Something that 4e's designers overlooked? -aka is KM correct?

[JoeGKushner]

Although some are, there are also plenty of instances where GP costs are not written in stone and negotiating is the rule of the day.

For example, in Shackled City, the players can ally themselves with the magic provider of the city and earn discounts on the magic items they purchase.

 

[Garthanos]

In Burning Wheel, time is factored in to conflict resolution in this way: a player can choose to have his/her PC act carefully, which gives a bonus to the roll, but on a failure authorises the GM to introduce a significant time-based complication (eg the guards arrive, the time bomb goes off, etc). This makes time a resource of a sort for the players - they can try to use it to get bonuses, at the risk of having it backfire on them. It might be possible to incorporate an idea like this into the skil challenge mechanics. .

I have considered allowing taking X... basically a diceless d20 mechanic ;-) where you chose to be focused and sacrifice defense or chose to take your time... with the incumbent dangers of interruption. The combinations is like taking 1 to 20. Defense if not in combat is used to tell if your character gets implications or repercussions..... it has some irony I like.

 

[pemerton]

Garthanos, interesting. Do you have a formal way of working out the severity of the repercussions?

 

[Garthanos]

Garthanos, interesting. Do you have a formal way of working out the severity of the repercussions?

You have to decide on potential repercussions first.. . The player might even suggest them (strain a relationship or your muscles ;p, how enduring is the repercussion might be a trade off to decrease its intensity).

Vague at the moment I only recently started thinking about it within the context of the Skill Challenges. ... It was inspired both by Take 10/20 rules and a feat I seen in d20 WOT a fighter could drop to hit by by up to 5 to gain defense... wave hands over it... use time as another factor (From the take 10 and 20 rules indicated factors that couldnt exist ... so why not use them as a scale... how much do you focus? incurring risk... how much time are you willing to take?incurring potential for interruption

perhaps the repercussions could be one roll and the interruption could be a separate roll with DM modifiers on either. The first might be the encounter attacking you.... and the second is kind of like it blocking your attempt. Shrug just brain storming a little.

 

[Hussar]

Those all take time to achieve, and any time spent not trying to achieve them decreases the chance of achieving them.

They're all time-dependent.

Umm no? How does not actively pursuing kingship decrease my chances of eventually becoming king? While it doesn't advance my goals, it certainly doesn't hurt them either. Same with pretty much every other goal I listed.

10 people a day is VERY slow for a kingdom, slowly replacing for a kingdom >>>>>> rapidly slaughtering for an individual

Killing 3500 people a year is a HUGE amount of slaughtering for a kingdom. You're depopulating a large town every year. That is by no means slow.

That's how life works, isn't it? Stitch in time and all that?
Giving them a challenge which increases with their level, so they can face it when they wish, and giving them a downside to not facing it now?

That's not railroading, that's just building plothooks realistically, and with fun in mind.

I see. "Do what I tell you to do or I'll beat you with the punishment stick" isn't railroading. It's instead, "realism".

Note, I do not believe that all goals are time based. However, that does not mean that none are. It's not binary.

Because the players can spend their time preventing that punishment, or they can spend it achieving their own ends.

Hrm, I can try to advance my own goal, which means I am going to get actively punished for advancing my own goals, or I can submit meekly to the DM's choo choo line and not get punished.

Yeah, that's a decision point.

If a world has tax-collectors, does that make money not a player resource, because they need to spend some of it on (avoiding) tax?

That's a realistic outcome, is it not?

The only alternative is that ALL plothooks are static "there's a dungeon here. It's not doing anything, no-one is being harmed, at all, but there might be some cool stuff down there"

Which is rather limiting, don't you think?

No, again, that is not the "only alternative". It's not binary - either all goals are time dependent or none of them are. That's ridiculous. There are all sorts of goals that are most certainly not time dependent. Most dungeon crawls for example aren't really all that time dependent.

Some plots can be time dependent. That's fine too. I loved the plot line in the Savage Tide AP where the pirates are going to attack your town in a few months and you have to rouse the defense of your homes by utilizing both the resources at hand and finding new resources on the Isle of Dread. Great time dependent plot.

But, it's also a railroad. If the players choose not to defend their home and instead pursue their own goals, the town will be destroyed and their lives will be more difficult.

I'm just very surprised to see RC, who has championed the idea of player choice uber alles time and time again, now doing a 180 turnaround and saying that DM's should have time based plots in their campaign which force particular choices upon the players.

Suddenly, RC's sandboxes look a LOT like everyone else's campaigns.

 

[steenan]

I'm not sure if I understand you, Hussar...

Do you think that to not be a railroad the setting needs to be static, with nothing important happening if the players choose not to act on it? I always thought that the term "sandbox" signifies a consistent world in which you put your PCs and let them do what they will, with appropriate consequences. You seem to state that it is a world with no consequences and no flowing time, like in most computer games where everything waits for the player, never changing by itself.

 

[pemerton]

My interpretation of Hussar's comment was that, if the GM sets events in motion within the "consistent world" such that the PCs can only save those things they care about by responding to those events, then the GM is railroading the players.

I don't agree that this is per se a railroad - at least at this level of generality, it just looks like the GM providing some interesting antagonism. But, as Hussar said, it does seem to reduce the practical difference in play experience between the sandbox and the more story-oriented campaign.

