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Ron Edwards on D&D 4e
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8412445" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>Yes, there can be player-driven game that don't look like a story during play.</p><p></p><p>Classic dungeon-crawling along the lines advocated by Gygax in his PHB, or Moldvay in his Basic rules, would be examples. This is very close to wargaming, and would typically be "story after". The more the GM pushes the "hook" to the fore, such that the player are following the GM's lead rather than making their own choices about exploration, the more the game shifts to "story before". In the publishing history of D&D, I think that shift begins somewhere in the early-to-mid 80s and is fully entrenched by the 2nd ed AD&D era.</p><p></p><p>Hexcrawls are in principle similar to dungeon-crawling. I have my own doubts (influenced by a mix of experience and Luke Crane's analysis) about the extent to which they can be genuinely player-driven, because the scope of the fiction becomes so large so quickly thereby shifting the outcomes onto GM decision or random tables, but that's a separate matter.</p><p></p><p></p><p>I don't know how much 4e experience you have.</p><p></p><p>Combat in 4e works on a conflict => rising action => climax => (typically, given the maths of the system, and assuming reasonably skilled play) PC victory. This is achieved by the asymmetry of PC and NPC/creature build: the latter have more hit points, and generally hit harder with their at-wills; which puts the PCs on the ropes; but effective play will allow the players to draw on their much greater depth of mechanical resources (including unlocking healing surges) and to deploy their encounter and/or daily powers effectively, which - if it all goes to plan - will yield a rally and a victory.</p><p></p><p>In my experience it's very reliable. and very engaging because the permutations of challenge and the details of resolution are different each time even if the player resources suites are relatively constant from combat to combat. (And of course the story significance/stakes of the fight change from combat to combat too; but in this post I'm focusing mostly on structure.)</p><p></p><p>Skill challenges are not as finely tuned in their maths as combats. But the basic logic produces the same story structure: the PCs can't succeed until the players achieve N successes; which means that even setting to one side failed checks, the GM is obliged to keep the scene alive by narrating new obstacles/opposition/complications that will prompt checks, until the final success is achieved. And this produces conflict => rising action => climax (the final success is needed; it's even better if this comes up with two fails in place, so it all turns on that last moment!) => resolution.</p><p></p><p>I remember reading a post, I guess over 10 years ago now, on rpg.net by Sergio Mascarenhas that criticised 4e D&D for being so convoluted (in terms of its use of levels, and rest cycles, and healing surges, and everything else) to achieve the same sort of pacing outcome as HeroQuest revised. But it does do it.</p><p></p><p></p><p>My reply to these is much the same. No, not all games give players the mechanical resources to proactively engage the fiction. For instance, if you give me a 2nd ed AD&D PC sheet and frame me into an urban intrigue game, I have few or no resources to proactively engage that fiction unless I'm (say) a MU/thief with a good suite of illusion and charm-type spells. If I'm a fighter, or a blaster-type MU, or a heal-y/bless-y cleric, I can do very little except say what my PC does and wonder how the GM will adjudicate it.</p><p></p><p>Archer rangers in 4e, in my view, have the same issue: they are really good at Twin Striking but don't bring much else to the table. Our archer-ranger player rebuilt his PC as a hybrid cleric as soon as the PHB 3 came out (I think around 6th level) - he called it "Operation Have My Character Do Something Other Than Twin Strike". By having the suite of leader and controller-type abilities that a hybrid cleric brings he was able to put his PC much more front and centre in taking charge of the fiction and doing interesting things with it.</p><p></p><p></p><p>I'm not 100% sure what points you're making here. I don't know of any scene-framed RPG that is not oriented towards "story now" play, and that doesn't at least aspire - via its framing principles and resolution system - to produce rising action => climax => resolution, with the whole thing meant to have some sort of thematic heft beyond just <em>will we get the macgufffin?</em></p><p></p><p></p><p>Player-authored quests are put forward as the ideal in both the PHB and DMG. Magic item wishlists are put forward as the ideal in the DMG.</p><p></p><p>I know there was a huge pushback against these things - it's "player entitlement" for the game to be about player-authored priorities rather than GM-authored ones - and the DMG's language was also halting in places ("try not to say no", "say yes as often as you can") rather than stating things forthrightly like Vincent Baker does in Apocalypse World or Luke Crane does in Burning Wheel.</p><p></p><p>I'm sure plenty of GMs ran bog-standard railroads using the 4e combat resolution framework (but probably not skill challenges as the predominant mode of non-combat resolution). I've also read accounts of people running DW essentially like a 2nd ed AD&D game.