D&D 4E The Best Thing from 4E

[The Crimson Binome]

3) When the player characters are imagined, we do so with the expectation that they will do something interesting and/or exciting. In other words, something dramatic.

I'm not disagreeing on these points. I'm just saying that something dramatic will happen regardless, so it's unnecessary and unwelcome for the DM to try and add more.

Our only disagreement is that I distinguish between legitimate ("natural") drama, and illegitimate ("artifical" or DM-induced) drama. You don't see that distinction, because you think all drama is DM-induced.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I'm not disagreeing on these points. I'm just saying that something dramatic will happen regardless, so it's unnecessary and unwelcome for the DM to try and add more.
Our only disagreement is that I distinguish between legitimate ("natural") drama, and illegitimate ("artifical" or DM-induced) drama. You don't see that distinction, because you think all drama is DM-induced.

He's right. The DM imagines, creates, and runs the entire world, all the drama in it is of his making (preferably with the connivance of his players), none of it's natural, all of it is legitimate, because that's what GMs legitimately do.

You're - well, you have a cherished illusion, and I'm starting to think it'd be tragic if we disabused you of it.

 

[Manbearcat]

@Saelorn, this is the macro agenda for GMing Dungeon World. This is pretty much exactly the same agenda for GMing 4e. To be honest, this is the agenda that I've strived for (but the systems until 4e fought me on it) since I began GMing D&D back in 1984.

Dungeon World
Ch 13 The GM; Gamesmastering p 159

Your first agenda is to portray a fantastic world. Dungeon World is all about guts, guile, and bravery against darkness and doom. It’s about characters who have decided to take up a life of adventure in the hopes of some glorious reward. It’s your job to participate in that by showing the players a world in which their characters can find that adventure. Without the player characters the world would fall into chaos or destruction—it might still even with them. It’s up to you to portray the fantastic elements of that world. Show the players the wonders of the world they’re in and encourage them to react to it.

Filling the characters’ lives with adventure means working with the players to create a world that’s engaging and dynamic. Adventurers are always caught up in some world-threatening danger or another—encourage and foster that kind of action in the game.

Dungeon World adventures never presume player actions. A Dungeon World adventure portrays a setting in motion—someplace significant with creatures big and small pursuing their own goals. As the players come into conflict with that setting and its denizens, action is inevitable. You’ll honestly portray the repercussions of that action.

This is how you play to find out what happens. You’re sharing in the fun of finding out how the characters react to and change the world you’re portraying. You’re all participants in a great adventure that’s unfolding. So really, don’t plan too hard. The rules of the game will fight you. It’s fun to see how things unfold, trust us.

Anti-illusionism. Pro-player-agency. Pro-PC-protaganism. Pro-low-prep. Conflict as the locus of play.

Thoughts? I'm assuming you feel this is divergent from D&D orthodoxy?

 

[pemerton]

Whether you attack someone with a sword or with a bow is fundamental to describing the outcome. The game mechanics might just say that the creature takes 6 piercing damage, but that's not nearly enough for the DM to narrate what happened.

If a character hits someone with a hammer, and dazes them, that indicates that the target was somewhat disabled by the attack. If the attack instead stuns the target, that indicates that the target was badly (if temporarily) disabled by the attack.

If your concern is that the mechanics don't indicate whether the dazing or stunning reflects a head blow, or a body blow, or something else, then I'm not sure why you can't decide this the same way you decide what happens when hit points are lost (did the 6 hp of damage indicate a blow to the head or the body?).

If your concern is that sometimes someone can take a lot of damage but not be dazed, but other times take little damage yet be dazed or even stunned, I'm not sure why you can't explain that in the same way that you explain that sometime someone takes 50 hp of damage but is not killed, but other times take 1 hp of damage and dies. More generally, there is no correlation, in D&D, between amount of hp of damge inflicted by a successful attack, and the condition inflicted by that attack.

How does the GM decide?

Imagination? The DM thinks about everything he or she knows about the world, and tries to imagine what the scene looks like. Or throw dice at a dart board. Read tea leaves. It doesn't really matter, as long as it's consistent with everything that came before, and doesn't factor in meta-game elements like if someone is a PC or where the camera is looking.

