More DMing analysis from Lewis Pulsipher

[Tony Vargas]

My theorycraft-fu is weak, but to have 4E-style powers more palatable to a "traditional" RPG experience, then perhaps either more in-game causality Or a clearer distinction between player narrative vs character-motivated actions.

Officially, the PH1 provided 'in game causality' explanations for daily and encounter powers being limited-use. The explanations varied by source.

In the case of the martial source, only, there was a fan-proposed alternative explanation that was much more narrative, frequently voiced in response to the criticism that the official explanation was unrealistic. One of the strangest and least valid - but most oft-repeated - criticisms of 4e was that the fan-proposed alternative explanation for martial dailies rendered them 'dissociative.' Frankly, if anyone was willing to go that far in trumping up and promoting an invalid criticism of the game, /nothing/ could possibly have made it 'more palatable.'

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I'll cut to the chase. I feel your post aggressively defends CaGI with an argument that doesn't concern me and I have no stake in the matter. But then concluding that you question how genuine/sincere someone else's concern is pretty much ends the conversation for me.

Aggressively defends it? Are you kidding me? So when one "aggressively defends" something, they say stuff like:

Personally I dislike CaGI because I do think it cuts really close to the line and does so in a cheesy rather than cool way

So let's get this straight:

1) CaGI isn't a great power, and I don't like it.

2) Your thesis is, IMHO, pretty lazy/ill-concieved because it relies on a totally unsupported and seemingly obviously false assumption that 4E is RIFE with powers like CaGI, which it is not.

So yeah, that 2? You can't get past that without evidence. You can waffle all you like about how I've "ended the conversation", but I am spot on, frankly, to point out that CaGI is a very rare exception, not broadly representative of 4E's powers, and I think it is perfectly fair to question the motives of people who hang their dislike of a system on a single power, and don't offer other examples.

You've certainly failed to offer any other examples, and I expect that to continue. You'd really need a significant fraction of 4E's powers for your thesis to be remotely convincing, like, say more than 5%. If there are that many, it should be easy to round some up.

 

[Kraztur]

Aggressively defends it? Are you kidding me?

Damn, I was just about to edit it out but you replied seconds before.

Your thesis is, IMHO, pretty lazy/ill-concieved because it relies on a totally unsupported and seemingly obviously false assumption that 4E is RIFE with powers like CaGI, which it is not.

You assumed that I assume or care if 4E is RIFE with powers like CaGI. You assumed my "thesis" relied on that. You assumed it's even a "thesis".

You've certainly failed to offer any other examples, and I expect that to continue. You'd really need a significant fraction of 4E's powers for your thesis to be remotely convincing, like, say more than 5%. If there are that many, it should be easy to round some up.

You assume I'm trying to convince YOU or anybody of anything.

 

[Umbran]

I agree some people fit into the categories you defined. How many I don't know. When it comes to movies, I've experienced exactly what you say. As an IT professional, I have a hard time enjoying movies with quick and easy hacking of every system coming and going.

It is something to keep aware of. My wife is a practicing veterinarian - fiction with bad biology or medicine really grates on her. I'm a physicist, and you would expect me to cringe at bad physics, but I generally don't. I mark it as wrong, certainly, but it doesn't usually kick me out of immersion or enjoyment. If this microcosm is at least demonstrative, then the population is mixed, so you can't straight off write either end off as a bad idea.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I would think in this case, "balance" refers to the "all options roughly equal" style of character/monster building necessary to grade challenges, which is important for Gamist play. Balance between, say, combat and exploration is a different issue.

I like to think of balance as being a matter of maximizing choice that keeps as many choices as possible both meaningful and viable. If it's possible to make a choice between combat and exploration, say, then, yes, there needs to be some sort of balance struck between the two pillars - if combat and exploration choices are 'siloed' they needn't be balanced against /eachother/, merely balanced within their respective pillars.

Several answers. Balance is not the only good and perfect balance at the edges as defined by some on these boards is hostile to other priorities.

That sentence doesn't make a lot of sense. But, yes, balance, by definition, is 'hostile' to individual priorities that have no regard for the individual priorities of others - like any compromise.

