Simulationists, Black Boxes, and 4e

[Andor]

I think that you have nothing to worry about. The unified mechainc is the set of rules that tell you how to accomplish anything that you may want. Then they added another level to this that they have called "Exception Based Design". This says, here is the generic ruleset, and then here is how we propose to do these common thematic things in a way that violates these rules. It does not follow that you can only do the exceptions. Just that you can use them as templates for how to go outside the rules. I think that this might be the heart of the matter. Many people do not like exceptions to the rules. It breaks consistency, making things appear less fair. The falacy there is that there doesn't need to be fairness between PCs and NPCs, because the NPCs don't really exist. There has to be fairness between participants, not imaginary constructs.

See here is the major disconnect between our positions. The characters are exactly as unreal as the NPCs. They all exist solely in the shared imaginings of the players. Fairness between PCs and NPCs is certainly a false goal and I don't recall ever seeing anyone argue for it. However in most genres the PCs should not be visiblely of an entirely different nature than the NPCs. PCs who are super heros or young gods in a world of ordinary dirt farmers is fine, if you are playing a game of super heroes or young gods. D&D however is more traditionally a heros journey where the PCs rise from humble beginings (superior to Joe Peasant perhaps but only a little by virtue of training or talent) to the dragon-riding demon-slaying greatness of high level. So the rules should reflect the difference between PCs and NPCs in way consistant with the expectations of the genre.

The Players gathered around the table are not their characters. Now the GM and Game should strive to make their players happy, but my preference is that it be done in metagame ways that do not visibly intrude into the game world, like fate points or the simple fact that for practical purposes the game world revolves around the PCs. It just shouldn't look that way.

 

[PrecociousApprentice]

The fairness issue that I brought up was in response to the stated unfairness of not building the NPCs and PCs in the same way. And yes, PCs don't exist either. This was an unfortunate misphrasing on my part. I was thinking about how the players create and play their characters, vs. how the NPCs are created and played. I definitely agree that it should not look like the PCs are special, unless you want them to. I just think that this is better kept in the realm of story and not stat block. That being said, I have no problem if a player wants to create a character that will last only one encounter and wants to use the "commoner" monster stat block for ease of creation. Those stat blocks are disposable, and were designed to be that way. If I wanted to create an NPCs that was to last a long time, I might use the PC character creation rules. I just don't feel compelled to. All of the efforts to create systems that are universal create greater disconnects for me because it is the narrative that I am connected to, not the stat block. An NPC can change stat blocks ten times for all I care, as long as the character progresses logically in the story. The disconnects only enter my game when I feel compelled to assume that the output of the rules need no narrative explanation.

I just realized I might be mixing up treads as well. Could be confusing things, but my points still stand in context of my imagination

 

[Nom]

At the extreme of abstractionist play would be a mechanic where you roll d4 before you declare some interaction with the gameworld. On a 4, you describe something really good for your PC, on a 3 you describe a net positive, on a 2 it works out for no benefit or loss, and on a 1 you describe a net loss. In this model, the resolution mechanic doesn't abstract any real world event; it limits how the player gets to describe what is about to unfold.

But it's still "abstract" (as opposed to "concrete"), precisely because the resolution mechanic is not trying to tie itself to the world model.

Of course, this is also not much of a "game" in a competitive sense, in that the resolution mechanics don't really interact with each other or give much scope for play. The "play" takes place entirely in the story.

D&D 4E is nowhere near this extreme. Its resolution mechanics form an interesting game in and of themselves. But they are also designed to evoke and support a story, without necessarily telling that story of themselves.

In other words there was no pretense that the rules covered all situations and yet the PCs could attempt actions outside the rules. The attitude I seem to see in the 4e rules, and the 4e fans, is the opposite. "Can I do X?" "Do you have a power for X on your sheet?" "No. " "Then no."

From what I've seen, this misses the point of abstract mechanics. At the core of the abstract mechanics are a small number of calibrated resolution mechanisms. Whenever a player wants their PC to do something, you pick the most appropriate mechanism and use it.

They key point is that there does not need to be a mapping from story to mechanism. It's good to have guidance that says "when the PC does activity X, resolve it using mechanism Y". But since Y does not try to model or represent X, only resolve it, it gives a lot of flexibility when you encounter a novel X. You simply skim through your available resolution mechanisms and pick whichever one looks most appropriate for the situation at hand.

Of course, previous editions could do this too. They just muddied the waters with quite detailed resolution models for a bunch of things written into the rules. Alternatively, the rules can be set up so you have a fun story and a fun game running at the same time, and every so often each wanders over to see what the other is up to.


Note that I'm not making a global value judgement, here. Both styles of rules have their place. One of my favourite games is Star Fleet Battles, and their "fiction guidelines" include a warning there is a guy on staff who will take any SFB battle portrayed in submitted fiction and try to play it out on the gametable to make sure it obeys the game rules. That's simulationism / concretism at its finest. 3E seemed to have the problem that it didn't really know which design principles it was using, which frequently resulted in an inelegant mix.

