D&D 4E The Best Thing from 4E

[AbdulAlhazred]

Please bear with me, but this entire concept of 'stakes' is quite unfamiliar to me. I know that Burning Wheel uses it, and people are using it to discuss 4E (and 5E!), but I've never actually sat down and read a rulebook that discussed its use. As a DM, I don't sit down and plan the stakes one way or another; it's not something I've ever consciously had to acknowledge.

But there are stakes. Stakes are what you put down in a wager. Lets imagine the characters go into a dungeon, the stakes they're wagering are probably their lives mainly. Perhaps if there's a good chance to get raised then they're mostly wagering several 1000gp, either way against the chance to gain a fortune, magic, etc.

The stakes could be something else, like if the PCs are defending their hometown against orcs then the stakes are everything they know and love.

Maybe on a smaller scale a characters leaps across a chasm to attack an orc, he's wagering his chance of falling into the chasm (whatever that entails) against the chance of killing the orc. Maybe he could stay on the other side and plink with his bow that he's not so good with. He instead chooses to RAISE THE STAKES, to bet more by pulling a stunt. He's looking for greater reward for his greater risk.

It sounds like a bunch of meta-game stuff that I don't like, though.

There's nothing really meta-game about stakes. Its the same as in the real world. Maybe you enter the Indy 500 and stake your chance of crashing against winning a big prize. People do it all the time, they take risks. Maybe you decide to go demand a raise from your supervisor, risking your current salary against a chance to get ahead. Life is filled with trade offs and every one of them has stakes.

It sounds like it's the DM talking to the players, about what's going on in the game, and the potential outcome to actions that the PCs might take. I can see how it makes sense when you're discussing something like a skill check, in order to better describe a situation that the PCs should be able to understand ("because of the wind blowing across this rock-face, a failure by more than 5 points will mean that you fall and could die"). What I don't see is, in your hypothetical example with Vecna stealing the souls, how would the PCs know if that plan was in place?

Why would they NOT know. Its a game of heroes doing heroic things. If they risk their lives, their souls, the future of their world against a chance to attain some great thing then its a pretty crap DM that just turns around afterwards and says "Yeah, haha, well, Vecna got what he wanted anyway suckers!" What was the DM gaining out of that except some cheap thrill? It cannot possibly be good DMing.

Is the DM beholden by social convention to include some foreshadowing, such that all important choices are made with (reasonably) complete knowledge of the outcomes? Is it like how the DM is encouraged to make things exciting for the PCs - less of a rule, and more just a guideline for how to make the game more fun?

Ayup! Its NOT FUN when the DM stomps on your accomplishments. What if you had your character spend years building a castle and spending all his cash and a week later the DM has some unstoppable army sack it and raze it? Its just a thing to do. Now, maybe its fine if the PCs built the castle to stop the unstoppable army and they fought the good fight and they LOST, that's one thing. But if the DM just says "haha, you had no chance, I let you think you could win but I don't even have to roll dice" its DMing indeed.

The PCs don't have to win total victories all the time, they can lose, they can win partially, or at great cost, but yes, the players should know when they get into a situation like that if there's a chance or not. Its bad DMing practice to take away the player's candy just for what, the satisfaction of saying the players couldn't 'beat you'?

My issue here is that I don't plan out the story very far in advance. I can't foreshadow that there might be a lieutenant left to carry out the evil plot, because I don't know what the players are going to do leading up to that point. Obviously, if they take out the lieutenant before moving on to the boss, that lieutenant won't be around to pick up the pieces. Or maybe they'll meet that lieutenant in town, and convince her to betray the Big Bad? Or convince her to pursue some other agenda, and abandon the Big Bad before the final fight (possibly without even knowing who the lieutenant is, but just treating her like any other random NPC).

Sure, but isn't it MORE FUN if they at least CAN find out about the lieutenant and decide whether to take him out first or not? Maybe there's trade-offs to doing so, that's fine. Maybe they kill the big bad and the lieutenant picks up some of the pieces and becomes some other new big bad, but they should have accomplished SOMETHING. The same stakes should not still be at play. Whatever they risked they should get to at least stack the winnings up on their side of the table and grin, even if the world goes on and its still got evil in it. What shouldn't happen is that the new big bad shouldn't be just basically the same as the old one like they never accomplished anything at all.