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Well, nothing necessarily plays any particular way. See my remark just above about DW. Or consider Ron Edwards on <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/reviews/4/" target="_blank">The Riddle of Steel</a>:</p><p></p><p style="margin-left: 20px">Reward systems generate value systems. In role-playing, reward systems are usually expressed through increased effectiveness and in some cases increased "author power," or ability to influence the game thematically through the character's actions. In <em>The Riddle of Steel</em>, these elements of design aim unerringly toward one thing: the character as a philosophical statement and the insistence that playing the game should be about something. The rhetoric of character creation, scenario design, and other mechanics aspects of the game all say this, throughout the book, but as I say, the meat is in the mechanics of the reward system, and here's where the game really shines. It's all in what are called the Spiritual Attributes, which are discussed in some detail later in the review. For now, I cite <em>The Riddle of Steel</em> as perhaps the best example ever published of hard-core Narrativist design that uses Simulationism, sub-set "realism" as an auxiliary motor to support the primary goal. . . .</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">One concern that faces such a game is in hooking the wrong fish - that is, if a person is drawn to the game due to its realistic, gritty, gut-ripping combat as a first priority, then they may discover that in application, some "other thing" is going on. Jake Norwood is quite blunt about this and considers it a feature rather than a bug. Basically, he has no sympathy: such a person adapts to the thematic goals of play or stops playing, because his character keeps getting maimed. (I kinda like this attitude, as it matches my own regarding people who are flummoxed by certain features of <em>Sorcerer</em>.) Another functional solution, of course, is Simulationist Drift, and some evidence on the forums suggests that a certain subset of <em>TROS</em> fans have already headed in that direction.</p><p></p><p>As far as design is concerned, Rob Heinsoo in a pre-release interview talked about indie-game influence and in my view it is obvious in the design. I'm not going to say that I predicted every design nuance, but nothing in the final package surprised me given what was being said in the lead-up period: skill challenges are not just 3E-era "complex skill checks" but are rather closed scene resolution in the same sense as a HeroWars/Quest extended contest or Maelstrom Storytelling scene resolution; the combat framework doubles down on every bit of classic D&D fortunte-in-the-middle (hp, defences, etc) but also gives the players all these proactive capabilities that historically were the prerogative of a certain sort of spell caster; and the use of the encounter paradigm for durations, recovery, etc supports scene-framed play in a way that no prior edition of D&D had done. I don't think those features were coincidence.</p><p></p><p>And as far as the stakes/thematic stuff is concerned, I <em>know</em> it's not coincidence because they explained it all in the preview Worlds & Monsters book, which in my view is very strong: it ought to have been largely reproduced in the DMG, probably replacing its pretty hopeless advice on adventure design and instead offering an excellent complement to the DMG's very strong technical advice (but no story/theme advice) on combat encounter design.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 8412445, member: 42582"] Yes, there can be player-driven game that don't look like a story during play. Classic dungeon-crawling along the lines advocated by Gygax in his PHB, or Moldvay in his Basic rules, would be examples. This is very close to wargaming, and would typically be "story after". The more the GM pushes the "hook" to the fore, such that the player are following the GM's lead rather than making their own choices about exploration, the more the game shifts to "story before". In the publishing history of D&D, I think that shift begins somewhere in the early-to-mid 80s and is fully entrenched by the 2nd ed AD&D era. Hexcrawls are in principle similar to dungeon-crawling. I have my own doubts (influenced by a mix of experience and Luke Crane's analysis) about the extent to which they can be genuinely player-driven, because the scope of the fiction becomes so large so quickly thereby shifting the outcomes onto GM decision or random tables, but that's a separate matter. I don't know how much 4e experience you have. Combat in 4e works on a conflict => rising action => climax => (typically, given the maths of the system, and assuming reasonably skilled play) PC victory. This is achieved by the asymmetry of PC and NPC/creature build: the latter have more hit points, and generally hit harder with their at-wills; which puts the PCs on the ropes; but effective play will allow the players to draw on their much greater depth of mechanical resources (including unlocking healing surges) and to deploy their encounter and/or daily powers effectively, which - if it all goes to plan - will yield a rally and a victory. In my experience it's very reliable. and very engaging because the permutations of challenge and the details of resolution are different each time even if the player resources suites are relatively constant from combat to combat. (And of course the story significance/stakes of the fight change from combat to combat too; but in this post I'm focusing mostly on structure.) Skill challenges are not as finely tuned in their maths as combats. But the basic logic produces the same story structure: the PCs can't succeed until the players achieve N successes; which means that even setting to one side failed checks, the GM is obliged to keep the scene alive by narrating new obstacles/opposition/complications that will prompt checks, until the final success is achieved. And this produces conflict => rising action => climax (the final success is needed; it's even better if this comes up with two fails in place, so it all turns on that last moment!) => resolution. I remember reading a post, I guess over 10 years ago now, on rpg.net by