I personally think it's a little bit hard not to factor in those elements, when the only reason that the GM even has to make the decision is because the PCs are entering the market place (or whatever).

But even if we put that to one side, what you are saying is that the players are discovering the content of the GM's imagination. This is the sort of GM-driven game that 4e tends to contrast with.

Fiction is constrained by plausibility, where reality is not. *shrug*

What fiction do you have in mind? I've just been re-reading REH's "People of the Black Circle". In that story, here are some of the improbabilities:

* the princess enters the governor's room at the same time Conan is in there threatening him, enabling Conan to kidnap the princess;

* as Conan is fleeing the town with his prisoner, he bumps into his former ally among the hill tribes who helps him escape his pursuit;

* as Conan flees the hill tribe village after his ally has been killed, he runs down an enemy sorcerer in his path;

* as Conan is riding on through the mountain trails, he encounters both (1) his former tribal allies, now opposed to him, and (2) another enemy who is hunting him.​

Those are just some of the events that make that fiction happen.

In LotR there are also improbabilities that drive the fiction, perhaps the most striking being Merry and Pippin's encounter with Treebeard.

In Star Wars, the whole story depends upon Luke - who is a jedi-in-waiting - be the one who buys R2D2 from the Jawas and therefore gets the message that sends him to Ben, the jedi master.

I'm not sure what fantasy fiction you have in mind that is constrained by plausibility.

That's a bad reason. Or, it's a good reason if you buy into the idea that PCs are protagonists in a story, who find themselves in all sorts of improbable situations due to narrative causality. Which is a fundamental element of Story-Telling Games, rather than Role-Playing Games.

GMing involves making decisions. One important element of decision-making is to introduce dynamic elements into the game, with which the players can then (via their PCs) engage.

So say you. And I suppose, so say whatever other person may have written a book, with the goal of spreading your agenda.

Story happens, whether you try for it or not.

<snip>

You don't need mechanics to promote story. If you try to promote story, then it kind of kills the integrity of the story.

something dramatic will happen regardless, so it's unnecessary and unwelcome for the DM to try and add more.

Our only disagreement is that I distinguish between legitimate ("natural") drama, and illegitimate ("artifical" or DM-induced) drama. You don't see that distinction, because you think all drama is DM-induced.

In reading this, I can't help but agree with [MENTION=27160]Balesir[/MENTION] upthread.

Where do you think the drama that occurs "naturally" or "legitimately", regardless of GM decision-making, will come from? The gameworld doesn't write itself.

Quite a way upthread you talked about the GM authoring a world with inbuilt excitement. That's an instance of the GM inducing drama.

You have talked about "zooming in" on the people who live exciting lives. That's an instance of the GM, in collaboration with the players, inducing drama.

The wandering monster tables are filled with orcs, aggressive snakes and spiders, demons, etc, rather than bunny rabbits and candy floss. That is the GM inducing drama (or, more accurately, conflict or the threat of it).

There is nothing that is more "natural" about writing all the drama into the initial world-state and the random encounter tables. Although that particular approach does make the GM's influence on the content of the shared fiction much greater.

As to whether mechanics can promote story, absolutely. I think most obviously, mechanics can affect pacing. For instance, mechanics that mandate lots of record-keeping between scenes of conflict impede dramatic pacing. 4e's healing mechanics for PC support dramatic pacing, by creating crisis in the rising action, resolved by decisive deployment of player resources at the moment of climax.

Pacing may not be an important factor in your games, but it is important to many RPGers, and different RPGs handle it in different ways.

Mechanics can promote story in other ways too, of course. For instance, a mechanic that gives a player a bonus to a roll when his/her PC engages something of value to that PC is likely to produce more such events. A mechanic that obliges the GM to narrate failure in terms of twists or complications rather than simple inadequate performance is more likely to produce rising action. Etc.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Anti-illusionism. Pro-player-agency. Pro-PC-protaganism. Pro-low-prep. Conflict as the locus of play.

Thoughts? I'm assuming you feel this is divergent from D&D orthodoxy?

The thing you quote is the opposite of protagonism, at least as we've been using the term here.

