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

[AbdulAlhazred]

Hm, I think 4e Essentials often made it worse not better; since there are chunks of half-arsed support for simulationist play in there as part of Mearls's attempt to salvage the game. But 4e was never going to be an all things to all people game. 5e achieved that goal very effectively.

Well, if you happen to be exactly a certain kind of people, lol.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'll give you "many things to many people". 5e really doesn't do it for me, and definitely didn't with the original classes & subclasses. But maybe I just haven't met the right 5e DM yet!

4e had its problems, but I lucked into a fantastic multi-year campaign and the DM wove my character (a star pact warlock) deeply into the world, which was pretty rad.

My problem is with the CORE of 5e itself, not the classes or any of the other stuff glued onto that core. 4e is just plain a better game design, hands down. No amount of tinkering around the edges of 5e will 'fix' that.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Hello! I think I'm on record (and if I'm not, I will be in a moment...) as saying that I didn't use 4e in a Story Now style. @pemerton @Manbearcat @Campbell and others found ways to play it as such - my group didn't really try.

We had an early experimental phase of seeing what could be done with it, but ended up deciding to play to the game's fundamental strength and main design feature - as a co-operative fantasy beat-em-up, which it does better than anything else before or since.

Yeah, its interesting. We found that the real strength of 4e is as a totally gonzo action adventure engine. Combat is fine, and figures heavily in any D&D type play, but the game really shines most when you are escaping from the collapsing mine while goblins try to steal your treasure, or attempt to climb Mt Grumbly during an eruption, or something like that. There will surely be fighting, but I never aimed for the classic stand up 5x5 fight that people seem fixated on in modern D&D.

 

[S'mon]

I'll give you "many things to many people". 5e really doesn't do it for me, and definitely didn't with the original classes & subclasses. But maybe I just haven't met the right 5e DM yet!

I just meant that 5e is very easy to drift to preferred style. Whether it's fun or not for you is a different issue. 4e is much more tightly designed IME and strongly resists drifting to any kind of simulationist approach.

 

[niklinna]

I just meant that 5e is very easy to drift to preferred style. Whether it's fun or not for you is a different issue. 4e is much more tightly designed IME and strongly resists drifting to any kind of simulationist approach.

And I meant that 5e is not an all things to all people game, because any game that abdicates on core design, that esentially has to be drifted (= made into something other than it is) in order to function, is already a game that isn't for me. In any case, big parts of it that I am not a fan of, like the spell system, are pretty darn resistant to drifting.

 

[soviet]

I agree 4e is more tightly focused than 5e, but a lot of 5e's flexibility is really just a deliberate fuzziness in its instructions. In actual practice the range of play it can be drifted to is still pretty narrow.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, getting back to the OP's concerns, above I said 4e action adventure, etc. Expanding on that thought a bit, inject a lot of story and do it through the elements of PC build, background, history, and interesting keywords. The warlock in one game was a human hailing from the Feywild. When it was appropriate for some monsters to show up, they were mysterious fey goblins! And they stole his implement! Why? Who sent them? Getting it back was fun, a lot more than just ganking some gobs.

 

[darkbard]

Well, getting back to the OP's concerns, above I said 4e action adventure, etc. Expanding on that thought a bit, inject a lot of story and do it through the elements of PC build, background, history, and interesting keywords. The warlock in one game was a human hailing from the Feywild. When it was appropriate for some monsters to show up, they were mysterious fey goblins! And they stole his implement! Why? Who sent them? Getting it back was fun, a lot more than just ganking some gobs.

Great point! Keywords, and thus derived tropes, are super important the game (and genre of games)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I "laughed" because this post made me smile, but it also reminded me of an interesting (serious) comment made by some theorist or other: that the features of a RPG that let it support "story now" may often also be ones that allow it to support "step on up" - namely, elements (which 4e has in abundance) that allow players to make and express choices that impose their will on the shared fiction. It's just the rationale and expectations for why you impose your will that differ in the two cases.

