Mearls' Chicken or the Egg: Should Fluff Control Crunch, or the Other Way Around?

[delericho]

Dark Sun is D&D.
Forgotten Realms is D&D.
Greyhawk is D&D.
Eberron is D&D.
Ravenloft is D&D.
Dragonlance is D&D.
etc.

If those all feel the same, then your GM is doing something wrong. Yet they all "feel like D&D" to some people. So I'm pretty sure that the "feel of D&D" is so entirely subjective that designing to fit it would lead to a very vague game.

While this is true, it is also true that there is a "core D&D experience" that most people playing the game would recognise as being D&D. Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance all hew pretty closely to that. While Dark Sun, Spelljammer, and the like are D&D, they're also fairly obviously outliers to that common experience - deviating from that "core D&D experience" in some obvious (and, indeed, deliberate) ways.

So, yes, while there's no one, true definition of "the feel of D&D", it's fairly easy to develop a game that comes pretty close, and it would also be fairly easy to develop a game that is distinctly not D&D. The 3e designers deliberately set out to do so with their list of the "sacred cows" (whether they succeeded or not is an entirely different debate). The 4e designers just as deliberately did not place anywhere near as much importance in doing that, focussing instead on building the best game they could - 4e not only had a different list of "sacred cows", it also had a much shorter list.

So, no, I don't accept that talking about "the feel of D&D" is too vague to be useless, and neither do I accept that maintaining that feel should not be a major goal when developing a new edition of D&D.

 

[rounser]

Although, let me check my 4e PHB. Elves, yes; dwarves, yes, paladins, yes. Sounds look you'd consider it a good base to modify or depart from.

But it's as much about what is left out as what is included. Tiefling warlords and eladrin don't suit a thousand worlds. They've no business being in the D&D baseline implied setting, nor all the modules and settings that entails. Dragonborn ended up stinking up FR, and they don't fit in Hommlet in my mind's eye either, nor is there a place for them in many homebrews. Simple.

 

[Pheonix0114]

In 4e I realized alot about different monsters by trying to take advantage of all of a monsters abilities, for example the Banshrae. They get advantages for moving a large amount on their turn, and the ability to shift after hitting with a melee attack as a minor. This and the words used in their powers "Melee Agility" "Mantid Dance" "Skirmish" all tell me that they are quick and are constantly moving in combat, which isn't just because I decided that, it is because that is what they can do. That is even before factoring in that they have a speed of 8.

Now you could say I was just inferring, or it was up to interpretation, but a move action is defined as you walking/running. If you fly or teleport or anything else the power has keywords that say so.

 

[rounser]

Are you really going to keep insisting that this isn't a case of personal taste?

Judging by Candlekeep and Amazon comments, I'm far from alone.

 

[rounser]

Hey a bunch of people like 4e and dragonborn too guess that means it's not objective.

It doesn't have to be. All it takes is for large numbers of former players and fans to start abandoning the latest incarnation of your game or setting, without being replaced by enough newcomers to matter, which is what appears to have happened.

Add to that former solid brand names like FR and D&D being associated commonly and publicly with "mud" under the new thematic direction, and it might be time to reconsider that direction...not just in terms of mechanics, but flavor, believability, storytelling, mythological resonance and "vibe".

I'd wager that it wasn't mechanics that turned former fans off of FR 4E, for instance, nor would it be for D&D, despite Mearls looking for a quintessential D&D in things like saving throws. Thus this thread.

 

[sciborg3]

Add to that former solid brand names like FR and D&D being associated commonly and publicly with "mud" under the new thematic direction, and it might be time to reconsider that direction...not just in terms of mechanics, but flavor, believability, storytelling, mythological resonance and "vibe".

I definitely think the 4e flavor overwhelming the taste of everything was like a sauce suddenly poured into all the food at your favorite deli. What happened to FR reminded me of what happened to Dragonlance - the accepted themes of the world were gutted and something very different was shoehorned in.

One of the big misses, in my opinion, in 4e was the attacks on the legacy of the Great Wheel. I had no interest in paying money to people so willing to mock what a lot of fans and previous designers had put tons of effort into.

The new cosmology has its fans, and flipping through the Gloomwrought box I can say there is gold to be mined even for Planescape fans. But overall I'll stick with the Wheel.

