Mearls' "Stop, Thief!" Article

[Herschel]

You think "powers" give a strong focus on who you are and what you do? Actually, the opposite is true.

Without powers, we need to know exactly what you are doing so that we can adjudicate it. With a power, it doesn't matter what your character is actually doing in the fiction, only what happens on the tabletop: shift 1, deal 2dX damage, fall prone.

What happened? Who cares?

Only if you're an unimaginative sod. The only difference between powers and earlier editions is powers give you a bit of potential narrative and some things pre-codified you can do. They in no way limit what you can do, they do expand what you can do in that they have other things going on outside of "I swing my sword after taking a move action".

In any edition you can play the "I make a power attack/I use spell X" or you can narrate and describe what/how you do something. The system is irrelevent, the player, DM and game are what matters.

 

[Neonchameleon]

1E AD&D doesn't use this system. Sorry. False.

1e does use inches as its explicit movement speed - go re-read the movement rules on p101 (at least in my copy of the 1e PHB). If you're going to cry false, get your facts right. And why would movement be measured in inches unless you were expected to measure it somehow? For in-character adjudication it's a meaningless quantity, but for tabletop + minatures from a wargame it's perfect. And for anything other than tapemeasures, it's an absurd quantity. Now I'm well aware that you and almost every other group ditched measuring the inches. But ditching one of the rules is a house rule rather than the rules of the game.

Fallacy.

1) More hit points doesn't mean that "death matters".

You miss the point. More hit points mean that death is less of a lottery. If you're effectively playing russian roulette and dying to a single die roll (I suppose it was 2e which introduced the domestic cat, bane of low level wizards) then death is going to be regular and meaningless. In 4e you do not die to an errant roll and so can trace where things went wrong.

You think not having "skills" makes the game into a wargame? There's hundreds of indie roleplaying games that would beg to differ. Again: logical fallacy.

And none of them have a combat system remotely as complex as 1e. A solid wargame core with no skills is completely different from a system like Dread or 3:16 that is almost statless. Apples to oranges comparison here.

You think "powers" give a strong focus on who you are and what you do? Actually, the opposite is true.

I think that selecting your powers encourages you to chose exactly how you approach the world and what you do under stress. Rather than when the chips are down approaching the world as Sword + Board Fighter #27. A burly fighter who puts his shield between the enemy and his mates moves differently in 4e from one who mostly wants to the enemy up - and has different powers. Powers that reflect and expand on who he is and how he approaches the world.

Without powers, we need to know exactly what you are doing so that we can adjudicate it. With a power, it doesn't matter what your character is actually doing in the fiction, only what happens on the tabletop: shift 1, deal 2dX damage, fall prone.

What happened? Who cares?

Another apples to oranges comparison. Without powers you can just swing your axe, roll to hit, and roll damage. "I hit him for 8 damage." And according to Old Geezer on RPG.net, that was how it was played at Gygax's table. Narrative isn't enforced by the rules of 1e. And basic combat is explicitely covered by the rules.

With powers and without narrative in 1e you have next to nothing. But the 4e system, what happened was that the person using that power moved carefully round their target in a set direction, and hit them hard knocking them to the floor. Much more interesting than "Chop. Eight damage." Which would be the 1e comparison.

And in both games you can bring the chandelier down on people, requiring DM adjudication. (4e presents better guidelines for the DM to judge what happens when you do, but I digress).

You need to go back and play 1E AD&D.

I have played 1e AD&D/OSRIC. The combat system was the most fundamentally disempowering I have ever played as a RPG, and that despite a good DM (hi, S'mon). (I've had far more disempowering games - I'm talking about the system here). The combat rules mean that in a high pressure, high lethality situation you get to decide what you are doing once every minute. That's how long a turn is. You can not adapt to changing situations or exploit openings like that. And a minute is much too long to describe what you are doing - with swords and spells flying around, what happens in fifteen seconds is IMO far too much. Even six is pushing it. Any description you give of what you are doing is either a broad brush, a photo snapshot, or requires massively writing the scene. And then you only get to make an attack roll once in a minute most of the time - an absurdly long time for things to last.

