D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[EzekielRaiden]

Oh, I'd forgotten about this one.

Conan at no point was EVER a weak fighter. He was never 1st level, nor did he get particularly better or stronger from day 1. He was a pulp hero - which means he was a superhero from the outset and stays that way in every story. He gets freaking crucified in the first story and lives - a feat no other human could perform.

D&D has never simulated pulp stories, like at all.

Though I will note, it has emulated pulp stories in a variety of ways, as I use the term "emulation". Which is one of the reasons why I think emulation and simulation need to be separated.

"Simulation" is specifically about modeling. It's about trying for an accurate representation of a situation. That's why people always bring up the "physics engine" thing, even though very few sims are ever anywhere near that detailed. That's the heart and soul, what it dreams to be, even if it cannot actually be. Things like genre conventions, themes, motifs, style, do not have a place in "simulation". That gums up the works, that gets in the way of modeling a world that runs on systematic rules.

And that's where "emulation" comes in. Emulation is about those things. Sometimes, the genre conventions will include substantial efforts toward realism, or at least the superficial appearance of it; that's where we get hard sci-fi, for example. Larry Niven's Known Space oeuvre, for example, is an effort to reconstruct space opera, a naturally VERY unrealistic genre, under hard sci-fi requirements. (Some will dispute it being true hard sci-fi, since Niven invents unrealistic materials like scrith to resolve physical problems with the ring, but that he cared about explaining it in the first place is close nough for most folks.) "Dark fantasy" works, particularly political-focused ones, form another genre that aims to inject the unhappy, problematic, off-putting sides of how IRL medieval history worked (though they often go overboard into "Dung Ages" territory, following the false and hollow pop-history perspective on what the Medieval Period was like.)

Both things have stuff in common. Both emulation and simulation place a pretty high premium on some kind of mechanical exploration that isn't really present in other approaches. Both aim for an open-ended sort of feel, where something (a thematic experience for emulation; an authentic process for simulation) should just naturally drop out of play when you follow the rules, if the rules are well-written. Both have a skeptical eye toward, for example, openly gamist elements that are there only to make raw gameplay easier/smoother/more enjoyable without directly contributing to the thing-that-drops-out-of-play.

But because their aims are different, even though they share some methods/concepts, lumping them together leads to more confusion than separating them, IMO and IME.

Early D&D wanted to emulate the feeling of the stories from Haggard and Burroughs and Dent (and Tolkien, though Gygax himself apparently did not like Tolkien's work.) It encodes genre conventions from these things, not all of them, but a lot of them. GP=XP is one of the biggest, and that has subtle effects across the system (like the fact that armor is functionally an XP penalty you wear in order to increase your survival--as are hirelings who will demand payment.) The inclusion of Alignment, an otherwise pretty massive intrusion in violation of the alleged absolute sanctity of player control over their characters, is another great example, there to emulate the enforced, grey-and-grey morality in Moorcock's work (we want a balance, one that favors Order over Chaos...but doesn't snuff out Chaos.)

But these things, despite being emulation tools rather than simulation tools, have become so hard-coded into the cosmic microwave background of what it means to be "D&D", that people no longer see them as that. They see them as necessary simulation tools, when they're nothing of the sort.

 

[clearstream]

If that was a reference to 13th Age, I'm pretty sure it explicitly tells you to be transparent about what's mooks and what's not.

(Though depending on the Daily, using that on mooks can actually be a pretty good deal, since you almost never waste damage If you've got a dozen mooks out there and drop a fireball on three of them, given how they work you can completely clean mooks off the map, which is not at an all bad deal most of the time).

Setting aside the mechanics, I worry about the trope of dozens of lives of our demonized enemies being worth less than one of ours. So I'm not generally aiming to support the play envisioned in the 4e text on minions. The game plays perfectly well without them.

 

[Enrahim]

And here is where I think a creative GM can step in and merge the fiction with the mechanics in a way that makes the players feel empowered.

As the GM creating a encounter along the lines of this idea is describe the ogre squad as having 7 memebers...one clearly the leader.

The party rouses the peasants to harass 3 of the ogres

Those three ogres are now treated like minions from a rule perspective...but the peasants are treated like environment. Their existence is what makes the "normal" ogre a minion. That state maybe exists as a timer.

