D&D 4E Ryan Dancey on 4E

[Umbran]

I'm not so sure about that.

I've played a session or two of it myself. It is a rather different experience than traditional RPG styules, but it can be done.

Having a game where every player is essentially a DM would mean players are constantly swapping roles. That wouldn't work for players who enjoy immersing themselves in the role of a particular character.

It works well enough. RIght now, you have a dedicated NPC player. So, you timeshare that role. It isn't like the person who wants to immerse has to break out every five minutes. Dependign on the exact organization, the immersive sort may go entire sessiosn without having to play an NPC. Heck, it may be agreed that not all players have to play NPCs at all!

I also can't see it working for anything other than 'local color' NPC's. How do your fellow players run plot-critical NPC's, whose plans and motivations would traditionally be kept hidden from the players. It would seem impossible for Tom to play a Noble Knight trying to uncover the Evil Dukes plot while simultaneously playing the Evil Duke...

Yeah, so Jim plays the Evil Duke for Tom's Knight. Tom will later on be the Demented Sorcerer for Jim's Righteous Priest. Really, it isn't that big a deal. There's only one player who is in on a particular secret. So, that PC can't be the one to solve the big mystery. He'll get his chance later on, when someone else has the secret.

Games the hinge on mystery and exploration would be become more difficult, it not flat-out impossible.

Again, no. All that is required is that the players who know the secrets don't force their characters to the forefront for dealing with a given mystery or unknown. This is where the trust comes in - you hav to trust that each player understands and acts for the whole group's benefit when they play an NPC. When you're playing the NPCs, you accept that the story is going to be about the other PCs for a bit. But your own turn will come around later...

Honest and for true, it does work. It is significantly different than the traditional mode, and it can feel farm more like cooperative storytelling than anything else. IMO, it works far better in the "winging it, make it up as you go along" mode than the "all things are prepped up beforehand in intricate detail" mode.

 

[Henry]

I'm not so sure about that. Having a game where every player is essentially a DM would mean players are constantly swapping roles. That wouldn't work for players who enjoy immersing themselves in the role of a particular character. I also can't see it working for anything other than 'local color' NPC's. How do your fellow players run plot-critical NPC's, whose plans and motivations would traditionally be kept hidden from the players. It would seem impossible for Tom to play a Noble Knight trying to uncover the Evil Dukes plot while simultaneously playing the Evil Duke...

As devil's advocate a moment, it might not be that hard. Some RPG games out there do this very thing, and do it pretty well from reports -- Burning Wheel is one that was discussed on these forums recently. There is no "DM" per se, but all the players work to build the plot and dramatic conflicts are resolved in conjunction with die rolls.

As for the Noble Knight/Evil Duke example, what if one player came up with the Evil Duke, but the plot was switched mid-stream by another player, using some sort of DM switchover/drama point/card resource technique? Not original, and could be made to work.

That said, I like my DM's just as they are, myself.

 

[blargney the second]

Why do I have an overwhelming urge to flip miniatures collectors off?

Declaring an urge on a public forum is the same thing as doing it. Try to keep that to yourself.
-blarg

 

[sullivan]

This confuses the goal with the means. The goal is a fun night of gaming. This frames the arguement in adversarial light, players vs. DM. I don't buy into that.

AD&D and D&D has always been primarily PC vs. NPC with a side of touch of PC vs. environment (traps, cold, etc. as set up by the DM) and a garnish of PC vs. PC. It's historical roots are actually in PC vs. PC.

PC vs. NPC/environment/PC of course all being totally legitamate in D&D, while player vs. player is taboo. Althought some tables have imposed stringent rules on the limit of PC vs. PC, there eventually is PC vs. PC conflict even if it doesn't come to blows.

This, I imagine, would remain the morales. Characters attack one another, players and DMs do not attack one another.

 

[LostSoul]

Wrong.

This confuses the goal with the means. The goal is a fun night of gaming. This frames the arguement in adversarial light, players vs. DM. I don't buy into that.

I think you could have a lot of fun knowing that the DM isn't going to hold back. He's going to do everything he can, with the resources he has available to him, to challenge you.