I prefer T&T bucket of dice approach. Get the combat out of the way rather than having a lot of rules for it - and rules geared to tabletop wargaming at that. If you just roll a bucket of dice and say it was a confused skirmish, and here was the outcome, it works. But plotting out minute-long turns doesn't.

A hack that added roleplaying.

Which left it as a hacked wargame. This is not to in any way denegrate Gygax or Arneson. They were doing amazing things with the tools they had available. But we have better tools now than having to use hacked wargames.

That's

what 1E AD&D eventually became, and a lot of wargamers hated D&D because of the far departure from actual wargaming.

Of course. They wanted to play wargames, not hacked wargames that were groping towards becoming good roleplaying games. And D&D was better at what it did than anything that had come before. We've just learned a lot since then.

Again, your assumptions are false.

You seriously need to go back and read the rules for 1e AD&D if you want to continue this conversation. Because right now you aren't talking about 1e, you are talking about P1NBACK D&D - if you weren't you'd know that movement in 1e was in inches. And Raven Crowking is talking about RCFG v0.1. This isn't a surprise. Few people I've spoken to played 1e straight out of the book and for good reason. But if you want to talk about actual 1e AD&D, claiming that inches weren't the system used merely undermines any credibility you have.

And @Pmerton, I agree completely about combat being values reflected at the sharp end so to speak. I like the positioning and movement details because the way I look at the world is kinaesthetic and it nails them down - I'm well aware that this is far from universal. But your choice of approach to high stress and high risk situations is a fundamental reflection of who you are. And the character powers are how the character naturally approaches the common high stress and high risk situation of combat.

 

[P1NBACK]

The system is irrelevent, the player, DM and game are what matters.

Herschel, we're going to have absolutely agree to disagree here. I don't think we have much to talk about if you think system is irrelevant to the outcomes at the table.

Thanks!

 

[Scribble]

Nah, that's not true.

You need to do something in order to roll damage right? You can't just say, "Ok, I roll damage."

The GM will look at you like, "Wtf? No. What are you doing?"

Entirely depends on the DM, just as it still entirely depends on the DM.

Someone in any edition of the game can just boil things down to: I attack, here's the damage- without ever getting into what he or she did.

It's different in 4E, where you say, "I'm using Flaming Phoenix of the Iron Tower Spikes Lure..." And, then the GM says, "Oh, ok. Damage?"

Again this entirely depends on the group and the DM.

The DM can say "Oh ok" just as much as the DM can say "Oh ok" in response to "I Attack."

The only difference I see is that powers, like spells before them, now come with convenient flavor attached that you can either accept, and use to your advantage, or change to something that fits what's happening in the game.

It works without saying, "Yeah... But, what did you do?"

So does simply saying I attach, here's the damage. Nothing breaks in the game at all.

I have friends that are like that- as hard as I tried to get them to be more descriptive they boiled everything down to I hit AC Whatever for 10 damage.

Lack of power descriptions doesn't force people to be more descriptive at all. The person wanting to be more descriptive does.

Even though, when I DM 4E, I always ask, "What happens? How are you doing that?" etc. Unfortunately, it's largely irrelevant to the resolution of said mechanic.

Same is true in every edition. I can ask how are you attacking all I want, but it largely boils down to, roll a d20 add some stuff, try to beat an ac then roll some damage.

If I as a DM WANT to modify the course of the game based on what the player says, that's cool- but the same is true in every edition.

I disagree. Components alone tell you something about the fiction occurring. Verbal? You're chanting then yeah? What happens when you're gagged? The rules lead into the fiction. And, vice versa.

Those are all rules questions though.

If you're gagged you can't use spells that have a verbal component... Just like if you're dazed you can't do actions that require multiple actions.

Fancy words helping to evoke the player's imagination while he or she rolls some dice.

