D&D 4E Reconciling 4e's rough edges with Story Now play

[pemerton]

the deva vs rakshasa thematic elements where reincarnation and the duty of the pure of heart to mend the taintedness of a corrupted soul

I like this.

 

[zakael19]

I like this.

Yeah, I was toying around with an interesting character concept to build a quick story-through-play around, with a loose idea of some sort of divine assassin (remembering that in base 4e clerics etc are invested via ceremony so your powers aren’t yanked back if you “go bad” so ofc the churches have some way to deal with that, and hey avengers exist); but then I saw the “Purified Soul” background and I was like holy naughty word. This is a story I want to find out through play - what will a purified soul do and sacrifice to redeem another fallen in turn.

Boom, easy to write up a set of quests that’ll play that out. I think that collision of class/setting/background fiction was my big “aha” moment in what 4e cleverly did to operationalize its game mechanics into the potential for powerful and concise characterization/storytelling tools. Like, if you want to tell the stories of characters in Neverwinter, the themes and backgrounds there are perfect - and the broad brush setting book would enable FR story now play super easily.

 

[Joshua Randall]

It's too bad, though, that many players evaluate backgrounds, themes, paragon paths, and epic destinies purely for their power-up elements.

But this is a human problem, not a game problem, at its root.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It's too bad, though, that many players evaluate backgrounds, themes, paragon paths, and epic destinies purely for their power-up elements.

But this is a human problem, not a game problem, at its root.

My feeling with 4e is, sure there are maximally effective options that probably serve you best in most situations. OTOH they're still mostly good in specific types of situations and there's a wide variety of builds that work very well. Most sensible builds are going to hit a high baseline. EVERYTHING is thematically interesting, certainly can be made so. Surely in this sense 4e massively improved on 3e. Optimize all you want, you're going to have a fun, thematic group of PCs. Maybe at most the GM is going to have to push you harder, but 4e is the simplest edition to do that in.

 

[Manbearcat]

We are playing a No-Myth 4e Story Now game

At the end of character creation, we end up with a number of characters that each have a significant number of thematic seeds ripe for dramatic exploration. This as a natural byproduct of 4e systemic support that generates these types of characters with these types of issues (to varying degrees of effectiveness, as @pemerton often points out, with the Ranger being a class with less of this “ripeness” of thematic content).

Importantly, characters may also define “Quests”, major and minor, which, out of all of these thematic signaling mechanisms, rely some the biggest clues for potential character proactivity.

At the end of character creation, we also have some kind of notion of a setting penciled-out. This may come as a natural extension of the kinds of characters that have been created, which themselves suggests the kinds of populations, geography and politics that surround them; as well as (potentially) conversations and choices that are made during character creation to ground the characters in a logical place and time (“we are all part of the same kingdom”, “we live in a desert”, “the gods are gone, and primal energies abound”).

Contrary to other Story Now games, we do not start the game with key NPCs in a relationship map of pre-defined motivations or conflicts (I’m thinking DitV’s towns here), nor do we have a predefined setting with timelines already at work (BitD’s Doskvol). If anything this kind of setup mostly resembles Apocalypse World in its initial setup.

Perfect

Play Begins:
The penciled in-setting gets instantiated in a HERE and a NOW.

Perfect

What I see from “Redeem the Past, Chase the Future” and “The Slave and her Sovereign”, is that when the GM frames a scene, there is really no indication as to WHAT the conflict of interest TRULY will be, only possibilities:

To a degree, the general locus of what the conflict of interest will be is nascently embedded in the Goal. You might think about Apocalypse World here kind of; the particular archetype of Threat, its Impulse, and its moves. For instance, here is the initial Goal for that initial conflict you're citing:

Goal: Retrieve the ancient Scrolls of Xanthar from the Imperial Library

If I were to format the way a GM should be thinking about opposition, situations/obstacles with respect to the above and then format it like Apocalypse World, the antagonist would probably look something like this:

Imperial Library (Institution)
Impulse: To restrict access to, hoard, and jealously covet knowledge

Then you would see within the actual framed situations/obstacles a manifestation of the equivalent of GM soft moves which index the above.

Being familiar with the crest of Chanvati's mercantile family, the draconic holy-woman stops when she sees you. "Inform him" she sternly instructs her herald, serpentine eyes never leaving you.

Seems like, thematically, our conflict of interest COULD be about Chanvati’s assertion of THEIR rights as member of a mercantile family within the Dome of Illumination. Like, that’s a legitimate move @darkbard could have acted on, yes? What YOU say my rights are vs what I say my rights are.

