Monsters are more than their stats

[AZRogue]

My favorite version of DnD was 2E Skills and Powers. You may put me on your Ignore List now.

 

[Zweischneid]

I think one problem is that DnD has always been written and designed by nerds. Nerds want things to work in a logical manner. That someone was kidnapped to the land of the faeries is not enough. We want to know why it happened, how often it can happen, is there a saving throw etc. etc. while people with a less engineering based point of view just say 'its magic' and thats it.

So I think the OP is correct in 4es approach. I like fantasy and sci fi that makes sense and looks like the logical clockwork world we live in but twisted up. But adding the level of codified detail to the game to make such a world does not add much but page count.

Besides there is no evidence that 'The Ecology of the Quickling' type pieces will not be provided with tons of obsessively crossrefernced fluff. All we know is that they are trying to make the MM book more concise and the keyhole view we have of parts of a few mm entries.

I don't really think that is the greatest problem. If people get overexited in representing certain narratives in convulated rules, you may be in for a bumpy ride, but you'll still retain that link to what you want to do (tell a fantasy story).

Potential disaster lies in the inverse. If you let yourselve guide soley by the need to create a fluid, coherent and logic set of rules that runs like clockwork, but fail to adequatly describe what these rules actually are for (supposed to represent), you run the danger of cutting that very link to the fantasy story and begin doing random and meaningless mathematical operations with your friends around the table.

Than you've left engineering, to use your picture, and entred experimental mathematics, i.e. a far more self-referential system of interest only to a far more limited number of people and of only circumstancial relevance for actual application. The feverish debates on "what do hitpoints actually represent" seem, among others, indicative of this risk to me. Or more precicely, the need and desire of people to have guidelines on "how should/can/must I translate a mathematical substraction of hitpoints back into a narration of wounds/fatique/etc suffered by medieval-fantasy heroes delving into a forbidden tomb?".

Many of the new powers have raised similar issues, i.e. the reactions of "wow, thats a brilliant & elegant way of solving issue X, that has always bugged me ... but wait ... what does it actually represent 'in-game'? How do I narrate the utilization of this?"

Again, experienced players/DM can likely do that without help (and the corresponding threads on Enworld are usually filled with most excellent ideas on how to do it), but an 'easy-to-learn-RPG' should provide pointers for those who don't.

4e is taking a very novel approach, building the game from the rules towards the story rather than vice versa, and I both applaud them for doing it and am very excited about seeing the eventual outcome. I just believe that "losing the story" is a potential risk in this approach, and one, we (to my knowledge) haven't really had to face in this extend in roleplaying before.

 

[jasin]

Well, mind-altering magic is always difficult to handle. I'm not sure what would be the best way to treat the succubus kiss, myself.

If you want to avoid the ambiguities of 3E's charm "as written, and dominated (save ends)" would be a much better model of what I imagine the succubus' kiss to be.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Many of the new powers have raised similar issues, i.e. the reactions of "wow, thats a brilliant & elegant way of solving issue X, that has always bugged me ... but wait ... what does it actually represent 'in-game'? How do I narrate the utilization of this?"

The thing is, 4e is really 2 games in one. It understands that the time you need RULES the most are when there is a conflict of some sort. It is at decision points that you need rules. Does what the PCs want to accomplish happen? Do they die from this attack? And so on.

That part of the game is the most GAME-like. It is where the players get to role dice, use strategy, and generally do things similar to that of a board game. It needs to be this way for a number of reasons. Mainly that conflict resolution requires the most precision since it matters the most to the players(in that what happens at decision points and combats are what "forks" the story in one direction or another).

The "roleplaying" or "narration" part of the game doesn't need rules. It is the part of the game where players think of clever solutions to problems and use their own intelligence to come up with answers. It is open ended and nearly anything could happen. These portions allow the players creativity to shine through and to provide the flavor of the game to come through.

4e really doesn't apologize for this duality, either. It doesn't say it in so many words, but it gives off the impression of: You are playing a role playing game. The point is to follow a storyline and see where it goes. You get quests you need to accomplish and your characters go on these quests. Along the way, monsters and bad guys will attempt to stop you. At certain points you may have to fight them. In order to figure out what happens during these battles you play this board game. We've made the board game as streamlined as possible with the clearest rules possible to make it fun for everyone with very little arguing over the rules and other things that make playing the board game no fun. When the board game is over, you go back to playing the role playing game. We're not going to tell you what ever little number on your character sheet represents in the role playing game since numbers aren't required in that game and can mean whatever you want them to. The numbers are for the board game.

And I think this is where most people have difficulty wrapping their heads around the new game. They want their numbers to be the answers to the role playing game. They want to look at their sheet when faced with a door and think "which one of my powers gets me past this door?" When they need to find someone in a village, they look at their sheets to see which spell answers that question immediately. 4e encourages pretty much throwing away your character sheet and actually roleplaying again at these times. And I can tell you, it's a little intimidating for me. I forgot how to do that a while ago when I figured out I had a spell or skill to solve all problems with a dice roll in 3e.

