Same rules or different Rules (PC vs NPC)

[Balesir]

A technical problem facing this in 4e is that XP scales at x2 per 4 levels, and treasure at x5 per 5 levels, so you can't just assign a treasure value to an XP value - a higher level party tackling the same encounter is, per the rules, entitled to more treasure.

Well, (a) doesn't this just relate to what you said before about "keeping your powder dry"? And (b) given that the 'core' 4E treasure items have several "versions" with different plusses, you can do a similar trick with these as with minions-standards-elites-solos to scale treasure, plus changing the value of monetary treasure is seldom problematic. In extremis, you can let high level characters walk over low level monsters for a collection of items that are useless to them (especially if you use 'Inherent Bonuses')...

This is really clever and I can't believe it's never occurred to me! Not my sort of game, but just the sort of option the rulebooks should be canvassing.

I have used it for Skill Challenge implications, already - I have combats that are worth the same xp as the SC; if the party succeed at the SC they don't have to do the combat, and they get the same scenario progress and xp either way. Next time, I'm likely to set my "xp budget" for the combat above the xp earned for success, thus making the non-combat route optimal, rather than just convenient.

Edit: this doesn't work for all Skill Challenges, obviously, but it's a neat "tool in the box".

 

[pemerton]

Well, (a) doesn't this just relate to what you said before about "keeping your powder dry"? And (b) given that the 'core' 4E treasure items have several "versions" with different plusses, you can do a similar trick with these as with minions-standards-elites-solos to scale treasure

Makes sense.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I have used it for Skill Challenge implications, already - I have combats that are worth the same xp as the SC; if the party succeed at the SC they don't have to do the combat, and they get the same scenario progress and xp either way. Next time, I'm likely to set my "xp budget" for the combat above the xp earned for success, thus making the non-combat route optimal, rather than just convenient.

Edit: this doesn't work for all Skill Challenges, obviously, but it's a neat "tool in the box".

I'm doing something similar with my current 4E game, but more on the macro level. The players are only aware of it at the macro level. What we are doing is that when the party completes enough adventures, they get a level. XP hardly enters into it, except as a guideline for how to design the adventures.

Now lots of people do that, but where this meets what you guys are discussing is that the players were specifically told before we started that: 1.) No level gain until a major adventure is completed, or a two or three minor ones completed. 2.) There will be more trouble available to get into than the XP guidelines would suggest.

Our purposes were as much as about not worrying about XP accounting, and keeping everyone focused on finishing things, as narrative concerns. But given that we are running a fairly episodic campaign, this was just enough carrot in the right place to have a bit of coherence to the campaign.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

I'm doing something similar with my current 4E game, but more on the macro level. The players are only aware of it at the macro level. What we are doing is that when the party completes enough adventures, they get a level. XP hardly enters into it, except as a guideline for how to design the adventures.

Now lots of people do that, but where this meets what you guys are discussing is that the players were specifically told before we started that: 1.) No level gain until a major adventure is completed, or a two or three minor ones completed. 2.) There will be more trouble available to get into than the XP guidelines would suggest.

Our purposes were as much as about not worrying about XP accounting, and keeping everyone focused on finishing things, as narrative concerns. But given that we are running a fairly episodic campaign, this was just enough carrot in the right place to have a bit of coherence to the campaign.

My group has experimented with this (started in 3.x), and found that it had this effect. Very desirable from our standpoint. Taking the XP metagame concern away leads to much more "believable" behaviours, and we have found, a better RP experience overall.

 

[BryonD]

This claim is controversial. I personally don't believe that it is true.

Fair enough.

I've frequently posted that 4E is fine tuned to a certain play style. And while I stand by my claim, I also stand by this statement.

Therefore a new complex game can have short cuts for simplicity absolutely CAN exist and be more than adequate. But it can still be true that a 4E is still completely preferable for that niche.