I expect in the case of 4e a LOT of that is things like keywords and how they tie into other elements of lore and character build/backstory. Once the dwarf in my game had an Axe, and he fought a fire creature, and the Axe became a flaming weapon, and lo and behold it had the sigil of his father, a famous weapon smith glowing on it! And then he learned that indeed his father made the axe, and when he found his father they reforged it into a more powerful axe. Later when he fought a Balor, which he had sworn to destroy, the axe took on a demon slaying aspect too. And so on and so forth. All of these were things the player decided, although they all fit in nicely with lore that was already present. Likewise the Warden once suddenly leveled up as his skin turned hard as stone when he invoked the aid of his patron (he was a goliath).

 

[deleuzian_kernel]

In practice, the way I've handled it is (i) to rely on the fact that other PCs also have to succeed at checks to win the challenge, and (ii) to use framing and "soft" moves in the context of the challenge to pressure the Sage of Ages player to declare non-knowledge-based actions. That's where "story now" techniques come into their own!

Right! It’s onto the GM to hook into the PC as a protagonist and continue to provide them with hard decisions even at the face of incredible powers such as SoA.

Honestly, my policy outside of any encounter was simply not to have checks happen. If nothing is at stake, just narrate the outcome or let the player have what they want (say yes). If something is at stake, then there should be an ongoing skill challenge!

Ah! I forgot to originally tag you @AbdulAlhazred. This makes sense.

Yeah, it got used some in my campaigns. I just played it pretty much straight. If a successful detection could work as a success in an SC, then creating one let you check Arcana and obviously would send the fiction in a certain direction. Outside of that, it could set up a combat situation, or simply provide a fictional cue. I tend to see rituals as a way of allowing a character to alter the fictional context of the ongoing challenge in order to use a different skill/ability, and possibly to get auto success depending on how good the fit to the situation is

You could also think of rituals as basically about the same as a specific skill use description, just a sort of mini rule to apply at that point. Yes, it is kind of 'trad', but then the outcomes need not be. So, again, it just tells you how to frame the next bit of fiction.

What I am getting from your examples and description is that, while skill usage description screams task resolution, its onto us as players to follow through logically and take their results as binding and consequential in resolving the actual conflicts at stake.

Seems like Eye of Alarm could very much be used as a consequence mitigator. If this were Blades in the Dark:
Spend 25 gp -> Position is now “controlled”.

Any ideas for how to use rituals like Detect Secret Doors? If we are playing 4e as a scene framing game without a naturalistic approach to running a dungeon environment, where do you see this ritual being useful? Going back to your description, it seems to me that either the PC's should already have an idea that there might be a secret door somewhere in their vicinity and this is an uncertain, yet quite reliable currency someone can spend to bring it all home. In other words, that the presence of a secret door is already part of the fictional circumstances of the ongoing conflict. Do you see Detect Secret Doors as also something that lets the PC pronounce the existence of a secret door where there wasn't one before? @pemerton thoughts on this?

DW's Discern Realities to "search for clues" in a scene that seems rife with potential for sabotage might be approached by a Ranger with good Wisdom and training in Perception or a Wizard through training in Arcana or a Dwarf Runepriest underground and so on.

Thank you! I totally see what you are saying with regards to skills acting as different tools characters have to meaningfully resolve the conflicts they find themselves in (this is like Blades PCs picking their action). I guess I thought you originally meant that the skills uses resolution mechanics (the specifics of "Swim", the specifics of "Forage") were no more limiting than DW moves, when it seems to me that those require a more grounded attention to the minute details of the fiction and thus not easily generalizable.

that allow players to make and express choices that impose their will on the shared fiction. It's just the rationale and expectations for why you impose your will that differ in the two cases.

As Vincent Baker started transitioning away from GNS, he played with this idea which I think relates nicely to your observation anyway: post a comment. Player-Empowered play is what defines a lot of the design direction for 4e, both thematic and competitive play equally viable.