Sergio Mascarenhas that criticised 4e D&D for being so convoluted (in terms of its use of levels, and rest cycles, and healing surges, and everything else) to achieve the same sort of pacing outcome as HeroQuest revised. But it does do it. My reply to these is much the same. No, not all games give players the mechanical resources to proactively engage the fiction. For instance, if you give me a 2nd ed AD&D PC sheet and frame me into an urban intrigue game, I have few or no resources to proactively engage that fiction unless I'm (say) a MU/thief with a good suite of illusion and charm-type spells. If I'm a fighter, or a blaster-type MU, or a heal-y/bless-y cleric, I can do very little except say what my PC does and wonder how the GM will adjudicate it. Archer rangers in 4e, in my view, have the same issue: they are really good at Twin Striking but don't bring much else to the table. Our archer-ranger player rebuilt his PC as a hybrid cleric as soon as the PHB 3 came out (I think around 6th level) - he called it "Operation Have My Character Do Something Other Than Twin Strike". By having the suite of leader and controller-type abilities that a hybrid cleric brings he was able to put his PC much more front and centre in taking charge of the fiction and doing interesting things with it. I'm not 100% sure what points you're making here. I don't know of any scene-framed RPG that is not oriented towards "story now" play, and that doesn't at least aspire - via its framing principles and resolution system - to produce rising action => climax => resolution, with the whole thing meant to have some sort of thematic heft beyond just [I]will we get the macgufffin?[/I] Player-authored quests are put forward as the ideal in both the PHB and DMG. Magic item wishlists are put forward as the ideal in the DMG. I know there was a huge pushback against these things - it's "player entitlement" for the game to be about player-authored priorities rather than GM-authored ones - and the DMG's language was also halting in places ("try not to say no", "say yes as often as you can") rather than stating things forthrightly like Vincent Baker does in Apocalypse World or Luke Crane does in Burning Wheel. I'm sure plenty of GMs ran bog-standard railroads using the 4e combat resolution framework (but probably not skill challenges as the predominant mode of non-combat resolution). I've also read accounts of people running DW essentially like a 2nd ed AD&D game. Well, nothing necessarily plays any particular way. See my remark just above about DW. Or consider Ron Edwards on [url=http://www.indie-rpgs.com/reviews/4/]The Riddle of Steel[/url]: [indent]Reward systems generate value systems. In role-playing, reward systems are usually expressed through increased effectiveness and in some cases increased "author power," or ability to influence the game thematically through the character's actions. In [I]The Riddle of Steel[/I], these elements of design aim unerringly toward one thing: the character as a philosophical statement and the insistence that playing the game should be about something. The rhetoric of character creation, scenario design, and other mechanics aspects of the game all say this, throughout the book, but as I say, the meat is in the mechanics of the reward system, and here's where the game really shines. It's all in what are called the Spiritual Attributes, which are discussed in some detail later in the review. For now, I cite [I]The Riddle of Steel[/I] as perhaps the best example ever published of hard-core Narrativist design that uses Simulationism, sub-set "realism" as an auxiliary motor to support the primary goal. . . . One concern that faces such a game is in hooking the wrong fish - that is, if a person is drawn to the game due to its realistic, gritty, gut-ripping combat as a first priority, then they may discover that in application, some "other thing" is going on. Jake Norwood is quite blunt about this and considers it a feature rather than a bug. Basically, he has no sympathy: such a person adapts to the thematic goals of play or stops playing, because his character keeps getting maimed. (I kinda like this attitude, as it matches my own regarding people who are flummoxed by certain features of [I]Sorcerer[/I].) Another functional solution, of course, is Simulationist Drift, and some evidence on the forums suggests that a certain subset of [I]TROS[/I] fans have already headed in that direction.[/indent] As far as design is concerned, Rob Heinsoo in a pre-release interview talked about indie-game influence and in my view it is obvious in the design. I'm not going to say that I predicted every design nuance, but nothing in the final package surprised me given what was being said in the lead-up period: skill challenges are not just 3E-era "complex skill checks" but are rather closed scene resolution in the same sense as a HeroWars/Quest extended contest or Maelstrom Storytelling scene resolution; the combat framework doubles down on every bit of classic D&D fortunte-in-the-middle (hp, defences, etc) but also gives the players all these proactive capabilities that historically were the prerogative of a certain sort of spell caster; and the use of the encounter paradigm for durations, recovery, etc supports scene-framed play in a way that no prior edition of D&D had done. I don't think those features were coincidence. And as far as the stakes/thematic stuff is concerned, I [I]know[/I] it's not coincidence because they explained it all in the preview Worlds & Monsters book, which in my view is very strong: it ought to have been largely reproduced in the DMG, probably replacing its pretty hopeless advice on adventure design and instead offering an excellent complement to the DMG's very strong technical advice (but no story/theme advice) on combat encounter design. [/QUOTE]
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