Mearls' Legends and Lore (or, "All Roads Lead to Rome, Redux")

[pemerton]

This.

Thanks. It's reasurring to know that I'm not some crazy out here on my own!

the beats of leveling being a pacing mechanic rather than a power mechanic.

Yes. The way I've described this is that levelling, in combination with using the published monsters, means that the backdrop to the game, and to the players' decision making, is "the story of D&D". We start with kobolds, go via drow and mindflayers, and end up with Orcus. And because everyone at the table knows this is what will be happening, it gives the players another tool to draw on in shaping their PCs, choosing their PPs/EDs, and making their choices.

So if I frame a scene where you have to deal with something in a way that is going to produce thematically relevant content, how can I already have the next scene planned? If I do, then the choice made in the previous scene is actually irrelevant.

Yes. Exactly!

4E's design for effect is much, much more improv friendly than 3.x's universal simulation framework.

To get back to Pemerton's quote, I've found that the greatest impediment in communicating about this stuff is when the other person only sees RPG rules and procedures as the means to determine whether or not a character succeeds at a task and by how much.

Yes. Exactly what I was saying.

I agree with the rest of your post too, but these were the things that particularly spoke to my experiences with 4e.

 

[pemerton]

My third major problem is that no one has shown me a single example of play using skill challenges which can in any way be differentiated from not counting successes and instead simply adjudicating logical results from the game world.

The overland travel skill challenge I explained above is an example of this.

The challenge was complexity 2 (6 successes before 3 failures). The PCs were leaving the collapsed temple of Baphomet that they had successfully stopped gnolls from rededicating to Yeenoghu (this is from Thunderspire Labyrinth). I had decided that after three successes the PCs arrived at the gnoll shaman's burial ground (this is from the old Basic module Night's Dark Terror), that after five successes that arrived at the ruin with the witches (this was my own encounter) and that after six success they arrived at the village from which they could easily follow the trail to the city they were headed for (this was adapted from Heathen).

I had also decided that a failure before the burial ground meant the pursuing gnoll archer on a manticore - whom they knew about and from whom they were trying to hide - got surprise against them while they were at the burial ground. I decided that a failure before either of the next two encounters meant that no extended rest was had before getting to it.

As it played out, the first success was the wizard's Arcana check to contain the magic forces collapsing the temple after the ritual was ended - so only the entrance caved in, rather than the entire mountain side. (This obviously makes it less obvious to the flying gnoll that the PCs are departing the temple.) The next I can't remember - maybe group Athletics to climb down the mountain-side, as I think they opted for speed over stealth - and then another check - maybe Nature(?) - which brought them to the burial ground.

After the encounter at the burial ground, the next check was a group check - Athletics or Acro - to cross the river, then the Nature check described upthread to find a resting place - this failed at first, then succeeded, as describd upthread. Consequently, no extended rest was gained. The next check then brought the PCs to the witches - I can't remember what it was, perhaps Nature again, or maybe Perception after climbing a tree to scout.

Since then, dealing with the witches has occupied several sessions, and so the last check(s) hasn't been made.

I don't think this could easily be done in an alternative, simulationist fashion. How would I work out how many Athletics checks are required to descend the mountain slope, for example, or their DCs, or how hard it is to find a satisfactory resting place, without detailed maps and terrain description?

I think upthread I may also have described the negotiation skill challenge with the duergar slavers. In any event, resolving a negotiation as a skill challenge means that there is a clear point at which it is over, and some resolution among the parties is reached (a bit like a Duel of Wits in Burning Wheel). In my own experience, freeform resolution via social skill checks doesn't always so straightforwardly lead to finality - it is in fact highly vulnerable to check mongering by either GM or players, and also to overriding the outcome of past checks, as the GM decides that the "natural flow" of circumstances has changed. Whereas the metagame element of skill challengs means that something like "Let it Ride" from Burning Wheel comes into play - if the players have succeeded at a skill challenge negotiation then they have got what they bargained for, and as a general rule the matter is settled (and the GM has to narrate the unfolding gameworld in a corresponding fashion). Just as, in the typical combat victory, the monsters are dead, and the players don't have to worry that five minutes later that GM might decide that circumstances have changed and the monsters suddenly are alive again.

