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

[pemerton]

And since the players don't know the effects of a failure, the PCs are still presented with the possibility of a 'gotcha!' encounter at the river where disrobing and dropping weapons can be both embarassing and deadly. So a player group cautious/paranoid enough to expect gotchas in previous editions are just as likely to want to act in a cautious/paranoid way prior to placing themselves in that position.

I think this is true in theory, but perhaps less likely in practice. (Of course, I may be generalising excessively from my own experience.) My view is that part of the point of level appropriate DCs and damage expressions is to establish a base level of trust.

And it's not just trust that the GM won't deliberately try to crush the players. It's also trust that the GM has the tools to hand not to accidently crush the players. (For me, the main challenge in running Rolemaster is this second issue - because RM has nothing comparable to CR guidelines or 4e encounter budgeting, and has rather notoriously swingy action resolution mechanics.)

How does this trust issue play into the scenario you describe? The PCs getting caught without their gear while crossing the river would presumably only ever be the consequence of a failed check in the challenge, and the guidelines as to damage and the like give the GM some guidance as to how serious such consequences should, in general be. Suppose that, without armour, the paladin is likely to be comparatively ineffective in the ensuing combat, but most of the other PCs adversely effected only for a round or so while they pick up their weapons/implements. Then the GM can be fairly confident that an encounter of no more than three or four monsters of the PCs' level will likely be interesting - because of the challenging circumstances in which the encounter starts - but not devastating, because able to be handled by the PCs even without the paladin there at all.

Does that make any sense?

 

[pemerton]

As you mentioned in a previous post, you think that "make that guy move 5 feet closer to me" is a really meaningful narrative control. And here we see that you think "I use Split the Tree and fire two arrows at once that separate in mid-flight" is "rich and compelling thematic material".

If that's the sort of potential that you see in using the combat elements of a fantasy adventure game to establish and express thematic material, then I guess you must strongly prefer the non-combat elements of the game.

The sort of decisions that I'm interested in are more along the lines of:

*What sort of warrior am I? An archer, who hides behind others and let's them face the enemy forces? A polearm master from whom none can escape? A paladin and knight who wil never retreat or surrender? What sorts of risks will I take to help my companions?

*What sort of techniques am I prepared to use to battle my foes? Will I use treachery? Stealth? The power of the shadowfell? Who or what will I rely on? Who or what will I repudiate?

*What sort of fate do my enemies deserve? Death? Imprisonment? Defeat and then humiliating execution?​

I've never claimed that my RPGs have great literary depth. But for me, at least, this is engaging stuff and the sort of stuff that dynamic combat rules allow the expression of.

 

[Nagol]

I think this is true in theory, but perhaps less likely in practice. (Of course, I may be generalising excessively from my own experience.) My view is that part of the point of level appropriate DCs and damage expressions is to establish a base level of trust.

And it's not just trust that the GM won't deliberately try to crush the players. It's also trust that the GM has the tools to hand not to accidently crush the players. (For me, the main challenge in running Rolemaster is this second issue - because RM has nothing comparable to CR guidelines or 4e encounter budgeting, and has rather notoriously swingy action resolution mechanics.)

How does this trust issue play into the scenario you describe? The PCs getting caught without their gear while crossing the river would presumably only ever be the consequence of a failed check in the challenge, and the guidelines as to damage and the like give the GM some guidance as to how serious such consequences should, in general be. Suppose that, without armour, the paladin is likely to be comparatively ineffective in the ensuing combat, but most of the other PCs adversely effected only for a round or so while they pick up their weapons/implements. Then the GM can be fairly confident that an encounter of no more than three or four monsters of the PCs' level will likely be interesting - because of the challenging circumstances in which the encounter starts - but not devastating, because able to be handled by the PCs even without the paladin there at all.

Does that make any sense?

That post was primarily in response to Hussar's notion that 4e breaks the overly cautious situation analysis paradigm offered by player groups when presented with what the DM knows is a minor challenge / fluff piece.

If the 4e DM in question says as apart of a skill challenge "You've made it to a river, it looks like a Athletics DC 20 to cross here. Heavy armour and weapons will provide a substantial penalty unless removed. What do you want to do?" You'll could just as easily have the group try to determine if more is at stake than described as the 3e DM who says "You've made it to a river. It looks like the Ranger (who has Swimmig trained to a decent level) can make it across without rolling. What do you do?"

The only real difference is the 4e world is a less harsh environment for low level groups (and conversely more harsh to high-level groups) due the level-appropriateness built into the game.