 

[Raven Crowking]

How is "Become the greatest swordsman" time-dependent? I'm curious - especially within the structure of a D&D campaign.

Eventually, your character dies of old age.

@ Hussar: The rate of death in the example is (I would hope, obviously) inflated to make the time factor obvious to you.

The Evil Baron getting married, though, can be approached by the PCs in any of a number of ways, up to an including deciding to work with him rather than against him. There is a railroad when you predetermine the outcome (even if you do so within a narrow range to allow for some choice of scenery along the way); predetermining the situation is not a railroad.


RC

 

[Fifth Element]

I'm just very surprised to see RC, who has championed the idea of player choice uber alles time and time again, now doing a 180 turnaround and saying that DM's should have time based plots in their campaign which force particular choices upon the players.

Suddenly, RC's sandboxes look a LOT like everyone else's campaigns.

I expect they do. Message board arguments tend toward the extremes, whereas most campaigns, I believe, have at least some elements of a sandbox and some elements of a plot-driven game. They are not mutually exclusive, and can coexist in the same game. We tend to argue about the extremes, while excluding the middle ground that most campaigns actually use.

Like most things, it's a matter of degrees. Some groups prefer a more sandboxy game, while others prefer a more plotzy game. But "pure" games of either type, if that's the correct word to use here, are exceedingly rare, I think.

 

[Kingreaper]

Umm no? How does not actively pursuing kingship decrease my chances of eventually becoming king? While it doesn't advance my goals, it certainly doesn't hurt them either. Same with pretty much every other goal I listed.

Any time you spend not maintaining alliances, recruiting allies, proving your leadership, fighting off opposition forces, etc. results in alliances failing, missed opportunities, and defeats, which reduce your standing, and decrease your chances of becoming king.

What, did you think becoming king was just a matter of walking up to the throne and going "Yo, I'm king now, and you are all going to obey me"?
No, It's a lot of work.

Killing 3500 people a year is a HUGE amount of slaughtering for a kingdom. You're depopulating a large town every year. That is by no means slow.

For any reasonable size kingdom it'll take centuries to complete at that rate.

Anything that takes centuries is slow.

I see. "Do what I tell you to do or I'll beat you with the punishment stick" isn't railroading. It's instead, "realism".

Why do you assume there's a punishment stick?

If the players don't mind the dragon converting his populace to dragonborn, then the populace being dragonborn isn't a punishment.

If they do? Then they'll try and find time to do something about it.

Note, I do not believe that all goals are time based. However, that does not mean that none are. It's not binary.

But any goal that's time-based is, by your statements, a punishment stick.

Hrm, I can try to advance my own goal, which means I am going to get actively punished for advancing my own goals, or I can submit meekly to the DM's choo choo line and not get punished.

Yeah, that's a decision point.

You can try and fight the dragon now, or accept a few deaths in order to fight him once you are the greatest swordsman in the world, and thus more likely to win.

You can try and fight the dragon now, or accept a few deaths in order to fight him once you are the king, and thus have an army to march beside you and hold off his minions.

YES, that's a decision point

No, again, that is not the "only alternative". It's not binary - either all goals are time dependent or none of them are. That's ridiculous. There are all sorts of goals that are most certainly not time dependent. Most dungeon crawls for example aren't really all that time dependent.

Dungeon crawls are exactly what I was pointing at when saying "here's a dungeon here. It's not doing anything, no-one is being harmed, at all, but there might be some cool stuff down there"

Some plots can be time dependent. That's fine too. I loved the plot line in the Savage Tide AP where the pirates are going to attack your town in a few months and you have to rouse the defense of your homes by utilizing both the resources at hand and finding new resources on the Isle of Dread. Great time dependent plot.

So, if you don't defend your town now, you get hit by the Adventure Path punishment stick, of having your town destroyed?

How is that different from the "punishment stick" of a growing dragonborn threat?

But, it's also a railroad. If the players choose not to defend their home and instead pursue their own goals, the town will be destroyed and their lives will be more difficult.

You have a very idiosyncratic definition of railroad then I guess.


You define railroad as "time-dependent choice"


And then complain that there are no time-dependent choices that aren't railroads?


Yeah.


I mean, how would you react if the dragonborn presence was growing while your town was under threat? Is that TWO railroads that the GM clearly expects you to follow simultaneously? Or is it, as it seems to me, a difficult choice?

How is "Become the greatest swordsman" time-dependent? I'm curious - especially within the structure of a D&D campaign.

Simple. there are two ways to mean "become the greatest swordsmen":

1. Just becoming the greatest, no-one need know. Any time spent schmoozing, building alliances in order to become king, seeking out romantic relationships etc. slows you down. Other swordsman will come and go, and you may pass adventuring age, or be saddled down with responsibilities, without ever having become an epic level character.
This is less time-dependent, but actually still pretty time-dependent if you're playing in a game that tracks time.

2. Becoming KNOWN as the greatest swordsman. This requires that you spend time personally tracking down and fighting the most famous swordsman in the world. Any time spent not doing so will result in more famous swordsman arising, and the ones you have defeated falling from fame, such that you may never be unanimously agreed as greatest; and you may find that other things pull you away from said aim before you can achieve it.