What if there's an evil lair, and the left wing leads to a library full of incriminating documents, but the right wing heads to the actual goal for the PCs? If they go right first, and never investigate the left path, then they'll never find the information. If there's an important document - say that it's a list of people who are on the Big Bad's payroll, and the PCs can use that information to learn that the mysterious stranger at the inn is secretly working for the Big Bad - should I contrive to make that available to them?

No, nobody is mandating that the PCs should have to be handed every possible plot hook and piece of information. Its perfectly fine if they are surprised or in the dark on some things, but when it comes time to decide what they're risking and what conflict they are engaging in, what interests are involved, they should get a 'fair' wager. Maybe the guy they didn't uncover the identity of backstabs them somehow later, that's fine, they can roll with that.

Because that seems like Illusionism, to me. If I did that, then I'm saying that the player's choices don't matter, and I'm going to make sure they reach my chosen outcome either way. Or does that not count as a real choice that I'm subverting, because it wasn't a choice made with knowledge of the stakes?

Its not much of a choice, no. Again, its a matter of what is better and worse. The choice "You can go left and gather evidence that you may want later, but the bad guy will have time to prepare for your assault" is an interesting choice. "you see an intersection, go left or right?" is an uninteresting choice, and any consequences that follow from it are arbitrary since left or right is just a guess by the players. I don't think anyone is advocating that PCs need perfect knowledge, just that you're leaving a lot of fun on the table when you make significant choices arbitrary.

Now, I can see a way to have the arbitrary choice itself be a choice. Say the PCs can go back to the library and research the left and right choices, but they risk being ambushed by wandering monsters each time they go back and forth, maybe they just pick a way to go. Its fine to make a choice in a vacuum when you have to. Major stakes that the players have already wagered just shouldn't hing on that arbitrary left/right choice.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The reason for the discussion of dysunctional Gamism is because, in the context in which Edwards wrote his essay, he was trying to defend the legitimacy of gamist play against overwhelming hostility from the RPG orthodoxy (still visible every day on ENworld in pejorative references to "munckins", "power gamers", "player entitlement" etc - for an example from a current thread have a look at the "Half-orcs" thread in the 5e sub-forum, where some poster refers disparagingly to players choosing PC race for reasons of "win" rather than characterisation).

Isn't this the same guy who self-identified as 'narrativist?'

As for balance, there is no dismissal at all: this essay has an extremely nuanced discussion of balance, and what it means in the context of different playstyles and different agendas for play.

The definition was dismissive:

Balance

This term is undefined. Used without clarification by the user, it typically diminishes the value of discussions about role-playing.

Frankly, the article you linked, for all that it is a nuanced dismissal of balance, is still a dismissal. I mean, did it result in a clear definition of 'balance?' Did it present a way of evaluating balance? No. All it did was assert that balance wasn't a gamist-exclusive issue, without ever addressing or even acknowledging the issue (labeling it, up front, a "sorta-issue"). It was a "STFU about balance!" rant. Self-identified, as a rant.

I'm sorry. I know you're a forge initiate and have found value in it. But for all the veneer of intellectualism, all I'm seeing in the glossary is the the Roll v Role thing again, just very elaborately re-stated. Any derived-from-within theory of a sub-culture that starts by dividing it up into us-and-thems is immediately suspect in my book. The older GNS articles, that acknowledged that all three were aspects of RPGs in general, and that most gamers wouldn't just be one or another seemed a bit more reasonable. This looks like it's arguing that a game that tries to combine even two 'Creative Agendas' is in danger of being 'dysfunctional,' yet no RPG could really exist as such without all three.

Looks like a convenient foundation for rationalizing likes & dislikes without needing to confront the actual quality of the games in question, not to mention justifying elitist attitudes.

I mean, I've never gotten a good vibe from the way GNS gets thrown around, but this particular one reeks of prejudicial framing of a debate. "These are the definitions we'll use for the debate, as a result one side of the debate is already wrong, by definition."

 

[Manbearcat]

Quick (yeah right) play example and analysis for 4e. I'll try to do a DW one as well but likely won't have time. Sblocking for space.

[sblock]

"Originally Posted by Binks"

Before my eyes register it as an illusory effect of the sunlight bending through riverspray, my ears hear the roar of the waterfall...

