D&D 5E Merwin said it better than Schwalb

[BryonD]

Here is the sentence that I said was a mischaracterisation of 4e: "the "math works" 4E approach also divorces the story distinctions from the mechanical nuance." The story distinctions are not divorced from the mechanical nuance. They result from the mechanical nuance - whether this is the nuance of keywords, the nuance of action economy, the nuance of skill descriptions, or the interaction of all these things plus other mechanical elements.

Again, we had this conversation many times back when it was relevant. I recognize that you don't see it the way many people see it. As I said, there are problems people have with 3E that never happen at my table. Just because they don't happen at my table doesn't mean they are not real in the market of gamers.

When all the nuances are constrained by "the math works" so that you tend to see the same mechanical underpinnings for diverse narrative elements, it can be very dissatisfying for someone who is looking for more. I don't think that perspective ever clicked for you before. I don't think I can make it click for you now. And it no longer matters.

But continuing to repeat that it isn't true won't make it stop being true.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

As a GM you aren't the @*&# narrator. That was the mistake White Wolf made. You control the setting, not the PCs. If the PCs subvert your plans roll with it. This is when the GM actually requires imagination.

THIS TIMES A MILLION.

We are not the narrators. We are not dictating the story.

We are the DMs. Even with White Wolf, whilst they used the term Storyteller (which was, perhaps, in some ways ill-advised but did get people thinking about story more and treasure/XP/kill-counts a bit less), they went to great lengths in most 2E and later Storyteller guides/sections to explain that you weren't supposed to dictating to the players what happened.*

Rolling with really surprising player actions is absolutely one of my favourite things about DMing and has lead to many of the best sessions I've run.

As for not preparing encounters in advance, normally in 4e I write mine in the session at the time I draw the battlemap.

Indeed. I usually prep the enemies/NPCs who are in a given area where an encounter is likely, and have an eye towards encounter budgets and so on, but I very often tailor the specific encounter to the specific circumstances at the time, just as in any edition - but because 4E's monsters are quick and easy to pre-prepare, and can be understood within seconds of reading them (and I have each one printed out on a bit of a paper, no bloody page-flipping or the like!), it seems to work particularly well (night and day from 3.XE, where to properly run a lot of NPCs and enemies you could require hours of prep, especially if you wanted to understand how they actually worked).

For the record, creating an utterly ineffective character is a common form of griefing.

It absolutely is. I don't think a lot of the people who know they are doing it realize that they are griefing, but they are generally making life harder for everyone else for entirely selfish reasons, in a social/group game (especially a class/role-based one like D&D or Shadowrun), and that's griefing. I've recently come to realize that intentionally useless characters, intentionally plotblocking/setting-screwing characters, and true munchkin-type "wreck the game" (rather than just "be awesome") characters are all basically different species of the same genus, and all stem from the same root problem - that the player doesn't actually enjoy/engage the game/setting/plot you've chosen to play.

I noticed this behaviour in myself many years ago with Castle Falkenstien (a game many people liked). As someone who actually knew UK aristocrats and had a lot of exposure to etiquette-based social situations (this is not a matter of "authority", note, merely my personal experience - I imagine others might have very similar feelings about games set in certain other subcultures they've experienced in a negative way), I found it's fawning on aristos, "honor" (of the second-worst kind, imho!) and etiquette as if they were wonderful, exciting, positive things absolutely loathsome, particularly given the strong setting/game expectation that the PCs as a group would want to engage with aristos, sword-duelling and court life in a positive fashion, rather than by going all English Civil War/French Revolution/Russian Revolution on them.

The right thing to do would have been to say: "Sorry, I hate this game/setting on a really basic level, and I can't play it.", but that didn't even occur to me - the person who ran most of our games had said he wanted to run it and that was that (let's be clear, 99% of his DMing was great - his system/setting choices, in retrospect, less so). So I made an angry, snarling US cowboy who hated aristos and etiquette and who was certainly ready to duel - with his two six-shooters! All he managed to do was cause big problems and headaches.

In retrospect, that was juvenile, but in my defence, I was about 16. Now I would just say no.

I feel like the vast majority of intentionally-useless characters and munchkins and the like come from a similar place. Many munchkin-types fundamentally don't enjoy RPGs, they just want the validation of "winning" (which is part of why we see them less nowdays - computer games really do offer that more easily). Many ineffective characters stem from people wanting to play an entirely different kind of RPG or setting, or because the player would rather be writing a novel or something.