 

[Nagol]

Sorry, that was a misstatement on my part. I should have said, "A 4e SC doesn't need a specific river to cross. You are correct in that you certainly can actually have one.

I was more referring to the idea of controlling pacing. If I wanted to slow down pacing, I could drop a Dragon Turtle in the river that is awakened on the first failure. Or, I could simply say, "The going is rough, lose 1 healing surge". (boring as heck, but possible.)

<snip>

The 3e DM can control pace through the swamp about as well through abstracting the environment as well.

DM: "You're at the edge of The Swamp of Icky Swamp Stuff. Your destination is deep within probably at a least day maybe two based on the muck you need to wade through. Any special precautions? No? OK roll a d20".

Destination is 14 hours of normal travel within. The group will realise it is getting close once it is within 4 hours of travel and not lost.

The Swamp of Icky Swamp Stuff

To avoid becoming lost: Survival DC 12 1/hour Take 10 is possible if no combat that hour (harder than a moor but less than a full forest). <Note that this means a group with a Wis 14+ character or any character with a trained Survival of +2 or better cannot get lost unless there is a serious distraction like combat.>

Disease check: Fortitude Save DC 12: Filth Fever 1/day for anyone susceptible to disease.

Wandering monsters: chance 1/20 every 12 hours of day travel, and 1/10 overnight. Average EL 6 during the day, EL 9 at night (see chart). <Chance of an encounter is remote, but the DM left some chance by assigning a probability. The players have some strong control over the likelihood to avoid encounters by forcing the travel to be a single day.>

With this setup, the PCs are in control if the lose the equivalent of a healing surge by using Forced March or Hustling to reduce the chance of random encounters and other dangers.

 

[Imaro]

It's interesting, Imaro, that you are choosing to ignore certain aspects of 3.5. You're not calling for "Getting Lost" checks (which seem to require a map of some sort; perhaps not) or making random encounter rolls. In addition, your handling of getting a good night's rest and the bandit ambush is to my liking, though not by the rules as far as I can tell.

Maybe you can answer my question about 3.x: When do you call for a skill check? It seems to me that any time you attempt any action that's listed in any of the skill descriptions you must make a check (or Take 10/20). If that's the case, you can see how that would affect the pacing of a game.



There's a reason why this works. Because you don't have to worry about making poor decisions - for the most part, you know what DCs you will be facing - you are free to take thematic actions.

Wow, I don't have enough time in the day to keep up with this thread...

I play where you only roll for what I would call "obstacles" in certain situations... taking 10 or taking 20 are viable in the majority of situations and take very little time(less than an actual roll) to resolve so why concern yourself as DM with them if you know the players auto-succeded by taking 10? I don't believe 3.x/PF ever intended a player to roll for every action, that's absurd in my mind... do you have to roll to walk, run, etc?

LostSoul, the problem with your assertion that you don't have to worry about making poor decisions... does not in any way guarantee thematic actions, and could just as easily lead to players of a different mindset more easily gaming the system mechanics and assumptions and disregarding thematic decisions alltogether... again this seems like a case of choosing to use mechanics in a particular way but not necessarily that those mechanics are designed to lead you or even give you incentive to play in a narrative style.

 

[Imaro]

If that's the sort of potential that you see in using the combat elements of a fantasy adventure game to establish and express thematic material, then I guess you must strongly prefer the non-combat elements of the game.

The sort of decisions that I'm interested in are more along the lines of:

*What sort of warrior am I? An archer, who hides behind others and let's them face the enemy forces? A polearm master from whom none can escape? A paladin and knight who wil never retreat or surrender? What sorts of risks will I take to help my companions?

*What sort of techniques am I prepared to use to battle my foes? Will I use treachery? Stealth? The power of the shadowfell? Who or what will I rely on? Who or what will I repudiate?

*What sort of fate do my enemies deserve? Death? Imprisonment? Defeat and then humiliating execution?
​

I've never claimed that my RPGs have great literary depth. But for me, at least, this is engaging stuff and the sort of stuff that dynamic combat rules allow the expression of.

BUT... all of this can be defined in 3e by player choice just as easily as a player in 4e... this is where I keep missing your overall point. You seem to be saying "heroic protagonism" and rich "thematic choices" boils down to fluff and choices... well then I really don't see 4e as any better at it than 3.x/PF, just different... and I stick by the fact that you are coating gamist mechanics with your own narrative paint, which can just as easily be done in 3.x by adjusting what particular DC's mean... In my game a DC 10 river is 100,000 feet wide... now everyone is a heroic protagonist!!

