Minion Fist Fights

[hong]

Rather, if the D&D rules are applied to its virtual world consistently, we must say that not every cut or other minor injury causes the loss of hit points. If we allow the text to tell us what it is really telling us, it is saying that the loss of even 1 single hit point represents a life-threatening injury. It must, since some people can die from it. I think we can conclude 2 things from this: first, hit points must represent, at minimum, your ability (for whatever reason) to avoid dieing from life-threatening injuries; and second, not every cut, bruise and sting does hit point damage.

Since the latter point is an interesting challenge to DM narration of results, how do we account for minor cuts, bruises and other non-life threatening injuries that can crop up in combat (like getting nicked by a blade, or suffering a minor flesh wound)? Obviously, since hits do 1 point of damage or more, those must be "misses". Or at least, they can be misses... though one might also narrate hit point loss as the luck or skill that reduces what would have been life-threatening strikes to those minor and incidental wounds.

You just... narrate it. The guy gets gashed by your sword, staggers back, but comes back for more. Or he ducks at just the right moment so the lightning bolt takes out his hair, but not his face.

This is identical narration to what might happen to a non-minion guy. The difference is that the non-minion guy will be slightly weaker from lost hp, while the minion guy won't, and this could cause problems for believability if the minion guy survives several such attacks. But in practice, after several attacks, nearly all minions will be dead. For the 1 minion in a thousand who actually survives half a dozen rounds of being stabbed, shot, burned or whatever, then bully for him! In fact, if he continues to live, you've even got yourself a new significant NPC or plot hook right there. Who is this "minion", who managed to live through punishment that killed all his buddies? What kind of supernatural toughness does he have, and where did he get it?

 

[mhacdebhandia]

So, a good portion of the Monster Manual won't be usable without serious modification? Great selling point. Wait, let me predict the response: "Play a different game, 4e is not for you".

The orc entry has two minion types and four non-minions. Out of the four "encounter groups", only two use a minion type (and it's the same level 9 orc warrior both times, as it happens).

Not using the two minion types doesn't really fit my personal definition of "serious modification".

Perhaps a more challenging fight would have been less tedious?

Absolutely. What I should have done is either eliminate the encounter (which would have left the area they were exploring oddly devoid of opponents, and deleted a nice bit of colour the players picked up on), or replace it with something more interesting. I would have chosen door number two, there, but I didn't have time. It's part of the reason I was running a published adventure in the first place.

My point is that using "minion rules" for this encounter turned a pointless and boring encounter which I should never have used into something quicker and less tedious.

This ain't much of a selling point for minions in Fourth Edition, I quite realise! What is does indicate is that minions let you have large battles which don't get bogged down - a few non-minions backed up by a mini-horde of minions will be a lot less painful than the same encounter has been in the past.

 

[Sojorn]

I want to know if people are going to think about swarms this hard.

The MM apparently has a full section devoted to them. Which makes me think it might mean more than just "bugs" this time around.

 

[Fanaelialae]

So, a good portion of the Monster Manual won't be usable without serious modification? Great selling point.

Actually, it seems like there are plenty of people on these forums who like the minion rules (though I in no way deny there are quite a number that don't). Those who like the minion rules won't have to change a thing, and considering that they like what the minions seem to add to the game, great selling point indeed, for them at least.

I don't want to come across as callous, but there is some truth in that you cannot please all of the people all of the time.

 

[Kishin]

GM: "Okay. The last of the Orcs falls dead, when you loot the bodies you get..."
Minerva the Mage: "Hold on. I used my sleep spell so we could get some prisoners to interogate."
GM: "Yeah but then you killed them with a fireball."
Minerva: "Not that guy."
Borax the Fighter: "That's right, I was standing there next to him, and she dropped the fireball over a couple to miss me and catch that bloodrager dude."
GM: "Okay fine. You tie him up, he's awake now. What do you ask him?"
Rodger the rakish rogue: "Foul miscreant, who paid you tribe to attack these pilgrims?"
GM: "I ain't sayin nothin."
Borax: "I pop him one on the lip to get him to loosen up."
GM: "He dies."
Borax: "What?"
GM: "He was a minion, you made a to hit roll, he dies."
Minerva: "I'm pretty sure minion status is meant to be a narrative device and not a litteral..."
GM: "Stuff it. He had one hit point and he's dead. Now do you want your loot or not?"

Are you telling me that wouldn't interfere with your suspension of disbelief?

I'm more in disbelief that you could use an example so laden with hyperbole and utter ridiculousness and think it some sort of compelling argument.

That's not going to happen around any table where the participants have more since than an intoxicated sea turtle. If it does...Well, to quote Ron White, 'You can't fix stupid'.

 

[pemerton]

I don't know which is more funny: "Ron Edwards makes [blank] clear" or "WoTC agrees with Ron Edwards"! Anyway, I don't think that these statements clarify anything. Technically, every role playing game ever written has been "non-simulationist" because, as far as I can tell, there is no such thing as a "simulationist" game.