EDIT:

This is one of the major problems I have with the "system": Whenever it's discussed, the advocates inevitably start claiming that in order for skill challenges to really work right the first thing you need to do is ignore the rules for skill challenges.

First - if there is no more conflict left in the situation (for whatever reason) - then the skill challenge obviously is over. Just as if one side in a combat surrenders or flees or decides to become friends with the other (for whatever reason) then the combat is obviously over. The DMG leaves this implicit; DMG2 makes it express.

Second, some people think that, at the end of a combat, if one monster having only a handful of hit points is all that's left, and then is hit such that it has only 1 hp left, the GM should just fudge that last hit point and let it die. Others disagree.

I think there is a similar spread of opinions in relation to "dead rolls" in a skill challenge.

My own tendency is to regard no roll as dead - whether in combat or in a skill challenge, it always creates the possibility of extra complication and therefore interesting development. But I'm not dogmatic about this, and if I ever felt that pacing considerations really pushed the other way I'd be happy to call it differently.

In any event, I don't really see this as an issue of following or not following the rules. It's about exercising GM judgment in the interest of keeping the game running smoothly. That it might arise in relation to skill challenges is no more a point against them, then that it might arise in relation to combat is a point against the hit point mechanic. If there was reason to think it might come up frequently in relation to skill challenges compared to combat that would be a different matter, but in my experience the tendency is in fact the opposite to this.

 

[Beginning of the End]

My third major problem is that no one has shown me a single example of play using skill challenges which can in any way be differentiated from not counting successes and instead simply adjudicating logical results from the game world.

The overland travel skill challenge I explained above is an example of this.

I read the example. I'm afraid it amply demonstrates my point. There's absolutely nothing in what you describe which required the skill challenge mechanics to resolve.

You see the same problem in the example of play in the Rules Compendium, too: Remove the references to counting successes and failures and absolutely nothing changes.

I should note there that there are circumstances where complex skill checks are a useful way for resolving a single, discrete action. But although the success-vs-failures nature of the mechanic is similar, its application is pretty much completely different.

 

[Beginning of the End]

Apparently the word "explain" escaped your notice there. Try again.

If multiple posts of multiple hundreds of words on this thread - including that amount of detail on the overland skill challenge - aren't adequate, why don't you go to some of the actual play threads I linked to upthread.

So I guess the answer to, "Can you explain?" is, "No, I can't." Fair enough.

If you can't tell the difference between what Czege describes and railroading, or in Edwards' terminology the differene between plot and situational authority, then I don't know what experience you're bringing to this, but I assume it doesn't include much familiarity with modern/indie RPGs.

You're the one who linked to the thread where Czege (and others) argue that the GM should take control over PC decision-making away from the players in order to aggressively frame scenes. If there's some screwed up Forge definition of "railroading" which makes that anything other than railroading, I don't really care.

The notion that Czege and Edwards are railroaders, or advocates of railroading, is too absurd for words. They're up there with Robin Laws and Vincent Baker as designers of player-focused RPGs.

Not a great example to pick. Robin D. Laws designed GUMSHOE. Which, despite his protests to the contrary, is an entire system designed to support railroading the PCs.

You, like Laws, seem to be under the impression that railroading the PCs from Point A to Point B isn't railroading because there isn't a railroad from Point B to Point C. I'm afraid you're mistaken. An intermittent railroad is still a railroad.

Please note that I've gamed with Laws. He's a good guy. I'm generally a fan of his game designs. But describing him as "not a railroader" is kinda kooky.

Yet in no way do the rules, in and of themselves, incorporate pacing or theme as you claim.

Here are some ways the rules incorporate, or open the door, to thematic content:
*If I choose to play an eladrin, I am playing a PC who straddles two worlds - the mundane, mortal world, and the magic otherworld of faerie. This in and of itself brings into play the thematic questions "What is the relationship between these two worlds?" and 'What is my response to being of these two worlds?"

You understand that nothing you wrote there is a rule right? It's really difficult to have a conversation with you when you keep changing the topic and refusing to explain your actual position.