I just used Perception to automatically succeed a Primary Check to notice the waterfall. I want to use Perception as my second Secondary Skill Use for the Challenge to determine the height or severity of the fall. I automatically pass the low and medium DC with Perception (+ 14) as a Secondary Skill.

1) If the fall is not severe, I'm going to hunker down and go over the fall with my raft. * I'm no stranger to rivers as my homeland in the Feywild is the cradle of the infamous Ley El'endre, "Serpent's Fang" in the common tongue. These rough waters have claimed more than one life. It is a rite of passage of my people to navigate its deadly spiral. I have on more than one occasion.

2) If the fall is severe, I'm going to quickly knot a length of rope around the head and handle of my handaxe, then put it out before me in practiced measurement to feel its balance, and then send it flying toward the boughs of the trees overhanging the 25 foot cliff-face. If it sticks, I'm going to pull myself up the rope to the top of the cliffs. ** When I was a child, I would help out in my grandmother's garden by standing sentinel, equipped with 3 child-sized handaxes on my belt. When the dog-sized hares native to our land would invade, initially I failed miserably with my aim, but the whirring sound of the axe cutting the air would frighten them off. Eventually I became so proficient that every evening of my watch we had rabbit stew.

If:

1) I'm going to use my Athletics to hang on to the raft. My Athletics check is + 9. I rolled a 1. Even with my Perception Secondary Skill bonus of + 2 this fails to hit the Medium DC.

If:

2) ** I would like to use one of my two advantages here to lower the DC one step. My Ranged Basic Attack with my handaxe is a + 7. I rolled a 1. Obviously that doesn't hit any target number.

I'll wait for your reply as to whether it is 1 or 2 and what complications arise due to the failed roll.

"Originally Posted by Manbearcat"

Its the first of the two.

Your ears attune to the information the crash of the falls is sending you. You can tell by the frequency and tenacity of the sound that it is not terribly steep, perhaps 20 feet or so. Regardless, its going to be a nasty ride and you're sure of it as you and your raft crest the precipice and you get a look at the scattered rocks and rushing rapids that await you below.

As your grip tightens on the raft and your core loosens to receive the energy of the impact, you take a deep breath. Your body is swallowed by the deluge as your raft strikes the water...but it holds together. However, you are dashed repeatedly on underwater rocks, your ribs, then your shoulder, and finally your head as you and your raft roll repeatedly. Your barge pole is long lost to the spirit of the river.

The last shot to the head has taken its toll and you're mind is foggy *. Your subconscious and muscle memory takes over and you are vaguely aware of the cold, the rolling, crashing, rising, falling...and the endless churning sounds of the river. You know not how long this goes on but the sensory information of granular silt, assuredly washed ashore during flooding, brings you back. Your face and chest, pressed against it, feels its warmth as you claw yourself with one hand out of the river and absent-mindedly bring your damaged raft with your other hand.

A voice, in an ugly form of broken common, abruptly stirs you to alertness, "Looks a meat to go with thems taters we ripped from them river folk. Course after I have her first..." The feel of cold metal under your chin draws your eyes upward. A grungy fellow with a scraggly beard, smelling of all manner of filth, looks down at you through a mostly toothless, grotesque smile. Behind him are 4 men, one relieving himself against a tree while the other 3 are setting up camp.

[sblock]* I'm going to need a Primary Skill Endurance check at the medium DC. If you fail at this you will start this encounter Bloodied. If you succeed then you are just down a Healing Surge worth of HPs. If you wish to attempt to parlay, you can do so by deploying a relevant skill. Nonetheless, you will need to roll initiative. If it escalates to combat, I will attach a battle map.[/sblock]

3/8 success (1/2 high DC) 1/3 failure 2 advantages remaining

[/sblock]

This is a little ways into the conflict where Saerie was traversing down the mountain river, looking for a civilized village to beseech them to take on the orphaned children. This is an example of proper failure (forward) in this Skill Challenge. Let us take a look under the hood into both my GMing and the mechanics:

1) The dramatic complication she was traversing when she failed this primary check was obviously a waterfall. She noticed it via an auto-success with her (very high) Perception check. Success with complications in 4e require the GM to bring out about what is the equivalent of a "soft move" in Dungeon World. The fiction needs to move forward in an interesting, thematic way which places a decision before the player on how to tackle this new threat. A lot of these complications will fall under the broad rubric of the DW soft move:

Show signs of an approaching threat

This is one of your most versatile moves. “Threat” means anything bad that’s on the way. With this move, you just show them that something’s going to happen unless they do something about it.

