R. Thompson : D&D still a sim/gamist RPG

[UltimaRatio]

smathis's many, many smart words have helped me realize myself why I like 4E so very, very much.

I took that quiz that everyone talks about and it came up with me equal parts Tactician, Power Gamer, Method Actor, and Storyteller.

I love games and game design. I'm a fan of chess and Go - games with depth on both the strategic and tactical level. As such, I push strongly for changes that allow for skill to make more of a difference. As an example, the large removal of "save or die" had me doing cartwheels because it prevents luck from holding skill hostage. Things can no longer go swimmingly in combat and then wind up in a TPK from a single failed roll - now you have to fail several rolls, and even then, since healing and damage are more evenly distributed, there's no longer a single crucial component of the party whose loss spells doom. In that capacity, I proclaim victory over each triumph of gamism.

But I have a passion for stories. In books, in theater, either crafting my own or enjoying someone else's, there's nothing that feels more "right" to me than something that makes sense as a story. I'm that guy at parties who leaps from tale to tale, sometimes nesting them within themselves, because there's no finer pleasure than a good story. I played four different paladins in mid to long-term campaigns over the course of 4E because I wanted to explore different takes on the paladin archetype and the different possibilities each brought along.

If 4E is a balanced and healthy game, with plenty of ways for skill to out and all options reasonably balanced against one another (I never could bring myself to play a class straight-up; my burning desire to be as effective as possible led me down the paths of dips and multiple PrCs), then that in itself guarantees I'll play it and enjoy my "game time." But the fact that it allows me to make roleplayingly consistent decisions without being penalized mechanically (skill selection as a f'rinstance) and lets my character do cool things that fit with his background, limited only by my creativity... that guarantees that I will clutch it to my bosom and never let go.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Tacticians: meh on 4E, lots more combat options, but fewer ways to avoid/short-circuit combat, inherent vagueness of conflict resolution system

I would think that more combat options would tend to make Tacticians extremely happy. How fun it is to avoid violent conflict is so style dependent that I would be skeptical of any generalizations.

I am looking forward to 4e because of the tactical options, on top of the fact it looks like it will be easier to share my kind of joy without first having to teach my less grognardy friends how to avoid countless tragically suboptimal pitfalls in character design.

 

[TwinBahamut]

I kind of feel 4e is moving away from 3.X's:

1) Character design (roleplaying of a sort)
2) Encounter a situation (no roleplaying)
3) Determine a goal (lots of roleplaying)
4) Determine tactics and RoE (some roleplaying)
5) Dice rolling

towards (not entirely by any means, but significantly in the case of the skill challenges)

1) Character design (as above0
2) Encounter a goal (no roleplaying)
3) Determine what circumstances would allow your character to achieve that goal in the way most appropriate to how he wished he could act (roleplaying of a sort, I guess)
4) Dice rolling.

for a net massive loss of roleplaying. Your character isn't defined *by* his encounters, but by *how* he chooses to deal with them.

I don't see how you can justify this shift of yours at all... It doesn't make the slightest bit of sense. It merely seems like a willful misinterpretation or misrepresentation of the information given to us by WotC.

I don't see any change at all between 3E and 4E regarding how characters are presented with challenges, determine their own goals, or anything else of that nature. In fact, I don't see any change at all between the games in how they present opportunities for roleplaying. Certainly, there are some changes to how characters can resolve a particular challenge, but the change is only to the conflict resolution system, not to anything more fundamental.

The difference you describe is more a difference between two DMs with very different playstyles, not a difference between two game systems,

 

[hossrex]

So much semantics, so little time.

Is the original poster really complaining that fourth edition, at the same time, is neither gamist, nor narrativist enough?

Thats like walking into a green room, and bitching that while he didn't want a blue room, nor did he want a yellow room... this room certainly isn't both blue enough, nor yellow enough.

The original poster realizes his post comes off as complaining for the sake of complaining, and that it would seem, that nothing would make him happy right (because if it were more gamist, he would complain it wasn't narritivist enough... and vice versa)... right?

He doesn't realize that? Not only doesn't he realize that, but some how enough people have this same twisted sense of logic as to be recognized as a "demographic"? Wow.

I dub thee "complainer demographic". People who have more fun complaining about their games, then they do playing them.

 

[MaelStorm]

Character actors: hate 4E, because of dumbing down of skill system, siloing of combat vs noncombat powers, more narrowly-focused classes

Yes, you're right. I'm waiting to see the Core Books. But if there is one aspect I really hate about 4E is this one. (The wargame minis aspect take the first rank, though.)

I think 4E is very gamist, and I don't think it's wrong, but I think they could improve 4E by giving optional rule to improve the simulationist aspect (even if the game designers think realism=not fun).

 

[Halivar]

You know, you could avoid all this confusion by just not trying to frame every friggin' thing in GNS terms.

I've got a feeling no one at WotC (or, just as probably, none of the big players in the industry) keeps in mind GNS, or any of the other "gaming theories" at the Forge, when designing a game. Like I said: it's a meta-game for people who enjoy talking about games.

So, people are upset because D&D is still a flobbergobberist/zixqist game. All I think WotC cares about is: is it still a fun "Fantastic Medieval Wargame" for "Campaigns with Paper and Pencil and Miniature Figures" that thousands of people will play and make money for WotC. Because that's the spirit of D&D. If D&D were to change into some foozlist/snuffleuffagist game that Forge-members think is so wildly different than what D&D is now, I don't think I'd want to play it anymore.