I could, of course, trivially point to equivalent "thematic content" in 3E:

* I choose to play a half-orc, I am playing a PC who straddles two worlds -- the civilized, cultured world and the savage, barbaric world. This in itself brings into play the thematic questions "What is the relationship between these two worlds?" and "What is my response to being of these two worlds?"

And I could point and laugh at the fact that you think "make a guy move 5 feet" constitutes a deep and meaningful contribution to the narrative.

But, really, that would just be a distraction from that you explicitly and implicitly refuse to explain your positions.

You say that you've written a lot of words in this thread. Yes, you have. And you have failed to use any of those words to answer the simplest of questions. Instead you just post obfuscated tautologies and apparently hope that nobody will notice.

There is nothing like second wind in 3E. Healing potions aren't a very effective substitute, because they take a standard action to use.

This is a pretty good example of why you're posting nonsense:

(1) You specifically claim that second wind mechanics support "character- and situation-focused narrativist play (...) in which the players build rich and compelling thematic material into their PCs (...) and the GM frames and resolves situations which engage with this thematic material".

This makes little sense to me. What does "you regain hit points and gain a +2 bonus to all defenses for 1 turn" have to do with character- and situation-focused narrativist play, building rich and compelling thematic material into your PCs, or the GM framing situations which engage with that thematic material?

You've been asked for an explanation multiple times, but you refuse to give it.

But even if we accept that the second wind mechanics somehow do all this...

(2) You specifically claim that they would not do so if they were a standard action.

By which we're forced to conclude that the "compelling thematic material" you're talking about is... somehow dependent on whether or not one is taking a minor, move, or standard action?

That seems kinda hokey.

But even if we accept that this is somehow true; that using a standard action to take a second wind would effectively disrupt whatever the heck it is you're talking about...

(3) Using a second wind, according to both the Player's Handbook and Rules Compendium, requires a standard action.

...

I'm just going to give that a second to soak in.

I think we're done here.

 

[Imaro]

That's actually not quite accurate. For one, DC's can be mixed and matched without any problem, so, no, DC's won't necessarily be mechanically "appropriate". Additionally, you can have a success (or failure) count as multiple, meaning that you can end a challenge before the intially estimation of successes.

So, pacing is actually quite easy to control and, has the added bonus, of not having any one element completely bog down play as each part of the challenge should be roughly the same length.

I'm going to disagree... now note, before I continue I never said it gives you mechanically appropriate DC's for the level of your PC's... but 4e's mechanics for deriving DC's most certainly give you an "appropriate" range of DC's for a particular level of challenge. You can use anything however you want, but the actual mechanics support this.

As far as a success counting as multiple or single... it doesn't change the fact that there is a set number of successes or failures you can reach that invalidate the rest of a SC... is this right or wrong?

Correct me if I'm wrong but you seem to be saying if you modify a SC on the fly to make sure it creates the correct pacing... you can control the pacing... well yeah, you can fudge anything in any rpg to control "paciing".

I also keep seeing refrences to play bogging down... IMO, this should be controlled by the players and DM not by the rules of the game, since the rules of the game can't tell you what parts of a game your players will be interested in or want to approach with more detail and what parts they will want to gloss through.

 

[pemerton]

You, like Laws, seem to be under the impression that railroading the PCs from Point A to Point B isn't railroading because there isn't a railroad from Point B to Point C. I'm afraid you're mistaken. An intermittent railroad is still a railroad.

I've lost track of your letters. What do A, B and C designate relative to Czege's example?

I read the example. I'm afraid it amply demonstrates my point. There's absolutely nothing in what you describe which required the skill challenge mechanics to resolve.

Would you care to elaborate? For example, how does one determine whether or not a satisfactory camp site is found, or river crossing is achieved, without a detailed map and terrain description?

You see the same problem in the example of play in the Rules Compendium, too: Remove the references to counting successes and failures and absolutely nothing changes.

I don't see this. The only thing that determines at the end of that sequence that the thugs turn up is that this is the third failure. There is no ingame causal logic that makes them turn up - it's a metagame determination governed by the skill challenge mechanic.

You understand that nothing you wrote there is a rule right? It's really difficult to have a conversation with you when you keep changing the topic and refusing to explain your actual position.