"Simulationist" appears to be nothing more than a semantic placeholder for "thing I'm going to say compares unfavorably with whatever it is I like". It doesn't have any content.

I don't think that this thread is the place to defend either Ron Edwards (about whom I know nothing other than his essays on The Forge, which I have read and which I admire) or the utility of his classificatory scheme.

But I will say that there is such a thing as a simulationist RPG. I have GMed one for the past 18 years, weekly for many of those years, now closer to monthly. That game is Rolemaster. I have also played other simulationist games such as RQ, CoC and (to a lesser extent) Classic Traveller. These games exist, and people (including me) play and enjoy them.

The notion that "simulationism" is a pejorative term I find bizarre. It's the only useful conceptual device I've encountered for describing the design logic and aesthetic of the main game that I play - that is, Rolemaster. And the main thing that has helped me become a better Rolemaster GM, by helping me understand it's design logic and limitations, is Ron Edwards' essay on simulationism, and particularly his analysis of purist-for-system design.

So far from being a useless nomenclature, I think that the reaction of many players to 4e mechanics illustrates the utility of the Forge terminology: it almost exactly parallels (for example) the sorts of arguments against the role of Spritiual Attributes in TRoS that Edwards discusses in his review of that game; it almost exactly parallels arguments I was having 18 months ago on the ICE forums discussing the differences between RM and HARP and the direction that an RM revision might take; there is a division in gaming aesthetic and preferences that it is useful to name, and the contrast between simulationism on the one hand, and gamism/narrativism on the other hand, seems to capture it pretty well.

Even Rob Heinsoo has used the contrast to try to explain the design direction of 4e.

Is "simulationist" trying to simulate reality, or a genre?

As you probably know, Forge terminology distinguishes between the former (purist-for-system) and the latter (high concept).

If reality, does it matter how that is done? Two games might set out to simulate reality. The first one models gun fights by comparing bullet caliber with the target's bone density to adjudicate the precise trajectory of the bullet after it strikes your femur. The latter one models gun fights by saying "FBI statistics show that 1% of bullet wounds from that range of that caliber are instantly fatal, and a further 32% are eventually fatal. Roll percentiles please." Both end up (for the sake of argument) returning a "realistic" result, which is to say a result that basically measures up to how that scenario would play out in the real world. But their methodologies are completely reversed. Are they really in the same category?

Again, as you probably know, Forge terminology distinguishes between high and low search and handling time mechanics (which would seem to differentiate your two designs in at least one respect). Furthermore, there is no special reason to think that two simulationist games have to use the same mechanics even if they are both crunch-heavy: compare parrying in RQ to parrying in RM.

What your second design would also permit is a degree of FitM: having determined the consequences of the bullet, the player or GM could narrate its precise cause. RQ and RM do not permit this (having complex hit location systems). Classic Traveller does (having only generic stat damage but no mechanic to tell us what sort of physical injury any stat loss represents). Your second design is therefore perhaps more open to be drifted in a narrativist direction.

And what if you're trying to simulate genre? And what if you're trying to simulate genre, but within certain parameters of verisimilitude?

Then different games get written. Compare RQ 3rd edition to RM to Ars Magica to Chivalry and Sorcery for various ways of designing mechanics of various degrees of complexity to model what would, to any outsider, have to be regarded as pretty much the same genre: dark ages/medieval fantasy.

I don't know how familiar you are with methodology in the social sciences, and particularly with Weber's notion of the "ideal type". I see the Forge nomenclature as playing that sort of role: it is not necessarily the case that any game design is absolutely one thing or another (contrast Hero or RM, for example, each of which has highly metagaming, and therefore potentially narrativist or gamist character build rules, with RQ or Classic Traveller, both of which lack such rules), but these ideal types of simulationism, gamism and narrativism are nevertheless very useful in describing and analysing particular features of game systems which make them prone to support (or not) a particular play experience.

 

[pemerton]

Borax: "I pop him one on the lip to get him to loosen up."
GM: "He dies."
Borax: "What?"
GM: "He was a minion, you made a to hit roll, he dies."

It seems that this is not the case, if we assume that D&D has attempted to make reasonable claims about the denizens of its virtual villages. A cut is an injury. I have given myself a good gash with the old hobby knife on occasion. If, in the course of a D&D session, a character accidentally cuts himself with a hobby knife (or let's say a butter knife at the family dinner table) does that necessarily inflict at least 1 hit point of damage? I can imagine Tim cutting himself with a small knife and not flopping over dead. Would D&D have ever posited that 1/6th of the inhabitants of its virtual world flop over dead from common household accidents? We could maintain that it has done so... but why assume something ludicrous only to get upset about its implications?

As John Snow said upthread, now we're getting somewhere.

The next question is: who gets to do the narration? The GM - in which case the game is about the GM making his/her point - or the player - in which case the game is about the player making his/her point.

And what are the mechanical constraints on the narration (which John Snow considers in detail in his post).

And is there any reason to think the Minion rules introduce any unexpected difficulty into the answer to those questions?