As it says, the GM portrays the fantastic world: check - it's the GM's job to create a world where exciting things can happen, and play the NPCs therein. There's a bit in the second paragraph about the players helping to create the world - a world where adventurers tend to get caught up in dangerous events - but that's not entirely untenable as long as the player can separate the role of creator from the role of character.

The third paragraph really hits home, though - the players set their own agenda, and when conflict occurs, the GM honestly portrays the outcome of that conflict. The GM doesn't know what's going to happen, and doesn't try to inflict drama on the players. Conflict happens merely because it's a world where conflict tends to happen, and the GM is a neutral arbiter. The fun, for the GM, is to see what the players end up doing.

It certainly sounds like D&D, to me. (The elements of Dungeon World which I dislike are ones unrelated to this stated goal. This description is not against process-sim in any way.)

 

[The Crimson Binome]

The research and researchers I pointed to are saying precisely that this is hardly ever the case. Vanishingly few people are really aware of when they are using heuristics and "fast thinking" and the biases that are emanating from that.

If you tell someone to organize blocks within a room, then they'll pick some order that makes internal sense and put them in that arrangement.

If you tell someone to scatter blocks randomly, then they'll place them in a position that doesn't correspond to any obvious pattern. It's not random, of course - people are terrible at randomness - but it's clearly not ordered, either.

If your main goal is to avoid an identifiable pattern, then asking for randomness is a good way to get it. Likewise, if you want a DM to avoid protagonizing the PCs, then having them develop their own concept of a natural world is a good way to get there.

You have to consider the messages the target of the social interaction is predisposed to hear, sure.

You have to consider that the thing people are predisposed to hear is what they already believe, and what most people already believe is rooted in reality. Sure, it might be rooted in their own perceptions of reality, but our perceptions are themselves rooted in actual reality.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

But even if we put that to one side, what you are saying is that the players are discovering the content of the GM's imagination. This is the sort of GM-driven game that 4e tends to contrast with.

I agree with this assessment.

Where do you think the drama that occurs "naturally" or "legitimately", regardless of GM decision-making, will come from? The gameworld doesn't write itself.

As I said in the last post, it doesn't matter how a DM makes a decision, as long as it doesn't take into consideration the fact that PCs are played players.

Treating PCs like protagonists is the DM equivalent of meta-gaming. The core tenet of roleplaying - as declared in 2E and all games which followed from its example - is that meta-gaming is bad.

As to whether mechanics can promote story, absolutely.

Yes, mechanics can obviously promote story. If you have an old AD&D-style mechanics, you tend to get different stories than if you have 4E-style mechanics. Since mechanics reflect narrative, you get different narrative elements whenever you have different mechanics. I don't know how this is even a question. Did I miss something?

 

[Manbearcat]

The thing you quote is the opposite of protagonism, at least as we've been using the term here.

Hmmm...alirght, lets take a look. Without the rest of the systems being involved, therefore the purchase of their context, I would think you would probably evaluate 4e as the same then. Here is what I take from that (again without even comparing it to the rest of the GMing advice and what the system pushes play towards).

As it says, the GM portrays the fantastic world: check - it's the GM's job to create a world where exciting things can happen, and play the NPCs therein.

Now this is interesting and I think we get to a core element here. Sort of a Rorschach test. Remember above where you said that you presumed that conflict resolution mechanics of AD&D were about pre-play worldbuilding rather than in-situ generation of content and resolution of action declarations (is there a natural shelter here?...well, the players have declared that they are looking for one, let us take 3 turns of exploration, roll random encounters, and find out...). You're doing the same thing here when you turn portray into pre-play, high-res, world-building (the kind that only AD&D2e and 3.x advocate for). They are not the same things. Again, even without the advantage of the rest of the system and GMing advice (which involves low prep - make a map and leave plenty of blanks - whereby the only thing consequentially fleshed out are the things guaranteed to be onscreen; eg the PCs' antagonists), we know that portray is solely about the depiction of something, to someone, right now. It is agnostic on whether something is wholly, mostly, partially, or barely improvised. It doesn't carry with it the loaded connotation that the GM has created a high resolution setting before play and isn't improvising new content when responding to play demands at the table.

