Mearls' "Stop, Thief!" Article

[Herschel]

I disagree. I think the "box" should encompass what we normally consider "stepping outside".

Or, in other words, we should have rules for being creative, imaginative and that should be the norm. Therefore, there is no "outside" the box. Only inside.

The norm should be creativity, imagination, description and exploration.

We have rules that support creativity within the game but also the freedom to be creative in areas the rules don't cover. One of the biggest things that drew me back to D&D (with 4E) was that there weren't all these set rules for everything under the sun. I absolutely DETESTED that about 3E. That wasn't freedom, that was nitpicking rules bloat. Now, if you think it, you can try it. Tell me what you want to do and I'll give you a way to do it (or as close as I see reasonable). There's a basic set of skill rolls and a DC system I can use if I choose.

Creativity is outside the norm, by definition.

 

[P1NBACK]

Creativity is outside the norm, by definition.

Huh? No. Not by definition.

And, especially not in old school D&D. Creativity was the norm. That's how you played.

My recent Sunday B/X game was a testament to that. If you didn't get creative, you likely didn't survive. It took me a couple characters to realize that.

Maybe in 4E play, creativity is outside the norm. Maybe in your game, yeah. Maybe when you get on ENWorld and people are telling you, "No! Don't be creative! That's not fair!" Of course, how can you say that "Now, if you think it, you can try it" if creativity is outside the norm? Your players don't think it? They don't try it?

Definitely not by definition. Definitely not in every game. And, that's probably why Mike Mearls is rambling on in his Legends & Lore article about how much fun he had getting creative with his Thief.

 

[Aenghus]

Creativity can be great. But it isn't automatically great. It's inherently subjective and one person's creativity can be another person's badwrongfun -e.g. metagaming, cheating or just attempting the impossible.

I think rules that encourage creativity are great, but think they need to be bare skeletons, thinks like page 42 and the encouragement not to give a bare "no" to players.

However, I think making "creativity" compulsory is potentially disasterous. I see creativity is best spontaneous, while it can be improved with practice, its not something you can force out of just anybody. Some players are more creative than others, some players visions will match the DM closer than others. The potential for favoritism and excluding players increases the more subjective judgement is relied upon.

It can work great when everyone involved has the same vision, but this is rare. The average group IMO has a variety of different viewpoints and don't see everything the same way. Rules produce a semi-objective framework to give everyone a baseline for comparison and stop perceptions from drifting apart.

I see the demand "you must be this creative to play RPGs" as being elitist. Now this is valid criterion for a particular group ( though it would need more detail than just "creative" as, like I said above, this is a subjective label).

 

[Herschel]

And, especially not in old school D&D. Creativity was the norm. That's how you played.

Yes, because the rules sucked. If you stuck to them, you were toast. That's the whole point of Mike Mearls' article. I'm not sure I could even run or play in a "adhere strictly to the rules" game of 1E because I don't think I've ever been exposed to a game or anyone that actually used them all as written.

Now the game just gives you more cool stuff to do "within the box", which seems to be what you want while not acknowledging it being in there. Basically 4E took a "list" of all these cool things people did or wanted to do and made powers around them while still giving you freedom to do other stuff that wasn't them.

 

[Balesir]

Wow, lots to respond to in what is becoming a very good discussion that I think has fruit to bear, but it's too late at night here for me to do it now. I'll try to post tomorrow morning.

P1NBACK - I think the key may be in what I mean by "aesthetic", which I didn't explain very fully earlier.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Great. How do you do that when you are "roleplaying" the White Knight who decides to turn against the White King and join the Black King's side?

You fundamentally have to break Chess' rules for this to happen. Fundamentally. Hence, Chess is not a roleplaying game.

How this is up for debate is beyond me...

Well, what if I don't move my white knight into the situation where he would checkmate the black king because I'm RPing him as a traitor? Is that not RP affecting the course of the game? Sure it is! Notice that it also inherently implies that I have a wider range of goals in playing that particular game of chess than simply winning the game.

I did make a distinction though between 'open ended' games and 'closed' games. I don't think closed games are automatically impossible to RP in. You simply have a limited menu of options. Admittedly that means the amount of RP you can encompass in closed games is much less, but I don't draw the line on RP at the same point as the open/closed distinction.

And I wouldn't want to take this whole argument to the completely absurd level. Chess is a terrible RPG.

Winding it back more to the original discussion though clearly more rules or more restrictive rules don't make some game 'not an RPG', they just make it a more or less useful one.