Those of us wanting the rich heritage of D&D magic and also the simple fighter keep hitting the buzz saw from these people.

If you mean that D&D that presents wildly-versatile, abundant, high-power magic as an equally-weighted choice with low-versatility, unlimited, low-power mundane actions (available to everyone) combined with modestly increased durability, yes that's very poor balance.

And, yes, the /compromise/ between players who want obscenely powerful casters overshadowing mundane characters who exist only to provide a contrast that illustrates who awe-inspiring and 'really magical' magic is, and those who want wild 'anime' heroes cutting nigh-irrelevant ritual-only casters in half with a flick of the wrist, is, indeed, /balanced/ classes in which both sorts exist in a more reasonable form, with rough parity in resources, versatility, and power.

The other option is to segregate said groups of players, with the former playing something like Ars Magica (or all-caster D&D parties), and the latter playing something like Iron Heroes (or a no-caster party in the one edition of D&D where that was practical).

 

[Emerikol]

And, yes, the /compromise/ between players who want obscenely powerful casters overshadowing mundane characters who exist only to provide a contrast that illustrates who awe-inspiring and 'really magical' magic is, and those who want wild 'anime' heroes cutting nigh-irrelevant ritual-only casters in half with a flick of the wrist, is, indeed, /balanced/ classes in which both sorts exist in a more reasonable form, with rough parity in resources, versatility, and power.

I reject all your hyperbole but the bottom line from you is for the rest of us to get out of D&D even though we likely far outnumber your radical viewpoint. Good to know. I guess when my utter removal from the hobby is your basic objective then no peace can be had.

The other option is to segregate said groups of players, with the former playing something like Ars Magica (or all-caster D&D parties), and the latter playing something like Iron Heroes (or a no-caster party in the one edition of D&D where that was practical).

Or we just keep playing D&D, the #1 rpg hands down during the entire period they failed your test and you play a different game that fits your very high demands for balance.

 

[Balesir]

1) The rules are paramount; if the rules imply that high level characters can jump off a cliff and walk away, then that's what they can do. It's just an odd quirk of the game world that this is possible - but possible it certainly is (because the rules say so).

2) The "world" is paramount. Of course, the "game world" does not really exist, so what this actually means is that someone's vision and conception of what they want the game world to be is paramount. The usual, perhaps even default, case is that this "someone" is the GM. They simply adjust/selectively apply/make up the rules such that the game world behaves just as their model of it demands that it should behave.

Good points on the description. I believe people should play this way though if that is what they find fun. I find the approach fun. The world I present to my players feels real to them so we are enough on the same page for it to work. Perhaps that is a form of genre preference.

A couple of folks seem to have taken this passage as criticism, so I think I must have made it insufficiently clear: I didn't intend to present either of these options as problematic or in any sense "wrong" in themselves. They are simply alternative ways of handling strict world consistency and what I assume is meant by "Narrative Mechanical Consistency" (i.e. the mechanics and the "world physics" are aligned).

I would substitute realism with cinematic realism. Things we'd spew our Mt. Dew when we see in a movie are the kinds of things we'd reject in a game. I realize that is entirely subjective but we have a small group of players in any D&D campaign so it's quit possible to please such a subset when it comes to believability and immersion. If you can achieve this with a small group of other players you've got something entertainment wise more valuable than most other things at least for me. Without immersion though, the high cost time wise and commitment wise of D&D is not worth it. Other games are so much easier to get into and out of.

I put "realism" in inverted commas because I think it will necessarily be (a) subject to a variable amount of "leeway" for most or all players and (b) reflective of the players' respective models of "reality" rather than the collected and synthesised understanding of reality that represents the "state of the art" of science (let alone the real, ultimate "rules of reality" for the real world that we as humans don't know!)

So, yeah, it will naturally be whatever model of reality is "negotiated" between the rules'/GM's vision and what the players imaginations can accept.

You only need a group that agrees. I believe unlike you perhaps that we all share a lot in common when it comes to basic sense of reality. We might disagree. More often some don't care.

I think models of reality can diverge radically, in fact, but this only matters if the players decide that it is important for this specific game. I think also friends (and most RPG groups are, I think, composed of friends) will tend quite naturally to have at least broadly compatible world models.