I'm not saying all 4E rules are like this. I'm saying 4E goes further toward the boardgame, disassociated end of the spectrum, where we layer fiction on top of the rules instead of invoking rules because of what's happening in the fiction.

Maybe we play differently. To each his own then man.

 

[Raven Crowking]

1e does use inches as its explicit movement speed - go re-read the movement rules on p101 (at least in my copy of the 1e PHB). If you're going to cry false, get your facts right. And why would movement be measured in inches unless you were expected to measure it somehow?

How many times have we been through this already?

1e uses inches, which mean different things on different scales of conflict, as a holdover from the game's origins. The distance (1-inch to 10-feet, or 1-inch to 10-yards) is easy enough to translate without a grid, and actually works well for the game's purposes.

Because 1e mapping also takes place in 10-foot squares, the DM can conveniently count squares when characters are moving down a corridor, and know exactly how far they travel in one turn.

OTOH, from numerous reports of those who played with Mr. Gygax, Gary didn't use minis. Moreover, examples in 1e do not assume the use of minis, and minis are clearly described as optional. (Battlesystem is, of course, an exception!)

This is, of course, directly in contrast to the examples in WotC-D&D.

As you say, get your facts right.


RC

 

[P1NBACK]

1e does use inches as its explicit movement speed - go re-read the movement rules on p101 (at least in my copy of the 1e PHB). If you're going to cry false, get your facts right. And why would movement be measured in inches unless you were expected to measure it somehow? For in-character adjudication it's a meaningless quantity, but for tabletop + minatures from a wargame it's perfect. And for anything other than tapemeasures, it's an absurd quantity. Now I'm well aware that you and almost every other group ditched measuring the inches. But ditching one of the rules is a house rule rather than the rules of the game.

For one, I never said 1E didn't use inches. I said it didn't use this "system", by which you described it.

Interesting, considering this quote from the 1E PHB:

Movement scale is kept as flexible as possible in order to deal with the
multitude of applications it has,,i.e. dungeon movement (exploring and
otherwise), city travel, treks through the outdoors, and combat situations
arising during the course of any such movements. Your referee will have
information which will enable him or her to adjust the movement rate to
the applicable time scale for any situation.

What's even more interesting is that you are equating "inch" rated movement to "wargaming".

Guess what: 4E uses inches for movement speed as well as ranges!

1 square = 1 inch... So... 4E is a wargame right? Please say yes, because if you're going to be a hypocrite about that, man, we need to just stop the conversation right now.

1E breaks movement down on a variety of scales based on indoor/outdoor environments, etc. In order to emphasis the varying locales you'll encounter.

Your original quote tried implied that the wargaming method of using a tape measure, etc. were employed during all 1E D&D games... Gimme a break, dude.

This is straight up false equivocation.

You miss the point. More hit points mean that death is less of a lottery. If you're effectively playing russian roulette and dying to a single die roll (I suppose it was 2e which introduced the domestic cat, bane of low level wizards) then death is going to be regular and meaningless. In 4e you do not die to an errant roll and so can trace where things went wrong.

I think you miss the point. Just because death doesn't happen on the 1st hit in 4E, doesn't mean that death is any more meaningful for the game.

1E wasn't about straight up, tactical battles. It was about using strategy, careful planning, and exploration to get the advantage on your foes and be in a situation where you never get hit in the first place.

A completely different method of play. So, if we're comparing "meaningful" death, then you can't possibly compare it based on amount of HPs. Because, despite that, death in 1E and 4E is very much left open to interpretation by the group playing the game. I've ran sandbox 4E games where death came sometimes swift and sometimes often. You know what happened? Death (and more importantly, survival) became more meaningful.

It meant you overcame something. You survived. You made it. Congrats.

The actual numbers have little to do with it.

And none of them have a combat system remotely as complex as 1e. A solid wargame core with no skills is completely different from a system like Dread or 3:16 that is almost statless. Apples to oranges comparison here.

