at all.

Now maybe someone doesn't care for the math behind my example. No problem, as it was only a rough example anyway. But my main point is that the math behind the 4E numbers as written make it impossible to easily convey this kind of rule of thumb to people who expect to operate with the traditional order of operations. You can't because the character scaling and jumps in DC by 5, don't allow enough steps to handle the fictional expectations that a such a person wants. You are effectively stuck with, at most:

DC N-5 - really darn easy
DC N - standard
DC N+5 - really hard (until my character scales some)
DC N +10 - the crazy stuff, barring magic items and such.

The several tweakings of the easy, medium, hard numbers on the chart is one reflection of this problem. You can't get numbers that everyone likes, because those numbers are compromises trying to handle different expectations.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

The guidelines on PC building, on setting and situation building (in the Adventure Builder), and on adjudication of action resolution all seem pretty non-traditional to me.

And the advice in the Burning THACO on how to adapt classic D&D modules looks fairly "story now".

I look at BW as an attempt to make a more traditional gritty action resolution and character building set of mechanics (a bit RQ-ish in general flavour) deliver a "modern" play experience by (i) changing the guidelines on situation building and resolving failure, (ii) tweaking the advancement rules to give players an incentive to have their PCs face a range of challenges, including near-impossible or impossible ones, and (iii) linking both (i) and (ii) to player-defined priorities (via the belief and character-trait mechanics).

Does that make any sense?

It makes sense, because that is pretty much the way I saw BW initially. However, the BW folks kept saying that it wasn't a Narrative game in the Forge sense, but was a traditional game. So I kept looking, and I think that I finally understood that BW is a game where story emerges from the action traditionally. The story is what happened. This became more clear when I realized that a large part of the BW appeal to me was that it is an aggressively "develop-in-play" game, once play starts. (The huge amount of space for lifepaths can hide this, but the belief and instinct writing should have clued me in.)

Where BW is modern is that every element in it (even those apparently sim-heavy, background-driven lifepaths) is built to fast forward to things that matter to whatever that emerging story is. And if something really matters, the game goes into slow motion while on that thing.

This is why some of its elements translate well to 4E, IMHO. (And would even better, if the skill challenges were as mechanically robust as 4E combat, albeit at a lesser scope--the 4E equivalent of BW Versus tests, whereas 4E combat matches the BW in-depth subsystems.) More than most versions of D&D (by RAW, if imperfectly), 4E subtly encourages you to only roll when it matters. Let it Ride translates very well to it, with just a little winking and nudging. Imagine if 4E combat could work for any conflict (social, exploration, whatever), and the skill challenges were more robust but still relatively light. Then if something doesn't matter much, say yes. If it matters some, skill challenge. If it matters a lot, "Combat".

I'll grant that beliefs are the most "Story Now" element in BW. But you'll note that the beliefs hold no direct mechanical weight. Rather, it is merely (Hah!) that the beliefs are forced into prominence by the check/artha/advancement system. Contrast this with Riddle of Steel (warning, I only know second-hand), where the spiritual attributes themselves have serious mechanical meaning.

 

[pemerton]

BW is a game where story emerges from the action traditionally. The story is what happened.

<snip>

Where BW is modern is that every element in it (even those apparently sim-heavy, background-driven lifepaths) is built to fast forward to things that matter to whatever that emerging story is.

<snip>

I'll grant that beliefs are the most "Story Now" element in BW. But you'll note that the beliefs hold no direct mechanical weight. Rather, it is merely (Hah!) that the beliefs are forced into prominence by the check/artha/advancement system. Contrast this with Riddle of Steel (warning, I only know second-hand), where the spiritual attributes themselves have serious mechanical meaning.

Even in narrativist play, I would say that the story is "what happened". But the mechanics and the play of the game are set up to ensure that what happens will be interesting - ie there will be drama with a thematic point. And it seems to me that BW with it belief system is likely to push in that direction.

But I would agree that compared to TRoS or HeroWars/Quest, the narrativism would be of a more mechanically vanilla variety - as you note, there are no Spiritual Attributes or Relationship Mechanics to bring to bear. But then the same is true of 4e! - which (as you know) I still think can be easily bent to narrativist purposes because of other features of the design.