* = There were a couple of terrible ones out there, which did pretty much amount to "If your players ruin your pretty story, use the officials of [insert supernatural court here] to put them into line (probably by flashily killing all the naughty PCs)", but it was a learning process, and they got over it.

 

[BryonD]

[Quote Originally Posted by Neonchameleon] As a GM you aren't the @*&# narrator. That was the mistake White Wolf made. You control the setting, not the PCs. If the PCs subvert your plans roll with it. This is when the GM actually requires imagination.
THIS TIMES A MILLION.

We are not the narrators. We are not dictating the story.

We are the DMs. Even with White Wolf, whilst they used the term Storyteller (which was, perhaps, in some ways ill-advised but did get people thinking about story more and treasure/XP/kill-counts a bit less), they went to great lengths in most 2E and later Storyteller guides/sections to explain that you weren't supposed to dictating to the players what happened.*

Rolling with really surprising player actions is absolutely one of my favourite things about DMing and has lead to many of the best sessions I've run.

Yes.

I love making up stories and being "in charge" of the world. And nothing is more fun than seeing creative (or foolish ) moves derail everything and take everything in a completely new direction.

 

[Hussar]

I don't agree with this.

Ever see a module have "4 to 5 characters of levels 6 to 8 of above normal optimized builds?"

No, you only see 4 to 5 characters of levels 6 through 8. This maybe the spirit of Huassar's table, but it's not the spirit of D&D.

Just like I posed it to Umbran, give me an example of one of these dead weight characters.

Third edition one from my group. A halfling monk/paladin/pious templar. The character was so useless that I actually gave him a holy avenger just to bring him back on par with the rest of the group. The only saving grace of the character was that it couldn't really be killed - insane AC and saving throws that meant that he too no effect on a successful save and his character abilities gave him a save vs pretty much everything. Completely, and utterly, a useless character. Couldn't hit anything even close to a par CR creature and even if he did hit, did so little damage, he might as well not have bothered in the first place. Every round of combat was effectively him dice fapping for all the good it did.

As far as a module with "4 to 5 characters of levels 6 to 8 of above normal optimised builds", let me introduce you to Age of Worms from Paizo. The entire AP is written with the intent that the players are going to go all in when it comes to optimisation and if you don't, you're going to die, or the DM is soft balling encounters.

 

[Umbran]

When all the nuances are constrained by "the math works" so that you tend to see the same mechanical underpinnings for diverse narrative elements, it can be very dissatisfying for someone who is looking for more. I don't think that perspective ever clicked for you before. I don't think I can make it click for you now. And it no longer matters.

But continuing to repeat that it isn't true won't make it stop being true.

That last point cuts both ways - assertion does not make for truth.

It is the nature (in fact, the purpose) of systems to be constraining. Being constrained by "the math works" is not fundamentally different than being constrained by "how the real world works" or " how the genre fiction works" or "how Gygax thought it should work".

The fundamental flaw is hidden in the emotionally loaded phrasing - "it can be very dissatisfying for someone who is looking for more." More? More what? without specifying, this becomes a de facto implication that "the math works" is generally less. When we admit that all systems are constraining, then we can see that is isn't a matter of someone looking for more. It is a matter of someone looking for something else. Different, yes, but not objectively more or less.

So, yes, there's people for whom any given game is not a good fit. But when we misidentify that as somehow being the game's fault, rather than a no-fault issue of just not being a good match, our discussion becomes twisted.

 

[Jester David]

I need to know what and who the PCs are. This doesn't require mechanical definition, though - natural language descriptors can do the job, and if the system is good then the mechanics that the players choose for their PCs will give effect to those natural language descriptors.

That's true to some extent, but you don't want to throw the party against skill checks they can't make, knowledges they don't have, and the like.
The more codified the system, the more they cannot even attempt some actions untrained because X is folded into a skill or a utility power or a class feature.

Whose imagination? If you are saying that the GM being like a player means imagination is not required, are you saying that players don't (have never?) needed to use their imagination? But the GM does?

In any event, a GM who plays monsters as the players play their PCs is in my view misplaying. The players' job is to advocate for their PCs. They should be pushing for their PCs. Whereas the GM's job is to frame and oversee the resolution of the ingame situations. The GM should be controlling NPCs and monsters so as to drive the game forward by putting the right pressure on the right player at the right moment. This is a very different job from that of a player, and a GM who doesn't do it well will lessen the overall quality of the play experience.

My ability to frame the resolution is occasionally

How do you learn who the villain is?