I am convinced that a complex game can be made to appeal to people who want simplicity FAR more readily that a simple game can be made to appeal to people who prefer complexity. And I think that complex games will also have a leg up on general popularity anyway because on the DM really need to get deep into it, and a DM that can manage those games is likely (not proven by ANY means) to be a better DM.

A great DM may completely reasonably have a strong to overwhelming preference for simple games. I'm not challenging THAT idea in the least. But there is a difference between preference and need. When you have a game in which people who NEED simplicity are joining in, you are diluting the overall experience.

Again, I don't mean to suggest that any of this applies in the least to any specific person or gaming group. This is a big tent marketplace assessment.

Reaching out to simplicity should be an automatic goal for any game that wants to be a marketplace leader. But striving for the high end of expectations as well is mandatory.

 

[BryonD]

This is true - quest XPs are the closest, and they don't go anywhere near to carrying this sort of load.

My view on this - and it relates to my disagreement with BryonD above in this post - is that finding a system to support a pretty vanilla narrativism is not as easy as it might seem.

I'm not completely certain what you mean by vanilla in the context. But I think it is an important modification to the conversation.

D&D is most absolutely a genre. You can do a vast number of different things with it, but you are still influenced by it. You can do a lot of things with chocolate ice cream. Making vanilla ice cream isn't a good choice.

Baking away from D&D to the D20 core system, I'd point at Grim Tales as a truly outstanding vanilla system.

In my experience, it is very easy for a system to push the focus of the participants' attention away from those elements of the fiction that are relevant to the story (theme, plot etc) and onto matters that are irrelevant to that - accounting, shopping, tedious searching, worrying about healing, etc, etc. All the stuff that is bog-standard to operational D&D play and tends to be incorporated by default in mainstream fantasy RPGs.

A related problem, which strongly simulationist mechanics in particular can produce, is of making it almost impossible to bring a scene to a conclusion without either (i) having the GM just suspend the action resolution mechanics, or (ii) having the PCs all go to sleep. (And in a game like Rolemaster, which has a range of magical and non-magical PC abilities that trigger on sleeping, even this is ofen not true!)

This touches on an area where I think RPG debates frequently fall apart. Things tend to focus on either the mechanics or the art brought by the players. The joy of gaming, to me, comes from the union of those two pieces which create something far greater than the whole.

There is NO DOUBT that the concerns you address can and do happen. But a good DM and players dedicated to being involved in a great story can easily and instantly avoid those pitfalls without needing to sacrifice the depth of the mechanics. Yes, there should certainly be tools to help players learn to avoid those pitfalls. And falling into them on occasion is part of the learning process as well. But we should not short-change the peak of what the game can be in a effort to compromise in the middle.

 

[pemerton]

I'm not completely certain what you mean by vanilla in the context.

I'm borrowing the term from Ron Edwards (or, at least, my take on his use of it). I mean "without fancy bells and whistles".

By "narrativism" I mean play in which the goal of play is "story now" - ie play that will generate a story that is aesthetically satisfying for the participants, without any single participant having to take responsibility for generating such a story.

By "vanilla narrativism" I mean play that aims at, and achieves, this narrativist goal without using fancy mechanical devices to do so. Examples of such devices include relationships in HeroWars/Quest; the somewhat analagous spiritual attributes in The Riddle of Steel; beliefs, instincts, some traits, and the artha mechanics that these feed into in Burning Wheel; etc.

The point of these sorts of mechanics - or, at least, one point of them - is to deliberately and self-consciously focus the participants in the game on the aesthetic/thematic priorities for play.

Now in fact it's probably not true to say that 4e, as I GM it, is completely vanilla, because my group does use various of the mechanics - some powers, paragon paths, etc - to focus our play of the game on our aesthetic/thematic priorities. But one feature of 4e is that it tends to imbed these features of the game within more traditional overall mechanical elements. The metagame character of powers, for example, is to some extent concealed because these look just like traditional components of lists of class abilities. And paragon paths occupy some of the same functional space as the traditional choice of character class.

