D&D General Reification versus ludification in 5E/6E

[Lanefan]

Well, I’m sure it wasn’t acceptable to all players then, and it wouldn’t be now either. Different people have different preferences in this regard. But I’ll say for me, the 13th Age approach represents something different than the D&D approach. In 13th age, the damage die represents the martial skill of the weapon’s wielder. In D&D, the damage die represents the lethality of the weapon.

In D&D the martial-skill piece is covered by the to-hit roll, which does the job well enough I think.

Both are acceptable approaches, but I would prefer a system to pick one approach and use it consistently. I would find it weird if weapons always used the same damage die in PC hands but different dice in different monster hands, or vice versa.

Agreed.

 

[Wolfpack48]

The edition after 5e.

Nice try.

 

[Pedantic]

That’s fine, but there are still a lot of people who strongly prefer when the game pretends it works that way.

I don't think we need to couch this in the language of pretense. You could actually just do both; set targets for NPCs as opposition for encounter building and have internally consistent systems for weapons and scaling and so on. It's more design work, but creating a language for the game world and then requiring things be expressed in it isn't antithetical to the goal of producing a sensible set of level appropriate encounters (or a scale to evaluate such encounters), it's just more work.

 

[Charlaquin]

I don't think we need to couch this in the language of pretense. You could actually just do both; set targets for NPCs as opposition for encounter building and have internally consistent systems for weapons and scaling and so on. It's more design work, but creating a language for the game world and then requiring things be expressed in it isn't antithetical to the goal of producing a sensible set of level appropriate encounters (or a scale to evaluate such encounters), it's just more work.

I agree they aren’t antithetical, but that extra work is pretense in a literal sense. You’re doing that extra work to present a more convincing illusion that the game mechanics represent real things. The underlying truth will always be that they’re just game mechanics though.

To be clear, I think that work is worth doing in a lot of cases, this one included. None of us would be here if we didn’t want our games to present the pretense of representing a consistent reality, we’d be playing… I don’t know, Yahtzee or something.

 

[Hussar]

That’s fine, but there are still a lot of people who strongly prefer when the game pretends it works that way.

And it’s 2008 again and everyone is up in arms about presentation and not substance.

Yay.

Good grief, if you want the stat blocks to be broken down to that degree (generic you), then you do the work. Stop forcing your preferences on me.

Holy crap. You folks dominated the game for a decade. Is it too much to ask for a bit, just a slice of simplicity in the game to sped things up for those of us who have zero interest in how the sausage is made?

 

[Remathilis]

I vaguely recall such discussions, and didn't agree with the premise then either.

I assume you weren't a big fan of when all weapons did 1d6 damage either?

 

[Remathilis]

And it’s 2008 again and everyone is up in arms about presentation and not substance.

Yay.

Good grief, if you want the stat blocks to be broken down to that degree (generic you), then you do the work. Stop forcing your preferences on me.

Holy crap. You folks dominated the game for a decade. Is it too much to ask for a bit, just a slice of simplicity in the game to sped things up for those of us who have zero interest in how the sausage is made?

I've noticed that 9th* edition has the same general complaints that 4th did. Disassociated mechanics. Jargon over natural language. Greater martial tactical elements. Disregard of prior lore. Of course, this does little to help those 4e players because 9th edition* also ignores what made 4e great to them (combat roles, tacticial combat, power-based classes, etc). Thus, creating a version that is too 4e for 5e and OS players, and too 5e for 4e players.

A perfect example of compromising since nobody ends up happy.

* Because if the Op can call it whatever they want, so can I.

 

[Parmandur]

I've noticed that 9th* edition has the same general complaints that 4th did. Disassociated mechanics. Jargon over natural language. Greater martial tactical elements. Disregard of prior lore. Of course, this does little to help those 4e players because 9th edition also ignores what made 4e great to them (combat roles, tacticial combat, power-based classes, etc). Thus creating a version that is too 4e for 5e and OS players, and to 5e for 4e players.

A perfect example of compromising since nobody ends up happy.

* Because if the Op can call it whatever they want, so can I.

*technically then "4E" should be 7E...

"Too 4E" for SOME 5E and OS players, "too 5E" for SOME 4E players. But in reality...how many of either? And how many like the changes or are indfifferent...?

 

[Remathilis]

"Too 4E" for SOME 5E and OS players, "too 5E" for SOME 4E players. But in reality...how many of either? And how many like the changes or are indfifferent...?

Yes some. Some didn't care. Some found enough of their concerns fixed (I was not a fan of 4e, but I find the same ideas as part of the revision much more palatable.)

 

[Pedantic]

I agree they aren’t antithetical, but that extra work is pretense in a literal sense. You’re doing that extra work to present a more convincing illusion that the game mechanics represent real things. The underlying truth will always be that they’re just game mechanics though.

To be clear, I think that work is worth doing in a lot of cases, this one included. None of us would be here if we didn’t want our games to present the pretense of representing a consistent reality, we’d be playing… I don’t know, Yahtzee or something.

No, I think that's too glib. I mean, just rhetorically, it's a bad choice because it encourages this:

And it’s 2008 again and everyone is up in arms about presentation and not substance.

But more broadly, the function of each item in the game is different when you change the context. The design necessarily changes when you want an enemy to hit a target of 64 DPS, but a longsword does a specific thing; you decide to give them a different weapon, you come up with an alternate ability that modifies their damage, and so on and so on, and now suddenly hobgoblins (or gladiators or whatever piece of mechanical representation you pick) have an identity that continues when you're fighting a hobgoblin warlord or a frost giant gladiator later.

More importantly, the player can use both the rules and the fiction to draw conclusions about the functioning of the game world. The interesting bit isn't in "making up an explanation that makes the math work" but in the design constraints that your existing rules create; longswords are constrained to being a specific thing, and I can use that information as a player to make decisions about the world state.

Admittedly this doesn't matter a ton for monster attack values, it would be far more salient and interesting in a game with an explicated skill system. If climbing works a specific way, then I can infer how an NPC would have used it when I'm forensically tracking their break into a castle, or be alarmed when they scurry up a wall I can't touch, because of what that means about their stats.

It's not something you add to a set of existing mechanics, an additional mask on top of gameplay, it's much more about the ultimate design/gameplay loop impacts (in a real sense, about what freedom of design you've lost) as a result of those choices. "Pretense" suggests that it's a secondary design consideration, that the expected DPR of a CR 13 threat, the monster design from a business card, has (and should have) more ultimate design weight.