 

[pemerton]

minions have been stripped of fully half the ability to challenge characters that normal opponents have. They have been reduced to a skill check, in that they are either hit and dead, or missed and alive. It is really no different than having the opponents with hit points waiting around until you pass the 'minion disposal skill challenge'. Complexity (number of minions) (minion) Successes before (party hit points) Failures.

I assume you are aware that there are a number of RPGs which, either expressly or by implication, treat combats in this fashion.

Thus, HeroQuest/Wars allows combats to be resolved as Simple Contests (skill checks, in D&D language). RQ and RM treat combats as skill checks, and against unevenly matched opponents they do reduce to skill checks: the first successful PC attack against an inferior foe in RQ or RM will take that foe out of the combat.

D&D, in introducing this possibility into the game, is playing catch up. It is not pioneering new (let alone unpassable) ground. What distinguishes it from RQ and RM, and brings it closer to HeroQuest/Wars, is that the use of the device is being driven by a narrativist logic rather than a simulationist logic.

'minion rules' are, by definition, not 'flavour text'.

<snip>

It is a clumsily implemented attrition mechanism to wear down the characters' resources.

<snip>

There is no point in them being there. Roll your to hit as a skill check or take X damage, and don't bother with minions cluttering up your battlemat or combat notes.

One way to look at the minion rules is as an attrition mechanism. Another way is to look at them as a tool to be used to permit expression of a particular thematic point. Another way (Hong's way) is to look at them as an opportunity for the PCs to showboat. The second and third ways definitely establish that there is a point to the minions being there. And that point is the "flavour text" (otherwise known as roleplaying) that the minion mechanics support.

The notion that one would replace roleplaying with "roll to hit as a skill check or take X damage" is absurd. If you aren't interested in the play experience that minion mechanics support, then don't use minions. If you aren't interested in the play experience that D&D 4e will support, don't play it. But don't assert that there is no sensible play experience to be had with minion rules, and with D&D 4e.

Wait, let me predict the response: "Play a different game, 4e is not for you".

Every other RPG in the world is allowed to be what it is, and those who don't like what it is don't play it. Why does D&D have to be different? And from the mere fact that some people don't like it, why does it follow that it is, in some objective sense, an untenable game?

 

[AZRogue]

GM: "Okay. The last of the Orcs falls dead, when you loot the bodies you get..."
Minerva the Mage: "Hold on. I used my sleep spell so we could get some prisoners to interogate."
GM: "Yeah but then you killed them with a fireball."
Minerva: "Not that guy."
Borax the Fighter: "That's right, I was standing there next to him, and she dropped the fireball over a couple to miss me and catch that bloodrager dude."
GM: "Okay fine. You tie him up, he's awake now. What do you ask him?"
Rodger the rakish rogue: "Foul miscreant, who paid you tribe to attack these pilgrims?"
GM: "I ain't sayin nothin."
Borax: "I pop him one on the lip to get him to loosen up."
GM: "He dies."
Borax: "What?"
GM: "He was a minion, you made a to hit roll, he dies."
Minerva: "I'm pretty sure minion status is meant to be a narrative device and not a litteral..."
GM: "Stuff it. He had one hit point and he's dead. Now do you want your loot or not?"

Are you telling me that wouldn't interfere with your suspension of disbelief?

That's so improbable that I can't even imagine it happening without a DM out on a mission to make things work poorly. Like one of those infomercials where the guy shouts "are you tired of trying to use those old, confusing, freezer bags" and the camera shows some numbskull wrestling with a Ziploc before choking himself to death to prove the infomercial's point.

If the PCs are socking the minion around for information you just ...... roleplay. You don't look at his sheet and subtract hit points. You're not in combat. They roleplay the encounter with you and you either a) use their roleplaying to figure out how to resolve the encounter, or b) make it into a Skill Challenge. Someone who removes a hit point from a minion and kills them outside of combat is being deliberately obtuse.

 

[Lizard]

So, in that light, I see Minion rules as providing a valuable shortcut for something I've ALWAYS done anyway. I don't think it's new. As a DM I was always looking for ways to save time and I've never cared if the mechanics can simulate NPCs working amongst themselves; I've only ever cared about what the PCs experience on their side of the table. I know that I can't be the only DM who had a list of six or seven generic stat blocks (THAC0, AC, DMG, HP, one Save for all things, etc.) on a sheet of paper with me for the occasional wandering monster or surprise fight. I had them labeled from really bad in melee to really deadly, based on my players current stats, and would use the statblock I wanted. My game never broke and it freed me up to worry about more important things like introducing plot hooks, mystery clues to be uncovered a year later, and story arcs.

I wouldn't mind if "Minion" were a template or option a DM could apply to a generic monster when statting out a fight. That makes it clear that "minion" is a dramatic/narrative label and not a description of a condition which is meaningful in the game world.

I do mind when the MM presents stat blocks for baseline orcs that make no sense for how the orcs exist in the world outside a fight.

I also mind when special rules (Minions take no damage on a miss) are ham-handedly jammed into the system as a balance mechanic with no pretense of an explanation beyond "Just 'cause!"