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NOW LIVE! Into the Woods--new character species, eerie monsters, and haunting villains to populate the woodlands of your D&D games.
My take.
- Thread starter Celebrim
- Start date
Mourn said:
This seems to mean "Please pretend the people who live in the world and grew up in the world don't know how the world works and won't act accordingly."
Yes, badgers are a joke. That's why I used "badgers". They rate a 5.1 on the Laffer Scale. Only weasels rate higher, at least among the small mammals.
But if you have creatures who die if they take ANY damage, you have to ask how any of them survived their childhoods to face the PCs. Or at least *I* have to ask this. Because I ask these things. Because I like my worlds filled with fire-breathing vampire dragons to make sense.
OK, obviously, they don't "really" have no capacity to take damage. It's a pure game convention. They exist to be mowed down in waves. Off-stage, they can stub their toe without exploding. (I hope...) But the cavalier dismissal of even the merest pretense of verisimilitude rankles.
I suspect that, in play, if a Minion ever survives an encounter and interacts with the PCs, I will deftly swap his stat block with a more viable breed...
Lizard said:
Meh--D&D has always required the cavalier dismissal of verisimilitude, so I really don't see this as a particular problem endemic to 4E. Your mileage may vary, of course--but consider that Order of the Stick is based on exactly the kind of knowledge of the game rules and how they govern the world, and it's generally considered a satire of D&D.
Actually, I think hong nailed it--some people want the characters in their world to be real people, others want them to be actors in a role. Neither approach is badwrongfun or poor roleplaying, but 4E is definitely sliding toward the latter.
Now you're thinking with 4E!
The Little Raven
First Post
Lizard said:
Maybe you'd get more interaction, and less "cavalier" dismissal if you used arguments that aren't predicated on such ridiculous ideas and assumptions. Maybe if you actually presented your "hypothetical" players as the moderately intelligent D&D gamers we've all met, instead of some cartoon caricature, you'd get somewhere.
Mourn said:
Actually, I'm portraying them as the loophole hunting, rule exploiting, vicious little bastards I've come to know and love in just under 30 years of playing the game with more groups than I can recollect..
If you've got a bunch of players who'll say, "Well, we could easily wipe out this next of kobolds by doing X, but we won't, since our characters, despite growing up in this world, have no idea of how it works", well, you've got some very interesting players. Mine assume they know how the world works. If you tell them a 12th level NPC fighter got knifed in a tavern brawl, they won't take it as background detail -- they're figure an equally high-level assassin is involved. They won't talk about 'levels' and 'classes' in character, but they do know "The captain of the watch, who survived three orc assaults, does not simply die from a common thug's knife. Period."
Whatever. D&D always used to veer between gamist and simulationist; it was never narrativist. Now it is.
Darkthorne
First Post
"Don't sweat the small stuff" I believe this is the end goal for 4th ed. 3.5 rules were extremely complex and to get newbies to learn the basics before they get to the "good stuff" and that alone created it own issues. From what I read of what the staffer's have posted they refer these sessions as delves. Delves I take as Dungeon delves or dungeon crawls (sorry if I am pointing out the obvious) which I took as pure combat. If what they are displaying is pure combat how much RP aspect of the game do you expect to see? Now with that being said I think getting many people psyched up about the game is through its combat aspect (our need for immediate gratification). I don't remember where there was a chart in 3.5 that told me what my xp breakdown was for social encounters, however they have stated they are giving xp guidelines for non combat (social) encounters as well as overcoming traps and I believe there may have been a third area as well. I see this encouraging people to do more non combat activities than the thought of but unspoken trait of "I'm not going to bother doing that there's no xp in it for me". Unfortunately there are people out there that need a rule to explain every possible scenario that could take place and how to deal with them and w/o those predetermined rules they believe the system is broken. It also strikes me as funny that people would have an issue with the fact the game mechnic for an ability/power/spell is identical across the board. Just because something is an arcane spell it should have a more complex mechanic? To me that's like saying rolling a d4 I shake in my right hand, d6 I have to toss with my left (more damage), 4d6 I have to spin around 3 times and use both hands (more dice this time) But hey this is just my pov 
The Little Raven
First Post
Lizard said:
Or maybe they aren't obsessively fixated on the divide between gamist-simulationist-narrativist, because they just care about making a fun game without caring about it crossing 'gameplay borders.' G-S-N is like alignment: sure, it can help describe things, but in the end, it's meaningless since real people are far more complex than it allows.
Jhulae
First Post
Lizard said:
To be honest, D&D hasn't had this since the very beginning.
HP and the fact that a dagger strike at 1st level can kill while at 10th level it's but a mere scratch?
Armor that doesn't prevent you from being hurt, but protects you from being hit? (At least 1st edition had it that some weapons could penetrate armor better, but still... the binary Hit/Miss of AC is hardly 'authentic'.)
For any attempt at verisimilitude, D&D just isn't the game to be playing.
