Schroedinger's Wounding (Forked Thread: Disappointed in 4e)

[Shadeydm]

It's obvious that this claim about ingame time is crucial to the argument. But like Hypersmurf I don't see it. Are the players really worried that their PCs will die of old age before reaching a level high enough to use magic that renders old age irrelevant if they narrate some down time? Certainly, in a sandbox, the world will still be there to be explored in the future.

Time is crucial because if the PCs don't act in time the mage may complete his ritual and become a lich, or the evil duke's bid to overthrow the king and take control of the kingdom may come to fruition, or the drow ambassador might reach and agreement with the local humanoid tribe and combine thier forces when assaulting the local community, or the rival party might find the sword of awsome hidden in the dungeon of death before your party does. In immersive play these things should be meaningful to the PCs, things they don't want to just let happen.

 

[pemerton]

ShadeyDM, that was why I said that time pressure is mostly within an episode, in which extended rest recovery can be narrated as teeth-gritting in the same manner as short rest recovery.

 

[Raven Crowking]

ShadeyDM, that was why I said that time pressure is mostly within an episode, in which extended rest recovery can be narrated as teeth-gritting in the same manner as short rest recovery.

There are no discrete "episodes" within a sandbox.


RC

 

[Lacyon]

For experimental game design purposes only, here's my gamist sandbox mod for 4E (draft version):
Every character has 4 sandbox points. You can spend an extended rest and one sandbox point to recover all your healing surges, hit points and all your daily powers, and reset all action points to 1. If you don't spend a sandbox point during your rest, you regain only enough hit points to get you to your bloodied hit point value.
Each extended rest you don't spend a sandbox point, you regain one sandbox point.

This is pretty cool.

 

[firesnakearies]

I have no idea how you could design a game in which "smart play" never conflicted with any player's idea of "satisfying play".

I agree that doing so would be GREAT game design, but I don't see how it could be done, so I think it's a bit unfair to call a game which doesn't achieve this "bad game design".

Perhaps you can explain more?

 

[Raven Crowking]

I have no idea how you could design a game in which "smart play" never conflicted with any player's idea of "satisfying play".

I agree that doing so would be GREAT game design, but I don't see how it could be done, so I think it's a bit unfair to call a game which doesn't achieve this "bad game design".

Perhaps you can explain more?

Bad game design is where you believe X is satisfying, and therefore give players incentive to not-X without realizing what you are doing.

Overall, while I think 4e is a bad design for sandbox play, I don't believe that the game was designed for a sandbox. It is a much better design for episodic play.

Failing to explain that wounding is being disjointed from mechanics, though, is a flaw. If that is what was intended. Not an insurmountable one, though. I've said that 4e is well designed for what the designers believe to be "fun" in the past.

There are some claims made by 4e supporters that, IF true, THEN would mean that 4e was poorly designed, because they are essentially claims that 4e is a intended for Y, wherein Y conflicts with 4e's "smart play/satisfying play" paradigm. So there are certainly times in discussing 4e's systems where a claim is made, and I will respond with IF that is true, THEN 4e is poorly designed.

(The same can be said for any game.)


RC

 

[firesnakearies]

Failing to explain that wounding is being disjointed from mechanics, though, is a flaw.

What if it's not being disjointed from mechanics, though? I mean, what if it's actually intended that a Warlord shouting at you is supposed to be reattaching your hacked off arm or whatever?


I mean, it might sound unrealistic to us, but I can imagine a bunch of Troll gamers in Troll World sitting around complaining about how slow their PCs heal in D&D, and how it really breaks their immersion and ruins verisimilitude to have to wait five whole minutes to heal to full.

Grumbling Troll D&D Player: "There's no WAY anyone heals this slowly! I have to sit here and make up a bunch of unrealistic narration about how my character basically rolled around in a bonfire after every fight, just to explain why these sword slashes take forever to regenerate! There's no way that this mechanical damage could possibly be intended to model actual physical wounds!"

 

[Mallus]

There are no discrete "episodes" within a sandbox.

Of course there are... they just aren't so clearly marked as such and are primarily player-initiated rather than DM initiated.

 

[Lacyon]

Failing to explain that wounding is being disjointed from mechanics, though, is a flaw.

I disagree, partly because wounding doesn't have to be disjointed from mechanics, but mostly because modern players don't have to have this explained to them.

(Anyone who's played a CRPG in the past forever is used to the idea of full-heal on rest. They've either resolved the inconsistency or resolved to ignore it.)

 

[Raven Crowking]

What if it's not being disjointed from mechanics, though? I mean, what if it's actually intended that a Warlord shouting at you is supposed to be reattaching your hacked off arm or whatever?

That's a possibility that I accounted for earlier. Not an idea that makes me happy, though.

YMMV.

RC