Telling a story with 4th Edition

[ashockney]

When telling the story, using the 4E game rules, how is the game's voice informed by the meta-game considerations?

For example, in 1st edition, fighters obtained followers when building a keep at 9th level.

In 3rd edition, players were able to consistently and reliably be transported through the use of Teleport and Overland Flight around 9th level.

The story you told should have "included" these concepts in their telling. What meta-game considerations will influence what you say in a story and how you say it? What limitations or changes from previous editions have you noticed? How will the supporting infrastructure of skill challenges add to the flavor and context of the npc or rpg story that you tell? How influential can the PC's become on your game world, and at what points?

 

[Victim]

That there should be a couple minute break between significant encounters for some reason so powers can recharge. Or you create an arbitrary breakpoint that counts as a short rest.

 

[DracoSuave]

Tiers, obviously. 11th and 21st levels are more than just ordinary levels. They're the points where the adventure changes from saving the town, to saving the kingdom, to saving the world, and the player's influence increases to match.

 

[Bond James Bond]

After about 4 month of paying 4E as a DM an player I see both light an shadow.

One of the advantages of 4E, however, about telling a story compard to 3.x is that it is in general easier to tell a heroic story even on higher levels.

In 3.x, at some point players could just teleport all over the place, detect lies oder alignment via spells and seriously screw things up for the DM. Coming up with a intriguing plot was quite hard under these circumstances, because lot of intereisting challenges became trivial -unless you gave every npc which planned to betray the party a ring of nondetection/udetectable alignment, for example.

 

[CapnZapp]

I haven't yet had had any high-level experience, but I have high hopes for 4E in this department.

3rd Ed was an utter wreck of an adventure thrasher. And the Monte Cook Defense, that "this is Right and Good, and if you believe otherwise you are wrong and an incompetent adventure designer", is utter bollocks.

 

[brehobit]

Well...

It's a bit weird in that the characters gain very little in the way of non-combat abilities outside of rituals. I'm a world builder, so I think of world design and story design as being closely intertwined. Keep that bias in mind.

Things you need to think about:

• The use of magic circles to travel is important and should be accounted for in the world and in the story.
• A weird money system. That the money per level is exponential (literally) makes things, well, weird. That one sword, which doesn't actually do much (say +6 sword) could be worth more than enough magic items to feed 100,000 people forever is just weird. Who's paying this much for stuff? I'm not saying previous editions didn't have that problem, but it's there and you need to deal with it. An obvious option is to "change the setting" at each tier. Go from "Small Valley" (say RHoD setting) to "Big City" (Greyhawk or the like) to "plane-spanning". But the story will _need_ that.
• I personally find the 4e encounter system a bit limiting to the story. Large battles end up needing to have minions. Small fights need elites and solos. And combining two "scheduled" fights into one is just instant death. Story needs to account for all this. (Others don't seem to have the same problem, so it might just be me).
• There is no "1st level scrub" state for the PCs. Some plots really require this (my main world/plot line I like to run starts the PCs off as pretty much "off the farm". 4e just doesn't allow that.) Stories need to _start_ more epic.

Other than that last point (which kills certain plot lines), I think 4e is actually easier to write for than 3e. 1e was probably the easiest and 2e only slightly harder. This was mainly because no one really expected to break level 7-9 for the most part and so the "epic" issues (teliport, etc.) rarely came up. In 3e the epic stuff hit early in (say session 15 or so), and in 4e it hits early too but is much more limited.

 

[ashockney]

Well...

It's a bit weird in that the characters gain very little in the way of non-combat abilities outside of rituals. I'm a world builder, so I think of world design and story design as being closely intertwined. Keep that bias in mind.

Things you need to think about:

• The use of magic circles to travel is important and should be accounted for in the world and in the story.
• A weird money system. That the money per level is exponential (literally) makes things, well, weird. That one sword, which doesn't actually do much (say +6 sword) could be worth more than enough magic items to feed 100,000 people forever is just weird. Who's paying this much for stuff? I'm not saying previous editions didn't have that problem, but it's there and you need to deal with it. An obvious option is to "change the setting" at each tier. Go from "Small Valley" (say RHoD setting) to "Big City" (Greyhawk or the like) to "plane-spanning". But the story will _need_ that.
• I personally find the 4e encounter system a bit limiting to the story. Large battles end up needing to have minions. Small fights need elites and solos. And combining two "scheduled" fights into one is just instant death. Story needs to account for all this. (Others don't seem to have the same problem, so it might just be me).
• There is no "1st level scrub" state for the PCs. Some plots really require this (my main world/plot line I like to run starts the PCs off as pretty much "off the farm". 4e just doesn't allow that.) Stories need to _start_ more epic.

Other than that last point (which kills certain plot lines), I think 4e is actually easier to write for than 3e. 1e was probably the easiest and 2e only slightly harder. This was mainly because no one really expected to break level 7-9 for the most part and so the "epic" issues (teliport, etc.) rarely came up. In 3e the epic stuff hit early in (say session 15 or so), and in 4e it hits early too but is much more limited.

That's exactly the kind of stuff I was thinking of when I wrote this post. For example, I love that unlike in 1e, 2e, and 3e, there is now an elegant set of mechanics to detemine through non-combat encounters the outcome of roleplaying and npc encounters. One of the players in my group is setting up a crime network in their little "town". So at what point, how big does the crime network get? Will it be in full swing in the city (minions, henchmen, a revenue stream, etc. prior to 10th)? There is no real clear base-line or guidance for how big to make all this. As has been pointed out the PC's are fairly "heoric" even at 1st level. Why couldn't they be running the town guard, running the local thieves' guild, etc? How much money, reputation, honor, contacts, or followers can the party acquire by succeeded in non-combat, story focused, skill challenges? What suddenly happens at 11th level to this pc, and how do his resources go from local (small town) thieves guild to kingdom-wide thieves guild? How fast? What in game advantages could this include? What would failure in the related skill challenges mean to the story? Has anyone tried telling this kind of story in 4e, and how has the rules system supported or challenge your story?

 

[Tale]

That there should be a couple minute break between significant encounters for some reason so powers can recharge. Or you create an arbitrary breakpoint that counts as a short rest.

Because it's totally arbitrary for people to want to take breaks.

 

[DracoSuave]

Because it's totally arbitrary for people to want to take breaks.

[facetious]Unnatural! I never rest! I must always be a constant flurry of activity, such that I never stop motion![/facetious]

I don't understand the trouble some people have with the five minute short rest.

 

[wedgeski]

Because it's totally arbitrary for people to want to take breaks.

In a game steeped in abstractions, this seems to me very close to the bottom of the list of what could be considered 'arbitrary'.