D&D 5E Simulation vs Game - Where should D&D 5e aim?

[fjw70]

I hadn't really thought about before but 4e could be ran with just standard monsters. It would play out different than a typical 4e game but I think it could work.


"Solo" monsters would just be monsters that are 9-12 level higher than the party. They would be monsters to avoid since they would probably have a herd time missing the PC and the PCs would have a hard time hitting them.


"Minions" would be monsters that were around 8 level lower than the PC and should be easy to beat since the hitting issues mentioned above would be reversed. It would slow combat down some since there would be a lot of HP to chew through.


Running a whole campaign with just standard monsters would be an interesting experiment that I may try someday.


Anyway, this thread is making me miss 4e. I left my 4e group about a month ago due to a job change.

 

[Neonchameleon]

You must have been playing some truly hellacious Fighters in your pre-4e games if they could routinely give out enough damage to one-shot a giant. Or a dragon. Or even an ogre.

This, to me, is where the minion idea falls apart.

We've been through this in the past.

Ogre. 4hd, 17hp.

Level 8 fighter. Gauntlets of Ogre Power (+6 damage), Weapon Master (+3 damage), +2 greatsword (vs large target).

3d6+11 damage. One shotting an ogre isn't going to be that rare.

There are also two things going on in 4e that you miss. The first is that you add +8 to the to hit roll and all the defences when minionising a monster. This means that on average (unless there's a wizard about) they take about as long to kill and do as much damage before they go down as they would if you fought them straight.

The second is that the 4e level range is much wider than the AD&D one. In AD&D (as in 4e) PCs are assumed to double in power approximately every four levels (the gap between Hero and Superhero). AD&D basically is played from level 1-10 before you enter the endgame. 4e is played from level 1-30 and scales at about the same rate. You'd never take a monster from Solo (as all dragons are when you meet them) to Minion in a mere ten levels (it takes seventeen).

It sounds like we're in complete agreement about the mechanics involved and how they affect the tone of the game, and our only difference is a matter of opinion. You want rules that encourage fantasy fiction like Conan and Lord of the Rings, and I want rules that are unbiased so we can see how things happen to unfold (regardless of how heroic it may or may not be).

And I've yet to see an unbiassed set of rules. D&D certainly doesn't have them unless you track all the spells for all NPCs, which is way beyond my DMing tolerance.

You don't have to believe it, but it's the design of almost every RPG ever made until 1-page RPGs were designed to promote an whitewashing ideology and censor and mock their publishing. RPG publishers publish game structures to provide game content so it can be used by referees to present to players. This is very similar to how every game is published. It's why adventures are essential to D&D (and unnecessary to storygames, which are built to create a story, not game a game system).

I believe this to be
1: Flat out wrong as my experience with Marvel Heroic, Fate Core, Apocalypse World, Monsterhearts, Fiasco, and even Lasers and Feelings demonstrates.
2: A straight ad-hominem attack on an entire family of game designers who are designing games they want to play.

"Shared fiction" is frankly is Forgite dogma that is irrelevant to all role playing games. It is part of the uniform design which identifies storygames.

Because Fiasco looks like Monsterhearts looks like Kingdom/Microscope looks like My Life With Master. Riiiight.

In fact, there there is a valid point of view that there is no such thing as a shared fiction ever. Stories can only be "shared" ironically. D&D's design was built on this understanding, but also on the belief that people could learn to understand each other better.

D&D's design was based on the idea "Hey, this is cool!" An excellent way of doing things.

So you change the definition of contrived outcome (deliberately created rather than arising naturally or spontaneously) to game mechanic. Are there non-contrived game mechanics for you? Games keep score, track game elements, are designed in almost every way to enable players to act in a gameable situation. Contrived outcomes are the antithesis of this action and the goals of virtually every game designed.

And here you're confusing 90s railroads with storygames. One of the foundational purposes of the Forge was to get away from White Wolf style low agency games with contrived outcomes.