I tend to rely on lore, either game or mythology. I find I monster (for when the villains are monsters) that will fit based on their role in the world or what they're known for and add that to the story. And then I pray they're close to the right level/challenge.
Other times I'll have the base idea for the villain but no stats and I'll just skim monster books for an appropriate challenge threat that's the right type.
I never sit down with the monster book, find a threat, and then build the story or encounter around that. The only times I've build encounters around the monsters abilities was during my time DMing 4e, where terrain and maps were essential, so I spent extra time doing that (and less time working on the rest of the story).

I'm not really seeing the connection between "story and imagination" and "rooms being barren". If you mean that rooms aren't described (as far as furnishings, architectural and decoration style, etc) I haven't noticed 4e adventures to be wildly different from adventures for other editions. Can you give examples?

But for me the bigger point is that, when I think story, I don't think "Eclavdra keeps her spare capes in the second drawer of her tall boy." Of the original WotC 3E modules there are two that I have used and enjoyed: Speaker in Dreams, and Bastion of Broken Souls. With the former I cut out a lot of the cruft (random and/or pointless encounters). With the latter I ignored the stupid dungeon crawl at the end, as well as all the "so-and-so always attacks" nonsense. What I liked about both is that they had strong thematic hooks: in the former, a baron held hostage to a Cthulhu-esqu cult; in the latter, an ancient pact among the gods that is bringing doom to the world, and can only be resolved by treating with a banished god who was exiled precisely for his objection to the pact in the first place. Room descriptions don't figure in my memory of either scenario.

Let's look at White Plume Mountain for a second. There's a big room full of boiling mud, a room that's a spinning cylinder, a room that's under hot spring, and a frictionless room. And so many others. Rooms were interesting because monsters were boring.
Let's look at Keep on the Shadowfell. Kobolds on page 6-7 in a bland road. And again on 14-15. In fact, it's the same damn map. But the types of kobold change so the fight is suddenly different. In 1e-3e that would have been running the same fight twice.
P16-17, more fights in the wilderness, only now there's a magic circle… for reasons. More fights follow, each in a mundane location.
Skipping ahead to the Keep there is room after room after room where the actual place you're having the encounter does not matter. There are twenty five separate encounters, most taking place in several clusters of rooms, and not a single chamber or area is remotely interesting. There's not a single location that is memorable.

That's the catch. The rooms don't need to be interesting or memorable because the fights are. The gameplay is fun. So that becomes a crutch and all the fun rests on the gameplay and not the imagination.
What's the most memorable thing in the Keep on the Shadowfell unrelated to rolling dice? I'd argue that it's Splug. He's mentioned nine times in the entire adventure and has three paragraphs relating to him (1/8^th of a page) dedicated to him. And he's the standout element of the module. Everything else is "meh".
People don't tell stories about the time they defeated Kalarel through textbook teamwork or how they synergized their powers with the wizard's to combo the ghouls. They tell stories about their interactions with the comic relief goblin. Encounters are only memorable when things are outside the norm: lucky crits, dramatic reversals, improbably strings of luck, etc. I.e. when the rules are not behaving as normal.

What you describe as "really liking tactical play" I think is actually enjoying the rules working. If the rules don't work then the GM has to make up outcomes. At which point the GM is not going to be surprised, and also the players have lost the ability to determine what happens in the game.

The catch is, as much as the rules hinder my ability as a GM to make up outcomes, they also hamper the players'. The rules are equally restrictive on what we can or cannot do.
So often I've been GMing and the players have wanted to do something creative and I've shot it down because The Rules wouldn't allow it: they didn't have enough movement, it would provoke an Opportunity Attack, what they were doing required a feat, they couldn't get past the hardness of the object or hit its break DC, etc. Once players learn The Rules they begin to self-censor, to restrict and hamper their creativity to the boundaries established by The Rules.
When I, as a GM, cannot make up the outcome then both I and the players have lost some surprise because the realm of possibilities has been narrowed to the finite range of options established by The Rules.
I'm doing a lot of Organized Play at the moment. Pathfinder Society with a lot of new players. And it really emphasises to me how stuck in their ways by homebrew group is. My group are a bunch of mad creative geniuses who can do some fantastic crap within the rules, but they really stay nestled into the mechanics.

Can I ignore the rules to enable the players to be creative? Sure. But that gets into the Oberoni Fallacy, with the "flaw" of the rules being their existence rather than their quality.

