D&D 4E The Best Thing from 4E

[AbdulAlhazred]

There's plenty of drama in a random die roll a player makes to see if he succeeds or fails (perhaps, 'forward') at something important. The drama inherent in encountering an orc patrol in a corridor, followed by a troll in a cavern, is no different for the patrol being random and the troll pre-placed, or the reverse, or both being pre-place or both being random. It's the exact same pair of encounter.

One reason I think 'players always roll' variants are kinda nice, if you can get a system robust enough to handle the implied lack of DM 'fudging.'

Mmmmm, not so much though. There's no coherence to what comes out of a random generator. Certainly not one simple enough that you'd want to actually use it in a game. Thus we come to my position, where all you really wanted to do with the random generator was kick things a little bit, say make the journey to Pirate Town a bit more interesting than just "you get there after 3 days." So how is it that this is an improvement over the encounter you have being set up by the DM? Its not really, and if you're using some generic encounter table such as came in early editions of D&D its probably a lot less than not an improvement.

Wandering from one randomly generated encounter to another is computer game fodder. It doesn't have any business being at the table as I see it. Very sparing use of dice can sometimes make a DM's job a little easier, but otherwise there's little reason for doing it at all.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'm probably over-stating my case, yeah. For example, I can see some room for players to contribute in world-building, where it might actually improve the game rather than detract from it.

I just think you guys do more of both that, and generally arranging things in dramatic ways through various processes than you say/think. Remember, I was, in some dawn age of D&D, an 'advocate' of the same theory. There really wasn't any other theory back then, nor tools to play differently. A lot of it is just built into the original conventions of play, that there's a dungeon, that the PCs are 'special', etc. And the procedures too, all the encounter checks and such. If you actually stop to think about it there's no way that every peasant that walks down the road is having these encounters, the whole human race would be eaten inside a week. Its, even playing the most utterly plot devoid sandbox, already a pre-arranged drama, even if you purely use dice to choose which thing happens at random. I think you just use a very specific terminology and set of concepts to think about it. Particularly at upper levels though, if you play those, the PCs eventually have to become central and drive some sort of plot or the game just falls apart. I think this is just a culture thing, we're not actually very far apart. My game wouldn't shock you or dismay you anywhere near as much as you may think IMHO.

When you place them on the map, you're saying that they'll be there regardless of what the players do. When you roll randomly, you're saying that you don't care whether or not the players encounter these monsters.

Those aren't necessarily in conflict with each other, but they tend to be.

Its the same either way, if the players come to place and time where its been decreed a monster shall be then they meet said monster. Now, if you're going to have 100's of hours of megadungeon exploration the DM probably gets tired of restocking and figuring out where these monsters show up next, so he makes up a random table and throws dice. Even in that environment the process is fraught with issues of logic, if the PCs are in a secret room how do the monsters get in? If they passed some trap or obstacle or other hostile monsters then how did the random wandering monster get there? I assume Gygax applied some sort of judgment on the process.

Those things are not equivalent. Just because we're pointing the camera at this particular group of people, who might be in the right position to do something big and important, it doesn't mean the world is out to get them.

At some point, if the PCs actually do accomplish something important, then opposing NPCs might take action to stop them. Not because the PCs tend to find themselves in improbable situations, but due to real choices that the players have made.

Who says anything about 'out to get them?' that's not at all a necessary component of the equation. They have a dramatic need, and there is serious opposition to satisfying that need, and this creates drama. Once things are set in motion the drama tends to be aimed squarely at the PCs. Its possible they're minor figures in some larger events, at least up to some level or other, but obstacles will keep appearing in their paths, and opportunities will keep appearing likewise, often they're the same thing.

The players made a choice to play the characters. After that they will make many choices that will presumably shape the course of events to come, but they can't choose not to be in the story. They are there, and they are bound to play some significant role in it, assuming they survive.

There's nothing hokey about this either, I don't get why you believe there is. The PCs aren't puppets and the DM isn't a puppet master. That's the whole reason we hate illusionism. If you want some predestined story where the DM just made it up and the players sat around the table never being able to make anything happen or change, then by all means play with that sort of DM, but its like you're painting us all to be that, AND WE ARE NOT! My game is not like that at all. What it IS like is, whenever the players send their characters someplace, whatever they're going to try to accomplish will require them to do interesting things to accomplish it.