I didn't know that race descriptions aren't rules. And your half-orc example is interesting. In fact, your mentioning of it reminds me that Penumbra published a couple of modules that pick up on this - one by Keith Baker (? - the Eberron guy) called Ebon Mirror, Mearls' Belly of the Beast, and also The Last Dance.

You specifically claim that second wind mechanics support "character- and situation-focused narrativist play (...) in which the players build rich and compelling thematic material into their PCs (...) and the GM frames and resolves situations which engage with this thematic material".

This makes little sense to me. What does "you regain hit points and gain a +2 bonus to all defenses for 1 turn" have to do with character- and situation-focused narrativist play, building rich and compelling thematic material into your PCs, or the GM framing situations which engage with that thematic material?

Because of its contribution to dramatic pacing in combat - as I've said several times upthread, the fact that the monsters start with the advantage, but that the ability of the PCs to draw on their reserves then turns the tide.

Using a second wind, according to both the Player's Handbook and Rules Compendium, requires a standard action.

It's minor for dwarves. Action points can be spent. Second wind can be triggered by a different PC taking a standard action and making a heal check. And I've referred not only to second wind but to other powers that permit spending of healing surges, and a number of these are minor actions - lay on hands and the X words of the various leader classes being the most obvious.

My question to you is - how much play experience of 4e do you have? In your experience, does or does not 4e combat have the dynamic I describe? It's very obvious at my table. Many other posters on these boards have also talked about it. I tend to see it as a fairly evident diffrence between 4e combat and other mainstream fantasy RPGs, achieved by the way PC access to resources - including but not limited to healing surges - is structured.

You say that you've written a lot of words in this thread. Yes, you have. And you have failed to use any of those words to answer the simplest of questions.

<snip>

This is a pretty good example of why you're posting nonsense

Instead of being outrageously rude to someone posting detailed accounts of his playstyle and the actual play of his games, I would find it more interesting to hear about your actual play experiences. Did you try 4e combat and not see the dynamic I describe? How have you acheived narrativist play in 3E? What techniques do you use to resolve overland travel that avoid minutiae and also avoid GM fiat?

 

[pemerton]

I also keep seeing refrences to play bogging down... IMO, this should be controlled by the players and DM not by the rules of the game, since the rules of the game can't tell you what parts of a game your players will be interested in or want to approach with more detail and what parts they will want to gloss through.

Tell me more about how you actually achieve this in play.

For example, suppose that the players want their PCs to travel overland through swampy river country. There is a chance that they will have trouble getting rest, and might end up exhausted. But equally there is a chance that, with skill and luck, they will get through it well. How do you handle this without a detailed map and details about the terrain, and then working your way through it in great mechanical and descriptive detail?

Now, I know how I do this in 4e. I've described it at some length upthread. But tell me how you do it, using 3E. Your view seems to be that 4e doesn't add anything useful here - so tell me how 3E handles it.

 

[Umbran]

Folks,

I just closed another thread in this forum for having too many people being impolite to one another. So, let us make sure this one does not follow suit.

Remember as you post: as far as EN World is concerned, the person you're talking to is more important than the point you are trying to make.

 

[Raven Crowking]

After all, since Raven Crowking is posting in this thread, 3e certainly didn't speak to him. 300 pages of house rules and a pretty strident constant criticism of all things 3e would mean to me that the 3e tent wasn't too comfortable for him. Now, the 4e tent still doesn't speak to him, so, I guess it's a wash.

Hmmm. Allow me to clarify.

(1) 3e offered so many options that it was necessary to collate them and codify them into a single source for races, classes, feats, etc., as well as for optional rules from various sources that were "in play". This included racial subtypes of my own creation, with racial levels that could be taken by those playing them. The human racial subtypes were later published in Dragon Roots, if you have any interest in them as a 3e player. That document also included the first version of the weapon skill rules I am now using in RCFG.

(2) You are cutting the size of the final document by half. It ended up closer to 600 pages.

(3) I would say that the size of the document is an indication as to what could be done with that ruleset if one was willing to put in the time to research all the options out there, as well as to create some of one's own. There is no doubt in my mind that the plethora of 3e materials allowed for more variation than the 4e ruleset does. Indeed, my reading of the designer blogs suggests that reigning this in was a goal of the 4e design team.