Now real quick. Lets take a look at the paragraph directly above the ones I quoted you:

Dungeon World
Ch 13 The GM; Gamesmastering p 159

* Portray a fantastic world
* Fill the characters’ lives with adventure
* Play to find out what happens

Everything you say and do at the table (and away from the table, too) exists to accomplish these three goals and no others. Things that aren’t on this list aren’t your goals. You’re not trying to beat the players or test their ability to solve complex traps. You’re not here to give the players a chance to explore your finely crafted setting. You’re not trying to kill the players (though monsters might be). You’re most certainly not here to tell everyone a planned-out story.

Well now. That pretty much looks to be telling you that this isn't about Gygaxian skilled play in megadungeons. It isn't about MY PRECIOUS setting or "big canon". It isn't about adversarial GMing and always trying to one-up players and put them in their stinkin' place. It certainly isn't about APs or railroading meta-plot down players' throats.

There's a bit in the second paragraph about the players helping to create the world - a world where adventurers tend to get caught up in dangerous events - but that's not entirely untenable as long as the player can separate the role of creator from the role of character.

That isn't a bit. That is pretty central. And that isn't talking about before play. That is talking about the emergent feature of the Dungeon World conversation at the table. If you follow your GM agenda (fill their lives with adventure) and then follow the GMing principles when making moves in response to player moves, the inevitable outcome will be an engaging and dynamic world. You'll be portraying a fantastic world that fills the character's lives with adventure. And because it isn't a finely crafted setting that you've developed before play, you'll also get to play to find out what happens just like the other players (bonus!).

Finally, fill their lives with adventure is just another form of "skip the guards and get to the fun (!)" or, more relevant, push play towards conflict (given that there is an exact analogue to this in Apocalypse World - Vincent Baker's game...who coined "push play towards conflict" - and all of the PBtA hacks). It isn't unbiased. It isn't neutral. It isn't about mundane crap happening and the trash-heap, pestilential, sewer-filled-street drudgery of the rank and file of a midieval world. It very specifically is telling you that the onscreen needs to be fantastic and filled with adventure.

The third paragraph really hits home, though - the players set their own agenda, and when conflict occurs, the GM honestly portrays the outcome of that conflict. The GM doesn't know what's going to happen, and doesn't try to inflict drama on the players. Conflict happens merely because it's a world where conflict tends to happen, and the GM is a neutral arbiter. The fun, for the GM, is to see what the players end up doing.

Again, this is a bit of a Rorschach test. The above is a really abridged and morphed version of the GM's agenda.

1) While the players obviously set their own agenda (which will be signaled to the GM via bonds and alignment statement), conflict doesn't just "occur." The GM is "filling their lives with adventure." That adventure is going to have a lot to do with those bonds and those alignment statements (to test them). You don't "inflict drama" upon them by framing them into adventurous scenarios or responding with dangerous/adventurous stuff when they make their moves. Unscripted drama (you're playing to find out what happens - nor imposing metaplot) just occurs as an inevitability if you're following your agenda and the principles (below it). Again, you cannot be neutral and unbiased when you're filling their lives with adventure (and then following your principles - more on that below). Otherwise, you'd be just as likely to fill their lives with mundane, monotonous, conflict-neutral content as you are fantastic adventure! But you're not.

2) It is interesting that you seem to substitute "honestly" for "unbiased". What "honestly portray the outcomes of that action means" is "don't be an illusionsm-driven GM that , whether retroactively or impromptu, manipulates backstory or the offscreen to advantage yourself over the players." That is what that statement means. It is specifically calling out that sort of crap adversarial GMing technique of dishonestly leveraging what only you can be privy to (which ends up deprotanonize the PCs). It doesn't mean, make mundane stuff happen just as likely as adventurous stuff happen when portraying the repercussions of action (that would be violating your agenda afterall!).

It means "don't make up an Ace in the Hole to put/keep yourself in a position of power over your players." That sort of GM force rubbish is what bad GMs have done historically. I don't want you to break in this place via teleport? OMG anti-teleportation magic. I don't want you to be able to scry and gain intel? OMG anti-scrying magic. I don't want you to defeat this NPC now (like that dragonborn in that godawful 5e adventure)? OMG he has 5 jillion HPs/stoneskins of plot protection and even if you kill him it matters not at all because his evil twin brother will lead the scourge against you!