There is nothing more dramatic about the game because 4e has healing surges as a mechanic.

Once more you are simply incorrect. With healing surges you can hit PCs harder. They go down in 4e. And then are in danger of Coup De Grace. Going down like that is dramatic, and that you can get back up when you are rescued allows it to happen more.

I hadn't really thought about before but 4e could be ran with just standard monsters. It would play out different than a typical 4e game but I think it could work.

It could. I wouldn't care to - the fights high and low would be a lot less interesting. But there's no reason you can't.

 

[Savage Wombat]

Neonchameleon:

Rich doesn't like it when people repost his comics.

 

[howandwhy99]

With the Story vs. Game question we get right to the heart of the hobby and the roots of D&D. Is the goal of the rules to support "good" storytelling or to place players in a defined space where they are to achieve objectives?

The game can't support both without being two fundamentally different things.

I disagree entirely. To be accurate one of the strong aspects of modern game design is, as mentioned, aligning gamist impulses with storytelling. The better you play the game the more intense the story will be as well as the stronger your character will be. (And your character will have more dumped on them because of this).

Storygames are games designed for players to purposefully tell a story. They all the use the same mechanic: narrative resolution. None of that occurs in any other kind of game including D&D. You attempting to pass a philosophy deliberately designed to destroy almost every kind of game design and game play from our hobby (except storytelling) as "modern game design" is simply perpetuating a vicious prejudice.

At least reread the whole of what you quoted from me. I've inserted it so you can do so. Story-games make game playing into telling a better story. They aren't the answer to the thread (game or story?), they are one side of a 2-sided issue. Is D&D going to be a game about telling a "good" story or is it going to remain a game about playing a role (i.e. a simulation game hidden behind a screen)?

 

[Hussar]

You must have been playing some truly hellacious Fighters in your pre-4e games if they could routinely give out enough damage to one-shot a giant. Or a dragon. Or even an ogre.

This, to me, is where the minion idea falls apart.

Lanefan

An ogre has an average of 19 hp in AdnD. Longsword, weapon specs and a decent strength kills the ogre in one shot before magic. By the time I'm 15th level, I'd be shocked if I wasn't.

 

[Hussar]

Because in one instance I have used my character resources so that he or she can achieve said feat of martial prowess (which I thought was supposed to be almost a guiding principle in D&D 4e) and thus it is consistent... While in the other case the DM has decided (whenever they feel like it and for various reasons) that my character... in this particular instance, should be able to kill orcs/ogres/giants/demons/gods or whatever in one hit.

I think this really gets to the meat and potatoes of the disagreement. To me, the end result is exactly the same, so, I don't care how you got there. The result is what matters, not the means by which you resolve it. I don't care if I had to roll a d20 to kill things in one hit, or roll a d20 and kill things in one hit. To me, it's exactly the same thing.

To others, how you get there is what matters. The result isn't that important.

 

[Aenghus]

Building simulations in the real world generally involves testing lots of potential models to see how they behave and which best suit the target criteria. Often one model works well for certain data ranges but another works better for other data ranges. Solutions often involve using multiple models because of this, picking and choosing which model to use for each data instance.

A single system generally doesn't work for all possible data inputs, it tends to break down for inputs out of a certain data range. Thus the sweet spot in many versions of D&D, monsters becoming obsolete, LFQW etc.

 

[Imaro]

I think this really gets to the meat and potatoes of the disagreement. To me, the end result is exactly the same, so, I don't care how you got there. The result is what matters, not the means by which you resolve it. I don't care if I had to roll a d20 to kill things in one hit, or roll a d20 and kill things in one hit. To me, it's exactly the same thing.

To others, how you get there is what matters. The result isn't that important.

I think the difference of who decides (as well as what realm the decision lies in) when you are capable of the one shot kill is a pretty important one. Does the player through gaining xp, selecting feats (in certain editions), finding magical items, and so on determine when he is capable of one-shoting a particular monster... Or does the DM decide arbitrarily when your character has reached the point where he or she is now capable of such a feat through manipulation of the setting elements?