Besides its belief mechanics, the other feature of BW that stands out to me is the reason that it gives to the players for having their PCs tackle challenges againt hopeless odds (namely, the advancement rules). This, in combination with the focus on intent rather than task in resolving failure, seems to be set up to encourage players to take their PCs where the action leads, even if their's no hope of success, and to make sure that GMs will build on that rather than just shut the PCs down. The mere fact that there are mechanics that discourage turtling/optimisation at every turn I think provides serious support for non-gamist, non-operational play.

(As you also know, I think that 4e has mechanics that play a comparable functional role, and therefore differentiate it from earlier versions of D&D as far as the support of various playstyles is concerned.)

I know this post probably seems silly, trying to contradict the designers of a game in diagnosing the sort of play it might support - but a game whose slogan is "fight for what you believe in", and whose scenario design advice (in the Adventure Burner) can be summed up as "build situations that will force the players to make choices that ramify upon the goals/values that they have identified as their priorities for play", is just asking to be labelled with the narrativist tag.

The attraction for me of BW is that, in many ways, it can be looked at as akin to Rolemaster or Runequest - purist-for-system PC build, very strong elements of purist-for-system in action resolution - but "done right", with just enough tweaks - "say yes", "let it ride", "intent rather than task as the focus of failure", and the belief mechanics feeding in on both the player and the GM side - to make it deliver the sort of player-drivien, situation-focused game that I think is very hard to get out of Runequest and reasonably hard to get out of Rolemaster (especially at low levels).

 

[pemerton]

More than most versions of D&D (by RAW, if imperfectly), 4E subtly encourages you to only roll when it matters. Let it Ride translates very well to it, with just a little winking and nudging. Imagine if 4E combat could work for any conflict (social, exploration, whatever), and the skill challenges were more robust but still relatively light. Then if something doesn't matter much, say yes. If it matters some, skill challenge. If it matters a lot, "Combat".

A "Save My Game" column earlier this year explicitly canvassed "let it ride" for 4e. And it's something I'm doing my best to implement, together with BW-style "say yes".

Skill challenges have a certain degree of "focus scaling" in virtue of the intersection between level and complexity. So if a challenge is harder but minor you can make it slightly higher level but keep the complexity low. Whereas if you want a challenge to be a bigger focus you up the complexity.

This doesn't work perfectly, or course. First, there are some odd interactions with the XP rules. Doubling the complexity, for example, doubles the XP. So does holding the complexity constant but going from Level N to Level N+4. My gut feel, though - I'll let someone else verify the maths - is that the chance of succcess is much more severely hit by increasing the level than increasing the complexity.

Second, increasing the complexity affects the likelihood of success. I don't think the effect, in actual play, is as severe as it looks when you sit down and do the raw calculations, because in a more complex skill challenge the players will bring more resources to bear (daily powers, utility powers, rituals, encounter powers etc) that will boost their skill rolls, and also will work harder to move the fictional positioning in a way that lets them exploit their advantages (be those mechanical or fictional).

But it's still a long way from perfect.

I'm not 100% sure that I actively want "combat" to be genericised in D&D, because I'm a bit traditional in that respect - I'm very comfortable with combat being given special mechanical treatment - but I'm not hostile either, and if designers are prepared to do the work I'll happily look at what they come up with.

 

[S'mon]

Where it gets tricky in 3E/4E is deviating from those odds. It is so tempting to adjust the DC by increments of 5 up and down, but that doesn't leave much room for expectations. Really, those are pushing the limits, with 65% as your baseline assumption.

A 5-increment system works well for me. I simply decide whether a task is Heroic, Paragon or Epic, and whether it's Easy, Moderate or Hard for the tier.

Heroic Task: Easy DC 10, Moderate DC 15 Hard DC 20
Paragon Task: Easy DC 20 Moderate DC 25 Hard DC 30
Epic Task: Easy DC 30 Moderate DC 35 Hard DC 40

Particular circumstances allow for a +2/-2 mod, eg a slightly tougher than Easy heroic task, like busting open a stuck dungeon door, might be DC 12. A slightly easier than Moderate heroic task, like breaking open a fragile locked door, might be DC 13.

I find this system lets me set workable DCs in play very easily without needing to refer to a table.