So now she has to navigate it. It isn't too terribly steep, so she decides to ride it out with Athletics + a Secondary Skill augment from Perception. She fails the medium DC despite the high Athletics check and the augment (needed a 4 or better).

2) All of my SC failures produce Healing Surge loss so they are the equivalent of the DW hard move:

Deal damage

When you deal damage, choose one source of damage that’s fictionally threatening a character and apply it. In combat with a lizard man? It stabs you. Triggered a trap? Rocks fall on you.

However, in SCs, the fiction always has to change so there is also another move to create a decision-point for the PC. As I hope is clear in the fiction, one would be the "Reveal an Unwelcome Truth" move or the "Use a monster, danger, location" move depending on how the player approaches the situation.

Of note here, at the outset of play, she overtly signaled that she wanted the primary antagonists to be bandits, sinister fey, tainted wild things. These marauders (bandits) didn't exist before this complication. Their band played a primary role in play from this point forward. Like most of my D&D games, this one was fairly "no myth" with a low resolution setting and backstory with the "blanks" filled in during play once things are formally established on-screen. This is mandate in indie "Story Now" play.

Of further note here, due to the fiction that immediately preceded it, I require a Primary Skill Endurance check (medium DC) from her before we proceed to the present situation (Turn their move back on them - in this case the attempt to ride out the waterfall). She knows a failure will typically be a loss of a Healing Surge. However, I overtly stipulate to her that these failures (from the failed Athletics check and the pending Endurance check) will yield loss of real heroic reserves (HPs) rather than latent heroic reserves (HSs) if this does indeed turn into a violent confrontation. So, in chronology, this knock-on complication is immediate fallout of her failed Athletics check with the Reveal an Unwelcome Truth (possibly Use a Monster if things turn violent) complication, which escalates things and moves the fiction forward in an interesting/threatening way.

This is precisely how things should snowball in a 4e Skill Challenge and especially so given the declared stakes and goal of this challenge.

3) She passes her Primary Skill Endurance check so she is down one Healing Surge or 25 % of her HPs if things turn violent. Further, she is halfway home at 4/8 success (1/2 hard DCs passed), 1/3 failures, 2/3 SS used, 2 advantages remaining. She forgoes even thinking about a prospective parley. This is surely for a few reasons: (1) the bad guys are clearly very bad and have shown their hand fairly dramatically with their actions and words and (2) she is a woman of action, not words (PC build shows this well enough). Nonetheless, if she would have tried to parley, I would have certainly honored the action declaration and we would have "found out what happens." I would have surely pulled out my remaining hard DC available to escalate things, but if she would have succeeded, the fiction would have changed to her advantage and she would have earned success 5.

So things turn violent. I let her know the mechanical stakes beforehand (the fictional stakes are obvious). This will be a nested combat. Success will earn her Primary Skill success number 5/8. I think the combat goes something like this:

a) She stabs the guy threatening her onshore with a dagger to the knee. She knee it was a minion and stipulated that she didn't want him dead, just lamed and out of the fight.

b) She action-pointed and used an arrow to stunt the boiling pot over the spit and AoE several of the bad guys around the fire and then used Mighty Sprint to scale a tree.

c) She dueled a big mean man in the tree for a bit while avoiding/taking some ranged fire, they both end up falling out of the tree. She gets up and finishes him off before he can kill her.

d) She kills another minion (who was taking cover behind the tents) with her bow and the leader of the band (warlord-ey action-multiplier) skedaddles into the forest in terror.

So success 5.

She can't let this guy go for fear that he will get reinforcements and chase her through the mountains that they know but she doesn't. This turns into another nested challenge (SC complexity 1) for either success 6 or failure 2. The guy temporarily escapes from her (failed Athletics check to climb a tree and get a vantage point to snipe him), disappearing into a large crevice in the hardpan of a dried river-bed. This ends up being the backdoor to the marauders massive complex. She pursues and ends up stalking this guy through the tunnels, avoiding trapped deadfalls and other contingencies that the raiders had set up. She succeeds at the SC1 so the guy is killed by one of the deadfalls in his panicked hurry before he can rally the bad guys. She gains an intricate fishbone necklace from the dead raider that helps her later in parleying with the people of the village.