3E has basically nothing to offer me as an FRPGer. The fact that you see it and 4e as largely equivalent, whereas I see that one is well-suited for me while the other is hopeless, suggests even more that by "story" and "imagination" you mean something very different from what I mean in the context of RPGing.

Equivalent? No. Comparable? Yes. Equally rules dependant. Pretty close. Especially compared with 1e and 2e, let alone Basic.
When you're just comparing just 3e and 4e they look very, very different. When you're comparing the entire range of D&D then 3e and 4e are pretty darn similar in a lot of ways.

I have no real idea what you mean by this, other than you seem to be implying that my game (or someone else's game a bit like mine?) is shallow.

You know what, yes I suppose I am.
I am exactly that.
If you're only playing The Mechanics, if there's no narrative overlay apart from perhaps talking in story, there is less substance. There are fewer layers. By definition there is less going on.
Can you still have fun? Yes, of course you can. Is it wrong? Nope. But there's less going on.

I rely on NPCs and monsters to make things interesting and memorable because I think conflict is more dramatic than exploration. I don't find rooms - be they "barren" or rich in wallpapers and architraves - to be all that interesting or memorable. In 30+ years of RPGing, when I try to bring to mind a memorable room the only two that come straight to mind are the opening corridor of ToH, and the flooding vampire room that I used in my 4e game (adapted from the FR Sceptretower module, I think combining a couple of different rooms into one). What I remember are things that happened, primarily to PCs but often involving NPCs.

I don't see how that is a "crutch", as opposed to playing the game. (And I also don't see why monsters and NPCs, or conflict more generally, so often on these boards gets equated with combat.)

If you don't see it nothing I say will help. I'm seeing a vase and you're seeing two faces and no explanation or amount of talking will change someone's perspective.

I wish you good gaming and may all your 20s be natural.

And? It adds to the spice rack.

And people rely on the spice and come to depend on it. They let other flavours slide because they can just dump spice into the game.

As a GM you aren't the @*&# narrator. That was the mistake White Wolf made. You control the setting, not the PCs. If the PCs subvert your plans roll with it. This is when the GM actually requires imagination.

As for not preparing encounters in advance, normally in 4e I write mine in the session at the time I draw the battlemap.

That's not what I meant. I mean I narrate the fights. I describe the action. And if a player just moves their piece on the board, declares they do 15 damage and the target is stunned I have no way at all to describe that. What just happened in the world? I have to get the player to read the card or pass it to me which slows down play, so I'm incentivized to just ignore the description and just play without the narrative like a game of Warmachine.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Let's look at White Plume Mountain for a second. There's a big room full of boiling mud, a room that's a spinning cylinder, a room that's under hot spring, and a frictionless room. And so many others. Rooms were interesting because monsters were boring.

Rooms were interesting because the writing was creative.

Let's look at Keep on the Shadowfell.

Let's not. Keep on the Shadowfell is pretty much universally acknowledged as terrible. White Plume Mountain is a classic for good reason.

Kobolds on page 6-7 in a bland road. And again on 14-15. In fact, it's the same damn map. But the types of kobold change so the fight is suddenly different. In 1e-3e that would have been running the same fight twice.

It is in 4e. This is part of the problem with it.

Skipping ahead to the Keep there is room after room after room where the actual place you're having the encounter does not matter. There are twenty five separate encounters, most taking place in several clusters of rooms, and not a single chamber or area is remotely interesting. There's not a single location that is memorable.

Which is an utter waste in 4e. And just more reason that Keep on the Shadowfell is a terrible adventure.

If there's actual interesting terrain in 4e then the system makes it pop in a way that other editions don't. You have forced movement which means that a fight on a dock will be memorable because you're going to push people in the water without giving up all your attack ability. (Or you're going to keep fluffing your attack rolls).

That's the catch. The rooms don't need to be interesting or memorable because the fights are.

Actually you have it backwards. 4E fights are at their most interesting and memorable when the rooms are. Bridges, walkways, things setting on fire? Yes please! In pre-4e when a pit trap has triggered it is done. You just step round it. In 4e when a pit trap has triggered it becomes a big part of the fight because you then try and throw all the monsters down there with forced movement. Set the ground on fire and everyone steers clear - except in 4e where again you have forced movement and people in addition to attacking are trying to drive each other into the fire.

What's the most memorable thing in the Keep on the Shadowfell unrelated to rolling dice?

Irontooth, Slayer of Parties!

I'd argue that it's Splug. He's mentioned nine times in the entire adventure and has three paragraphs relating to him (1/8^th of a page) dedicated to him.

