D&D 4E Palladium's philosophy for D&D 4e? Pros and cons

[Jdvn1]

Yeah, but you gotta admit - the idea IS scary, no?

Palladium ice cream? I'd go for it.

 

[Cowpie Zombie]

Is there something to be said for this "fast and loose and damn the torpedoes" approach to the game? Or is it a case of "been there, done that", and now D&D can never go back that way, especially as it becomes integrated with an online component in D&D 4e?

The problem with "Fast and loose" and "damn the torpedoes" is that WotC has created a gaming culture in which slavering adherence to the RAW is held up as some kind of holy sacrament. D&D 3.5 is a rules lawyers dream come true. Contrary to what people say about "we had rules lawyers back in the day too!!!" the rigid logical nature of 3.5 has created more rules lawyers than ever DREAMED of back in the day.

Yet 4e may change that somewhat with its emphasis on online play and collectible-style minis, feat cards, etc. It is pretty obvious that it will be some form of tabletop/computer hybrid; what remains to be seen is *how* much of a hybrid, and how much room there will still be for rules lawyering.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Been playing since 1977.

There aren't more rules lawyers. There are more rules.

 

[Graf]

This is a charitable way of saying, "the Palladium system" was written in the 1970s and the original owner, who maintains control, isn't capable/interested in fixing or changing it.

People who dislike the rules of DnD shouldn't play it. There are lots and lots of great rules-lite (or rules heavy or rules-just-different) systems out there.
But I don't think that DnD "should be like palladium, and just make up random stuff and stick it in rules and never pay attention or accept responsibility for the rules-set or how it works" is some kind of panacea...
Palladium is similar to DnD appeared around the same time and is far less popular. One of the reasons is that the system is.... well.... what it is.

The fact that DnD's rules are relatively granular is just a feature of the system. The fact that Palladium's rules-set has never been improved (or even edited for clarity...) is also a feature, that most people feel is a bug.

 

[Arkhandus]

It may be neat for WotC to put out a 'basic game' in 4E, that serves as an intro and rules-lite version with minimal rules and basic guidelines for how to adjudicate situations on the fly. It would certainly serve a purpose and please a few people, anyway.

But it really shouldn't, and definitely will not, be the core game of 4E D&D that Wizards of the Coast will eventually produce. There's not much money to be made with that, and most groups will be in an outcry if D&D becomes some really-simplistic make-the-rules-up-as-you-go game that is played vastly differently by every group (especially tough on people who want or need to join a new group).

I know myself and most groups I've played with would definitely be outraged if 4th Edition turned out to be some simplistic piece of junk we could've thrown together in an afternoon. Many of us want actual, well-defined rules to run our games with and build our characters with. A rules-lite or rules-free game would get dull after a bit and wouldn't continue to evoke our interest. Same goes for a poorly-thrown-together mishmash of crude rules that are more like guidelines for wasting time on excessive houseruling.

Houserules shouldn't be a necessity for enjoyment of play; the rules should be reasonably complete enough and reasonably balanced enough for play out of the box, as it were. I love tinkering but I'm not gonna play a game that requires me to fix the system first and get everyone in the group on-board with the fixes and additions.

 

[Jer]

Is there something to be said for this "fast and loose and damn the torpedoes" approach to the game? Or is it a case of "been there, done that", and now D&D can never go back that way, especially as it becomes integrated with an online component in D&D 4e?

Just for the record, you can run D&D right now with a "fast and loose and damn the torpedoes" approach to the game. You just need to have players who are willing to go along with it. It works for Rifts because the rules are so obfuscated that you HAVE to come to a consensus at the table about what the rules mean, and a lot of players will just "take the GM's word for it" if it comes down to figuring out what a rule with multiple interpretations might mean in practice (AD&D 1e had this feature too - 2e had it much less).