So maybe I should say that [/I]4e is vanilla relative to the received habits of traditional and mainstream fantasy RPGing[/i]. But precisely because it is vanilla, because it doesn't have mechanics that lead you willy-nilly and irresistably into story now, it is - at least in principle - in danger of getting nudged onto other priorities.

There is NO DOUBT that the concerns you address can and do happen. But a good DM and players dedicated to being involved in a great story can easily and instantly avoid those pitfalls without needing to sacrifice the depth of the mechanics.

The extent to which this is feasible for a group, relative to its goals for play, is so variable across the range of actual and possible mechanical systems, and the range of actual and possible group preferences, habits, etc, that I doubt that very much meaningful generalisation is possible.

Speaking from my own experience: systems that require the participants in the game to actively ignore elements of them (for example, to suspend the action resolution rules in order to bring a scene to a conclusion) will tend to fail one of my desiderata for play, namely, that the game should produce an aesthetically satisfying story without any of the participants having to take responsibility for that. I want the players to be able to play their PCs to the hilt; and I want to be able to frame my situations to push the PCs and their players; without anyone having to keep in mind meta-level concerns about where the action resolution mechanics might tend to lead us off the rails.

Others undoubtedly have different priorities, different experiences, different cognitive and aesthetic inclinations, etc, etc.

I would also add - I think the notion of "depth" as you use it is not one that is necessarily capable of generalisation. What one player experiences as "depth", another may experience as "needless distraction." A range of different examples is possible. Rolemaster, for example, has rules for generation of PC hand, head and foot size, which are then meant to factor into questions about the size and suitability of discovered magical loot. For some players of a fantasy RPG, this will produce an experience of depth. For others, it will produce an experience of irritation. (For yet others, they might respond differently dependnig on mood, desires for a particular play episode, the way it fits into other aspects of the system, etc.)

AD&D "solves" the issue of one-size-fits-all by specifying that magical clothing magically resizes itself. (A bit like the notorious "unstable molecules" of Marvel super hero outfits.) For some players this adds depth - there is now an explanation, in the fiction, of why clothing size is not an issue. For other players - and I would probably be one of them - the AD&D explanation doesn't add depth so much as a minor piece of silliness. I would rather gloss over the issue, or handle it a compeletely different way (magical items are primarily gifts from patrons, for example, and therefore selected in part on the basis that they fit the recipient), then have magical auto-resizing as a default part of my fantasy world.

This is also yet another example of how features of a system can get in the way of narrativist (or other forms of) play. Every minute spent at the table worrying about whether recovered loot can fit the PCs who want to wear it is a minute not spent engaged in play that will generate a story that is aesthetically pleasing for the participants (at least if the participants include me).

 

[BryonD]

Speaking from my own experience: systems that require the participants in the game to actively ignore elements of them (for example, to suspend the action resolution rules in order to bring a scene to a conclusion) will tend to fail one of my desiderata for play, namely, that the game should produce an aesthetically satisfying story without any of the participants having to take responsibility for that.

I'm not clear where ignoring elements came into this. I assure you that isn't what I meant.

Getting hung up searching every square of a hallway isn't an automatic result of a system that allows it and not doing so in a system that allows it does not equate to ignoring mechanics.

I'm really far from hung up on the "without any of the participants having to take responsibility" thing. To me the idea of BEING a single character in a world demands that someone take SOME role in standing in for the rest of the world. I can see how the burden could be spread equally. But I'm also quite certain that doing so would produce a vastly less satisfying outcome for me.

Again, if you truly want to be in the shoes of a character in another world then you should perceive the world in ways that have analogs to the way real people perceive the world.

I don't mean this REMOTELY in a badwrongfun sense. But if a character has narrative control over the world around him then that is certainly story-telling but it is NOT "roleplaying" because TO ME a fundamental part of roleplaying is being fully in that role and having exactly all the control the individual should have over his surrounds and nothing whatsoever beyond that.