If the PCs intervene in the peasant versus ogre battle the distraction serves to make it a cakewalk. The ogre has its back turned and is easy prey for the skilled attack.

If the GM wants to increase the pressure maybe the peasants are getting taken out or are ready to flee....thus turning the minions back into normal ogres mechanically. Give the heros a ticking clock to address that threat.

Minions having 1HP can certainly jar the bounds of credibility when used in a vacuum, but when you tie the status with in game fiction to make it obvious which targets are going to be easy pickings then it can be very satisfying.

The thing is - now you are (propely) introducing contextual rules handeling of a creature. You are dynamically transition the ogres between "normal" and minion state depending on their current environment, and you have taken the commoners that could have been represented by stat blocks and based on context interpreted them as environment instead.

The thing is that both of these are serious house rulings. There are no official support in 4ed that I could find for dynamically degrading a monster to minion on the fly that I have found. There are as far as I can remember no support for representing creatures as environment. You basically are inventing 2 entirely new sub systems in order to handle a scenario in a way that you feel happy about.

 

[Enrahim]

Setting aside the mechanics, I worry about the trope of dozens of lives of our demonized enemies being worth less than one of ours. So I'm not generally aiming to support the play envisioned in the 4e text on minions. The game plays perfectly well without them.

Can be mentioned that I like Asterix aesthetics. This very much applies to minions. It can also be pointed out that demonizing might not be so bad, if the opponent in question is actual demons..

That said, this is a issue I have with the common violence aesthetics presented, even without minions involved..

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Setting aside the mechanics, I worry about the trope of dozens of lives of our demonized enemies being worth less than one of ours. So I'm not generally aiming to support the play envisioned in the 4e text on minions. The game plays perfectly well without them.

That problem is already way, way, way too much embedded in the nature of D&D as it is. You don't need minion rules for that.

Or did you think that the Acolytes, Goblins (of numerous types), Cultists, Kobolds, or Xvarts--all of which have less than 10 hit points--were not somehow "dozens of lives of our demonized enemies [are] worth less than one of ours"?

It's already there. Decrying minions as somehow injecting a thing already there sounds like special pleading, like inventing a special exception for why this usage is bad but all the other usages of the exact same thing, but with more steps, is somehow good. That if we make it so you have to roll a die and might sometimes fail to kill a fellow sapient in one hit, that somehow validates their existence and makes them not lesser but equal. That it is the difficulty of how one brutally ends another sapient life which indicates that we have shown respect for that life.

I dunno about you, but it seems to me that the issue is the brutally ending sapient lives, not the amount of gameplay time spent doing so. That we show, or lack, respect for sapient lives based on whether we kill, not on whether it is effortless or laborious.

 

[Enrahim]

Except that there is a HUGE GAP between these two things!

This might be. But the issue is that entering this gap is not so easy as this has been a very polarizing issue. The entire rulings over rules vs RAW vs RAI + system matters debate has been present for a long time, and as such most games have been pushed to make a stance.

FATE is the only major game I can think of off the bat that seem to actively have positioned itself into a hybrid position of strongly enforced core with a large body of "toolkit"/"tuning" options on top.

WotC D&D for instance have such a tightly woven web of dependencies in it's combat system that it is known for being too hard to "just fix" without breaking something down the line. There are some tuning parameters, but those are so specific that I think the DMG points to most of them.

This as opposed to how early D&D was hardly coherent at all, and left huge obvious gaps that needed to be filled by judgement calls and rules made at the table. And this was clearly recognized, and encouraged in official materials, beyond the lip service to rule zero we get in some of today's materials.

To compound this we also have parallels to the rules light vs rules heavy polarization line. There are some very hackable rules heavy games, and there are some rules light games that are really tight. But with heavier games we are more likely to get into situations where the entanglements involved makes "just fixing" stuff hazardous, and not nearly as feasible as in a light weight collection of discrete tools.

So while the theoretical gap might be quite huge, for practical purposes most games today tend quite closely toward one of the extremes. This is also further compounded by the community attraction polarization effect. Even if a game might be "hackable" in theory - if it is presented in a way that appeals to those strongly believing in firm rules, the community around the game will likely quickly be dominated by these, making finding a group interested in playing the game in a more lose fix it as you go manner relatively hard.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

This might be. But the issue is that entering this gap is not so easy as this has been a very polarizing issue. The entire rulings over rules vs RAW vs RAI + system matters debate has been present for a long time, and as such most games have been pushed to make a stance.