But you don't need that feature to run the game that way -- that's how we ran D&D from the Metzner boxed sets at my table back in the day and those rules were probably just as clear (if somewhat less "standardized") as the 3e rules are today. I run my 3e game in a fast-and-loose fashion as well -- you don't have to follow all of the rules in the book to the letter, even with 3e, as long as you get that consensus at the table.

Having said that - there is no way on Earth that Wizards is going to move D&D to a more obfuscated system. Mainly because clearly written sets of rules with lots of expansions and options sell really, really well for them. Even today, years after the introduction of the 3e ruleset, people STILL want to buy books with "more crunch less fluff". And crunch is a lot easier to develop with a solid, balanced, clearly described foundation of rules to build on.

My personal prediction for 4e is that it will be a simplification of 3e, in the way that 3e simplified down the complex system that 2e with all of its options had become and 2e simplified down the system that 1e with all of its options had become. The overall core system will be streamlined, with the "best" stuff from expansions (new races, new core classes, rules from the minis game, etc.) pulled into the core.

 

[Razz]

If I see one more 4E thread, I'm going to probably bludgeon the first person I personally meet who even puts the two symbols together in his speech...seriously, give the 4E talk a rest. You're just going to make it arrive that much quicker and make it that much more painful for all of us

 

[jdrakeh]

Or is it a case of "been there, done that", and now D&D can never go back that way, especially as it becomes integrated with an online component in D&D 4e?

Honestly, D&D has never been as fast and loose with rules as Palladium is/was. D&D has had fewer rules, sure, but its rules have always been spelled out explicitly. Palladium doesn't do that. For instance. . .

The Rifts rule core book never actually told you how to use skills for the better part of two decades -- they just presented some skills with percentile ratings and assumed that you'd figure out that you needed to roll under a skill rating on % dice in order to use them. This, of course, doesn't apply to the skills that don't have percentile ratings, but instead modifiy combat rolls or attributes.

D&D has had fewer rules, but I don't think that TSR ever actively omitted explanations of how to use the rules that were present (they'd refer you to other books quite often, but that's not the same thing as omitting rules/explanations in their entirety). No, Palladium has always been a different beast when it comes to content editing and presentation standards. Admitedly, for some folks, this is part of the appeal.

For others, it's the reason that they don't (or don't anymore) play Palladium games.

 

[comrade raoul]

So basically the Palladium line is that the game works best with an off-the-cuff blend of rules-based powergaming and freeform improvisation? I'd buy that--I bet that's true of lots of games, at least games that emphasize butt-kicking the way D&D and Palladium do--but that's demanding an awful lot of proficiency, maturity, and trust from everyone involved. It's plausible that with certain groups the rules even encourage that kind of play, but, again, I wonder how common those groups are, and I wonder whether it's reasonable to evaluate rules according to the extent to which they work--without explicitly saying so!--for that special, ideal group of players.

I'm, personally, glad that most modern games aren't like Palladium. I think that integrating freeform play works best when the rules explicitly allow for it--like I guess Castles and Crusades does--if only because it makes it easier for groups to know what the system expects of them.

I think there's also a space for comprehensive, well-designed rules, though, and I think if you look at the gradual progression that d20 has exhibited--from 3e to 3.5e to the new, hyper-streamlined SW: Saga Edition--you see that the mechanical understanding that designers have had for the rules has steadily increased over time; it's experiencing the sort of progression you might hope for from the sciences. It's neat, intellectually, that design has worked like that, and I think it's very important to have rules that accomodate beginning-to-intermediate groups, or those that for one reason or the other are most comfortable with rules that stand very well on their own, without requiring much improvisation.

 

[comrade raoul]

Honestly, D&D has never been as fast and loose with rules as Palladium is/was. D&D has had fewer rules, sure, but its rules have always been spelled out explicitly. Palladium doesn't do that. For instance. . .

The Rifts rule core book never actually told you how to use skills for the better part of two decades -- they just presented some skills with percentile ratings and assumed that you'd figure out that you needed to roll under a skill rating on % dice in order to use them.

Were they really any better than 1e/2e proficiencies? What about versions of D&D without proficiencies?