Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="CuRoi" data-source="post: 5490492" data-attributes="member: 98032">First off, awesome link! Thanks for the info it was a great read. However, many things said also completely support EXACTLY what I was saying in my previous post about DMing and how 4e does not fit my style.Ron Heinsoo: One of the challenges for us with this edition is recognizing that the 3.5 sweet spot was real, it was this element where when the Game Master gets to the point around when their players are using 6th-level spells, all of the sudden the GM’s ability to really understand what’s going to happen in their game is a little bit gone. I’ve seen too many plans of GM’s lovingly figuring out what they want to do, and all of the sudden the PC’s say, “bop!”, and it’s like game over! The GM thinks, “I don’t know what to do.” There are people who can handle it, I’m sure in our audience we have people who are intensely proud of being really good GM’s and can manage to handle it. But I, perhaps, am like the part of the audience who really didn’t want to have to learn 3.5 according to its rules. I could just make up rules when needed to help everybody have fun, but that isn’t really how the game is supposed to be played. What we’re trying to do with 4th Edition is make a game where the Dungeon Master is given enough tools, and enough SIMPLE ways of making the game fun, that the amount of time that 3.5 would force you to spend doing math is actually used by the GM on their story. Go ahead and finish figuring out your story and what seems cool to you, not just dealing with leveling up this monster or figuring out the math. I am that guy. That guy that loves "handling it" when the players go off the map. The guy that lets the players completely trash the module because its "more fun that way". Take me off the freakin' rails please <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> The "simplicity" in 4e which is intended to help the DM with the story and take more spontaneous control out of players hands does not at all help me in crafting a story the way I do it. If you want a system that can ensure players stick to the script, then yes, 4e accomplishes that better than 2e, 3e, etc. My style really doesn't want or need that. Mr. Heinsoo in the above assumes that a) There is a way the game is "supposed to be played" and b) DM's having to ad lib campaigns is a "bad" thing. My games are the antithesis of that. I have never really seen any roleplaying game's rules as anything more than a shared structure for a story. If the story demands the rules be bent, broken or twisted, I'm happy to oblige. The rules, for me, are shared guidelines, nothing more. 3e I think had so many simulationist rules that it encouraged players not to move outside the rules when the story or plot demanded it. It gave the impression that "gee, there's a rule for this, we must follow it at all costs". In many cases that thinking was right - because if you altered that rule you'd break something else.  However, I do not think the rules bloat of 3e means the idea of DMs having to improv or react to a players wild suggestions was ever a bad thing that needed to be exorcised with a new rule set. It does mean that the DMs were possibly overwhelmed with rules and needed some simplicity but I do not necessarily think many DMs wanted less flexibility as a result.   I snipped the skill challenge quotes for brevity.  As previously discussed, you have enlightened me on the value of skills challenges. I think it might make a great foundation for future DMs, but still feel it is unnecessarily restrictive if a DM is never encouraged to move on to a more flexible style. My issues are precisely with how the skill challenges are presented and confirmed by Mr. Heinsoo's interview. The system makes several assumptions which Mr. Heinsoo alludes to in the above: Players shouldn't just say "bop" and challenge the DM / pre-written story as he states. The system also assumes the DM will have a nice laundry list of skills challenges all laid out ahead of time which the players will necessarily follow because the DM "lovingly figured out what they want to do" some time prior to the session. They will then all follow the script to its conclusion.  Yes, you can alter this approach and take skill challenges and put them together on the fly for a more "free-form" game. I still contend the system is not designed for this, doesn't allude to the budding DM for a future need to do this, and it is a matter of a talented DM "making water from wine" so to speak. So I'll stick by everything I said previously - 4e's intent was to lower entry level DM barriers and to further divorce collaborative storytelling from the mix so players had less say in the overall direction of a story. Sure, the skill challenge system lets them mechanically interact with the established story in a structured, localized, basis and it is an excellent framework. However, I think the designer made it clear that players fundamentally altering the some "lovingly crafted" plot was something 4e wanted to move away from. EDIT - Rob says the "I don't know what to do" moment for DMs comes at 6th level spells. I'd lower that to 5th with Teleport, Commune, Commune with Nature, Plane Shift, Overland Flight etc. Heck, just having a druid that can change into a small bird forces you to expand your DMing horizons to aniticipate the extremely unexpected. I love those spells when players cast them frankly. I don't want to see a game where those things are deemed "too difficult for a DM to deal with" and shunted off to some red headed step-child system. Those instances have made for some of the most memorable times I have experienced in RPGs. Again, this is all by my play style which has never followed the typical "module of the day" path.</blockquote>

Verification