If you really lived up to the ideal of the game you espoused where the PCs don't play any special part in the world and just 'do stuff' boring or not it would be VERY BORING! This is why I, and I suspect [MENTION=27160]Balesir[/MENTION] and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], and probably [MENTION=8900]Tony[/MENTION]Vargas as well all have this real doubt that anything even close to the idea of a 'neutral DM' is happening here.

You didn't earn it, at all, if it was set up for you. The DM has arranged these convenient monsters and bandits and usurpers for you to overcome. That's not to say that it's necessarily easy to overcome them, but that's the reason why they are there.

There is no other reason they would ever be there. The whole game EXISTS so that you can do exactly that. You're just accusing me of playing D&D! I'm guilty as charged! I have NO IDEA how that equates to in your version I somehow 'earned' something and in my version it was 'given to me', that's a crock, to put it bluntly.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.

The only part of it that bugs me is this idea that its 'the one true way'. I know [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] will disavow saying that, but then he says things like "we haven't earned it!" if we run through a campaign that is based on a dramatic storyline. LULWUT? First there's nothing to 'earn' beyond 'you played elfs and dwarfs well and had fun', but beyond that our games have no requirement to be easy mode or foreordained cakewalks. Just because Gygax chose to play in a way where the PCs and the Dungeon were bloody enemies and the idea was to outsmart his evil genius, doesn't mean that no other way of structuring the game can be challenging.

 

[LostSoul]

Mmmmm, not so much though. There's no coherence to what comes out of a random generator. Certainly not one simple enough that you'd want to actually use it in a game. Thus we come to my position, where all you really wanted to do with the random generator was kick things a little bit, say make the journey to Pirate Town a bit more interesting than just "you get there after 3 days." So how is it that this is an improvement over the encounter you have being set up by the DM? Its not really, and if you're using some generic encounter table such as came in early editions of D&D its probably a lot less than not an improvement.

Wandering from one randomly generated encounter to another is computer game fodder. It doesn't have any business being at the table as I see it. Very sparing use of dice can sometimes make a DM's job a little easier, but otherwise there's little reason for doing it at all.

I use wandering monsters as a way to give time a cost in the attempt to make time a real resource that players can use. The time cost isn't in the fight or conflict itself, it comes down to wandering monsters draining resources. Those resources are usually HP and therefore healing surges; less often daily powers. The "refresh rate" of daily powers is slightly different between classes - martial characters carouse to get all of them back, wizards get one True Spell (daily spell) per six hours of uninterrupted study, clerics meditate with drugs - which also cost a fair amount of GP - over six hours per Miracle (daily prayer) or lead NPCs in a public display of faith that takes at least six hours. Warlocks don't need to take time, they instead alienate themselves from the settlements everyone relies upon. (Warlocks are currently unbalanced, though.) Healing Surges come back at a rate of 1 full day of rest, doing nothing or little else.

NPCs are active during this time, typically growing in strength unless the PCs successfully weaken them.

Wandering monsters encounters can impact the game in other ways - a recent result with uncertain, cautious, and wary dwarves led into a skill challenge that saw the PCs gain some new allies. The dwarves told the PCs (and thus the players) about a nearby dungeon's history - since I try to tie wandering monsters to other hexes/features of the map - and they gave the PCs a needed place to rest after a tough fight with a large group of gnolls. This kind of encounter isn't specific to wandering monsters, though.

If/when I get into urban campaigns I think "wandering monster" checks will cover a lot more ground.

I use random checks because: 1. I doesn't take very much time to roll on a table and get a result (a minute, maybe) and 2. the frequency of encounters will seriously affect the amount of time the PCs have to spend. This requires the DM to make very difficult judgement calls about things the DM shouldn't care about (PC success, basically). Letting the system handle this makes it easier on the DM to run the game.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.

