Simulationists, Black Boxes, and 4e

[HeavenShallBurn]

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.

Which didn't actually cover the "taking their stuff" part at all. It totally divorced the treasure from the in-game world even more than previous editions. It just said from X encounters of difficulty Y you should get Z amount of stuff. And made the items you find a function of the PCs doing the looting rather than what the NPCs had. Because the NPCs didn't actually have anything to take, they were just a pile of numbers off a chart and drop level appropriate items for the PCs rather than what they would actually be using.

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.

Funny, every previous edition managed to fit those bits into the books. In fact they did it in almost no time at all just by noting what kind of equipment the creatures were using in the stat-blocks so you would have a guideline to what the PCs were salvaging. And if they wanted to use it, you could let them because you knew how it worked. Now there's nothing there under the surface. And the mobs just drop level appropriate items for PCs, move on to the next encounter! Because of course you wouldn't want to scavenge the battlefield and say give that stuff to a friendly NPC, or equip a small horde of your own with it. Replaced with a mechanism more complicated than those of previous editions that doesn't even pretend to correspond to the game world the PCs are supposed to be inhabiting.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

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.

That's because we're using the word narrative to define different activities. You're using forge terminology where I'm using narrative in a more common definition as an event history. For me the narrative emerges from the rules which describe what happened in-game. You don't narrate the end of an action till you know whether the action actually occurred. The narrative is not the goal, the narrative is just a description of what happened via the game-rules. Look at the second sentence in my post, there ISN'T a story or a narrative in the sense you're looking for. Those are a record that emerges from the interactions of the PCs via the players and the rules describing how the in-game world functions.

 

[PrecociousApprentice]

The game world is still there. You can equip whoever you want with your crappy kobold army. It's just that the rules don't deal with it. That is what your description is for. Why do you need a rule to tell you that you can do this? There was a quote I beleive upthread that says that there are two types of sets of rules. Permissive and restrictive. I am not sure that it will say either way, but I would be willing to bet that it says in one way or another that these rules are meant to be permissive. Meaning that even though there is no rule for it, it doesn't mean that you can't do it. It just means that they didn't want to spend time designing it for you. If this kind of detail is important to you, I am sure that you are resourceful enough to come up with a good rule yourself. For a lot of players, these were the rules that got ignored in favor of fun things.

The level appropriate rewards only seem strange if you divorce them from the fact that there are supposed to level appropriate challenges as well. The gear doesn't have to just be little packages that pop up after you defeat the foe. FitzTheRuke has a great play report from KotS that includes him adding the treasure to the foes. Interesting results. Now he has to add previous rewards back to other foes because of a TPK.

Either way, the world isn't less comprehensive, just the explicit rules for handling this sort of resource management. It seems that in WotCs opinion, that stuff is just not fun.

 

[PrecociousApprentice]

That's because we're using the word narrative to define different activities. You're using forge terminology where I'm using narrative in a more common definition as an event history. For me the narrative emerges from the rules which describe what happened in-game. You don't narrate the end of an action till you know whether the action actually occurred. The narrative is not the goal, the narrative is just a description of what happened via the game-rules. Look at the second sentence in my post, there ISN'T a story or a narrative in the sense you're looking for. Those are a record that emerges from the interactions of the PCs via the players and the rules describing how the in-game world functions.

Emphasis mine.
Funny. This looks like fortune in the middle. I like it. Very flexible, and avoids the WTF moments. Not very sim though.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

Emphasis mine.
Funny. This looks like fortune in the middle. I like it. Very flexible, and avoids the WTF moments. Not very sim though.

I just love being taken out of context, doesn't everyone? Especially by Comment removed. Don't insult people, even when they don't agree with you. ~PCat

Not when you use mechanics that tell you the outcome of the action straight off. That is one of the reasons I dislike action points, they're re-editing the event log of the in-game universe. You rolled a failure, thus you didn't succeed. But because you really wanted to succeed you expend some metagame do-over point and make the event un-happen to try something different. Immersion breaking. A fortune in the middle game model is a deal breaker for me. You determine what happened via the roll then you narrate it. Move on to the next set of actions. Once rolled it's no longer mutable.