Really? You're going to pick out two games and say that encompasses all indie games? Hilarious.

Your original point was, 1E doesn't have skills, therefore: wargame.

Now, it's because 1E's combat is complex. I say again, 4E's combat is robust. Does that mean it's a wargame?

Let us not forget it uses inches as movement measurement... lol

I think that selecting your powers encourages you to chose exactly how you approach the world and what you do under stress.Rather than when the chips are down approaching the world as Sword + Board Fighter #27. A burly fighter who puts his shield between the enemy and his mates moves differently in 4e from one who mostly wants to the enemy up - and has different powers. Powers that reflect and expand on who he is and how he approaches the world.

Wait a minute... So, because my character doesn't have a "power" that says, "You use a shield" that means I can't portray a fighter who uses a shield to protect his allies?

Wtf?

How does that make sense at all?

In Basic D&D I can portray both thank you very much, without the need for powers, by simply doing those things in the fiction! I can play a fighter who rushes ahead and "s up the enemy" or I can play a fighter who yanks the wizard behind his shield and defends him.

I don't need a power to do this.

Another apples to oranges comparison. Without powers you can just swing your axe, roll to hit, and roll damage. "I hit him for 8 damage." And according to Old Geezer on RPG.net, that was how it was played at Gygax's table. Narrative isn't enforced by the rules of 1e. And basic combat is explicitely covered by the rules.

Well, for one, "I swing my axe" is a narrative... So, if you are required to say, "I swing my axe" well, that's fiction isn't it?

"I use Stomping Dragon of the Fiery Helljism..." isn't really fiction is it?

It's the difference between "I use my shield to block..." vs. "I use AC."

One references a rule. The other references fiction. Can you tell the difference?

With powers and without narrative in 1e you have next to nothing. But the 4e system, what happened was that the person using that power moved carefully round their target in a set direction, and hit them hard knocking them to the floor. Much more interesting than "Chop. Eight damage." Which would be the 1e comparison.

Really? That's funny, because in my recent B/X game, we did exactly that. The DM was running Keep on the Borderlands, and we entered a room with a high priest that had platemail and a mace, casting evil spells at us.

Guess what we did? We carefully maneuvered to get in past his army of zombies, set up a grapple attack and then knocked him down, so that our Fighter could move in and stand over him to keep him down, while me (the Thief) used my blade to cut our Cleric free from a snake that had been summoned by the priest to entangle him. I took my blade and wedged it in and sliced the snake's neck off. Lots of blood, but at least the Cleric was free.

Wow. I guess "Chop. Eight damage." isn't the only thing you can accomplish in old school D&D (and, we were using B/X! Notorious for being super rules light!).

I'm not saying you can't do this in 4E. You won't hear me say that. But, in 1E it wasn't an "after the fact" description we added after using Power 319, which knocks target prone, Power 406 that lets you keep them prone, Power 27 that lets you deal 14 damage, etc...

No, we were immersed in the fiction, and what came about was directly because of the details of what was actually happening.

I have played 1e AD&D/OSRIC. The combat system was the most fundamentally disempowering I have ever played as a RPG, and that despite a good DM (hi, S'mon). (I've had far more disempowering games - I'm talking about the system here). The combat rules mean that in a high pressure, high lethality situation you get to decide what you are doing once every minute. That's how long a turn is.

A round is 1 minute. A segment is 6 seconds... No?

Again, from the 1E PHB:

In adventuring below ground, a turn in the dungeon lasts 10 minutes (see
also MOVEMENT). In combat, the turn is further divided into 10 melee
rounds, or simply rounds. Rounds are subdivided into 10 segments, for
purposes of determining initiative (q.v.) and order of ottocks. Thus o turn is 10 minutes, a round 1 minute, and a segment 6 seconds.

Usually, what you are doing falls within the segment time frame, based on initiative.

Not to mention, in B/X, a turn was 10 seconds... Not much closer to 1 minute.