(4) That said, the later work on RCFG is a stronger indication, to mind, of how 3e didn't "do it" for me. And I credit the design blogs of the 4e designers for direct inspiration not only for making me re-evaluate the problems (IMHO) of 3e, but also to see what I liked and did not like about the direction of 4e.

(5) One of the things that those blogs did was convince me how much Gygax got right with 1e, and how little the designers understood why things were as they were in that edition. Indeed, how little I had understood it until I started really taking it apart. I had thought I'd never go back to 1e when I bought my 2e books. Now I am not sure that anything I do (with RCFG or otherwise) will be anything more than a footnote to Gygax. I truly didn't understand the brilliance of his work when I was playing it in the 80s-90s.

(6) The limitations of 4e are largely, IMHO, the limitations of the GSL. I feel certain that 4e has been expanded in various houserules (ex. LostSoul's "fiction first" hack), but the limitations on the GSL make it harder to share those expansions. Had Necromancer Games been able to put out their announced "4e Done Right", WotC would probably have gotten a lot more of my money.

Oh dude, that would rock on toast. I'd be right behind you on this one.

I can't take the credit for that. It showed up on one of the designer blogs, back when 4e was still going to be a game with faster combat than 3e, and when monsters were going to flow organically from one encounter area to another. I.e., back when 4e was still going to be published under an OGL.

I also maintain that, if WotC stopped giving us the game experience they want us to have, and started to provide the game we wanted, they would do better. And I am not just talking about the ruleset here; there are a lot of things one might be able to do with 4e that WotC simply doesn't seem interested in providing.

There is no reason that 4e couldn't be providing "must have" adventures for players of other editions, or even other systems. The biggest impediment, IMHO, is being married to the Delve format. I know that I am like a broken record on this, but the Delve is not appropriate to all kinds of adventures, and if you only do Delve, you limit yourself to a narrow subset of what you can do.....or, at least, of what you can do well.

My reading of the designer blogs suggests to me that the initial ideas being tossed around were far more open than the game that they ended up producing. Moreover, it seems to me that the game they produced was specifically designed to use the Delve format.

In the end, it seems very much to me that we were told that D&D is what the Delve format supports well, and D&D is not what the Delve format doesn't support as well (again, from the designer blogs of the time).

There is nothing wrong with having a core experience. In fact, having a core experience is probably a good idea for any edition. But, no, a core experience built around the Delve format is never going to do it for me.

The first step toward getting me to try a newly reformatted 4e (Essentials II?) would be to ditch the Delve, and then use the tools provided to extend the range of what is (regularly) possible.

There are some great ideas in 4e, buried (IMHO) in lackluster execution. There is some great material in 4e modules, buried (IMHO) in a lackluster format that limits how the material is used.

Maybe what 4e needs (for those who feel as I do) is an Unearthed Arcana to dig some of that material up, and let it see the light of day.

Let me give one quick example of what I mean: Healing Surges.

The basic idea (if you want fighters to be more central to the game, they have to have some durability, represented by restoration of resources) is a great one. It's so good that I've stolen the basic idea for my own "Shake it Off" mechanic.

However, the idea of Healing Surges also encapsulates within it that the restoration of resources should be non-magical; i.e., that there is a benefit to the game in having a character type who is clearly non-supernatural. Sadly, they either failed to understand that, or failed to carry it out.

I would also say, IMHO, that the limitations on healing surges were not well thought out, preventing them from being as momentous in the game as they are in the fiction it emulates. I am still working on how to resolve this problem for the Shake it Off mechanic.

Finally, the whole set of healing RAW makes the system wonky (again, IMHO) for anything other than episodic play.

I would contend that the system is like this specifically to meet the needs of the Delve format:

(1) The Delve format is episodic in nature, so making the game play episodic in nature helps hide the resulting A to B to C railroading implicit in the format.

(2) The Delve encounters require the party to be at strength for their balance, by virtue of their static framing. This presented problems with 3e-era Delves; Healing Surges are intended to counteract this problem.

(3) The Delve format places undue emphasis on combat encounters, thus making "combat healing" important, because the healing takes place during the emphasized part of game play.