 

[Imaro]

It's a question of how you're choosing to resolve these actions. 4th Edition also includes rules for overland travel, enduring harsh conditions, managing rations, and the like which are similarly being ignored by Hussar and pemerton.

This...

EDIT: I'd also like to add to this a little... as I look through the 4e PHB and DMG... I've noticed that many of 4e's skills have set DC's for particular actions just like 3.x/PF. Does this mean that using the skill rules vs. SC rules of 4e hinders "heroic protagonism"? I'm also curious how you deal with this dichotomy. Why in a SC is an Acrobatics DC based on whatever the appropriate difficulty for level is, and described however you want (which I will comment now, not every 4e fan believes this is the way the DC's should be generated)... but using the Acrobatics skill alone to do something forces the DM to have all those things you rail against as hindering "heroic protagonism" (like width of beam being crossed, length of fall, etc.) and sets clear guidelines? So one minute my character can balance on the single strand of a spider's web with a DC of 10 and then all of a sudden when he's not in a skill challenge he has to roll a 20 to balance on a narrow ledge. I mean we are looking at 4e as a whole, just like you claim we must with 3.x/PF... right?

I mean I understand this discrepancy from a gamist stand point... having general by level DC's makes the game more fun and easier to run when you don't want to be concerned with the detail of simulating the world... What I don't understand is how these seperate resolution systems help to promote narrative play vs. gamist. Again it seems you are ignoring what contradicts your assertions about 4e and using the mechanics the way you want to promote your particular style of play... which is something that can just as easily be done in 3.x/PF.

 

[Raven Crowking]

It's funny that Raven Crowking hasn't jumped on you for this.

Raven Crowking has always been consistent on this one: Rolling and ignoring the result is fudging. Not rolling is not.

EDIT: Also for clarity, Raven Crowking isn't the arbiter of your game. If you post "fudging is a great idea", I am going to post to oppose that meme. If you post "I fudge at my table all the time", Raven Crowking is merely going to make a mental note not to play at your table. If you post "I occasionally fudge", Raven Crowking really doesn't care one way or the other.

Raven Crowking says now, and always, if you can get someone to play in your game, you can run it however you like. He's like a broken record that way.


RC

 

[BryonD]

You're basically saying that you control pacing by fudging the dice. If the dice say that a random encounter happens, then that's what happens according to the rules. If the dice say that the group gets lost, then they get lost.
Of course, you can ignore the dice, but considering the rather large amount of complaining about fudging from certain quarters, I wanted to be absolutely fair and RAW about things.

No. I'm not saying that at all. I think you really don't grasp the root point of where I am coming from.
At first THERE ARE NO DICE. I don't follow them. I don't ignore them. They don't exist.

When I read the Lord of the Rings, I don't imagine dice. Do you?
The very idea of thinking about dice while reading great fantasy literature is bizarre to me and I'm going to presume that it is for you as well.

And really the same thing applies to reality. When I drive my car there is a chance my trip could be delayed by a School Bus or I could have a drunk driver swerve in front of me. There is a vast array of potential happenings which range from minor but generally good diversions (school bus) to potentially deadly threats (drunk driver) and a million others in between. When I think about safely and efficiently getting to my destination I am aware of this collection of unknowns. But I don't think in terms of dice or encounter tables. There are no dice in reality.

There are no dice when I read fiction for the same reason.

Now, if I wrote some lame fan fiction piece set in Middle Earth, I'm going to be in the exact same mindset. I'm still picturing Middle Earth exactly the same way as I was when I was reading the Lord of the Rings. So the dice still don't exist. And I doubt anyone thinks of Tolkein as having consulted dice to help craft his story. The very idea of dice is still bizarre at this point.

But something has changed because now that I am the author, I control what happens. So the characters might meet a giant spider or an orc. Or, no matter how unlikely, they may find a ring in a cave. And if I have them encounter Greedo or a Cyclon then I have gotten Middle Earth "wrong". (It might still be a great story.) The concept of the setting exists and there are parameters around what it does and does not contain, but the concept of dice apply to it as well as ice skates do to cobras. The introduction of a deterministic authorial control does nothing to change that because the concept of the setting existed before I ever started thinking about writing.