Really I think OD&D or 1e AD&D and the thief is a bit of a bad example, Mearl's could have used a better but equally simple system as a better example (except it would have missed his nostalgia angle). AD&D was pretty restrictive in a lot of odd ways. Something like Savage Worlds would probably be a better example of a system with simple generalized rules and few complex 'baked in' options for a given PC, vs the implicit comparison to 4e where you have a lot of that. OTOH SW and 4e both have quite generalized rules, older D&D just had a mass of very specific rules and little else. I think both SW and 4e are better RPGs than AD&D/OD&D were, even if they are quite different in some ways.

 

[LostSoul]

Can you give an example of this kind of rule?

Sorcerer's conflict resolution rules work like this.

You have 4 stats rated as a die pool number - Stamina, Lore, Past/Cover, and Will. Each has one or two descriptors, like "Lore 4: Unnatural Means; I bathe in hot coals every day". When you get into a conflict you roll one of your stats if the descriptor applies, and 1 die if it doesn't.

You can't say "I roll Stamina" without describing what you're doing. The game literally cannot proceed; we don't have enough information. Do we need to roll? How many dice do you roll? What happens when you succeed or fail? What bonus dice are you going to get?

You get bonus and/or penalty dice for the specifics of your action. You never have enough dice so you want to build off previous actions, and make sure that you take smart and creative ones.

The equivalent of saying "I roll Stamina" in 4E or 3E would be to say, as your turn, "I rolled a 19." Is that a save, a skill check, a move over challenging terrain, using a power, or what?

When you use Spinning Sweep on a snake, it doesn't matter what your character actually did; what matters is the attack roll, HP damage, and condition applied. I think that none of these are part of the fiction, they're part of the real world, the same way landing on Park Place is. They suggest something fictional - you flipped the snake over on its back, you spent a week holed up in the penthouse with hookers and blow - but that fictional element isn't part of the game; the game doesn't need it to proceed.

Here's a quick combat that happened in our last game:

Dhalia Doomfey heard some painful moans coming from a haughty courtesan's room. She's got Martial Awareness - a skill that lets her know when violence is going down - and the hair on the back of her neck stood up, telling her that something was wrong.

The fact that she has Martial Awareness as a skill means that we have to consider the fictional elements of the game world in a way that we wouldn't if she had a general Perception skill. Martial Awareness is only applicable in certain situations, and those situations are governed by the fictional details of the game world. We needed to know that violence was occurring in order to apply the skill.​

She tried to pick the lock to the door but failed since she was using improvised tools. She decided to burst through the door, using her gauntlets of ogre power, tumbling into the room, trying to appear drunk.

She saw Mysteval the Portal-Watcher tormenting the haughty courtesan with a spell - she was held by bands of white fire, burning her flesh. When he saw Dhalia, he said, "I'm glad you decided to join us," and began casting a spell, turning his hand toward Dhalia in a clutching manner, as if to grab her.

The description of his spell casting is going to be important.​

Dhalia's player wanted to use her power Sudden Surge. However, this requires that she has something to push off of - if that fictional requirement is used, she can use the power all the time. Since she tumbled into the room, she wasn't next to the wall. As DM, I didn't have a map of the room, so I rolled a d6, giving a 50% chance that there would be something nearby. Nope.

We determined if she could use Sudden Surge based on the description of her previous action; if she hadn't tumbled into the room, she could have pushed off of the wall. That's how fictional details matter!​

Dhalia saw the spell being cast, and an icy hand forming in the air to grab her. She got up, Cursed Mysteval in the name of Bercalion of the Dark Vow, and leapt at him, grabbing and twisting his spell-casting hand and grabbing him in the throat. She succeeded, and as Mysteval's spell formed, she twisted his hand away at the last moment so the icy hand missed her.

She got a +2 bonus to her Ref because she twisted his hand like so. That was enough for the hand to miss her.​

In the next round, Dhalia put her leg behind his and tripped him with force, slamming his head to the ground and stunning him. Mysteval grabbed her with his hand.

Mysteval was dazed as a result of this attack, which was consistent with the fiction. Dhalia got a bonus to attack because of her description of her action - the precise way she tripped him - and the fact that she already had him grabbed, her trip following up directly on her last action.​

So there's a lot of fiction and creativity generated there. In standard 4E it would look something like this:

Roll init
Dhalia wins, uses Sudden Surge to hit him for some damage
Mysteval shifts back, casts Bigby's Icy Hand, misses
Dhalia uses some other power, possibly Spinning Sweep; he takes damage and has the prone condition
Mysteval responds by sustaining Bigby's Icy Hand, hits
etc.

