Opinion: But It's So Gamist!!

[ObsidianCrane]

That's drawing a very long bow. Going back to Tolkien, if I recall correctly, Gandalf comments that "there are many magical rings which turn their wearers invisible", which is why it is slow to dawn on him exactly what he's dealing with.

Does D&D no longer support those? (Hey, you guys went to Tolkien first. And I don't even care about the ring thing.)

Sure it does, they are there for Paragon level characters.

Nothing says that there are not a bunch of rings any more, the narrative of it is that Rings are simply now more powerful items.

 

[rounser]

Sure it does, they are there for Paragon level characters.

And was Bilbo a paragon character? No, and yet Gandalf accepted that it could be just some "plain old" invisibility ring working for his inexperienced friend. So that's quite clearly the answer: No, 4E doesn't support it.

 

[ObsidianCrane]

How do you know Bilbo wasn't a Paragon Level Character, do you have his character sheet?

However its noteable that Gandalf recomends Bilbo to the Dwarves because he would be able to do the job (he does so several times). I would suggest that Bilbo established himself when he was a younger more Tookish hobbit. (ie Reached Paragon Tier at the end of the first campaign).

So after some adventures, when Bilbo turns up with a Ring its not a big deal.

Further the One Ring is an artifact...we don't know what the rules for Artifact use are currently. Also from a narative sense how the heck does a character know what level another is, its not (normally) tattooed on their forehead or anything?

 

[FabioMilitoPagliara]

e.g. "Warlords" don't make sense in a D&D party IMO, and them using magic makes even less sense, yet the gamist rules suggest they exist, because they're fun to play. I'll have to ban them. This is easy to do in this case, but what about deeply rooted gamey things that don't make sense?*

*: By "don't make sense" I mean in terms of genre context. Giant, firebreathing lizards make sense there - those wings are really big. Magic makes sense there. Near-impossible warrior feats make sense there, but within limits - really superpowered stuff without the influence of magic or "epic power of legends" doesn't make sense there.

so? as long as the warlord (or the fighter, or the thief or the ranger) is not tossing fireballs around but using things like "Strenght of one hundredt", "Rain of Arrows", "Warcry", "You can do it", "One shot one kill" and the like that allow them to make that perfect hit once for combat and other interesting things more often is good for me

 

[Roman]

I agree with those who say gamist concerns should not take precedence over other concerns. I can only speak from personal experience, but a degree of simulationism* is important for me, whether I am in the role of the player or the role of the DM, but especially in the latter.

It is precisely because of what I perceive to be utter disregard for simulationist* concerns during 4E design that I am now heavily leaning towards staying with 3.5E. I do not want to commit myself to not switching over yet, as something might yet convince me that my assumptions about 4E were wrong, but the chance of that is not very high. If somebody else buys the books (so that I don't have to pay for them) and wants to run a 4E game, sure I will not boycott the game on that basis, but I am not planning on buying the books myself or running a 4E game.

Note that this situation arises despite the fact that to some extent I do look to gamist and narrativist aspects of the game too and the fact that I like some things about 4E (for example, that characters get something at every level).

*I am not sure I am using the right terminology. I don't care for names such as "Golden Wyvern Adept" and the like that might be considered simulationist. I am concerned, however, about the referencing of durations and frequency of action use to gamist councepts such as 'encounters', about the removal of non-combat powers from monsters, about the inability to be bad in a skill and the like. Given these facts, am I a simulationist or something else?

 

[Hussar]

It's in the simulationist essay of R. Edwards.

Thanks for the link. When my brain is working again, I'll give that a swing.

On the Tolkien Sidebar - D&D has never, ever, ever done Tolkien well. Not once. When Gandalf, one of the strongest magic users in the setting has to run away from goblins, that's not D&D in any incarnation.

That the whole One Ring vs D&D rings doesn't fit - well, honestly, who cares? Why should we be shackled to dead authors anyway? Rings in a lot of stories are very, very powerful. Heck, Aladin's ring allows for unlimited wishes, not just three in some stories. That rings don't happen to gel with one author's vision is the poorest reason to change the mechanics.