100 %. This could absolutely be the locus of PC dramatic need vs nature of opposition in this paricular framed situation/obstacle.

The young herald steps forward, clears her throat and makes significant effort not to gawk at the massive form of the Goliath slave next to the lowly merchant Chanvati. (…) Two well-armed and armored members of The Inquisitors' Guard step forward next to the herald to back up her claim with force if necessary.

Seems like, thematically, our conflict of interest COULD be about Chanvati and Pa’avu’s ability to push their way into the. Like, that’s a legitimate move either player could have acted on, yes? How far YOU are able to go vs how far I am able to go?

100 %. This could absolutely be the locus of PC dramatic need vs nature of opposition in this paricular framed situation/obstacle.

A few questions at this point:
1.
I imagine that there might even be more possibilities that I have not addressed initially:

Like, “Spectral Servants”, taken literally for this example, depending on the protagonist’s religious beliefs, one of them might say “I did not expect you to also enslave undead souls at your house of knowledge.” A conflict of morals.

“The Inquisitors' Guard”, “Not so long ago you and I served in the same war…” A conflict of loyalty.

Am I reading too far into this? Given a No-Myth style of game, are all of these pronouncements legal/fruitful/conducive to good play? Is my suggestive interpretation of the players role, one where they truly read the initial fiction and endow it with dramatic meaning, in line with what we are talking about here?

You are absolutely on top of it. Nailed it.

The only thing I would add is the precursor to all of this are the constraining and guiding inputs of (a) PC build flags (Background, Theme, et al), (b) hewing to what has been established to date through play (including the mild parameters given to the milieu before play begins) within the fiction regarding setting, (c) the nature of the opposition (embedded in the intersection of Goal + explicit or implicit stakes inherent to Loss Con + that (b) just mentioned).

2.
When framing the initial circumstances, the GM is, not only, TRULY divesting themselves of how these will resolve, but also WHAT they are truly, and ACTUALLY, about. That aboutness is hinted at, but only made real by the players pronouncement of these as issues. Is this correct? This is very similar to “Trollbabes’” player-initiated conflict, no?

100 %. Spot on and the reference to Trollbabe is

Again, the only constraints are what I addressed directly above. Further, I'm assuming the actual architecture of the conflict resolution framework is implied here (and how that endows the action with shape and parameterization) so I didn't mention it directly above (because of course it governs play in the way that rules do).

3.
Notably absent, is any form of stake establishment prior to player initiation. While “retrieving the ancient Scrolls of Xanthar” is one of the Minor Quests, the GM does not immediately assume that the achievement (or not achievement) of those stakes are on the line here.

Alright, this is a good area of conversation; foregrounding and meting out consequences (of macro-failure in the SC at large or micro-failures individually). Multiple things here:

* In any given SC, if the x Successes are achieved before 3 Failures, then the Goal is achieved. In this opening conflict where the Goal of the SC is Retrieve the ancient Scrolls of Xanthar from the Imperial Library, that would mean (a) that macro-success achieves that end and (b) no micro-success before the Win Con of the conflict resolution archetecture is achieved can "lock in" that result.

* Macro-failure (3 Failures accrued before x Successes) means that either the Goal is outright subordinated in full or its complicated. Lets go back to Apocalypse World and the 6- result for the governing principle here in the 4e DMGs/RC; the GM makes a move as hard and direct as they like.

* Sometimes these Loss Con stakes are outlined before the initiation of the first situation/obstacle fo the SC. Sometimes they mature as the fiction accrues and we follow that.

* Now micro-failures are a bit different. I typically (especially in-situ at the table) explicitly encode the consequence-suite to prospective action declarations. Players propose something > I say what happens roughly in the fiction (cloud) and exactly mechanically (box) if things go bad > they absorb their prospective lines of play > make their move and resolve it.

* In PBP format, you'll see a fair amount of the exchange that leads ultimately to the action declaration > resolution > consequence stream...however, some of this information exchange is happening in other venues (Discord or some other form of communication) because sometimes the back-and-forth can become weighty and trying to transpose that onto a PBP format is both burdensome clerically and it would totally muddle the composition of the PBP itself (making it unreadable and difficult to parse for referencing later for all parties, including the participants).

But at the table during a live play? This back-and-forth happens via efficient conversation (with efficiency increasing as chemistry is built out and all participants understand precisely what they're best practices are).

4.
When you framed this scene, @Manbearcat, did you have a threshold or rubric for deciding, if the scene had enough promise for conflict or are you more neutral?

I'm not going to index this scene exclusively with this answer. I'm going to talk about scene-framing generally in 4e.