So success 6.

That leads to her taking a short rest (recovery of encounter powers and spending HS to recover HPs) and initiating a parley with the lamed, but alive, marauder at the high DC:

"Originally Posted by Binks"

When I get back to the camp, I'm going to interrogate the guy I incapacitated. I'll place him in a seated position and tie him to a tree so he can't move. Assuming there is a bucket, pale, or any suitable baling implement, I'm going to take some of the cold river water and wake him abruptly. When he wakes, I'll be standing over him grim-faced. "You are a marauder. Marauders take as the can from those who have toiled greatly for their bounties. From whom have you taken?"

My Intimidate is a 5. I rolled a 19. That is a 24 total.

and my response:

"Originally Posted by Manbearcat"

The man is in obvious, terrible pain. The stress of his pain and the situation is making him sweat profusely. He isn't even attempting to try to wriggle free. He vomits on himself and begins to sob like a child. Your common is different from his own but you can communicate well enough:

"...I can take you there...its down the river...<sob and painful groan>...but underground is faster and safer...<wretch>"

If you left your dagger buried behind his kneecap, he begs you to take it out. Otherwise, he barely retains his consciousness.

So that is 7/8 success with both of my hard DCs used.

She ties the guy to the raft and he helps her navigate the branching, downstream tributaries which lead to the bay and the civilized island village within it. Relying on her knowledge of this sort of geography, it is very akin to her homeland of Brokenstone Vale in the Feywild, she uses her Nature check to avoid hazards.

Other cool stuff happens (including an awesome midnight battle on the bay with a sea monster where Saerie and a father had to protect the man's - minion - daughter from death...this fight is definitely something that can't be done legitimately in prior editions...the minion and terrain interaction rules enormously shine here to make it dynamic, thematic and exciting as all hell). But let us stick to this.

This conflict features 4e's illusionism-averse machinery quite intensely. Transparent GMing procedures. Transparent, coherent resolution mechanics (in this case the Skill Challenge mechanics, including nested challenges - DMG2). Informed (both mechanically and fictional-positioning-wise) thematic decision-points and attendant player action declarations. Honored, dramatic, genre-coherent results of micro-checks and the macro-stakes explicated at the outset.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I would say the difference is that [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] would regard taking the time to explore a room that isn't central to the current conflict as being an example of skilled play. It's no different than finding a treasure chest in an hidden room in Final Fantasy or The Elder Scrolls. For many players, the choice to forestall conflict and instead take the time to explore is an explicit virtue that needs to be rewarded.

That's not quite what I was getting at. As a DM, I'm not building a world full of secrets, for sufficiently-thorough players to discover. Nor is it my goal to reward players for being sufficiently paranoid, or for having encyclopedic knowledge of every magic item or spell effect.

My goal is to reassure players that their choices matter. If everyone just charges head-long toward the goal, then that might not always work out for them. They might miss out on something. They might get in over their heads. And if they do, then hopefully they realize that they brought it upon themselves. And if they survive that, they can either continue being recklessly straightforward, or decide to be more cautious in the future.

If they decide to search the evil lair for clues, knowing that it's going to cost them time (and possibly other resources), then they might find this information that helps them out later on. Hopefully they trust me, that I won't invalidate their choice by placing these clues in their path later on, or else there would be no reason for them to even try. This might not even be the best course of action; it's possible that they'll spend so much time (and other resources) in exploration that they miss out on their main goal.

I don't want the players to meta-game, and I don't want them to expect that I will meta-game. In this case, the term 'meta-game' means to make decisions within the game based on knowledge that it is a game. The example given in the book is to assume that a particular puzzle must have a solution, based on the idea that the DM wouldn't include a puzzle that was unsolvable. By a similar token, it would also be meta-gaming if the players decide to head straight to their goal, on the assumption that the DM will provide any relevant information regardless.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

As a thought experiment, what would you both think of a setup whereby the "room with a clue" might be visited before the "evil lair" based on a random roll of a die? Say there was a straight 50:50 chance that the room full of incriminating documents might be visited or might not - would that be "railroading"/"illusion building" or what?