That is what it is talking about.

This description is not against process-sim in any way.)

On this I agree. It doesn't specifically call out process-sim. But it sort of implies it because it is impossible to simultaneously model process (and spit out the inevitable, uninteresting things that will arise from that formulation) and "fill the characters' lives with adventure." However, the rest of the system is pretty much blatantly adversarial to process-sim (from GM principles, to the basic resolution mechanics, to player and GM moves).

Here was my takeway regarding protagonization:

* Dungeon World is all about guts, guile, and bravery against darkness and doom.

Points of Light anyone?

* Without the player characters the world would fall into chaos or destruction—it might still even with them.

This is as close to a reformatting of D&D4e's statements on the matter as I could possibly imagine. The player characters are special.

* Filling the characters’ lives with adventure means working with the players to create a world that’s engaging and dynamic.

The players get their say in how their characters engender an engaging, dynamic world...and adventure is going to follow them wherever they go (like it does to literary and cinematic protagonists)!

* Dungeon World adventures never presume player actions and play to find out what happens.

Those two alone protagonize the players with absolute agency and, through that, their PCs.

Lets put it all together. Players have absolute agency to affect change/outcomes. Big adventure. Not big metaplot. Not big setting. Big adventure. That big adventure is premised upon the world being full of darkness and doom....and without the player characters it will fall into chaos or destruction (perhaps even with them?). We are all going to play to find out what happens.

And finally, the GMing principles that bind and inform GM moves (which is exactly what you should be doing in 4e in response to player actions...soft moves on success with complications and hard moves on failures):

Dungeon World
Ch 13 The GM; Gamesmastering p 160 (runs through 162)

Principles

* Draw maps, leave blanks
* Address the characters, not the players
* Embrace the fantastic
* Make a move that follows
* Never speak the name of your move
* Give every monster life
* Name every person
* Ask questions and use the answers
* Be a fan of the characters
* Think dangerous
* Begin and end with the fiction
* Think offscreen, too

Be a fan of the characters

Think of the players’ characters as protagonists in a story you might see on TV. Cheer for their victories and lament their defeats. You’re not here to push them in any particular direction, merely to participate in fiction that features them and their action.

Obviously note the bottom bolded part. This is important. The non-sequitur that "being a fan of the characters" or "protagonizing them" means favoring them mechanically or advancing them through a story needs to a die a quick, but terrible (I'm ok with that) death. It merely means that their status in the fiction defaults to heroic, special, and uniquely positioned to affect positive change. Whether they die or live to do great things is up to the formulation of the players' agency and the consultation of the resolution mechanics. But their default status is protagonist. And your job is to endlessly test their protagonist mettle and find out what happens.

TLDR; WORDS WORDS WORDS SHUT UP ALREADY

 

[pemerton]

it doesn't matter how a DM makes a decision, as long as it doesn't take into consideration the fact that PCs are played players.

Hasn't this injunction been violated as soon as we focus on these characters rather than some others? Why are we focusing on them? Because they're the PCs!

The thing you quote is the opposite of protagonism, at least as we've been using the term here.

As it says, the GM portrays the fantastic world: check - it's the GM's job to create a world where exciting things can happen, and play the NPCs therein. There's a bit in the second paragraph about the players helping to create the world - a world where adventurers tend to get caught up in dangerous events - but that's not entirely untenable as long as the player can separate the role of creator from the role of character.

The third paragraph really hits home, though - the players set their own agenda, and when conflict occurs, the GM honestly portrays the outcome of that conflict. The GM doesn't know what's going to happen, and doesn't try to inflict drama on the players. Conflict happens merely because it's a world where conflict tends to happen, and the GM is a neutral arbiter.

I've bolded the last sentence, because it is not found in [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]'s quote from the DW rules.

The quoted rules say "As the players come into conflict with that setting and its denizens, action is inevitable. You’ll honestly portray the repercussions of that action." There is nothing said there about it being "a world where conflict tends to happen." And in fact, it says "don't plan too hard". The GM is expected to respond to what the players do, and narrate the world in response.