 

[MichaelSomething]

If D&D isn't for simulationists, then what is? GRUPS? HERO? FATAL? There has to be some system out there for them!

 

[mmadsen]

I personally feel that the less that you rely on the rules to give you fluff, the better the game runs.

Sure, but my point was that the rules explicitly define some things about your game world -- unless you rewrite them. The more the rules explicitly define, the more "fluff" they can contradict.

 

[mmadsen]

I can understand a level of immersion necessary, but why would you assume that there needs to be rules for looting armor? Make it up.

In a game about killing things and taking their stuff, I would most certainly expect rules for looting arms & armor.

 

[Blackeagle]

If D&D isn't for simulationists, then what is? GRUPS? HERO? FATAL? There has to be some system out there for them!

Phoenix Command!

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

I can understand a level of immersion necessary, but why would you assume that there needs to be rules for looting armor? Make it up.

In a game about killing things and taking their stuff, I damned well expect rules to facilitate the "taking its stuff" part.

We're just a different sort of gamer and enjoy different sort of games. For me there ISN'T a narrative, the story is what comes out of play, not something you play to facilitate. I do expect the rules to map onto and model what happens in the game world. Mostly because I just can't like fortune-in-the-middle, it gets my hackles up and breaks immersion.

I don't like action points or fate points or any other form of narrative control points because the narrative should be emergent. I don't want to "resolve a conflict" that's pure handwavery I could have gotten just as easily without rules. I want to resolve tasks so that everybody has a handle on what is actually happening in-game rather than just knowing how it ended and going back to make up what happened to create the end result.

 

[PrecociousApprentice]

It is about killing things and taking good stuff. There are rules about taking good stuff. There was a preview about magic items and treasure. They decided to skip adding the rules about taking crappy stuff. They figured that if they gave good rules for the good stuff, maybe GMs would give that and players would be happy. If they included rules about crappy stuff, many GMs would focus on that, and players would say "This game sucks! It still has the Killing things part that I like, but now all we get is crappy stuff! What has come of my D&D? I am going to stick to the edition that focussed on giving good stuff."

Sorry for the juvenile humor, but I hope that I made my point. There is a limited amount of space in the books. There is also a limited amount of time for prep for games. WotC decided to focus on what is fun, let the GM make up the stuff that is fun for them but not popular with the general public, and streamline the rules. The point of streamlining is to focus on what is important at the cost of decreasing comprehensiveness.

There will be players that want to focus on strange things. Help them to have fun, but don't worry about the rules for it.

I once had a player that liked to collect the ears of his enemies. Gross, but he thought it was cool. He then badgered me to give him a fear aura for humanoids because of his necklaces of little pointy ears. I caved, but he didn't like it when there was a bounty set on his character. There were all kinds of fun moments to be had by everyone. Now if I had rules to look up for this it might have been gross for many players. Just because a player has a strange fetish for things outside the norm does not mean that there is a fault in the rules for not covering it. Collecting crappy kobold armor to try to sell it fits into this category.

Focus on Kill Things, take their Good Stuff. Ears, toenails, and stinky, crappy armor can be left behind.

 

[IanArgent]

We're just a different sort of gamer and enjoy different sort of games. For me there ISN'T a narrative, the story is what comes out of play, not something you play to facilitate. I do expect the rules to map onto and model what happens in the game world. Mostly because I just can't like fortune-in-the-middle, it gets my hackles up and breaks immersion.

I don't like action points or fate points or any other form of narrative control points because the narrative should be emergent. I don't want to "resolve a conflict" that's pure handwavery I could have gotten just as easily without rules. I want to resolve tasks so that everybody has a handle on what is actually happening in-game rather than just knowing how it ended and going back to make up what happened to create the end result.

Whereas I see Action Points as a means to facilitate emergent narrative, in the way that 4E handles them, anyway. Action points, from what I've seen of the rules, and the demo I got to play in last month, are a way for the player to have some input into that emergent narrative at the same level as the DM. I like the PCs to have a certain amount of input into the story via the metagame - I am a long-time shadowrun GM, and the karma point mechanism in SR2-3 (I'm not as familiar with the Edge mechanism in SR4; having run all of 2 sessions and one combat in it) worked out very well for me. I guess I may just be used to it, I suppose.

To a certain extent, this is also the realm of the daily martial Exploits; certain Exploits are dependent on situational timing. I know I used this example in another thread, but in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" there is a point in one of the fight scenes where 3 Nazis line up to attack Indy. Indy then shoots the three of them with one bullet. Were we to translate this to a game, it would be pretty powerful to allow him an at will (or even a per-encounter) ability that let him hit 3 enemies in a row on the battlemat. But write it up as a per-day ability, and it looks a lot better. (Incidentally, the Nazis are minions, so once he hits each one of them, they go out of combat).