There are many, many other problems with the Delve format. I could write a 600-page document on why I dislike it. All I am trying to establish here, though, is why I think (perhaps ignorantly) that ditching the Delve would cause the designers to be more creative with the materials already inherent in the edition, leading to more 4e products that would be worth buying for non-4e players and 4e players alike.

YMMV, and probably does!


RC

 

[Imaro]

Tell me more about how you actually achieve this in play.

For example, suppose that the players want their PCs to travel overland through swampy river country. There is a chance that they will have trouble getting rest, and might end up exhausted. But equally there is a chance that, with skill and luck, they will get through it well. How do you handle this without a detailed map and details about the terrain, and then working your way through it in great mechanical and descriptive detail?

Now, I know how I do this in 4e. I've described it at some length upthread. But tell me how you do it, using 3E. Your view seems to be that 4e doesn't add anything useful here - so tell me how 3E handles it.

Ok, I'm at work so I can't go into a great amount of detail, but let's first look at the facts of this encounter...

The landscape is swampy river country... thus swamp land, a river crossing or two and any monsters/NPC's who inhabit this environment would be the main obstacles I have at my disposal to create this part of my adventure.

The consequences for whatever obstacles I have set up according to your statement above are exhaustion and/or trouble getting rest (though personally I would have also thrown in sickness due to the conditions of a swamp, but whatever). So let's look at some of the mechanical conditions we could use to simulate this...

1. Fatigued: character can neither run nor charge and takes a –2 penalty to Strength and Dexterity. Doing anything that would normally cause fatigue causes the fatigued character to become exhausted. After 8 hours of complete rest, fatigued characters are no longer fatigued.
2. Exhausted: character moves at half speed, cannot run or charge, and takes a –6 penalty to Strength and Dexterity.After 1 hour of complete rest, an exhausted character becomes fatigued. A fatigued character becomes exhausted by doing something else that would normally cause fatigue.
3. Hit Points: Loss of hit points can also be used as consequence of a character being exhausted or not resting properly.
4. Temporary Ability Damage: Loss of both mental and physical capability could also simulate exhaustion.

Ok, I think those are enough conditions since this isn’t suppose to be a detailed or in-depth encounter but a quick overland travel scenario to get to wherever they are going. Now let’s construct my scenario. I think 3 non-combat challenges and one combat challenge will round this out nicely.

1st encounter: “Across the Swamp Lands.”: The purpose of this encounter is to simulate travel across the first half of the PC’s journey. The scenario is described for the PC’s with the conflict being a landscape of that they must cross. The PC’s roll for initiative and are then asked, in order, to describe what action or actions concerning this part of the journey their PC’s will make to cross here. The consequences of failure, for any particular PC’s actions, will be tied to one of the above conditions (based on the circumstances) of their particular failure.

2nd encounter: “The River”: This encounter is centered on crossing a strong running river at the halfway point between the beginning of the swamps and the end of the PC’s journey. Again, the scenario is described and the PC’s are asked how they will go about crossing the river. Failure to cross the river results in the PC’s being soaked and suffering the fatigued condition (or the exhausted condition if they are already fatigued) on top of whatever condition they may have gained from the previous encounter (rising crescendo!!).

3rd encounter: “The Hermit’s Hut”: This encounter is a chance for the PC’s to rest and recuperate from the previous encounters. They come upon a small hut inhabited by a slightly eccentric hermit. The hut would provide a warm and dry place to rest but the PC’s must convince, bully, or cajole the hermit into letting them stay. There are also natural materials here that can be used to construct a makeshift shelter if sought out by a PC. If the PC’s do not get adequate rest they suffer the consequences (no healing/no removal of conditons). This is either a comeback for the heroes (removal of conditions), or it highlights the dangers they must face (they must preservere through the adversity)... of course I could shape it either way with a little fudging to portray appropriate themes and narrative structure.

4th encounter: “Bandit Attack”: As the PC’s near their destination, unless they are cautious and aware they are set upon by a pack of bandits who prey upon those emerging from the swamps. This is a combat encounter (an easy encounter) and the effects of any conditions still attached to the characters apply in this battle. This is the climax as PC’s battle, avoid or talk their way out of a confrontation after having survived the swamps. It also showcases the consequences of their actions in the swamp in a visceral manner. (Climax of this part of the adventure.)