 

[PrecociousApprentice]

Fair enough that you don't like fortune in the middle, but you have to admit that the way you are talking about it makes it seem like you are referring to it right? I mean a fortune at the end model allows all the narration at the beginning, then you roll. It happens or it doesn't. Fotrune in the middle is where you narrate intentions, roll, then narrate in a way that makes sense in game for what the roll produced in terms of success or failure. When you narrate at the end, that is fortune in the middle. I guess that you are just constraining yourself in what the success actually means in-game. But to say you narrate after the roll is fortune in the middle, narrative mechanics aside.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

Fair enough that you don't like fortune in the middle, but you have to admit that the way you are talking about it makes it seem like you are referring to it right?

I'm not necessarily the greatest at explaining myself. So I'll let this quote from I think Andor though I may be wrong explain my views on the issue since he said it better.

The critical point is that the contents of the black box are not trying to simulate events, but enable outcomes. The 4E principle is that a game element has whatever mechanical representation is required to create the desired game experience. The mechanics are a black box to the story, not to the players.

I'm strongly on the simulating events side of that curve. You are narrating an act in the game world that directly corresponds to a game mechanic. When you narrate you go no farther than the resolution mechanism has taken you, step by step. Whereas things like action points or the 4e mechanics have you determining what happened after the fact often ret-conning what happened earlier and I don't like that. But am not necessarily so great at explaining it.

 

[PrecociousApprentice]

Thank you for explaining that HSB. I can respect that. I also think that 4e is not the greatest game for doing what you want. It seems to require fortune in the middle to make things consistent in-game. I like that. It makes playing easier for me. I am very happy that D&D has been enabled in this way, and streamlined from a purely simulationist chassy. I hear your pain though. I am not trying to imply and logical progression when I say this, but I was right there with you about ten years ago. I just don't need that anymore. Nothing about this being good or bad or better or worse. Just that I don't need it any more. If you insist on playing 4e, I would suggest that you try to take more of a fortune in the middle approach though. That apears to be the only way to not get the WTF moments. I would understand if you don't convert to 4e. I am not sure I would have at one point.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

Thank you for explaining that HSB. I can respect that. I also think that 4e is not the greatest game for doing what you want. It seems to require fortune in the middle to make things consistent in-game. I like that. It makes playing easier for me. I am very happy that D&D has been enabled in this way, and streamlined from a purely simulationist chassy. I hear your pain though. I am not trying to imply and logical progression when I say this, but I was right there with you about ten years ago. I just don't need that anymore. Nothing about this being good or bad or better or worse. Just that I don't need it any more. If you insist on playing 4e, I would suggest that you try to take more of a fortune in the middle approach though. That apears to be the only way to not get the WTF moments. I would understand if you don't convert to 4e. I am not sure I would have at one point.

Thanks for being reasonable about it, a lot of pre-4e people on these boards haven't. They just don't accept that 4e doesn't necessarily fit everybody's preferred playstyle. And it gets hackles raised by 3e people, especially when many of these same people were happy enough with 3e not so long ago and now act so dismissively toward it.

4e is just not my sort of game, there's really no chance of me moving over to it. If it wasn't resolution mechanics it would be something else. What they did to the magic system was really the kicker, they tossed so many elements of one of my favorite subsystems they guaranteed I wouldn't be moving on. I played 1e and 2e and they were fun but had problems. 3e fixed so many of those problems and created some new ones. 4e has picked back up many of the problems of 1e or 2e while dumping the elements that kept me playing the game.

Really the reason why many of us who are staying with 3e post here in these threads is a sense of having been abandoned. I've been playing the game for more than 20 years. Out of all the game systems I've experimented with D&D is what stuck. We wanted to like the new edition, we hoped it would fix the problems we'd seen in the system. But instead they took out what for many of us were the fun parts, the unique and entertaining parts, and went in a totally different direction with the game. One that steps too far away from our arena of play. We wanted to like the new D&D but it's a fork where we needed a spoon.

 

[Family]

We wanted to like the new D&D but it's a fork where we needed a spoon.