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The Best Thing from 4E
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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6566324" data-attributes="member: 82106"><p>See, I wouldn't call THAT a 'detail'. Its not something that 4e provided for out of the box, but there are rules for BEING blind. Obviously the narrative implications are beyond pretty much any general RPG rules, though I could imagine something very specific (IE a class modeling a cult of blind oracles or something like that, pretty specific but not too far-fetched). Anyway, its not really a detail. Personally, using 4e or its ilk, I would see this kind of thing as a collaboration between the DM and the player, not something imposed by pure chance, though it could start out with a chance circumstance.</p><p></p><p>I just cannot comment on your system, its unknown to me. Classic skill systems don't work that way. Some games have fairly extensive lists of skills and circumstances, usually within areas thematically linked to the setting or game system/genre. Most provide a smattering of 'DCs' for the most commonly encountered situations and that's it. However, 4e in particular provides a pretty firm foundation for setting other DCs. Its quite possible to play 4e 'by the book' (especially the RC) and have practically every DC come down to a known number with a variance basically between moderate and hard being the uncertainty factor (not small, but manageable). MOST DCs will be known pretty much exactly.</p><p></p><p></p><p>I look at it this way:</p><p></p><p>4e Skills: See above, they're as nailed down as most anything gets in RPGs IME. The fact that 4e usually has clearly ONE specific skill with fairly well-documented effects for any given check situation makes it more deterministic than many systems. It is definitely more so than 3e in any of its standard forms where just deciding which skill applies is a highly doubtful operation in many cases.</p><p></p><p>Skill Challenges: Two things. First no other D&D-like system has them at all (well, SWSE if you count that, no doubt someone will point out another) but the point is SCs should be compared with what? Entropy! They're INFINITY% more empowering because the alternative is random die rolls until the DM feels happy declaring success or failure. As others have pointed out, at least they provide a defined endpoint at which the DM has to get off the pot and declare something has happened.</p><p></p><p>'Subjective' DCs: Again, nobody has a DC for everything, and 4e's DCs are no more or less subjective than those of any other system. They should be relatively consistent as well, though that isn't really assured.</p><p></p><p>Stunts: Again, 4e's alternative here is entropy! 3e, 2e, 1e, every other flavor of D&D of which I'm familiar has NOTHING beyond possibly a suggestion that the DM use skills and make up some DCs and usually some of the example DCs for the skill system will be something you eyeball (Acrobatics for example in 3e lists some DCs that you'd probably base off of). 4e at least says "here's what the DCs should be for something you think is challenging to a level X PC, and here's how much damage should result when its an attack". Again, this is so many light years beyond most any other RPG that it HAS to be pretty empowering by comparison.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Yeah, obviously I just cannot possibly comment on this except to say that it would certainly be IMHO unworkable for a commercial game. Such a massive compendium of material has, in my mind, two effects. First it crushes the GM creatively in a vice of pre-imagined ways of doing things. This is immaterial of course for you because these are YOUR ways that work in your campaign to achieve your goals. I wouldn't find such a work useful simply because I don't want to have you telling me how the economics of a kingdom run, and I might well not want to do it in whatever way you have detailed. Secondly how do you even find something in that mass? I wouldn't use it just from sheer awkwardness of trying to sort through and decide what section of that list a given situation in the game was applicable to and just FIND the rules. Yes, you can index and cross-index, and etc, but how do I even know what terminology you used for something? In a fairly small work of this sort, like the 3e skill list for example its not TOO hard to do that, but I doubt anyone but you could ever make it workable. It would certainly require a very large investment of hours of reading and many years of play to become facile with such a system. </p><p></p><p>SO, in terms of a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of RPGs that are likely to be encountered out there in the world I don't think the 'massive list of everything possible' really has a lot of weight. </p><p></p><p>Honestly, I THINK I would find it as disempowering as it was empowering in the sense that if everything I can ever think of to do is already spelled out in there, with the implication that all the associated agenda and setting assumptions and etc is attached then I'm going to feel like I only have this one recipe to do the thing I want. Its exactly what people complained about with 4e powers, that having this hard fast list of powers that was what you could do made the game too rigid. The saving grace of 4e, what made it all work, was the high quality of support for going outside those bounds, and the narrowness of the arena in which powers applied (combat pretty much).</p><p></p><p></p><p>Well, I didn't mean to imply anything about anyone's group. I only mentioned mine because it reflects on my experience as a GM. That is to say I have very collaborative and experienced players that I am close with and thus we can pretty much do anything with our game. I could unleash an unstoppable disaster in my campaign that wiped out all the PCs and the whole world without even a hope of averting it, tell them to roll up new characters, and they'd just be like "Oh, that's interesting, OK, where are you going with this!?" Yours may well be the same, it is often so with such groups. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Yeah, I just don't have a problem with the level of clarity that 4e has. We all know how each other think. They can pretty much set their own DCs.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 6566324, member: 82106"] See, I wouldn't call THAT a 'detail'. Its not something that 4e provided for out of the box, but there are rules for BEING blind. Obviously the narrative implications are beyond pretty much any general RPG rules, though I could imagine something very specific (IE a class modeling a cult of blind oracles or something like that, pretty specific but not too far-fetched). Anyway, its not really a detail. Personally, using 4e or its ilk, I would see this kind of thing as a collaboration between the DM and the player, not something imposed by pure chance, though it could start out with a chance circumstance. I just cannot comment on your system, its unknown to me. Classic skill systems don't work that way. Some games have fairly extensive lists of skills and circumstances, usually within areas thematically linked to the setting or game system/genre. Most provide a smattering of 'DCs' for the most commonly encountered situations and that's it. However, 4e in particular provides a pretty firm foundation for setting other DCs. Its quite possible to play 4e 'by the book' (especially the RC) and have practically every DC come down to a known number with a variance basically between moderate and hard being the uncertainty factor (not small, but manageable). MOST DCs will be known pretty much exactly. I look at it this way: 4e Skills: See above, they're as nailed down as most anything gets in RPGs IME. The fact that 4e usually has clearly ONE specific skill with fairly well-documented effects for any given check situation makes it more deterministic than many systems. It is definitely more so than 3e in any of its standard forms where just deciding which skill applies is a highly doubtful operation in many cases. Skill Challenges: Two things. First no other D&D-like system has them at all (well, SWSE if you count that, no doubt someone will point out another) but the point is SCs should be compared with what? Entropy! They're INFINITY% more empowering because the alternative is random die rolls until the DM feels happy declaring success or failure. As others have pointed out, at least they provide a defined endpoint at which the DM has to get off the pot and declare something has happened. 'Subjective' DCs: Again, nobody has a DC for everything, and 4e's DCs are no more or less subjective than those of any other system. They should be relatively consistent as well, though that isn't really assured. Stunts: Again, 4e's alternative here is entropy! 3e, 2e, 1e, every other flavor of D&D of which I'm familiar has NOTHING beyond possibly a suggestion that the DM use skills and make up some DCs and usually some of the example DCs for the skill system will be something you eyeball (Acrobatics for example in 3e lists some DCs that you'd probably base off of). 4e at least says "here's what the DCs should be for something you think is challenging to a level X PC, and here's how much damage should result when its an attack". Again, this is so many light years beyond most any other RPG that it HAS to be pretty empowering by comparison. Yeah, obviously I just cannot possibly comment on this except to say that it would certainly be IMHO unworkable for a commercial game. Such a massive compendium of material has, in my mind, two effects. First it crushes the GM creatively in a vice of pre-imagined ways of doing things. This is immaterial of course for you because these are YOUR ways that work in your campaign to achieve your goals. I wouldn't find such a work useful simply because I don't want to have you telling me how the economics of a kingdom run, and I might well not want to do it in whatever way you have detailed. Secondly how do you even find something in that mass? I wouldn't use it just from sheer awkwardness of trying to sort through and decide what section of that list a given situation in the game was applicable to and just FIND the rules. Yes, you can index and cross-index, and etc, but how do I even know what terminology you used for something? In a fairly small work of this sort, like the 3e skill list for example its not TOO hard to do that, but I doubt anyone but you could ever make it workable. It would certainly require a very large investment of hours of reading and many years of play to become facile with such a system. SO, in terms of a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of RPGs that are likely to be encountered out there in the world I don't think the 'massive list of everything possible' really has a lot of weight. Honestly, I THINK I would find it as disempowering as it was empowering in the sense that if everything I can ever think of to do is already spelled out in there, with the implication that all the associated agenda and setting assumptions and etc is attached then I'm going to feel like I only have this one recipe to do the thing I want. Its exactly what people complained about with 4e powers, that having this hard fast list of powers that was what you could do made the game too rigid. The saving grace of 4e, what made it all work, was the high quality of support for going outside those bounds, and the narrowness of the arena in which powers applied (combat pretty much). Well, I didn't mean to imply anything about anyone's group. I only mentioned mine because it reflects on my experience as a GM. That is to say I have very collaborative and experienced players that I am close with and thus we can pretty much do anything with our game. I could unleash an unstoppable disaster in my campaign that wiped out all the PCs and the whole world without even a hope of averting it, tell them to roll up new characters, and they'd just be like "Oh, that's interesting, OK, where are you going with this!?" Yours may well be the same, it is often so with such groups. Yeah, I just don't have a problem with the level of clarity that 4e has. We all know how each other think. They can pretty much set their own DCs. [/QUOTE]
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