This is how protagonistic RPGing works (what Manbearcat has been calling "story now" play, following Ron Edwards's terminology).

The fun, for the GM, is to see what the players end up doing.

And to see how the actions that they declare for their characters "change the world you’re portraying". Dungeon World is oriented in just about the opposite direction from the sort of pre-planned game and world that you are advocating in this thread.

The core tenet of roleplaying - as declared in 2E and all games which followed from its example - is that meta-gaming is bad.

Nonsense. Roleplaying existed before 2nd ed AD&D, and metagaming was part and parcel of the game. The players were expected to anticipate and outwit the GM. No one can play a module like White Plume Mountain or Tomb of Horrors in the way they were written without metagaming. (At the barest minimum: understanding that these dungeons have been designed by a GM to test and outwit players.)

You may not like metagaming - that's your prerogative. But it is absolutely part and parcel of a range of approaches to RPGing.

mechanics can obviously promote story.

<snip>

I don't know how this is even a question. Did I miss something?

Well, upthread you said (post 735) that "You don't need mechanics to promote story." I was responding to that.

If you want a story in your game, the alternative to using mechanics to promote it is GM force - typically in the form of illusionism. Games like Dungeon World, Burning Wheel, HeroWars/Quest, and (I would say) 4e avoid the need for illusionism precisely because they have mechanics that promote story (pacing mechanics, resolution mechanics, scene-framing mechanics, etc).

EDIT: I've cross-posted with [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]. He makes the same point I do - that "portraying the world, honestly" is not about world-prep or pre-game. It's an instruction to the GM about what to do during action resolution.

Much of the DW advice woud work equally well for Burning Wheel, another game in which the shared gameworld is expected to emerge as a product of play, not be pre-written by the GM as an input into play.

 

[Manbearcat]

Regarding the conversation that @Imaro, @Sadras, @AbdulAlhazred, and @Tony Vargas were having about instruments (etc) and the place of archetypes centered around singing/playing in 4e.

Given that 4e's default play is Story Now centered around action-adventure conflicts set against a mythic, high-fantasy backdrop, it doesn't promote mechanics for conflict-neutral "tavern playing for coin" tropes. If that is what you're going for, you're not going to be happy.

That being said, there are plenty of "transition scene" mechanics in the Bard RItuals that connote this theme exactly:

Glib Limerick
Traveler's Chant
Lullaby
Call of Friendship
Fool's Speech
Song of Sustenance
Anthem of Unity
Tune of Merriment
Aria of Revelation
Chorus of Truth
Song of Restfulness

Further, if you want an actual "action scene" suite of resources that are detached from the "baggage" of Diplomacy (et al), I think Character Themes can easily perform that load-bearing. One of my players in my last game had Mariner as his theme. While the system itself doesn't have any profession skills or anything of the sort, that Theme did a fantastic job of manifesting nautical proficiency (shared with crew - PC teamates, hirelings) in the fiction thus turning maritime conflicts into a place of protagonism for that PC specifically.

Something like this should do the trick:

Renowned Minstrel

(1st level): You gain a + 5 bonus to any ability checks that involve playing three instruments of your choice (including singing).
In addition, you also gain the It Goes to Eleven power:

It Goes to Eleven
You can bring the noise like no one else. Surveyors are floored by your musical might...but sometimes even you are floored by your boundary breaking play!

Encounter
Free Action - Personal
Trigger: You make an ability check that involves playing one of your instruments.
Effect: You roll two d20s for the triggering roll, and use either result. If you roll the same number on both dice, after you complete the action related to the triggering roll, you are dazed until the end of your next turn.

(2nd level): Cool Daily or Encounter Utility that mixes with the theme and resolution mechanics.

(5th level): Thematic feature here (probably a pair of +2s)

(6th level): Cool Daily or Encounter Utility that mixes with the theme and resolution mechanics.

(10th level): Thematic feature here

(10th level): Cool Daily or Encounter Utility that mixes with the theme and resolution mechanics.

Mix that with bard multi for Rituals, reskin some magic items as instruments that advance that skill while you level (allocated within magic item budget), and you've got a pretty BA instrument player that kicks bad guy butt and woos kings and peasants alike with his voice and instruments.