OK, I've been thinking back, and I think I begin to understand how this whole concept you have evolved. See, way back in the old days, before 1974, Gygax and all that crew were playing WARGAMES, but they weren't just ANY wargame, Gary was refereeing campaigns fought with armies of fantasy miniatures. Dave Arneson was busy running/playing 'Kriegspiel' type games, refereed RP scenarios with the players having various roles. Importantly in NEITHER type of game was there a 'party'. These were zero-sum competitive wargames, you could win or lose, and the referee was there to provide the backdrop, the setting in which this would happen.

There was no need in these games for the referee to be neutral about the WORLD vs 'the players', he just had to not favor one player over another. That was the job of the referee, to adjudicate that no, indeed, the cutting at Antietam was too steep and columns of soldiers couldn't march up or down the sides. Secondarily the role of world creator came into existence when these games transferred to a fantasy realm. The world plainly had to be 'balanced' just like everything else, so that the various players had a chance to succeed in the campaign, and defeat each other, or at least field a force in battles that were played out that was worthy of the bother.

Eventually Arneson folded the concepts from the Fantasy Supplement of Chainmail into a 'kriegspiel' wherein various characters could delve into the dungeons of Blackmoor and gain treasure, etc which they could use in other aspects of the campaign, to progress their characters. Gygax of course took up this idea and extended it somewhat, but the core premise was the same in all cases.

The thing is, there was never an assumption that the players were all on one team. As it evolved some 'team ethics' came into play, as the dungeon itself became the focus of play and the main antagonist the rivalries and opposing goals of the player characters were made somewhat subservient, so that the thief didn't rip off the cleric, and the cleric healed the thief, at least while they were in the dungeon. Again, the role of the DM was to be a neutral arbiter between the player's characters.

This has only later become conflated with a role of 'running a neutral world' as you put it. That was never part of the original design. The only social contract here was that the DM wouldn't screw over the players by throwing things into the PC's paths that wasn't either already indicated (and thus able to be anticipated, scouted for, divined, or researched, or that was behind a door and thus avoidable, or was 'the random luck of the dice'). This convention NEVER extended to a 'neutral plot' where only the players will could move the action and nothing ever happened 'because it would be fun'. I'm pretty sure Gygax himself would laugh with amusement at that notion.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I use wandering monsters as a way to give time a cost in the attempt to make time a real resource that players can use. The time cost isn't in the fight or conflict itself, it comes down to wandering monsters draining resources.
...
I use random checks because: 1. I doesn't take very much time to roll on a table and get a result (a minute, maybe) and 2. the frequency of encounters will seriously affect the amount of time the PCs have to spend. This requires the DM to make very difficult judgement calls about things the DM shouldn't care about (PC success, basically). Letting the system handle this makes it easier on the DM to run the game.

Yeah, I don't really have a lot against the concept, I guess. I just don't really buy into [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION]'s automated world concept. I'm with Dungeon World and [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] though, I think the DM is an advocate FOR the players. That's subtle though. He's not 'on the side of' the characters, but he's trying to give them a chance to be heroes if they can. Making it hard is part of being on the side of the players though, the game isn't much of a game if there's no way to be thwarted. For the same reason that sportsmen try to win at sports, the DM should make the attainment of the PCs goals uncertain and difficult.

 

[pemerton]

IThere is no other reason they would ever be there. The whole game EXISTS so that you can do exactly that. You're just accusing me of playing D&D! I'm guilty as charged! I have NO IDEA how that equates to in your version I somehow 'earned' something and in my version it was 'given to me', that's a crock, to put it bluntly.

I agree with this.

The notion that XP are "earned" because the players resolved an encounter the GM had pre-planned, but are "not earned" because the GM framed the PCs into the encounter to push the game forward, is odd to me.

In the first sort of play, logistics and planning are rewarded (which relates, again, to [MENTION=205]TwoSix[/MENTION]'s post upthread). In the second sort of play, logistics and planning are less important, and it is the actual play during the encounter which determines the outcome. They are different playstyles, but neither is about "earned" vs "unearned"!

I use random checks because: 1. I doesn't take very much time to roll on a table and get a result (a minute, maybe) and 2. the frequency of encounters will seriously affect the amount of time the PCs have to spend. This requires the DM to make very difficult judgement calls about things the DM shouldn't care about (PC success, basically). Letting the system handle this makes it easier on the DM to run the game.