GMs in 4e are definitely not neutral. One of the primary governing principles of 4e (which was enormously contentious at the time and I wish they would have framed it differently) is "skip the gate guards and get to the fun." I (and others) knew what I was reading when I read that (and several other kindred statements in the 4e texts). You'll recognize this:

* Cut to the action

* At every moment, drive play toward conflict

Those indie axioms absolutely govern GMing in 4e whether you're running a No Myth game or a game set in the conflict-charged PoL setting or Dark Sun or whatever. So basically I look at what we've got on the table in front of us? Is it charged enough? Provocative enough? Can I generate compelling opposition and decision-spaces for players to manage as I try to defy/complicate their espoused Goal? If the answers are "yes?" Ok, we formalize it with the SC framework and begin the play loop of resolving; framing obstacles, executing decision-trees and action resolution, changing the situation, meting out consequences, following the fiction until the Win/Loss con is cemented and our gamestate/evolving situation has changed and given propulsion and trajectory to subsequent play/follow-on conflicts. If the answers are some formulation of "no?" Ok, we tighten it up and load the macro-situation/Goal with more "conflict-heft" until we're there.

Once that scene is resolved there is either a (a) natural follow-on scene to the next (that references the dynamics of what just happened in the SC and/or/both references a pending Minor/Major Quest/or the embedded thematics of Theme/Path/Destiny etc) or (b) we hash out where we go next via conversation (via referencing the dynamics of what just happened in the SC and/or/both referencing a pending Minor/Major Quest/or the embedded thematics of Theme/Path/Destiny etc). This is not far afield from (in fact its pretty kindred with) orthodox Apocalypse World or the Info Gathering/Free Play phase into the Score phase of Blades in the Dark play.

---

Alright, that is a lot of words to parse and digest. Hopefully that all makes sense.

 

[Joshua Randall]

Optimize all you want, you're going to have a fun, thematic group of PCs. Maybe at most the GM is going to have to push you harder, but 4e is the simplest edition to do that in.

(Sorry I'm having this weird parallel conversation in between the SC advice, but I think it's an important point, so...)

Yes. Absolutely true. 4e is the edition in which the GM can take the gloves off and put extremely difficult obstacles in front of the characters, in the knowledge that as a group, 4e characters have an enormous spread of capabilities -- and, in pure power-gaming terms, a ludicrous ability to absorb punishment and dole it out. The apotheosis of this design ethos is the 4e Epic Destinies with the "once per day, when you die..." clause which is the players' and DM's license to go nuts with challenges (be they combat, or the results of a RP / SC failure at epic tier). It's a safety net that ensures that in telling a truly epic story, you don't inadvertently end that story accidentally.

It prevents things like --

DM: "Oops, I made the combat encounter too hard and you're all dead. Well, your 30th level characters, the pride of 6 years of real-time gaming, are gone; and we didn't resolve anyone's dramatic arc. Oh well! Time to roll up new PCs."

===

Also also: 4e characters' resiliency is what made 4thcore possible, showing how you can push the game mechanics into extreme optimization on the DM's side... and still have it be fun for the (incredibly tough and capable) 4e characters.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Perfect



Perfect



To a degree, the general locus of what the conflict of interest will be is nascently embedded in the Goal. You might think about Apocalypse World here kind of; the particular archetype of Threat, its Impulse, and its moves. For instance, here is the initial Goal for that initial conflict you're citing:

Goal: Retrieve the ancient Scrolls of Xanthar from the Imperial Library

If I were to format the way a GM should be thinking about opposition, situations/obstacles with respect to the above and then format it like Apocalypse World, the antagonist would probably look something like this:

Imperial Library (Institution)
Impulse: To restrict access to, hoard, and jealously covet knowledge

Then you would see within the actual framed situations/obstacles a manifestation of the equivalent of GM soft moves which index the above.



100 %. This could absolutely be the locus of PC dramatic need vs nature of opposition in this paricular framed situation/obstacle.



100 %. This could absolutely be the locus of PC dramatic need vs nature of opposition in this paricular framed situation/obstacle.



You are absolutely on top of it. Nailed it.

The only thing I would add is the precursor to all of this are the constraining and guiding inputs of (a) PC build flags (Background, Theme, et al), (b) hewing to what has been established to date through play (including the mild parameters given to the milieu before play begins) within the fiction regarding setting, (c) the nature of the opposition (embedded in the intersection of Goal + explicit or implicit stakes inherent to Loss Con + that (b) just mentioned).



