Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Should NPCs Have to Follow the Same Rules as PCs?
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6569380" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>Agreed. The GM has too much authority for mere rules to stop a GM from being a bad GM. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Well, it's near the heart of every design strategy for every professional software product on the market. "Are you sure you want to do this?" is a very good validation. No one would suggest that a good design for a product is, "We'll just trust the users to only delete the things that they really want to delete."</p><p></p><p>As far as your complaint goes, I think the key to understanding what I'm proposing and thinking is in the sentence, "it quickly gets out of control <strong>particularly if the game gives the GM no markers to represent how much resources/favor an NPC is receiving and doesn't encourage them to think about it or reflect on it.</strong>" If the game begins with the assumption that ideally everything will work on a similar system - and if the system is really too complex for NPCs its probably too complex for PCs as well - but that the in the interest of time its often necessary and desirable to use simplified models for the NPCs, and then opens up its math and expectations to the DM and says - "If you must wing it, here is how to do so.", it's a very different mindset that the mindset that NPC's and PC's are supposed to be using different rules. While I'm a big critic of 4e in a lot of ways, the suggestions it makes for rapid templating of NPCs and for reskinning monsters are in and of themselves good approaches. The big problem of course is that to get the most out of the system, the NPCs not only are using a completely different system than the PCs but <em>are just as complicated to design and nearly as difficult to run</em> as well. Any value in having the NPC/PC divide not share complexity is loss if the intention is to create these elaborate set piece combats with each enemy have specific flavorable powers, and the high level elites are very good examples of this. Conversely, on the other hand you have this huge stat block and while it doesn't involve nested text to the same extent as 1e-3e stat blocks, it lacks the out of combat refinement of the early editions as well because its gutted the "clutter" regarding what the monster can do in situations outside of set piece combat. This means out of set piece combat you're likely to get back to DMs relying on power of plot on one hand and not finding out of combat inspiration on the other.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Or looking at the otherway, a rules set is very much like open source software. You don't have to create a special privilege for the technical end users to modify the rules how they like (and accept the consequences). But you still want the system to work well for someone who isn't reprogramming it to suit his immediate needs all the time.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>This is a huge discussion that would end up in edition warring eventually, but while I fully agree that 3e had huge problems with high level play, I'd argue almost none of these problems had their real roots in NPCs sharing the rules of PCs. High level PC's were themselves too complicated, too reliant on absolute powers, too fiddly, too imbalanced, and too difficult to create (in that any noob following an intuitive character creation path in 3.5 would likely end up with an unplayable character given 3.5 assumptions). Without attempting to prove this for 3e, which would involve much discussion, I'll just point out that 4e threw out the NPC=PC assumption and still wound up with slow play, difficult to create high level encounters, and complicated PCs and NPCs.</p><p></p><p>So in short, the problem certainly exists, but it's not clear to me that the proposed solution is really a solution.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>If that's your thesis, then more or less we are in agreement.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 6569380, member: 4937"] Agreed. The GM has too much authority for mere rules to stop a GM from being a bad GM. Well, it's near the heart of every design strategy for every professional software product on the market. "Are you sure you want to do this?" is a very good validation. No one would suggest that a good design for a product is, "We'll just trust the users to only delete the things that they really want to delete." As far as your complaint goes, I think the key to understanding what I'm proposing and thinking is in the sentence, "it quickly gets out of control [b]particularly if the game gives the GM no markers to represent how much resources/favor an NPC is receiving and doesn't encourage them to think about it or reflect on it.[/b]" If the game begins with the assumption that ideally everything will work on a similar system - and if the system is really too complex for NPCs its probably too complex for PCs as well - but that the in the interest of time its often necessary and desirable to use simplified models for the NPCs, and then opens up its math and expectations to the DM and says - "If you must wing it, here is how to do so.", it's a very different mindset that the mindset that NPC's and PC's are supposed to be using different rules. While I'm a big critic of 4e in a lot of ways, the suggestions it makes for rapid templating of NPCs and for reskinning monsters are in and of themselves good approaches. The big problem of course is that to get the most out of the system, the NPCs not only are using a completely different system than the PCs but [I]are just as complicated to design and nearly as difficult to run[/I] as well. Any value in having the NPC/PC divide not share complexity is loss if the intention is to create these elaborate set piece combats with each enemy have specific flavorable powers, and the high level elites are very good examples of this. Conversely, on the other hand you have this huge stat block and while it doesn't involve nested text to the same extent as 1e-3e stat blocks, it lacks the out of combat refinement of the early editions as well because its gutted the "clutter" regarding what the monster can do in situations outside of set piece combat. This means out of set piece combat you're likely to get back to DMs relying on power of plot on one hand and not finding out of combat inspiration on the other. Or looking at the otherway, a rules set is very much like open source software. You don't have to create a special privilege for the technical end users to modify the rules how they like (and accept the consequences). But you still want the system to work well for someone who isn't reprogramming it to suit his immediate needs all the time. This is a huge discussion that would end up in edition warring eventually, but while I fully agree that 3e had huge problems with high level play, I'd argue almost none of these problems had their real roots in NPCs sharing the rules of PCs. High level PC's were themselves too complicated, too reliant on absolute powers, too fiddly, too imbalanced, and too difficult to create (in that any noob following an intuitive character creation path in 3.5 would likely end up with an unplayable character given 3.5 assumptions). Without attempting to prove this for 3e, which would involve much discussion, I'll just point out that 4e threw out the NPC=PC assumption and still wound up with slow play, difficult to create high level encounters, and complicated PCs and NPCs. So in short, the problem certainly exists, but it's not clear to me that the proposed solution is really a solution. If that's your thesis, then more or less we are in agreement. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Should NPCs Have to Follow the Same Rules as PCs?
Top