This is why I allow player/DM communication to represent the thoughts of the character. I state the DC to represent knowledge the character with such skills would already have. I make passive checks against knowledge skills and I tell the players when I think it makes sense. So my players don't have to even ask in some cases because I just tell them. Based upon your knowledge of heraldry you'd say this shield was made during the fourth dynasty and so forth.

I agree that communication is key; open DCs and passive knowledge rolls are things I use extensively, too. As a matter of preference I generally prefer most communication to be up-front via the rules, but as I say that is pure personal preference (and not an absolute one, at that).

This viewpoint is a classic error. Abstraction is not unrealistic. When I play an operational wargame where I move DIVISIONS or even ARMIES across Russia in world war 2, the combat is very abstract. I do not need to know where every rifleman is taking cover or whether my tank hits his tank. D&D combat is very much the same. The d20 roll is based upon probabilities. The footwork, dodging, maneuvering etc.. is assumed.

Abstraction is definitely not realistic - I hope I didn't convey that with my post! My favourite edition of D&D uses bucketloads of it to achieve results that are plausible to me with simple, abstract mechanics.

I appreciate your perspective and I don't mean to be harsh at all in my responses so do not take me that way. For me D&D just isn't worth it without it being really immersive. As a board game, it just doesn't bring enough to the table to overcome all the costs involved in playing it.

I don't take this post as harsh at all

I don't find immersion at all times essential for a good RPG experience, myself, but I enjoy it enough to understand the desire for it. Other 'angles' include intellectual exploration and building (of another's imagination or of concepts and real-world history and features), team cooperative tactics and challenge beating (with I/C dialogue), engagement with an in-game situation and collective story building.

I think one key issue people miss is that most everyone wants all the priorities. They just rank them in importance differently. I believe I could make any 4e player happy without using a single dissociative mechanic. If I worked hard enough at that goal. The devs seem to consider that effort not worth it but I'd think it really is worth it.

I agree that most players have these points as priorities, not absolute and separate needs. I think that is partly why most can enjoy a wider range of game systems than they imagine they can!

On "dissociated mechanics" I can't really comment as I'm not sure I understand the term, yet. On the definitions given, I don't find supposedly "dissociated" 4E mechanics to be dissociated (by the definition) at all. When people say that there "is no in-game reason" for CaGI or Encounter Powers I simply don't see that as true. And the reasons that are there for those phenomenae I imagine the character as being aware of. I obviously don't really understand the argument.

So like, if I were a trained paramedic - I'd be OK with the DM saying "make a Healing check" and rolling a die, but if they wanted me to role-play how I went about treating the patient, I'd start asking questions the DM isn't prepared to answer, which impedes my ability to reply in character?

Partly, yes. Another aspect is that you may be so used to picking up on a mass of data immediately upon appraising a situation (through the combined bandwidth of your eyes, your ears, your nose, your sense of touch and taking in details the untrained would miss) that a "twenty questions" session may itself break up any immersion and engagement with the situation that you had.

The problem with Balesir's characterisation here of purist-for-system is that any RPG can be played in that way, if you read the rules back into the fiction. (Several posters on these boards seem to take that approach - eg [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION]).

I think that most traditional style RPGs can be played this way, for sure - and I think that is a definite comment on the place of PFS in the history of roleplaying. I can think of several systems, however, where it would be a bit of a challenge; PrimeTime Adventures, for example, or Fiasco. Maybe even Hillfolk.

But Edwards, in characterising purist-for-system, clearly has in mind that there are external constraints on our conception of the world, which the system then has to model/account for. If you look at the systems he actually identifies as aspiring to purist-for-system, they are exactly the sorts of systems that Pulsipher (and Gygax) has in mind as contrasting with D&D:

Here I think Edwards got trapped by the very traps he pointed out! As soon as we go for a consistent set of rules I think there is some internal pressure to slide toward a model of the real world. I am convinced that this is two separate things, however: the desire for rules that reflect a consistent and working game world on the one hand, and a game world that has broad similarities to the real world on the other. The two are entirely compatible, but neither requires the other.