Right now, "the resources he has available to him" are so great that the DM has to hold back.

I dunno, not everyone would like that, but it sounds cool to me.

 

[sullivan]

I've never seen it happen at any table I've gamed at, and less commonly have ever heard of it at any one else's table. Usually, it's "you suck at DM'ing, next campaign I'm DM'ing."

Admittedly, if the environment is not one of friends gaming together (which I know exists, it's just an unusual one to me outside of tournaments), then hostility can result.

But the DM is not the jury, and never is, not even in the hoary days of OD&D when he was "referee": the jury has always been the other players, and they've always held veto power. That's why it's never bothered me, though if someone doesn't come from an atmosphere of cameraderie-gaming, I can understand the stronger desire for strong controls on the DM's power.

I'm just in the middle of one of my groups sorting out the fallout of that approach. They are a bunch of friends, although none were friends before first playing with them. We never really got to that point till a few months back when the accumulated backlog of just waiting for the next campaign to get it done right caught up. One person person had lost so much interest, and had for so long, that he did the equivalent. He just wandered off and talked to my wife for most of the evening. Well I was to that point too, but since it was my house I thought I should hang around a bit....to make sure they didn't steal out of the liquor cabinet.

Of course we'll get it sorted out. The first step is already done. Getting the one fellow who was currently GMing to stop quoting from page 6 of the DMG.

I've seen it before too. Not as a blow up, but as a blow off. Lost interest because of exclusion and drifted away. I only know why because I asked them about it later. Basically using the D&D guidelines, nearly verbatum from the DMG, lead to just not getting stuff sorted out that needed getting sorted out. Nice people, differing tastes, poor plan, terrible direction.

The other longterm group doesn't take that approach at all. The result is much, much different. Of course they have no interest in playing D&D, but I'm not sure about the correlation there.

P.S. I just talked to the DMG quoter on the phone earlier today. He's a D&D-AD&D-D&D player from way back. But to resolve the issues and find common ground he's not only willing, but actually brought up himself that we will likely have to move on from D&D to do it.

 

[Azlan]

I have no huge problems with this as long as that is what the majority of the market wants- I still have all of my old game books.

But even if D&D 4.0 sells like hotcakes and makes lots of money for Hasbro/WotC (and how can it not, with players as well as DM's being hard-pressed to buy 4.0 materials, and with players typically outnumbering DM's by 4-1), doesn't mean it will be what the majority of D&D players wants. It certainly won't be (I'm betting) what the majority of DM's wants. And, really, DM's (and gamemasters) are the backbones of roleplaying gaming groups – if not the backbones of the entire community.

Eventually, the whole "collectable", hyper-marketing aspect of D&D 4.0 could reach critical mass and cause the collapse of the roleplaying gaming Renaissance that we've been enjoying, the past 3-5 years, with DM's collectively throwing up their hands in frustration and disgust. Because, really, who wants to continuously be the equivalent of a server for MMORPG's, thanklessly catering to a bunch of self-centered, high-maintenance players and their tricked-up, over-powered characters, which these players feel entitled to and justified having, since they paid for them with their own money?

 

[Storyteller01]

Not impressed.

If, as speculation has it, the DM is to be reduced to the role of a "server", then by extension the players are reduced to "terminals", and other than the need for physical mini's the game might as well be played online. Pathetic!

However, there could be a silver lining...people who come in new with 4e might start wanting to do more with their mini's after a while than combats on a battlemat, leading to a new RPG system being cobbled together by the players; it'll be called Mini's and Monsters (M+M, you heard it here first ) and in scope and complexity it'll look a lot like OD+D...

And so the wheel goes round.

Lane-"but all this speculation could still be wrong"-fan

SOunds like what happened when RPG's first started. War game simulations became ...other stuff.

Will 4th ed just be repeating the cycle?

 

[Vlad Le Démon]

D&D Without DM

In the AD&D1 times, with a friend we have played without DM. Each of us played one PC or more and we used the Random Dungeon Generator Table and The Random Outdoors Generator Table from the DMG...
We've got a lot of fun!

But we played without minis!

 

[Geron Raveneye]

Somehow strikes a chord, doesn't it?