The Call of the World Builder

[Hussar]

I've been reading the responses to the Monster Manual previews and something strikes me. People are complaining quite a lot that various monsters lack "interesting abilities" or "ways to do X" or "things to do outside of combat". And it reminds me strongly of the complaints about the CR of various demon and devil lords in the Fiendish Codex books and the BOVD.

The complaint generally went, "How can X possibly be a demon lord when he's only CR 23. A big balor is bigger than that. How can X keep his title. He should be CR 50!"

And, from a world building POV, they are entirely right. 100% true. A CR 23 Demogorgon is laughable. He's Balor chow.

But, that point of view entirely ignores one salient point - monster exist to be fought and defeated. A CR 50 Demogorgon will never, ever see play at 99.9% of game tables. You may as well just declare him unkillable and not bother with any stats at all.

And, even in the Savage Tide AP, they recognize this. Dragon gives us a CR 33 Demogorgon, massively powerful. Then the STAP gives us several hoops to jump through which knock him down to about CR 23. Right where he started from.

Why? Because almost no one plays Epic games to that high of a level. The vast majority of games out there tap out at around 20th at best. So, giving us a CR 33 Demogorgon, while fitting from a world building POV, is pretty much a waste of page count from the POV of the game.

4e seems to be countering this attitude. They are starting with the effect that you want to get and then working backward. You want game elements to be viable to be used right out of the box. Anything beyond that is handed to the DM to do.

And, no, it's not simply Make Up. That's terrible rules. True. It's, "Ok, here's the baseline, if you want to move beyond that baseline, here are several ways you can do so - Templates, advancing monsters, rituals, etc.

But, what really surprises me is that the world builders here are annoyed about this. This really does shock me. Why? Why be annoyed about this?

Think about it for a moment. In 3e, monster abilities were extremely well defined. Very carefully constructed. But, because they were defined so clearly, your game world became defined by the mechanics of the game. If a given element always works in a particular way, your game world has to reflect that. So, if you had an idea that wasn't really covered by the mechanics, you had to bend and twist the mechanics to fit, or you had to change your idea. Typically changing your idea was easier.

Heck, Eberron revels in this. A campaign setting designed from the ground up based on 3e mechanics. Think about that for a second. That means that the mechanics are so prevalent, so much in the foreground, that you can design a whole world based on them.

4e appears to be far more permissive. In 4e, it appears that you start with the effect that you want to achieve, and then use the tools they give you to explain that effect. A succubus rules a kingdom from the sidelines? Ritual power. A phane has a bunch of "evil twins"? NPC templates.

In other words, it appears that your world building will actually be far less constrained by the mechanics than it was in 3e. It has to be since the 4e mechanics are less concretely defined.

So, why are all the world builder's here pissed off?

 

[WhatGravitas]

So, why are all the world builder's here pissed off?

I guess because some of them are ingrained in the 3E mindset and try to use the game material as building blocks to build their world.

Furthermore, there are different kinds of world builders - some like to build a world out of existing stuff (simulating what kind of world the rules imply), others like to build a world from scratch, adapting the rules to fit the world (changing/adapting the rules to the world).

The former has a problem, the latter is delighted.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Rex Blunder]

I don't know if ALL the world builders are annoyed. There are definitely a vocal minority who tend to dominate threads. I'm a "simulationist" - heck, I've mapped out ocean currents. But I recognize that d&d rules are a bad model for reality, and, when the PCs are offstage, the world tends to proceed in what I think is a realistic manner, without will saves, hit points, and profession checks. D&D rules are for arbitrating what happens when the PCs are ON stage.

 

[AntiStateQuixote]

I guess because some of them are ingrained in the 3E mindset and try to use the game material as building blocks to build their world.

Furthermore, there are different kinds of world builders - some like to build a world out of existing stuff (simulating what kind of world the rules imply), others like to build a world from scratch, adapting the rules to fit the world (changing/adapting the rules to the world).

The former has a problem, the latter is delighted.

Cheers, LT.

I don't see how even the former has a problem. The bit of fluff and cosmology available in Worlds and Monsters has me super hyped for D&D unlike anything any many years. While we haven't seen detailed rules for much of anything, I'm already hard at work on a campaign that I think will suit the Points of Light implied setting rather well. Whatever they come up with for "downtime" rules will just be icing on the cake.

OK, maybe you're right. Someone who wants hard and fast rules for orc reproductive rates and other unnecessary details is probably SOL.

 

[Crothian]

I build worlds, and this is great news about the game. It's what I did in 3e, use the stats they gave as a base line and advance and add templates as needed. It's great that that aspect is going to be a larger part of the game. I use what the provide but I don't limit myself to using it the way they intended.

 

[WhatGravitas]

I don't see how even the former has a problem. The bit of fluff and cosmology available in Worlds and Monsters has me super hyped for D&D unlike anything any many years.

Which is different from build a world from what the rules imply.

I'm not talking about implied flavour, I'm talking about the consequences of the rules themselves. And if only the combat rules are given (or largely), then it's hard to form a world around that.

