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D&D Older Editions
Mike Mearls on how 4E could have looked
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<blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 7523532" data-attributes="member: 29398"><p>Short answers today...</p><p>Unless the design intent of that trip across the wastelands is to drain the PCs' resources such that they're at less than full pop when they get to wherever they're going. The problem here is the amount of auto-recovery the game as written bestows between 'encounters' and-or on a short rest, unless and until one starts heavily houseruling.</p><p></p><p>For AD&D another big one is spell and-or effect durations.</p><p></p><p>Even in a pure AD&D dungeon crawl there's still loads of time-related things that need tracking: movement rates, spell durations, wadering monsters if you use 'em, and even something so simple as whether it's day or night if some monsters only come out at night...</p><p></p><p>So, three ogres: one an elite, one 'standard', and one minion. Sounds fine...until you ask how that 1-h.p. minion possibly managed to survive growing up in a colony of might-makes-right ogres, or how it's lasted this long without suffering the one little scratch or accident that would do the one point damage required to kill it, and so on.</p><p></p><p>More broadly, if the fiction works in a particular way when PCs are involved then it also has to work the same when the PCs are not around: the 1-hit-point minion has one hit point. Period. Without this the fictional setting and background becomes nothing more than internally-inconsistent - and thus worthless - garbage.</p><p></p><p>And in this I AM putting fiction first, because if the fiction doesn't work right then the whole game kinda falls apart.</p><p></p><p>It's not a non-sequitur at all.</p><p></p><p>If a resource is limitless then it's only natural to use it as if it were - you guessed it - limitless! Resource attrition is meaningless when the supply of said resource is infinite, and this endless availability is going to inevitably affect what actions the players declare.</p><p></p><p>As soon as resources become limited, however, those actions come with choices regarding resource use vs resource conservation. Far more interesting, and - yes - sometimes far more challenging.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Lanefan, post: 7523532, member: 29398"] Short answers today... Unless the design intent of that trip across the wastelands is to drain the PCs' resources such that they're at less than full pop when they get to wherever they're going. The problem here is the amount of auto-recovery the game as written bestows between 'encounters' and-or on a short rest, unless and until one starts heavily houseruling. For AD&D another big one is spell and-or effect durations. Even in a pure AD&D dungeon crawl there's still loads of time-related things that need tracking: movement rates, spell durations, wadering monsters if you use 'em, and even something so simple as whether it's day or night if some monsters only come out at night... So, three ogres: one an elite, one 'standard', and one minion. Sounds fine...until you ask how that 1-h.p. minion possibly managed to survive growing up in a colony of might-makes-right ogres, or how it's lasted this long without suffering the one little scratch or accident that would do the one point damage required to kill it, and so on. More broadly, if the fiction works in a particular way when PCs are involved then it also has to work the same when the PCs are not around: the 1-hit-point minion has one hit point. Period. Without this the fictional setting and background becomes nothing more than internally-inconsistent - and thus worthless - garbage. And in this I AM putting fiction first, because if the fiction doesn't work right then the whole game kinda falls apart. It's not a non-sequitur at all. If a resource is limitless then it's only natural to use it as if it were - you guessed it - limitless! Resource attrition is meaningless when the supply of said resource is infinite, and this endless availability is going to inevitably affect what actions the players declare. As soon as resources become limited, however, those actions come with choices regarding resource use vs resource conservation. Far more interesting, and - yes - sometimes far more challenging. [/QUOTE]
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