Tolkien might decide that there is a pebble on the ground at the exact moment that Gandalf needed one. And Gandalf perceives that what he needed worked out. But he doesn't perceive that his desire changed the world to make the pebble be there. If you want to feel like Gandalf you need to be fully oblivious to the idea that Tolkien even exists in the first place, much less that he can put a pebble there for you.

Yes, you can rapidly change hats back and forth and role-play then dictate and back and forth. But you are still constantly going meta-game. And that may add hugely to a definition of "fun". But it detracts from the concept of purely being THAT GUY. And, to me, being THAT GUY is what it is all about.

 

[pemerton]

I'm not clear where ignoring elements came into this.

I brought it in, as an explanation for why simulationist mechanics (and other sorts of mechanics that focus on, or encourage, exploration in the Forge sense) can cause problems for non-simulationist play.

One example: spells that have durations of 10 min/lvl, or low single digit hours per level. A player who has his/her PC cast such a spell has a natural incentive to get the maximum benefit from it. And therefore has a natural incentive to care fairly precisely about the passage of time in some detail - did that negotation take 1 hour (my spell is still up), or 90 minutes (oops, I'm only 7th level, my spell dropped)? Did the trip through the woods take 5 hours or 7 hours?

And suddenly crisp scene framing, and scene conclusion, is gone out the window!

There are solutions - the GM can make (more or less arbitrary) calls. But this runs the risk of being arbitrary. The GM can roll percentile dice, or even let the player roll a percentil die, to see if the spell is still up. (I used this method from time to time GMing Rolemaster.) This is a type of ignoring, supension, or ad hoc variation, of the action resolution mechanics. I'm not too fussed about how excactly one describes it, but it's the sort of adjudication I would rather the game mechanics not compel me, as a GM, to make.

Now I'm not saying that those sorts of spell durations are in any absolute sense bad. For those who want to play Gygaxian or Pulsipherian D&D, for example, they're great. They introduce another element of operational complexity into the game, and provide an opportunity for players who are careful in their use of ingame time to be rewarded. (Provided the GM is good at tracking such time. Classic D&D advice is full of guidelines and techniques intended to help the GM both calculate time passed in a fair manner - look at how much of this there is in Gygax's DMG, for example - and also to keep track of it without timekeeping completely bogging down play.)

And maybe some pure simulationists like that sort of stuff as well - detailed timekeeping supports the goal of "immersion" into the fiction.

But this sort of stuff is death to vanilla narrativism. Which goes back to my earlier point - a system which supports "deep" simulation is not necessarily suited to supporting other playstyles, even if it provides various sorts of shortcuts through the detail.

 

[Li Shenron]

According to bits in the last article by Monte Cook, the 5e rules have the target of supporting both "easy-designed" PC and highly-customized PC, what he calls "1ed" and "3ed" style PC.

If this is going to be true, it will also provide a solution for the NPCs. Want a quick & ready opponent for a random encounter? Make it 1e style. Want a deep-thought recurring villain? Make it 3e style.

I share the feeling of frustration when creating monster characters or high level NPCs in 3e. It shouldn't always be a pain to do so. But OTOH it would be unacceptable not to be able to do so when I want to.

Also, if it should be easy for the DM, it doesn't mean it should be easy for the designers. I want all-round, well-designed monsters in the Monster Manual, let the designers earn their wages.

The best thing they could do, would be to make 3e-style monsters in every MM but pick a very good template for monsters description and presentation, so that their primary stat block is all a DM would need to read if he wanted to run the monsters 1e-style. Make it well visible what the DM can ignore, if he wants to use the monster just as an occasional encounter.

Maybe such template could be based on separating the 3 main different situations (and time-frames) where both PCs and NPCs/monsters are found: combat, exploration, downtime.

If the DM is going to use the Balrog for a fight only, who cares if he has Read Magic at will? That's something however that could be useful if a monster is used for interacting with the PC in the downtime.