 

[Vascant]

In 4e, if the DM wants to have a succubus have the king under her control and rule the kingdom through proxy, the DM can do so, without needing the monster's statblock in the Monster Manual to back up that decision.

At least, that's my impression of 4e. What do you think?

Seems to me you are comparing DM problems and not game rules, this has been done several times.. there even is a case of this in FR (North of Waterdeep if I recall correctly). Safe to say if a DM had issues in 3e, he will have issues in 4e as well.

There are a few back issues of Dungeon or Dragon Magazine that cover topics exactly like this and I would also like to note these same articles deal with the DM and not the game rules.

 

[Ipissimus]

I think one problem is that DnD has always been written and designed by nerds. Nerds want things to work in a logical manner. That someone was kidnapped to the land of the faeries is not enough. We want to know why it happened, how often it can happen, is there a saving throw etc. etc. while people with a less engineering based point of view just say 'its magic' and thats it.

I don't really think that's precisely true, but you're on the right track. It's not really because anyone is a 'nerd', it's more due to the nature of the game.

The greatest strength and the greatest weakness of the DnD game is the DM. The DM simultaneously makes the DnD game not a video game (where everything occurs according to the program's rules) but infuses it with uncertainty. Every moment where the DM has to eyeball something is the moment when your entire game could go down the tubes.

The problem is consistency. Players want to interact with a world. Ideally, that world should feel like a living, breathing, moving sandbox that reacts in a generally predictable manner to the PC's actions. Once you have this solid basis, both the PCs and the DM can start throwing in curve balls with far less chance of breaking the game or suspension of disbelief.

More fluff, like the ritual to become a Lich, isn't necessary but it's nice to have a guideline from which a DM can work. It can lead to a great moment when the PCs, investigating a wizard character, look at the list of spell components he's been buying recently and someone goes 'AHA! He's trying to become a Lich!' without any prompting. A far better moment than just happening to find 'Ye Tome of Darkynesse' in the local libabry that just happens to have the ritual spelled out or the Wizard saying 'Uh... I'll just roll Arcane'. It also helps when you get the odd players who sits down and says 'I'd like my Necromancer to become a Lich, how do I work towards that?' Sure, the DM can make stuff up but what if you've got a DM who's biassed against undead/a newbie/has had a bad day/is feeling tired and cranky (pick one or make up your own)?

Good DMs let players do things proactively. All we need is the tools to be able to do it effectively. That's the major thing the designers, who live and breathe building the game and get paid for it, can give us.

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

If I've said it once, I've said it twice:

"Make Stuff Up" sucks as a rule.

Specifically, I don't need $90 worth of rulebooks to tell me that I can just make stuff up as I go along. There are much easier, simpler, more flexible ways to resolve these conflicts than 900 pages of rules. I don't want WotC to say "Do whatever you want!" because oh thank you so much for your permission, no.

What I need, what I'm paying for, what I want, are rules.

Specifically so I don't have to make stuff up. I'm a busy man, I'm not playing D&D to write a collaborative narrative, I'm playing it because it is a game of plot resolution. If it doesn't give me a plot to resolve, if it doesn't give me a way to resolve it, it's not giving me what I want to play.

I think this is a misrepresentation of the way the 4E ruleset works. I think 4E will provide hard-and-fast rules for covering 99.9% of gaming situations. Instead of trying to guess at and provide rules to cover all of the strange corner cases that occasionally arise in individual games, 4E will provide a framework for creating your own rulings in these situations. A much, much cleaner approach than the 'rules carpet-bomb' route that 3E took, admirable as that attempt was.

 

[Lizard]

At least, that's my impression of 4e. What do you think?

I think the designers said "No one cares about anything but combat...lets not give them anything else."

I have the exact opposite thought on the combat-only, "monsters live for 5 rounds" attitude. I think it's a giant step backwards in game design. Not only does it turn everything into DM fiat and encourage railroading plots, but it makes sharing content much more difficult, as everyone will have different ideas about how things "work" outside of combat. It's one thing to say "This book deviates from the RAW as follows..."; it's another to have no rules at all.

For a quick example -- in my D20M campaign, I wanted to have an aboleth lurking in a sunken freighter offshore, controlling his minions in San Francisco to steal valuable pages from a magic tome. The problem -- as written, the aboleth didn't have the range I needed him to have for the plot. The solution -- he had an artifact which greatly enhanced his control range. Having hard rules for a creature's non-comabt powers does not constrain a creative DM (especially in a game like D&D), but it does provide a very helpful baseline from which to work.

3e was the first version of D&D where I felt the designers were saying "We're giving you the tools to build a world." In 4e, as in 1e and 2e, the designers seem to be saying, "We're giving you the tools to stage a fight scene."

If you want to play Amber or Nobilis, play Amber or Nobilis.

 

[hong]

I think the designers said "No one cares about anything but combat...lets not give them anything else."

WTF?

 

[Zweischneid]

If you want to play Amber or Nobilis, play Amber or Nobilis.

Dunno how this little statement relates to the rest of your rather insightful post, but this is just screaming for a not-so-witty World of Warcraft rebuke

Be careful with the matches...