And really, the flavor never fit with 3e mechanics anyway. Forge Ring requires a 12th level caster. This isn't some neophyte wizard - this is a pretty powerful individual making this. So, if I'm a powerful wizard, capable of teleportation, flying, even dimensional travel, why in the hell am I making a ring that lets me jump better? The only reason we have a ring of jumping is because of the legacy issue. We had rings of jumping before, so, dammit, we need them now. Never mind that it makes no sense.

Look at rods. You need to be at least 9th level, and there isn't a SINGLE minor magic rod in RAW. Not one. Most rods are major magic items with a smattering of mediums. Meaning that you will not see rods in the game until minimum 5th or 6th level, and probably not until around 9th or 10th.

So, now, they are taking the limitations that already existed and applying it to rings. No one bitched about it before. Why does making it explicit suddenly piss everyone off?

On a side note, I wonder what will happen to rods. Wands and staves are wizard implements and fit into the hand slots. I wonder if rods are going to go away?

 

[Doug McCrae]

Going back to Tolkien, if I recall correctly, Gandalf comments that "there are many magical rings which turn their wearers invisible"

Munchkin setting.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Given these facts, am I a simulationist or something else?

By the Forge definitions, no one's a simulationist. The GNS terms refer to units of play only. A game system can be said to support a style of play, as 4e is being said to support gamism.

That said I've seen a few people claiming to be 100% simulationists or whatever. Though in practice virtually everyone prefers a mixture of G, N and S. I'm mostly gamist, for example, but I certainly make plenty of DMing decisions on the basis of what's plausible, which is simulationist decision making.

 

[ruleslawyer]

That distinction you're reporting is so subtle I'm unaware of it.

Like probably the majority, I assumed all the Rings of Power were usable by anyone, simply because the One Ring was. I think you'll find the man on the street makes the same assumption - nowhere in the movies or books do I remember them out and out saying that e.g. the rings of the nine, or galadriel's ring etc. cannot be used by Joe Schmoe.

I'm prepared to accept that you're correct, but I pay more attention to such things than your average person, and didn't know this. The One Ring makes you assume otherwise.

There's also Draupnir, or the Ring of the Nibelungs, or the entire Norse poetic construct of the "ring-giver," an individual of great status/power.

But your argument doesn't make sense either given or absent all of that. If everything in D&D needs to obey a fantasy trope that "the man on the street" knows and understands, then we can eliminate... well, anything that's original to D&D that wouldn't immediately be familiar to the layman. How many people know what a mind flayer is? (Outside the people I currently game with, I can count *one* friend who'd know.) Or an aboleth? (Zero of my friends outside my gaming group.) Or a yugoloth? But all of these things are part of D&D's "mythology." Adding things to the mythology or changing them (such as, for example, "magic rings are only usable by those with the great power needed to master them") is a) hardly new to D&D (or are we forgetting that drow, aboleths, and numerous other common foes weren't around in OD&D or early AD&D, that entire character classes changed or were added to the gaming universe, and that we even introduced new kinds of magic items and new item rules and restrictions, including an entire magic item economy, over the editions?).

As to the warlord: Again, I don't understand how this is "gamist" vs. "simulationist." You argue that adding a tactician turns the D&D PC party into a military unit; I'd suggest that a) this is already the case in a number of games, and pretty much guaranteed if the players are running an adventure like GDQ1-7, (Rtt)ToEE, or the like; and b) that warlord abilities are just as easily seen in a character like Aragorn (and the Fellowship is practically *the* iconic adventuring party) as like some Black Company officer. Furthermore, one can make this argument about any character class. Doesn't adding a monk turn the whole game into a cultural fusion experiment? Or adding a paladin turn it into Three Hearts and Three Lions? Both of those hypotheticals make as much sense as what you're suggesting.

In short, I do think there are mechanics that are good for better play but simultaneously strain immersion in the fantasy world and/or suspension of disbelief. I just haven't seen anyone raise an actual example of one in this thread. (Hit points are one that have been around for the history of the game, but that's got nothing to do with 4e specifically.)

 

[glass]

Thousand appologies. I seem to have caused more problems than solved by misusing the terms. Like I said above, assume that I'm using the right term and go from there. I was thinking Narativist=making the game follow certain genre and story conventions. My complete and utter bad. :'(

Don't worry two much about it. GNS theory is like the emporer's new clothes IMO.


glass.