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

[AlViking]

That's the old-school ethos for you, Gygax's best efforts notwithstanding: the rules as written are merely an adjustable framework and not necessarily even complete, that you then adjust (ideally, locking in your adjustments as you go!) to make the game your own. The rules designers are fallible. No two tables are the same, nor are they intended to be outside of organized play (the RPGA back then wasn't as relevant as AL has become now) or convention tournaments (which used to be a big deal but we just don't see them any more).

I agree up to this point.

That's the WotC ethos for you: the rules are inviolate, and not to be messed with. The rules designers are perfect (and if they're not, we'll fire them). Hardly a surprising take, perhaps, from the company whose roots lie in Magic the Gathering; but not a very useful one in the wild west that is the greater D&D community.

That's just it: the WotC editions - 3e and 4e in particular - want their rules to be binding straitjackets. As such, this leaves those rules more open to criticism because they've largely taken away the idea - and general acceptance - of "just fix it to suit yourself".

For 3e they did try to answer everything and in my opinion just added extra overhead that lead to endless page flipping. With 4e they changed the nature of the game to lock it down even more to the extent that for many people it felt like an entirely different game.

But with 5e they talk about the DM being in charge and house rules quite openly. They realized that what they had tried to do with their previous attempts didn't work and they went back to the older philosophy, at least to a degree.

TSR general principle: you can do it unless a rule says you cannot.
WotC general principle: you cannot do it unless a rule says you can.

For my part, if someone calls out a crap rule in 1e (and hell knows, it sure has some!) I'll just say how I fixed it, and hope others do likewise so we can compare our solutions.

There is more structure, consistency and in general more coverage. But people house rule things to small and large degrees, one of the things we discuss in games I run or play is what the house rules are. There are now entire third party books that alter the core rules.

It may not be as free wheeling as the TSR days, the game has changed and I understand why that doesn't work for some. But it's still "You csn do it if the DM okays it".

 

[Enrahim]

"Contribute" is a squishy word. Much too vague. You had said:

Emphasis added. This boils down to "because of how you phrased the sentence, nobody believes anyone can be creative with how the rules are applied."

I reject this as fundamentally wrong. Particularly when it applies to D&D-related things, because we're talking about a community that already exists full of people who ignored blatant, explicit, repeated, vehement claims against ever doing such tinkering.

Remember, the following is a verbatim quote from AD&D1e:

"One of the things stressed in the original game of D&D was the importance of recording game time with respect to each and every player character in the campaign. In AD&D it is emphasized even more: YOU CAN NOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF STRICT TIME RECORDS ARE NOT KEPT." -- Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) 1st Ed. Dungeon Master's Guide, p. 38.

The books--the community--had been overlooking text that had said there were hard-coded requirements as aggressively as a text could possibly say it. It is simply absurd to argue that later editions are somehow different because of small turns of phraseology and subtle notes that encourage a certain kind of community is.

The D&D community has been flagrantly and knowingly ignoring what books say for ages. Why is it that it becomes an ironclad cage only when the books actually tell you what they're doing and why they're doing it?


That is the assertion I take issue with, yes, but the problem isn't the one you're referencing.

Consider rules like 4e's XP Budget. This subsystem is frequently alleged to require perfect, lockstep matching of character level to combat level. Nothing could be further from the truth--and the text explicitly and repeatedly says so, in at least three different sections. It twice goes into how necessary it is to have both easier and harder encounters, and that placing encounters in flat, no-detail environments likewise leads to boring experiences.

In other words, even when the text literally TELLS you to engage creativity, to include variation, to elect to throw in occasional well-designed difficult encounters as well as well-designed easy encounters, they claim it ironclad requires the opposite. They literally claim that the rules forbid creativity, when those rules repeatedly say that creativity is absolutely essential to make the rules worth using.

Contrasted with, as above, parts of these allegedly "hackable" rules which explicitly, in all-caps text, tell you you cannot ever fail to do some particular task or you've ruined your game forever....and then the vast majority of gamers, even at the time, never kept time records of any kind, let alone "strict" ones.

The actual text is irrelevant to whether people claim that something is a straitjacket or not. Hence why I have made several other arguments with my particular speculation as to why this claim gets made. I won't repeat them here; they aren't relevant to the thread and I don't think speaking them here would be productive.

I think still that what you are pointing to is mainly amplifying what I tried to say. The elements you point to like phrasing and repeated requests to be creative I sort of consider part of the rules text. When I was writing "presentation" I had in mind things like layout and marketing. You are pointing to that there are other things that is important, like context (WoW) and zeitgeist (Forge).

I absolutely agree there are things outside the context of "the game itself" that affects how "strict" the game is talked about in terms of "strictness", and that was what I wanted to draw attention to in that last paragraph. I however think you cannot completely reject game structural considerations here. In particular it is for many less tempting to break something that appear beautifully designed and thought out, than something that appear like a unstructured mess of unrelated ideas

 

[AlViking]

No. Or at least not 4e.

We played different games then, 4e absolutely locked you in. Powers were very specific and detailed to the point where I was told more than once "You can't do that, there's a power that allows it" or "I don't care if that should convince the NPC it still only counts as one success in this skill challenge ".

And the fact that you hold systems you neither know well, nor play, to a different standard than the one you hold the systems you do, is precisely the issue.


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

There is a HUGE HUGE HUGE HUGE gap between this--which is literally nothing more than "the rules are suggestions, make up whatever the hell you want whenever the hell you want to for however long you want to"--and "the rules are absolutely ironclad bars, if you even THINK about touching them, WotC will send the Pinkertons after you."