It would not be very appealing to me, in any case, since it removes player agency. You might as well roll randomly to see if rocks fall and everyone dies. Granted, D&D does have a long history of rolling randomly to see if everyone dies, but I've never been a big fan of that style.

A game is a series of meaningful choices. You may not always know the full ramifications of each choice, but they should always matter.

 

[Manbearcat]

Wow, that's a document with an agenda. Note that it presents 'dysfunction' as virtually the only sin or failing in RP, and list /five/ types of dysfunctional 'Gamist' play vs one or two for the N & S types. Also casually dismisses critical qualities like Balance.

You might be able to lift a useable bit of jargon from it here or there, but I hope you don't drink the Kool-aid.

Here is the thing though. The world is overfilled with agenda. Everyone has an angle. I'm not worried about the purity of motives when I read any text (historical, philosophical, or a work of fiction). Hell, if I was, I'd never read anything again. I'm merely trying to derive signal from noise. I feel I'm rather up to that task. And there is A LOT of signal amidst some cantankerous noise.

Edwards specifically (and the Forge generally) was clearly annoyed by the idea of "incoherency" in gaming, of which White Wolf and AD&D2e were the "leaders of the pack" at that point, particularly preoccupied by the issues of "force" (of which illusionism is the most insidious variety - the covert kind) and "agenda/system drift"...and how TTRPG design might go about addressing those issues. That is a good conversation to have and a lot came out of it. Because people felt it was elitist means absolutely zero to me. I'm in no fear of being a "Kool-aid" drinker. I have endured WAAAAAY too much bad stuff in my life to become enamored of/invested in any form of "RPG xenophobia" to justify whatever tribe I think I'm in. This is merely the intellectual pursuit of a TTRPG phenomenon that I vehemently agree needed exploring in order to produce mechanics/play agendas/GMinging principles - system - for people who wish to play free of "force" and/or "drift". If that rankles some feathers because some TTRPG players feel like its a passive-agressive/agressive shot from the bow which indicts their (years-long) mastery of techniques/systems that promote force and/or agenda/systemincoherency (I posted above on this specific issue...with certain aspects of agendas being at tension or diametrically opposed with on another if the system doesn't account for those tensions with "mechanical relief") ...then so be it. It still has value, rankled feathers and bruised egos or no.

Beyond that, I don't accept that The Forge is Gamism-averse. If anything, a huge part of The Forge's momentum in exploring these things (beyond the effort to distill the nature of Story Now gaming and produce systems that truly perpetuated it) was due to that late 80s/90s era of the Gamist agenda being slammed by a large strain of the TTRPG mainstream culture. It was almost a direct response to derogatory epithets by that culture such as "munchkins", "roll-playing not roleplaying" and that culture's indictment of the metagame-nature of classic, pawn-stance dungeon-crawling with disposable characters named Bob005 and truly neutral, challenge-based refereeing and metagaming players (Gygaxian Skilled Play). You were there during that time. I know you're very aware of that culture clash. It reminded me so, so much of the 4e edition wars.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

But there are stakes. Stakes are what you put down in a wager. Lets imagine the characters go into a dungeon, the stakes they're wagering are probably their lives mainly. Perhaps if there's a good chance to get raised then they're mostly wagering several 1000gp, either way against the chance to gain a fortune, magic, etc.

That's the thing, then. Stakes, like story, naturally occur on their own. I don't need to think about them, or address them in any way.

Sure, but isn't it MORE FUN if they at least CAN find out about the lieutenant and decide whether to take him out first or not? Maybe there's trade-offs to doing so, that's fine. Maybe they kill the big bad and the lieutenant picks up some of the pieces and becomes some other new big bad, but they should have accomplished SOMETHING. The same stakes should not still be at play. Whatever they risked they should get to at least stack the winnings up on their side of the table and grin, even if the world goes on and its still got evil in it. What shouldn't happen is that the new big bad shouldn't be just basically the same as the old one like they never accomplished anything at all.

We seem to be in agreement on this point, at least. The secret lieutenant shouldn't just be thrown in at the last minute as an excuse for the DM to invalidate the actions of the players. But the secret lieutenant, masquerading as a mysterious stranger at the inn, has been there the whole time. It would be a lousy DM who shuts down every attempt at investigating this suspicious character, and even worse if the DM later retcons the NPC into this role when the PCs kill the Big Bad and the DM wants the show to keep going anyway.