Especially, because we have no clue how rituals will look or work like.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Rechan]

Furthermore, there are different kinds of world builders - some like to build a world out of existing stuff (simulating what kind of world the rules imply), others like to build a world from scratch, adapting the rules to fit the world (changing/adapting the rules to the world).

Not to turn this into a 'simulationist vs gamist' argument, but:

I recently heard a really good analogy, or explanation. There are three kinds of game systems, from that perspective.

Realism
Verisimilitude
Authenticity.

I'll use an example: Let's say you are playing an RPG and one of the characters is Batman. A low-life thug comes around the corner and shoots at Batman.

In a Realism based game, that thug has a real high chance of killing Batman. This is the real world, where dodging bullets just doesn't happen. Or at least, wounding him badly. Because he's got a gun, and those things are lethal.

In a Verisimilitude game, Batman has a good chance of dodging the bullet, because the thug is low level, he's higher, has a better defense, and has some abilities, etc etc.

In an Authentic game, the thug cannot hit Batman becaus Batman is the goddamn Batman; he's just too good for that. This is more the feel of the genre, where mooks are mooks, and because Batman is the "Super Smart Vigilante Badass", he just has plot armor against Joe Triggerhappy.

I think the people who have a problem are the ones looking at things from the Realism view.

 

[Spatula]

Heck, Eberron revels in this. A campaign setting designed from the ground up based on 3e mechanics. Think about that for a second. That means that the mechanics are so prevalent, so much in the foreground, that you can design a whole world based on them.

Eberron isn't based on 3e mechanics any more than any other setting is. I know people like to say that, but Eberron is instead designed around the presence of reliable magic, which D&D has always had but settings haven't always been consistant in applying. The commonplace magic you see in Eberron is not derived from 3e mechanics; there's nothing in 3e that leads to warforged, dragonmarks, dragonshards, the lightning rail, ships powered by elementals, mile-high towers, and so on.

So, if you had an idea that wasn't really covered by the mechanics, you had to bend and twist the mechanics to fit, or you had to change your idea. Typically changing your idea was easier.

Or you make use of your idea in the existing framework. Like Eberron does with warforged, dragonmarks, dragonshards, the lightning rail, ships powered by elementals, mile-high towers, and so on. Which is how things will also work in 4e - nothing has changed at all, in fact. If you have an idea that's not covered by the rules, you need to create new rules to handle it.

 

[humble minion]

In other words, it appears that your world building will actually be far less constrained by the mechanics than it was in 3e. It has to be since the 4e mechanics are less concretely defined.

So, why are all the world builder's here pissed off?

Because it shoves the game towards a single style of play. The walk-up-to-monster-and-beat-on-monster style. Not that beating on monsters is a bad thing, but I'm worried that other styles my be difficult or impossible to play under the new ruleset.

World-builders (of which I count myself one, unashamedly) want setting stuff to make sense because it's good for the game. It gives a (largely) known set of baseline rules to work with, so that if that PC wizard with a zillion ranks in Bluff and Knowledge(planes) or equivalent wants to, for example, take down Demogorgon by turning his balor minions against him through cunning strategy and subtle magical control rather that by simply walking up to ol' two-heads and throwing lightning at him, the world is built robustly enough for that to be possible (extremely difficult certainly, but possible!). And further, a smart player will be able to learn enough of the rules of the setting (through Knowledge skills etc) to see the fault lines and come up with this sort of plan him/herself. Complex and/or sneaky plans are difficult to come up with unless the mechanism/politics of the setting is known in sufficient detail. WotC doesn't, from what we've seen so far, seem to think that sneakiness (beyond Stealth rolls) and lateral strategic thinking is fun, and seems to be orienting the game much more towards combat. Tactical flexibility 4e seems to have in spades - strategic flexibility I'm not so sure about.

WotC is not barring the possibility of course, but they're avoiding the issue by putting the responsibility for making it work squarely on the shoulders of the GM, and I'm uneasy about that. They've basically said "here it is, it works, trust us" and wandered whistling off before anyone can ask "Why/what/how?" From what incomplete preview material we've seen so far, I'm worried that WotC only bothered to build enough of the world to beat up, but not enough to manipulate.

Basically if the player wants to implement a complex plan of that type, the GM is going to have to make up all these rituals and templates you refer to on the fly, and run the real risk (since GMs are not all game designers, regardless of our pretensions! ) of introducing something very broken into the system. A ritual is a ritual after all, and if the PCs get the bright idea of breaking into Demogorgon's tower and copying The Rite Of Improvised GM Handwavingness To Enforce Balor Loyalty down, then the campaign (and universe) is in trouble. Sure you can say "sorry, this ritual can only be performed by a 2-headed evil outsider whose name starts with D", but that's a pretty nasty railroad...

 

[MichaelSomething]

WotC is not barring the possibility of course, but they're avoiding the issue by putting the responsibility for making it work squarely on the shoulders of the GM, and I'm uneasy about that. They've basically said "here it is, it works, trust us" and wandered whistling off before anyone can ask "Why/what/how?" From what incomplete preview material we've seen so far, I'm worried that WotC only bothered to build enough of the world to beat up, but not enough to manipulate.

If WOTC won't sell you the fluff, I'm sure someone else will. In fact, you'll be able to buy the fluff that best suites your taste.