From the Moldvay Basic book:

TIME: Time in D&D adventures is given in turns of ten minutes each. A turn is not a measure of real time, but is a measure of how much a character can do within a given time frame. A character may explore and map an area equal to his or her movement rate in one turn.

MOVEMENT: In the D&D, rules movement is given in the number of feet a character may move in one turn. All characters are able to move 120' or feet in one turn when exploring a dungeon.

SCALE MOVEMENT: If miniatures figures are used, the actual movement of the characters can be represented at the scale of one inch equals ten feet.

TIME IN ENCOUNTERS: "Normal" time in D&D games is measured in turns of 10 minutes each. ... Time in encounters is measured in rounds of 10 seconds each.

You are making some serious exaggerations here.

You can not adapt to changing situations or exploit openings like that.

I can't? Wow. See my example above. I'd say that was all about adapting to changing situations...

And a minute is much too long to describe what you are doing - with swords and spells flying around, what happens in fifteen seconds is IMO far too much. Even six is pushing it. Any description you give of what you are doing is either a broad brush, a photo snapshot, or requires massively writing the scene. And then you only get to make an attack roll once in a minute most of the time - an absurdly long time for things to last.

See above.

I prefer T&T bucket of dice approach. Get the combat out of the way rather than having a lot of rules for it - and rules geared to tabletop wargaming at that. If you just roll a bucket of dice and say it was a confused skirmish, and here was the outcome, it works. But plotting out minute-long turns doesn't.

Again, see above. Lots of misinformation here.

Which left it as a hacked wargame. This is not to in any way denegrate Gygax or Arneson. They were doing amazing things with the tools they had available. But we have better tools now than having to use hacked wargames.

Better tools? You mean like 4E's inch-based, miniature required tactical combat system?

Hmmm....

Of course. They wanted to play wargames, not hacked wargames that were groping towards becoming good roleplaying games. And D&D was better at what it did than anything that had come before. We've just learned a lot since then.

"Good" of course is a subjective matter. And, I'd never say that B/X, BECMI, 1E, 2E, 3E, etc... don't have their faults. They do.

But, they were all damned good RPGs.

And, 4E is too.

But, this thread is about a specific fault of 4E. Something that we can look back at older editions and see what went wrong.

You seriously need to go back and read the rules for 1e AD&D if you want to continue this conversation.

I'd never say I knew all the rules 100% by memory. But, I think I have a decent grasp. But, how about taking a bit of your own advice here?

 

[P1NBACK]

Entirely depends on the DM, just as it still entirely depends on the DM.

Someone in any edition of the game can just boil things down to: I attack, here's the damage- without ever getting into what he or she did.

How is that possibly true? You need to know how you are attacking to determine damage die, no? You can't just say, "I attack" without some sort of description, like, "with my axe..." and get a damage result.

Again this entirely depends on the group and the DM.

The DM can say "Oh ok" just as much as the DM can say "Oh ok" in response to "I Attack."

Not true. See above. The DM needs that information in order to resolve the attack. "How are you attacking? Are you using your axe, or your bow?"

It's necessarily information to resolve the attack.

The only difference I see is that powers, like spells before them, now come with convenient flavor attached that you can either accept, and use to your advantage, or change to something that fits what's happening in the game.

Yup. Exactly. It's completely disassociated from what you are actually doing.

So does simply saying I attach, here's the damage. Nothing breaks in the game at all.

If you have all the necessary information, "I attack with my sword." Sure. That's fiction though, right? Then we go to rules... "Roll d20. Roll for damage."

4E can occur like this: "Footwork Lure, Roll d20, Slide 1, Roll for damage." Success! "Oh, cool, I attack him with my sword and he falls forward."

Or, it can be any other description you want to make up. "Oh, I swing my sword in the air and it creates a whirlwind that blows the guy toward me and I slap him in the face with my sword blade..."

It doesn't really matter what you say, does it?