 

[Kesh]

This.

The OP is arguing semantics.

That's all you can do with a GNS argument. There's no set definition for those terms, so this entire thread will be a waste of back and forth "Yes it is!" "No it isn't!" ad infinitum.

As we've seen so far, all you can do when someone brings up GNS is argue about GNS. The real meat of the matter (does D&D promote/hinder a certain style of play?) gets drowned in the semantic arguments over GNS.

GNS muddies more waters than it ever cleaned up.

Agreed entirely.

 

[Kraydak]

I don't see how you can justify this shift of yours at all... It doesn't make the slightest bit of sense. It merely seems like a willful misinterpretation or misrepresentation of the information given to us by WotC.

I don't see any change at all between 3E and 4E regarding how characters are presented with challenges, determine their own goals, or anything else of that nature. In fact, I don't see any change at all between the games in how they present opportunities for roleplaying. Certainly, there are some changes to how characters can resolve a particular challenge, but the change is only to the conflict resolution system, not to anything more fundamental.

The difference you describe is more a difference between two DMs with very different playstyles, not a difference between two game systems,

Lemme try to use an example. Thogg the barbarian is an ass-kicker by nature. The edition doesn't matter, ass-kicking is what he does. Now, in 3.X, Thogg is (frequently!) confronted with situations where ass-kicking is non-optimal or even counterproductive. Thogg cannot always repond to situations with ass-kicking, and an outside observer would determine that Thogg is an ass-kicker by noting that he chooses the ass-kicking option more often than the average, and that he chooses it even in cases where it is a poor (hopefully not catastrophic) choice.

In 4e, going by Rodney's blog, the goal is that Thogg gets rewarded for choosing ass-kicking as his choice. This requires the circumstances be such that ass-kicking is, in fact, a productive option. An observer of 4e would determine that Thogg is an ass-kicker by noting that Thogg *encounters* an unusually large number of situations where ass-kicking is a good option, but given the set of encounters Thogg has, he won't be choosing ass-kicking an unusually large number of times.

Again, going by the blog, 4e's design philosophy takes away roleplaying options from play, and puts them into character creation. Strange that an edition that explicitly tried to silo abilities to get character breadth seems to have an additional philosophy that rewards strong specialization. 3E's Thogg will be forced by circumstances to use his (poor) non-ass=kicking skills more than 4E's Thogg will be able to justify using his (better) non-ass-kicking skills.

 

[hong]

Lemme try to use an example. Thogg the barbarian is an ass-kicker by nature. The edition doesn't matter, ass-kicking is what he does. Now, in 3.X, Thogg is (frequently!) confronted with situations where ass-kicking is non-optimal or even counterproductive. Thogg cannot always repond to situations with ass-kicking, and an outside observer would determine that Thogg is an ass-kicker by noting that he chooses the ass-kicking option more often than the average, and that he chooses it even in cases where it is a poor (hopefully not catastrophic) choice.

In 4e, going by Rodney's blog, the goal is that Thogg gets rewarded for choosing ass-kicking as his choice. This requires the circumstances be such that ass-kicking is, in fact, a productive option. An observer of 4e would determine that Thogg is an ass-kicker by noting that Thogg *encounters* an unusually large number of situations where ass-kicking is a good option, but given the set of encounters Thogg has, he won't be choosing ass-kicking an unusually large number of times.

Again, going by the blog, 4e's design philosophy takes away roleplaying options from play, and puts them into character creation. Strange that an edition that explicitly tried to silo abilities to get character breadth seems to have an additional philosophy that rewards strong specialization. 3E's Thogg will be forced by circumstances to use his (poor) non-ass=kicking skills more than 4E's Thogg will be able to justify using his (better) non-ass-kicking skills.

You have fallen into the common trap of thinking of roleplaying as character-building. There is nothing that states being true to your character concept requires, or must be associated with, mechanically suboptimal choices.

There are indeed SOME gamers who associate roleplay with character-building, and in Robin Laws' scheme, they are called method actors. These are the people who consider taking a bard and then playing up his uselessness in combat to be an excellent way of differentiating themselves from the rest of the group. Needless to say, this definition of roleplay is not universally held.

In your 4E example, Thogg's player would roleplay by thinking up possible ways in which he can relate his ass-kicking schtick to each situation at hand. The DM then assigns skill checks deemed appropriate to the proposed solution, which may or may not coincide with the skill that the player had in mind. In a harmonious group, they'll probably coincide more often than not; even if not, 4E characters have much more flexibility where noncombat skills are concerned than 3E ones, so Thogg will rarely be caught completely without options. Thogg thus manages to express his ass-kicking schtick, his player remains engaged, and everyone is entertained by Thogg's asskicking antics.

There will no doubt be some situations where no plausible asskicking solution can be found, but you can't have everything.

This can be contrasted with the situation in 3E where Thogg either kicks ass, stands on the sidelines, or actively sabotages his party members' efforts to find a solution by inappropriately kicking ass.

 

[Harr]

The mistake the OP makes in this thread is assuming that GNS theory is not, in fact, bunk. Which it is And I'm glad WOTC is aware of that fact.

In fact from the very first things I read about 4e, I thought to myself that 4e constitutes, in part, a big finger-giving from WOTC to the GNS shippers. 'Not only do we not care about your GNS separations', they are saying, 'but we are actually and actively designing our game in to fly in the face of them.'

To which I say, good show sirs, good show indeed.