 

[Manbearcat]

the left wing leads to a library full of incriminating documents, but the right wing heads to the actual goal for the PCs

Politics! Reported!

 

[Tony Vargas]

Edwards specifically (and the Forge generally) was clearly annoyed by the idea of "incoherency" in gaming, of which White Wolf and AD&D2e were the "leaders of the pack" at that point, particularly preoccupied by the issues of "force" (of which illusionism is the most insidious variety - the covert kind) and "agenda/system drift"...and how TTRPG design might go about addressing those issues.... If anything, a huge part of The Forge's momentum in exploring these things (beyond the effort to distill the nature of Story Now gaming and produce systems that truly perpetuated it) was due to that late 80s/90s era of the Gamist agenda being slammed by a large strain of the TTRPG mainstream culture. It was almost a direct response to derogatory epithets by that culture such as "munchkins", "roll-playing not roleplaying" and that culture's indictment of the metagame-nature of classic, pawn-stance dungeon-crawling with disposable characters named Bob005 and truly neutral, challenge-based refereeing and metagaming players (Gygaxian Skilled Play). You were there during that time. I know you're very aware of that culture clash. It reminded me so, so much of the 4e edition wars.

I've drawn that parallel many times, yes. But, when I look at what GNS turned into, it looks like a perpetuation, more than a response. Role not Roll was prettymuch Storyteller vs D&D. Storyteller was the challenger, and it's proponents framed a debate that painted it as saintly, high-minded, elite, and the One True Way of the RPG, while denigrating D&D as neanderthal "ROLL playing," bereft of any intellectual value, and antithetical to True ROLEplaying.

At first, GNS seemed to want to reconcile that false dichotomy by expanding to three or four styles and asserting all were present, even necessary, and none a One True Way. But, the Big Model comes along and defines the only possible failings of an RPG to be 'incoherence' - the sin of mixing 'agendas' - and 'dysfunction' (which seems to fall heavily on one of the three GNS styles). Just looking through that glossary the agenda is obvious: There are Three True Ways - the Creative Agendas - one is defined as fraught with dysfunction, another may not even exist in actual play, and trying to combine either of them with the remaining one is 'incoherent.' Leaving One True Way.

Coincidentally, the one that corresponds to the ROLE playing of the Roll v Role 'debate.'


But, sure, there may be a few terms in there worth using. As for the GNS terms, I'll stick with the earlier, less antagonistic versions.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

That's the thing, then. Stakes, like story, naturally occur on their own. I don't need to think about them, or address them in any way.

They're worth thinking about. When the player makes a big wager, then you know they're heavily invested in whatever story element is involved. My character in our 5e campaign decided to take the books we recovered as his share of treasure. The other characters each got several 1000 gp, and my character has avowed uses for funds, but in this case he wanted to learn the spells included in these books, even though he can't use all of them yet. I don't know if the DM will put some pressure on the character via the agency of those books, but it would make sense.

Another example from this campaign, my character decided he was going to re-occupy the ruined castle (the one in Phandelver) after single-handedly killing the goblin king in a duel. However, we had to go deal with other stuff, and the DM sweetly planted the green dragon at the castle in our absence, knowing we would have to either respond to this new threat or I suppose change plans. Luckily we were able to dispose of the dragon by a clever strategem, but no doubt the castle will continue to be the focus of various machinations. Especially since I forewent the cash I could have used to hire some of my dwarvish cousins to help clean the place up and hold it.

We seem to be in agreement on this point, at least. The secret lieutenant shouldn't just be thrown in at the last minute as an excuse for the DM to invalidate the actions of the players. But the secret lieutenant, masquerading as a mysterious stranger at the inn, has been there the whole time. It would be a lousy DM who shuts down every attempt at investigating this suspicious character, and even worse if the DM later retcons the NPC into this role when the PCs kill the Big Bad and the DM wants the show to keep going anyway.

I think its OK if the DM starts attaching some more weight to this guy, if the players want to engage that story element. In that case perhaps it does turn out that the stranger is the lieutenant and has a chance to assume his fallen master's mantle. Maybe he has to accomplish something first. This could all be interesting, with the players racing to uncover him while he's working to pull off his big plot twist. But yes, we agree, it would just be poor form if the guy suddenly just popped into place as a replacement for the old big bad and made the PCs previous victory void of meaning.