But D&D is not this. It's not that it produces unrealistic outcomes. It's subsystems (hit points and action economy chief among them) violate ingame causality.

Here I disagree. I don't think either hit points or action economy in D&D break game-world causality; the proof of this is simply that they provide in-game causality, so if we assume that the game-world is determined by the rules then it, too, must have unbroken causality. The only reason that game-world causality might be compromised is if we require it to have some specific causality that is incompatible with the rules system. Like, for example, one modelled - however loosely - on the "real world" system. If we assume that "divine favour" and "heroic energy" and such like are real forces in the game world and that creatures in the game world perceive things such as to make consistent action and reaction the way things work out, then it can be perfectly "sensical", even though it might clash with our "plausibility filters".

"Purist for System", as I understand it, is mostly about the game world being faithfully reflected in the game mechanics. The game world literally works as the mechanics say it does. This can be achieved in one of two ways:

1) The rules are paramount; if the rules imply that high level characters can jump off a cliff and walk away, then that's what they can do. It's just an odd quirk of the game world that this is possible - but possible it certainly is (because the rules say so).

2) The "world" is paramount. Of course, the "game world" does not really exist, so what this actually means is that someone's vision and conception of what they want the game world to be is paramount. The usual, perhaps even default, case is that this "someone" is the GM. They simply adjust/selectively apply/make up the rules such that the game world behaves just as their model of it demands that it should behave.

There are reasonable and realistic problems. But they are also very easily overcome.

<snippage>

On item #2, that can happen. But IME it doesn't. And I think this is a common issue with people talking about game style they don't like. They have a strong tendency to project their own issues onto other peoples' game, whether they exist at those tables or not. A hugely fun experience for everyone at the table is paramount. The people I play with tend to want the consistent world systems, so that of course matters a lot. But any "adjustments" made are always to adapt to the unique nature of the situation at hand. I'm frequently complimented on consistency and fairness. Item #2 just doesn't ever raise its head as a problem.

Once again, sorry if my post implied that these two points are "problems" - that was not my intent at all. They are merely approaches to ensuring world consistency against the rules. Both might be susceptible to problems in certain circumstances, but neither is "a problem" in itself. Indeed, I know from personal experience and hearing from others that fun games are perfectly possible using both approaches (as well as others besides).

 

[Tony Vargas]

the bottom line from you is for the rest of us to get out of D&D even though we likely far outnumber your radical viewpoint.

Nonsense. The point of balance is that each player can get a reasonable version of the character he envisions. That the choices players make in creating and playing their characters are generally meaningful & viable. It's an inclusive compromise approach to varied player agendas.

I guess when my utter removal from the hobby is your basic objective then no peace can be had.

My basic objective in this context is a game we can all participate in and enjoy.

Or we just keep playing D&D, the #1 rpg hands down during the entire period they failed your test

Appeal to popularity. If you're going to try to get Fallacies named after you, you might want to avoid committing too many classic ones, yourself.

you play a different game that fits your very high demands for balance.

Again, you're trying to paint balance as an extremist goal, instead of a compromise. That makes no sense. In a balanced game, each player gets to play what he wants without overshadowing the next guy. How is that extreme or objectionable? It's not. It requires compromise on the part of any player whose vision of his desired character is overpowered or under-contributing, but that's all, it doesn't exclude anyone.

It's imbalanced games that are exclusionary. By over- or under- rewarding a given choice or style, they encourage adoption by some players and exclude others. What's worse is when those they're trying to exclude still find nowhere else to go, and end up second-class players, punished for their preferences or coerced into less desirable alternatives.

 

[Savage Wombat]

Again, you're trying to paint balance as an extremist goal, instead of a compromise.

[MENTION=6698278]Emerikol[/MENTION], is this true? Are you trying to paint balance as an extremist goal, instead of a compromise?

 

[Emerikol]

@Emerikol, is this true? Are you trying to paint balance as an extremist goal, instead of a compromise?

Only Tony's version of it. Not balance at all. For example I'm sure that the 5e designers intend for their game to be balanced. Tony though by his standards thinks 5e is highly imbalanced. Thus he has a radical view of balance in my opinion. Again just my opinion but that is how I see it.