I have friends that are like that- as hard as I tried to get them to be more descriptive they boiled everything down to I hit AC Whatever for 10 damage.

Lack of power descriptions doesn't force people to be more descriptive at all. The person wanting to be more descriptive does.

There's a difference between ignoring the fiction, and not requiring the fiction.

If someone says, "I hit AC. I do 10 damage." I'm going to say, "Huh?" Because it makes no sense. Did you attack with your axe? Or, did you use a dagger?

"I attack with my axe" is sufficient. But, "AC, hit. 10 damage" is not. How do we know to apply 10 damage? Where did that come from?

What may be happening there is, a lack of communication. Clearly, the player is drawing the 10 damage and attack vs. AC from somewhere? Right?

It's like someone saying, "Dungeoneering. Success."

How do you adjudicate that? What were they trying to do? You simply can't. You need the fiction to resolve it.

Same is true in every edition. I can ask how are you attacking all I want, but it largely boils down to, roll a d20 add some stuff, try to beat an ac then roll some damage.

You keep saying this. My response is, no you need details to determine d20 bonuses, damage type, etc.

If I'm using my +1 sword, that is going to make a difference on my attack. If I'm using my dagger, that'll make a difference in damage.

If I as a DM WANT to modify the course of the game based on what the player says, that's cool- but the same is true in every edition.

That's not entirely true. If the player says, "I swing at him with my sword!"

You can't say, "Uh, no. I'm modifying that. Use your dagger instead."

Well, maybe you can, but my players wouldn't have it.

If you're gagged you can't use spells that have a verbal component... Just like if you're dazed you can't do actions that require multiple actions.

Yup. Agreed. I never said all the rules of 4E are disassociated. Being "dazed" has particular fictional weight to it. You can't do anything. That's certainly fictional.

Fancy words helping to evoke the player's imagination while he or she rolls some dice.

Maybe we play differently. To each his own then man.

You don't need "fancy words" for fiction. You just need to know what's happening.

"I swing my axe." Is as simple as it goes. But, guess what? It's fiction. And, now we know what rules to apply: d20 attack, using axe damage dice.

By contrast:

"I use Butt Fandom Squeamish Fiery Death!" Cool: d20 attack, axe damage, knock prone, poison ongoing 5.

See? What happened?

Who knows? We don't need to know. Everything is in the real world on dice, minis, character sheets, etc.

Edited to add: Actually, that's not entirely true. We know an axe was involved. I would say, "And, a guy is lying on the ground." But, apparently in 4E (according to many members of this board), "Prone" is not a fictional thing - it's simply a mechanical condition. It doesn't inform us about what actually happened, but what "state" (combat advantage, etc.) the target is in. I disagree of course, especially since they errated the condition to say, "When a creature is prone, it is lying down."

 

[Herschel]

Herschel, we're going to have absolutely agree to disagree here. I don't think we have much to talk about if you think system is irrelevant to the outcomes at the table.

Thanks!

You get out of the game what you put in to the game regardless of the system or game.

 

[P1NBACK]

You get out of the game what you put in to the game regardless of the system or game. You have a bias you're trying to "prove" with complete fallacy, period. Go back the the 3E forum where others share your like-minded, edition-warring ignorance.

I'm not edition-warring. And, I haven't played 3E in years... lol.

You're being angsty and combative. It's all good dude. Go back and read my post 1 or 2 up about how I think pretty much all the editions are awesome RPGs with faults and goodness all their own.

That's by definition the opposite of "edition-warring ignorance".

But, if that's how you want to paint people who disagree with you, so be it. I think we're done.

Cheers.

 

[Herschel]

Cut the PA bullcrap and man up. Your bias is not fact, period. You get out of a game what you put in to it, just like everything else in life. If you have a bad attitude about it or are apathetic about it, then that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy but for you and you alone. That's the whole point. Your experience does not mean the game is wrong, it means you're playing it in a way not consistent with the way others are. That would be fine except you claim that your feeling is universal in its direction which it quite clearly is not.