100 %. Spot on and the reference to Trollbabe is

Again, the only constraints are what I addressed directly above. Further, I'm assuming the actual architecture of the conflict resolution framework is implied here (and how that endows the action with shape and parameterization) so I didn't mention it directly above (because of course it governs play in the way that rules do).



Alright, this is a good area of conversation; foregrounding and meting out consequences (of macro-failure in the SC at large or micro-failures individually). Multiple things here:

* In any given SC, if the x Successes are achieved before 3 Failures, then the Goal is achieved. In this opening conflict where the Goal of the SC is Retrieve the ancient Scrolls of Xanthar from the Imperial Library, that would mean (a) that macro-success achieves that end and (b) no micro-success before the Win Con of the conflict resolution archetecture is achieved can "lock in" that result.

* Macro-failure (3 Failures accrued before x Successes) means that either the Goal is outright subordinated in full or its complicated. Lets go back to Apocalypse World and the 6- result for the governing principle here in the 4e DMGs/RC; the GM makes a move as hard and direct as they like.

* Sometimes these Loss Con stakes are outlined before the initiation of the first situation/obstacle fo the SC. Sometimes they mature as the fiction accrues and we follow that.

* Now micro-failures are a bit different. I typically (especially in-situ at the table) explicitly encode the consequence-suite to prospective action declarations. Players propose something > I say what happens roughly in the fiction (cloud) and exactly mechanically (box) if things go bad > they absorb their prospective lines of play > make their move and resolve it.

* In PBP format, you'll see a fair amount of the exchange that leads ultimately to the action declaration > resolution > consequence stream...however, some of this information exchange is happening in other venues (Discord or some other form of communication) because sometimes the back-and-forth can become weighty and trying to transpose that onto a PBP format is both burdensome clerically and it would totally muddle the composition of the PBP itself (making it unreadable and difficult to parse for referencing later for all parties, including the participants).

But at the table during a live play? This back-and-forth happens via efficient conversation (with efficiency increasing as chemistry is built out and all participants understand precisely what they're best practices are).



I'm not going to index this scene exclusively with this answer. I'm going to talk about scene-framing generally in 4e.

GMs in 4e are definitely not neutral. One of the primary governing principles of 4e (which was enormously contentious at the time and I wish they would have framed it differently) is "skip the gate guards and get to the fun." I (and others) knew what I was reading when I read that (and several other kindred statements in the 4e texts). You'll recognize this:

* Cut to the action

* At every moment, drive play toward conflict

Those indie axioms absolutely govern GMing in 4e whether you're running a No Myth game or a game set in the conflict-charged PoL setting or Dark Sun or whatever. So basically I look at what we've got on the table in front of us? Is it charged enough? Provocative enough? Can I generate compelling opposition and decision-spaces for players to manage as I try to defy/complicate their espoused Goal? If the answers are "yes?" Ok, we formalize it with the SC framework and begin the play loop of resolving; framing obstacles, executing decision-trees and action resolution, changing the situation, meting out consequences, following the fiction until the Win/Loss con is cemented and our gamestate/evolving situation has changed and given propulsion and trajectory to subsequent play/follow-on conflicts. If the answers are some formulation of "no?" Ok, we tighten it up and load the macro-situation/Goal with more "conflict-heft" until we're there.

Once that scene is resolved there is either a (a) natural follow-on scene to the next (that references the dynamics of what just happened in the SC and/or/both references a pending Minor/Major Quest/or the embedded thematics of Theme/Path/Destiny etc) or (b) we hash out where we go next via conversation (via referencing the dynamics of what just happened in the SC and/or/both referencing a pending Minor/Major Quest/or the embedded thematics of Theme/Path/Destiny etc). This is not far afield from (in fact its pretty kindred with) orthodox Apocalypse World or the Info Gathering/Free Play phase into the Score phase of Blades in the Dark play.

---

Alright, that is a lot of words to parse and digest. Hopefully that all makes sense.

One interesting dynamic with SCs is that they are 'scale free'. An SC can be a charged situation like library scenario from that PBP, but it could also be something like a whole military campaign. And those bigger scale SCs could play out as framing devices, with key elements being individual scenes, or simply as scenes or montage style elements all their own.

Honestly I would advise mastering the basic sequential "go to a place, do an encounter" kind, but you can then easily expand into things similar to DW's Perilous Journey, which is pretty much an SC. I like this aspect of 4e where you can do a lot of what these other systems put into more heavily structured mechanics using this one very general tool.

 

[andreszarta]

Alright, that is a lot of words to parse and digest. Hopefully that all makes sense.

Indeed! Good reading material for this weekend. Thanks for taking the time!