In one instance it is up to the player and the player mechanics of the game and is within the realm of his/her character and their abilities (thus the character actually grows to reach the point that he can one shot certain monsters...

In the other situation it is up to the DM and DM mechanics and falls within the realm of DM designing setting (thus the character doesn't grow powerful enough to one shot a monster... the monster grows, relatively speaking, weaker to enable a one shot)...

 

[Neonchameleon]

Neonchameleon:

Rich doesn't like it when people repost his comics.

Comic cut.

Storygames are games designed for players to purposefully tell a story. They all the use the same mechanic: narrative resolution. None of that occurs in any other kind of game including D&D.

Storygames are a term invented on RPG.net because some people wanted to define My Life With Master as anything other than an RPG and the pro-storygames crowd are far more interested in designing and playing fun games than they are about what they are called. But how are you defining "narrative resolution"? Because I'm sure that however you are defining it, the field of Storygames as defined by the people who write and play them is larger.

You attempting to pass a philosophy deliberately designed to destroy almost every kind of game design and game play from our hobby (except storytelling) as "modern game design" is simply perpetuating a vicious prejudice.

I'll quote that sentence in its full glory. "Deliberately designed to destroy almost every kind of game design and game play from our hobby" indeed! Because the Storygame Ninjas are really breaking into your house and stealing all your old copies of D&D from your bookshelves. And my GURPS sourcebooks vanished overnight after I started playing Fiasco. Right. For that matter most of the Storygames/former Forge crowd is relatively familiar with the OSR and only has things against it when someone like the RPG Pundit is ranting.

At least reread the whole of what you quoted from me. I've inserted it so you can do so. Story-games make game playing into telling a better story. They aren't the answer to the thread (game or story?), they are one side of a 2-sided issue. Is D&D going to be a game about telling a "good" story or is it going to remain a game about playing a role (i.e. a simulation game hidden behind a screen)?

I read what I quoted from you. It's no more true now than it was then.

If you are looking for immersive games about playing a role, almost all the Apocalypse World family leave any version of D&D you care to name in the dust. Far more immersive. For that matter My Life With Master, the very game that gave rise to the term Storygames is much more immersive and much more about playing a role than any version of D&D I can name. And D&D vs Montsegur 1244 for playing a role? No contest. On the gripping hand, Burning Wheel and its D&D-esque hack Torchbearer are much more ruthlessly built for the challenge than D&D has been (mostly because D&D grew as a trailblazing game while Torchbearer had over 30 years of experience to draw on).

D&D was written to be played in Pawn Stance. You didn't play in character. You played as if your character was a pawn on a gameboard, and the object was to get the most bling. And if you are not playing a role so much as playing a hacked boardgame or a hacked tabletop wargame (as D&D was), wanting to lay out the board as scrupulously fairly as possible (which is a fundamental driver of simulationism) is sensible. And it's something I enjoy from time to time. But in such a game the role you are playing is that of a disinterested observer who is actively trying to avoid emotional entanglements because they lead to weaknesses and hence losing. If you want to play a role as a person within a world, rather than the avatar of a player, some storygames (notably almost any member of the Apocalypse World family) leave D&D so far in the dust it's funny. Others (e.g. Fiasco) are about storytelling and put you into Author Stance.

The big dichotomy is not the one you indicate. It's whether Next is going to go for some sort of world-simulation, or whether it's going to try to decide on something to be good at at the table.

 

[Imaro]

A single system generally doesn't work for all possible data inputs, it tends to break down for inputs out of a certain data range. Thus the sweet spot in many versions of D&D, monsters becoming obsolete, LFQW etc.

Couldn't the same type of argument be used for a narrativist system as well... In other words a single system's mechanics will be good at reproducing a certain type of narrative say pulp-action fantasy but breakdown (without modifications and house rules which can be done for either type of system) for producing other types... say dark fantasy... or fairy tale-esque fantasy?