But now we take another step. Rather than writing a story, I am involving other people as active participants in the creative process. And, yet another step, rather than just writing a collaborative work of fiction, we go beyond just inserting a Mary Jane into our fiction and we insert our own selves into the shoes of the characters. And part of what we want to experience is being characters in the moment of the story, with no certain knowledge of the future, be it whether or not this arrow will hit in the next two seconds, or what new adventure we will encounter when we cross the mountain next month.

So we have gone from conceptual parameters to authorial determinism, now we a stuck needing a way to surrender that power of determinism. Otherwise there is no experience in the illusion of achievement or failure if we don't feel we have faced the prospect of both without any more certainty of the outcome than we imagine the protagonist of a great story having. The audience may know, but part of a great story is (usually) that the characters don’t. We want to be the characters; therefore we need to not know.

It is now a game. And we use dice to help with that.
But go back up to the very beginning and every bit of that still applies. The same parameters of the setting are in place. The setting exists and there are no dice. So the challenge becomes to introduce dice and make it still FEEL like there are no dice. The dice provide a model of the setting that we try to make both as perfect and as invisible as possible. Sacrifice will enter the picture here.

But the idea of the setting has no dice. And any time anyone is really aware of the dice, Greedo is peeking around a tree.
The dice might “say” the party gets lost. And if the model was set up well then great, we now know that the party gets lost and that is part of the story. But, this completely misses the point that the potential results dictated by the dice are FIRST dictated by that original “I’m reading a story” narrative pseudo-reality. The dice are completely a slave to the narrative definition. And the DM has absolute control over that. Once a good model is in place the DM willingly and eagerly concedes control to the dice. But the dice only have control because the DM provided it and a good DM will have established valuable parameters on what those dice may dictate.

It all starts with a diceless setting and a DM. When you say the DM has zero control you are exactly 100% wrong. When you say my approach involves ignoring or fudging dice, you are again 100% wrong.
It is about being inside the story and the game should be invisible. It is highly clear to me that for some people “the game” is vastly more an important part of the experience for them than it is for me. So we end up talking past each other. That is cool. It is not my intent to say that 4E isn’t fun. It is partly to say it is different, but mostly to say that you statement about DM control in 3E is wrong. Because your statement about DM control in 3E is wrong.

(I actually DO fudge dice infrequently, part of the job description of a good DM is knowing when the mechanics, including but not limited to dice rolls, failed to anticipate the events at hand and represent them well. This is, as I said, infrequent. But I don’t want to be accused of double talk when in some later thread I heartily endorse fudging. Fudging dice is completely unrelated to my point here.)

 

[Hussar]

That post was primarily in response to Hussar's notion that 4e breaks the overly cautious situation analysis paradigm offered by player groups when presented with what the DM knows is a minor challenge / fluff piece.

If the 4e DM in question says as apart of a skill challenge "You've made it to a river, it looks like a Athletics DC 20 to cross here. Heavy armour and weapons will provide a substantial penalty unless removed. What do you want to do?" You'll could just as easily have the group try to determine if more is at stake than described as the 3e DM who says "You've made it to a river. It looks like the Ranger (who has Swimmig trained to a decent level) can make it across without rolling. What do you do?"

The only real difference is the 4e world is a less harsh environment for low level groups (and conversely more harsh to high-level groups) due the level-appropriateness built into the game.

But, your example here of the river is a very poor example of a skill challenge. For one, why is the DM announcing the DC's? And, again, why is the river there? Have they arrived at the river as a result of a success or a failure? Additionally, why is the DM telling the players how to cross the river? It's up to the players to tell the DM how they attempt to cross the river and the DM's job to adjudicate from there.

In 4e parlance, if the party reaches the river as a failure, and the penalty for that failure is an ambush by a dragon turtle, you should start at initiative, not poncing about at how to cross the river. Crossing the river is not important, the encounter with the Dragon Turtle is.

No. I'm not saying that at all. I think you really don't grasp the root point of where I am coming from.
At first THERE ARE NO DICE. I don't follow them. I don't ignore them. They don't exist.

Why are there no dice? What game are you playing? The game expressly states how this is handled. As you so rightly pointed out to me recently, ignoring the mechanics of a system is not a strength of the system.

3.5 D&D tells you specifically that you need to make survival checks to not get lost. The DMG specifically tells you that there should be random encounters at intervals when traveling across country.

Sure, you can ignore that all you like. Fair enough, but, you're not playing 3.5 D&D anymore. You're playing BryonD's Diceless d20. Because, again, the rules are pretty clear here in the books.

And, considering the number of shots about people not being perfectly up front about 4e mechanics, I figured that absolute adherence to the rules is a primary concern in this thread.