Is this a matter of taste? Absolutely, but 4e decided to make or break itself not just on a new system but on a new flavor that permeated across settings. It would have done better to keep FR the way it was (I wonder if sales of novels plummeted) and focus on the new cosmos but give options and nods to the Wheel. I can see no benefit the alienation gave in the long run - especially gutting the mags.

Can a new 5e system bring players back? By itself I doubt it, people who felt burned found new homes elsewhere - and exactly what would it offer? A game more like the one 4e claimed was a broken dinosaur?

But perhaps making something more compatible with Pathfnder can at least offer cross-pollination profits.

 

[Elf Witch]

I don't like 4E and to be honest I was not crazy that tieflings were made a common race.

But that said it really is up to the DM to decide how common they are or if they exist at all. I have seen this done in many campaigns all way back to 1E with all the races.

In my homebrew world I have a list of accepted races. It is a heavy dragon based game so there are half dragons, spellscales, dragonborn and kobolds as PC races.

If I was designing a game I would take some some races and put them in as supplements like dragonborn, warforged, tieflings ect.

 

[Umbran]

Folks,

Let us please stop the endless rehashing of old scores about changes in 4e. The thread is about whether Fluff should control Crunch, or vice versa. Please keep to that, and not to the endless edition warring and recriminations. Thanks.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I'm curious... how does this work again? You see, since all we have is a name "goblin tactics" and an effect... shifts... which can be anything you want to describe it as... how does this help me as far as the in-game fluff of a goblin? How does "shifty" tell you anything except how it abstractly moves in combat? Anything outside of that and you're making it up yourself.

Shifting has a certain consistent meaning through every monster that uses it (and that's all of them given that shifting one square is an option for move actions). It means moving cautiously and guardedly. Just because this isn't made absolutely explicit in the ruleset (which is a valid criticism, I agree) doesn't mean that it isn't consistent and what the term means.

So it's not a displacer like ability because you decided it wasn't,

It's not a displacer effect because it doesn't have the teleportation keyword. This is hardly arbitrary. And teleporting has its own conditions (for instance you don't provoke Combat Challenges by teleporting - you vanish in the blink of an eye rather than take your eye off the fighter for a fraction to see where you are going). This is all consistent and coherent within 4e - it just isn't always made explicit.

the point is that nothing in the actual mechanics of the power speak to this being about sneakiness or decption that is your interpretation of the mechanic and probably based on your vision of kobolds...

As apparently you do not play 4e, all I can say is that this mechanic makes Kobolds feel like slippery little buggers you can't pin down unless you are very good. They slip round any except specialist PCs as if there's no tomorrow and, at least as importantly, can all move both before and after they attack. Or dance into position for flanking better than almost anyone else of remotely comparable level. Or shift back, attack with their slings, and then take an entire normal move action to get away (possibly after having glue-potted you to the floor). This makes fighting Kobolds an excercise in trying to pin down the slippery little bastards.

However unless you have the right sort of mind to visualise that from reading stat blocks (I do) it's not immediately obvious. The 4e monster manuals would IMO be helped by a little two paragraph explanitory and tactical note by each set of monsters explaining how they are meant to work and a layman's guide to each tactical term (shifting being a favourite). The flavour is all there in buckets once the monsters hit the tabletop - but a lot of people would be helped by a decoder ring so they could see it in advance.

Edit: In 4e most of the time IMO the fluff controls the crunch. But in too many places the rules only tell you the crunch and assume that working backwards to the fluff is obvious. To some people (including me) it is. However I'm not everyone and clearer pathways would help a lot of people.

 

[ExploderWizard]

In a well run game I don't the issue of control should come up. The gameworld and the events being driven by the participants should not conflict with the mechanics used to represent them.

What is happening in the campaign is in fact the game. Whatever rules are used to keep the wheels turning, the game should always take precedence.

Rules are a means to an end, not an end unto themselves. If a rule is no longer serving a purpose in the campaign throw it out or replace it.

Likewise, fluff is also subservient to the game. Aside from providing useful fodder with which we create games, fluff has no more importance than rules unless we intend on writing novels.

The best games feature crunch and fluff both serving thier purpose while staying out the way of everyones good time.