Right.

Time is not a resource in my 4e game. I use my own judgment, as GM, to decide when to keep throwing things at the PCs, and when to pull back, based on a sense of their surges remaining, powers spent etc. (This isn't that hard to keep a general handle on, because comments among the players about resources remaining are organic to play.)

A related thing, that to me also illustrates a contrast between illusionistic and non-illusionistic play. One of my players, more than once, has early in a combat encounter observed that he is not pulling out all the stops because he expects that I, as GM, may well have a second wave ready to enter the fight, and he (the player) wants to have the resources to handle that.

In other words, the player knows that I add content to the fiction in order to put pressure on the players (via their PCs). It's not disguised as an "organic outgrowth" of a "living, breathing world".

For me, the pithiest bit of helpful GMing advice I remember having read is this, from Paul Czege:

when I'm framing scenes, and I'm in the zone, I'm turning a freakin' firehose of adversity and situation on the character. It is not an objective outgrowth of prior events. It's intentional as all get out.​

I think that, from Czege's point of view, my game is probably fairly puerile - I don't think the "firehose of adversity" that he had in mind is Pazuzu turning up when a PC wishes upon his Ring of Tenacious Will!, or a column of rock turning out to be a roper because a player had his PC examine it closely - but for me Czege's advice works outside the avant-garde context that he had in mind.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I agree with this.

The notion that XP are "earned" because the players resolved an encounter the GM had pre-planned, but are "not earned" because the GM framed the PCs into the encounter to push the game forward, is odd to me.

In the first sort of play, logistics and planning are rewarded (which relates, again, to [MENTION=205]TwoSix[/MENTION]'s post upthread). In the second sort of play, logistics and planning are less important, and it is the actual play during the encounter which determines the outcome. They are different playstyles, but neither is about "earned" vs "unearned"!

Time is not a resource in my 4e game. I use my own judgment, as GM, to decide when to keep throwing things at the PCs, and when to pull back, based on a sense of their surges remaining, powers spent etc. (This isn't that hard to keep a general handle on, because comments among the players about resources remaining are organic to play.)

See, now this is where you and I diverge. I think the resource game can be a meaningful game, and I don't change the intensity of resource utilization in response to the players fortunes and misfortunes (or profligacy or otherwise). If they burn up all their HS in the first fight, well, maybe its time for the heroes to go out in a blaze of glory, its happened.

Of course the last 4e 'tpk' I had was a low level party being dropped in on by a bunch of giant spiders after they foolishly chased an insane wizard into a warren of tunnels under Fallcrest. I couldn't resist teasing them with a Hobbit reference, so they all woke up with bad hangovers dangling from the ceiling of a tunnel and had to get out. There's nothing wrong with throwing the players a bone if it seems like it will be more fun. They'd have rolled up new characters gamely of course, but at some point you begin to realize that death really doesn't make too much difference, but an ongoing story is a more rare and interesting thing if its good.

Anyway, I don't mean to sound too much like [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION], but there IS an aesthetic to the 'sport' aspect of D&D, and I don't feel like I can't make the narrative move along and be thrilling without conjuring up endless bad guys and obstacles in exactly the numbers the players can handle. I let them know ahead of time what they're getting into and its kinda up to them to work with it. Its still plenty dramatic.

 

[pemerton]

See, now this is where you and I diverge. I think the resource game can be a meaningful game

I agree it can be - and [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION]'s version is pretty elaborate.

It's just not something I do in 4e. And it's also not something that I think becomes meaningful if it's grounded in nothing but GM fiat. LostSoul uses a whole lot of mechanical techniques to make it meaningful, for instance.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

TLDR; WORDS WORDS WORDS SHUT UP ALREADY

Great. We've established that I don't like Dungeon World. I don't think that was ever in question, though.

It's possible to pursue the same agenda via different means. There are a lot of games, both D&D and D&D-inspired, which share a similar agenda yet promote different methods for achieving that agenda. This is a good thing, since different people enjoy different aspects of gameplay.