FATE is the only major game I can think of off the bat that seem to actively have positioned itself into a hybrid position of strongly enforced core with a large body of "toolkit"/"tuning" options on top.

WotC D&D for instance have such a tightly woven web of dependencies in it's combat system that it is known for being too hard to "just fix" without breaking something down the line. There are some tuning parameters, but those are so specific that I think the DMG points to most of them.

This as opposed to how early D&D was hardly coherent at all, and left huge obvious gaps that needed to be filled by judgement calls and rules made at the table. And this was clearly recognized, and encouraged in official materials, beyond the lip service to rule zero we get in some of today's materials.

To compound this we also have parallels to the rules light vs rules heavy polarization line. There are some very hackable rules heavy games, and there are some rules light games that are really tight. But with heavier games we are more likely to get into situations where the entanglements involved makes "just fixing" stuff hazardous, and not nearly as feasible as in a light weight collection of discrete tools.

So while the theoretical gap might be quite huge, for practical purposes most games today tend quite closely toward one of the extremes. This is also further compounded by the community attraction polarization effect. Even if a game might be "hackable" in theory - if it is presented in a way that appeals to those strongly believing in firm rules, the community around the game will likely quickly be dominated by these, making finding a group interested in playing the game in a more lose fix it as you go manner relatively hard.

I fundamentally disagree with your final assertion.

Players have attempted to force them into only those extremes. They aren't actually at those extremes. They aren't even particularly close to either extreme.

Presentation does not actually change whether you can be creative in your interpretations. To claim otherwise is to say that the books can mind control their readers.

 

[Enrahim]

I fundamentally disagree with your final assertion.

Players have attempted to force them into only those extremes. They aren't actually at those extremes. They aren't even particularly close to either extreme.

Presentation does not actually change whether you can be creative in your interpretations. To claim otherwise is to say that the books can mind control their readers.

Ah, it seem like you might have slightly misread me. The way I read you, you are rather amplifying than disagreeing with my final point? That is that the community effect "forcing" them into this extreme is more important than the intrinsic factors of the game previously mentioned?

I agree that presentation cannot mind control people away from being creative in their interpretations. But I assume you agree that presentation can contribute to attracting or pushing away people with certain opinions regarding how they want their game to be played?

(Edit: "So while the theoretical gap might be quite huge, for practical purposes most games today tend quite closely toward one of the extremes" was it this assertion you questioned? I guess in that case it could be a question about different metric. For instance I could have a hard time seeing how to make a game much harder to hack, and hence considering it close to that extreme, while you can easily envision an extremely intrinsically unhackable game, and hence think we are far from the extreme? A fully straight jacket game is hard to envision unless it come bundled with pinkertons..)

 

[AnotherGuy]

The thing is that both of these are serious house rulings.

Who is in charge of designing monsters and challenges for the encounter?
And how is that different from ANY D&D game where the GM changes up the monsters and challenges?

When a GM changes up a 5e monster per WotC published material do you call that a serious house ruling?
Do you ever have good and bad NPCs ("villages and ogres") fight off-camera and then only come back to focus when the PCs intervene?
Does that not meet your condition for a serious house ruling?
Is that not a degradation of those NPCs?

 

[Enrahim]

Who is in charge of designing monsters and challenges for the encounter?
And how is that different from ANY D&D game where the GM changes up the monsters and challenges?

When a GM changes up a 5e monster per WotC published material do you call that a serious house ruling?

If the changing up monsters, involve introducing entirely new concept, then yes I could for instance design a monster that everytime would take damage, you need to also defeat the GM in a best out of 3 rock paper scissors match, or else the damage is ignored. I think most would consider this pretty serious house ruling.

If you on the other hand is taking an existing monster, and just changes some of the numbers, and give it a new skin I wouldn't really consider that house ruling at all.

See the difference?

I am not saying you cannot do these things. I just wanted to point out that I think you were leaving the domain of pure encounter/monster design, and into territory I would rather recognize as rules/system design in your example. And I thought the distinction was relevant for the context.