We could generate similar fiction, but it wouldn't have an effect on the choices the players make round-to-round. But we don't have to generate any fiction at all; we could ignore it and simply track HP and conditions, and the game would proceed in the same way.

 

[mudlock]

That all sounds very interesting, but reminds me far-too-closely of "Well, since you didn't SAY you're character checked the ceiling for green slime before walking into the room, no, they didn't see it; doesn't matter WHAT number you have next to 'perception' or 'dungeonering' on your sheet."

I've had some good times with, for example, bonus dice in Exalted... and some really lame times with yet another minute-long tortured explanation of how THIS slash-with-my-sword is different from the previous five slashes-with-a-sword because someone desperately wants that 2nd extra die but really doesn't have any good narrative ideas.

I've had some good times and some lame times with diceless Amber, AKA, "If I, as a player, can fast-talk the GM, then my character wins!" (That, much like the board game Diplomacy, is a game I will not play with a newly in-love couple ever again.)

Different things will work at different tables with different people. For D&D, I want a game that's more like 4e and less like Merls' "Fast-talk the GM or die" 1e.

 

[LostSoul]

That all sounds very interesting, but reminds me far-too-closely of "Well, since you didn't SAY you're character checked the ceiling for green slime before walking into the room, no, they didn't see it; doesn't matter WHAT number you have next to 'perception' or 'dungeonering' on your sheet."

I've thought about that:

Careful Travel: You move at a much slower pace, but this allows you to check for hidden objects (including hidden characters, traps, and secret doors). Describe your character's actions to the DM; this will determine if you make a check to find hidden objects, find hidden objects automatically, or pass by them without a check. Your pace is determined by your speed; you may only move up to your normal speed while travelling carefully, but if you move one-half your normal speed or slower you can gain a +2 bonus to any checks made.​

While "Crawling" (exploring small-scale dangerous areas), players describe the actions of their characters and we resolve those actions, using conflict resolution rules if needed. Players describe the "standard operating procedure" so the game doesn't bog down too much.

If the PCs are looking at the ceiling, and the green slime doesn't have some way to hide, then they'll see it; the players might not realize it's green slime, but that's too bad. If it does have some way to hide (the whole area is covered in moss), then it makes a check and the PCs make a check (rolled in secret by the DM). If they don't have a way to see the slime (can't think of a situation where that would be true), then there's no check to be made.

Then there's the Free-and-Clear stage: when you declare your action for the round, the other players (including the DM) do so at the same time, and anyone can change their action in response. The action isn't committed to until the dice are actually rolled, after the modifiers have been worked out.

I've had some good times with, for example, bonus dice in Exalted... and some really lame times with yet another minute-long tortured explanation of how THIS slash-with-my-sword is different from the previous five slashes-with-a-sword because someone desperately wants that 2nd extra die but really doesn't have any good narrative ideas.

I've never seen this happen in my game. I think it's because your first slash with your sword sets up a situation in the game world and you build off of that for your next slash.

Different things will work at different tables with different people. For D&D, I want a game that's more like 4e and less like Merls' "Fast-talk the GM or die" 1e.

I think "fast-talk the GM or die" is a bad way to describe the sort of play in my example above. Dhalia's player was thinking, "What is my character doing in the game world? What would she do next?", not "What is the DM going to allow me to get away with?"

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Sorcerer's conflict resolution rules work like this.

It is just a different level of abstraction and different representational tools. I don't agree that there is something fundamentally different going on between Sorcerer and 4e (or say DitV either for a similar example). You can no more resolve an action in 4e without making the relevant choices than you can in Sorcerer. Fundamentally it boils down to the same thing. 4e simply has a STRONG concrete representation framework (a battle map with a grid, etc). That may allow you to be LAZY, but you can likewise be lazy in Sorcerer, just at a slightly different level. Notice in both games there may be preconditions for or favorable adjustments for specific actions in specific contexts.

With a given group of players you probably WILL get slightly different results. Each approach has its strengths and weaknesses. Nor does one or the other directly enable more or less creativity in play. A more abstract representation may demand that the players spend more time negotiating and clarifying details, but if those details matter that will have to happen somehow (usually automatically in 4e).

Really I would say what I see is that 4e tends towards a more expositive mode where you explain the results of things "the wall was slippery, I fell" where you might work it out more ahead of time in other systems (since you will need to clarify the operant conditions enough to decide what to try in the first place).

Some differences there, but IMHO less than some people make out. Both types of games are fun though and quality narrative should happen in both cases (and may not in either case).