Which ranks right up there with Meepo.

And he's the standout element of the module. Everything else is "meh".

I'll drink to that. Which is why the best way to fix the module is to drop a bomb on the keep. Raze it to the ground. Because it is a terrible module that should only ever be used to show how not to write 4e.

People don't tell stories about the time they defeated Kalarel through textbook teamwork or how they synergized their powers with the wizard's to combo the ghouls.

No. They talk about driving the wizard back into his own portal from half way across the map. Or holding the mountain pass against an entire company of guards.

But they don't tell stories about Keep on the Shadowfell because it's possibly a worse module than The Forest Oracle. At least we can make jokes about The Forest Oracle and some people had fun with it.

The catch is, as much as the rules hinder my ability as a GM to make up outcomes, they also hamper the players'. The rules are equally restrictive on what we can or cannot do.
So often I've been GMing and the players have wanted to do something creative and I've shot it down because The Rules wouldn't allow it: they didn't have enough movement, it would provoke an Opportunity Attack, what they were doing required a feat, they couldn't get past the hardness of the object or hit its break DC, etc.

That sounds like 3E. 4E because I don't have to clear things with the DM first, my monk can look at a tower and simply run up the side and kick the goblins over the battlement.

Once players learn The Rules they begin to self-censor, to restrict and hamper their creativity to the boundaries established by The Rules.

Or, because the rules are wide ranging and flexible, they learn to use the rules as building blocks to enable them. Unless they have a DM trying to shoot such plans down.

And people rely on the spice and come to depend on it. They let other flavours slide because they can just dump spice into the game.

And that's when we get Keep on the Shadowfell.

That's not what I meant. I mean I narrate the fights.

No wonder your group is set in its ways. Why aren't they narrating what they do?

so I'm incentivized to just ignore the description and just play without the narrative like a game of Warmachine.

You play Warmachine without narrative

 

[Greg K]

Cleric of a Disease God who went around infecting anyone he could & refused to wear armour or carry weapons other than a club. The player was acting out as he did notwan to play D&D (we rotated systems) We should have just booted him, told him to grow up or come back later.

Cleric of a Disease God affecting everyone? Whether or not it is inappropriate depends upon the campaign. If it was inappropriate, the DM should have disallowed it (the character would not be allowed in my campaign, because the deity of disease is an evil deity with evil clerics and I don't allow evil PCs).

As for not wearing armor or carrying only club, I don't see a problem unless an individual campaign is so heavily focused on combat and part of the social contract (set by the DM or the group as a whole) is that all players will be combat effective. Two editions had options for non-combatant PC clerics. 2e Specialty Priests could have a wizard's based THACO, d4 hit die, and no armor proficiency depending upon the deity. 3e's Unearthed Arcana had the cloistered cleric with Poor BAB, d6 hit die, and leather armor proficiency. For my own campaign, most clerics are based off of the cloistered cleric, because most of the deity's are non martial.

 

[The Black Ranger]

Third edition one from my group. A halfling monk/paladin/pious templar. The character was so useless that I actually gave him a holy avenger just to bring him back on par with the rest of the group. The only saving grace of the character was that it couldn't really be killed - insane AC and saving throws that meant that he too no effect on a successful save and his character abilities gave him a save vs pretty much everything. Completely, and utterly, a useless character. Couldn't hit anything even close to a par CR creature and even if he did hit, did so little damage, he might as well not have bothered in the first place. Every round of combat was effectively him dice fapping for all the good it did.

As far as a module with "4 to 5 characters of levels 6 to 8 of above normal optimised builds", let me introduce you to Age of Worms from Paizo. The entire AP is written with the intent that the players are going to go all in when it comes to optimisation and if you don't, you're going to die, or the DM is soft balling encounters.

Do you have a copy of that build?

While Age of Worms is a well liked adventure* it doesn't set the bar for Pathfinder or D&D. I've heard from many people that the adventure may have been written harder than it should have been. The writers are sometimes capable of making an adventure too hard. I seriously doubt it was created with pure optimization in mind.

 

[Agamon]

While Age of Worms is a well liked adventure* it doesn't set the bar for Pathfinder or D&D. I've heard from many people that the adventure may have been written harder than it should have been. The writers are sometimes capable of making an adventure too hard. I seriously doubt it was created with pure optimization in mind.

Well, seeing as one of the final adventures assumed that the party consisted of the same PCs as the when it began, and it was a meatgrinder, I'm not really sure what they were thinking. It was great for a good belly laugh, though.