And that's what I don't get. Why one side is judged so goddamn harshly for an element that isn't even present, while the other is literally not just forgiven but actively CELEBRATED for being utterly riddled with things that ARE present and just...ignored, or reworked with a binder of house rules bigger than the gorram bame itself!

I've played all editions of D&D. 4e was by far the most restraining on what a character could do.it was obvious a goal was to have consistency from one table to the next.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

We played different games then, 4e absolutely locked you in. Powers were very specific and detailed to the point where I was told more than once "You can't do that, there's a power that allows it" or "I don't care if that should convince the NPC it still only counts as one success in this skill challenge ".

Both the text and the designers explicitly support creative use of powers. A power with the fire keyword can be used to light things on fire.

The fact that you didn't feel that should be true has no bearing on whether it is o rnot.

I've played all editions of D&D. 4e was by far the most restraining on what a character could do.it was obvious a goal was to have consistency from one table to the next.

It wasn't any more restrictive than 3e. That's a simple fact. If you felt it wasn't, that is on you, not on it.

 

[Enrahim]

We played different games then, 4e absolutely locked you in. Powers were very specific and detailed to the point where I was told more than once "You can't do that, there's a power that allows it" or "I don't care if that should convince the NPC it still only counts as one success in this skill challenge ".

I think that is exactly the argument. It was the people that told you "you cannot do that" that was restrictive, not necessarily the game itself.

 

[AlViking]

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.

I want more consistency of the world than that. Obviously the DM could have taken a completely narrative approach to the commoners. But that goes back to the main issue, that those ogres were not anything "real" in the fiction. It does nothing to fix my dragonborn's 1d6+5 damage from a breath weapon taking out as many ogres as I can hit.

If my character can take out an ogre in one hit, make it so I do enough damage to make that happen. If my character could take out an ogre by kicking them in the shin, then Joe the Barber should be able to do the same.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think still that what you are pointing to is mainly amplifying what I tried to say. The elements you point to like phrasing and repeated requests to be creative I sort of consider part of the rules text. When I was writing "presentation" I had in mind things like layout and marketing. You are pointing to that there are other things that is important, like context (WoW) and zeitgeist (Forge).

If the layout makes (generic) you think (generic) you can't change the rules, that is no one's fault but (generic) your own.

Frankly, I find it utterly ridiculous that someone could see something with well-kerned fonts or whatever and think "this prevents me from making changes." That's...I literally cannot believe anyone ever actually thought that.

I absolutely agree there are things outside the context of "the game itself" that affects how "strict" the game is talked about in terms of "strictness", and that was what I wanted to draw attention to in that last paragraph. I however think you cannot completely reject game structural considerations here. In particular it is for many less tempting to break something that appear beautifully designed and thought out, than something that appear like a unstructured mess of unrelated ideas

And I just think that position is...well. I don't have a good opinion of that perspective. At all. I think it is not only harmful to game design, it is harmful to the people holding it.

Because that means that ignorance is strength and knowledge is weakness. That being informed is actually more harmful to you than being willfully kept in ignorance. That it is better to get manipulated by the designers than to make decisions for yourself. That scattershot, actively slipshod game design is better than careful, considered, tested game design.

That idea is literally antagonistic to the very idea that games can be designed at all--and it is infantilizing to GMs and players alike. I will never accept it, and I will never understand how anyone else can.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I want more consistency of the world than that. Obviously the DM could have taken a completely narrative approach to the commoners. But that goes back to the main issue, that those ogres were not anything "real" in the fiction. It does nothing to fix my dragonborn's 1d6+5 damage from a breath weapon taking out as many ogres as I can hit.

If my character can take out an ogre in one hit, make it so I do enough damage to make that happen. If my character could take out an ogre by kicking them in the shin, then Joe the Barber should be able to do the same.

Problem:
You are asking for a mathematical result that cannot be made to happen.

That's the issue. You're asking for a mathematical impossibility. There simply isn't a mathematical scaling that ensures this consistently happens, all the time, every time, while still being a D&D-like game.

Something has to give.

 

[AnotherGuy]

IMO. In our context, there is a difference between updating a single dc number and updating the entire mechanical representation of a creature.

I do not agree, since I consider both obstacles to be overcome by the PCs, not that I'm in favour of doors having their DCs changed depending on the PC's level or the area's level, funnily enough. I prefer more consistency on that issue.

I quite like having the freedom to treat monsters as standard, environment and minion - even within the same combat - which can challenge the PCs in a variety of ways allowing for a richer tapestry of story-telling I feel.

 

[AlViking]

Except that your Ogre Bludgeoneer (which is the stat for an Ogre Minion) has a 28 AC, which your townsfolk straight up cannot hit. You'd need 20:1 against each ogre minion to kill one, and there should be 4 or 5 minions for each normal monster you're switching out for the encounter. Meanwhile, we've pulled 2 out of the 5 for a standard encounter as minions, meaning there's 8-10 minions, each automatically killing one townsperson on a roll of a 2 or higher. So, your 20 townsfolk might kill 1 ogre minion (which is actually fairly reasonable) before all being killed.

It's almost like 4e D&D was designed by people who understood game design.... But, hey, like I said, this is just bog standard edition warring stuff that's been hashed out for over a decade. Why bother letting things like facts interrupt now?

I don't remember the exact details and as I've said repeatedly it probably wasn't ogre minions. But we had set up a situation were most of the villagers young and old could throw rocks from a safe position.

But why let people with actual play experiences alter your summary judgment?