The D&D Experience (or, All Roads lead to Rome)

[pemerton]

I am such a one.

As far as I'm concerned, if it isn't D+D it might as well not exist.

<snip>

I don't care about trends in RPG design, I care about the game I play and about what's being presented to the masses as D+D; and about the ever-widening gulf between the two.

And also - unless I've missed it - you don't post that 4e isn't an RPG. You don't project your preferences onto others. Quite the opposite - otherwise we could never have compared notes on running Night's Dark Terror!

What sometimes frustrates me is other posts - again, it would be rude to name names - who sometimes do seem to infer that, because a design doesn't seem to look like the sort of RPG they're familiar with, therefore it's not an RPG, or will spell the death of all serious RPGing.

 

[pemerton]

In the second case, the mechanics constrain the imagined game space, effectively becoming the physics of that fictional reality.

<snip>

2nd case: Come and Get It affects all creatures, 'cause that's what the rules say.

I wanted to follow up a bit on Hussar's post #427.

I think that to say, in a game like 4e, that the mechanics become the physics of the fictional reality is a little unfair - it's hard to find a non-tendentious analogy, but I'll try - at least some practitioners of formalist or non-representationalist styles of art might reject an attempt to characterise what they're doing as just some special variant on representationalism - perhaps the representation of certain abstract concepts. The artists have set out to repudiate representation, not to represent strange things in a strange way, and a description of what they're doing that already seems to introduce the judgment that they have failed might be one they reject.

Likewise, for those who see the mechanics as primarily operating at a metagame level, and setting constraints on permissible narration of what is happening in the fictional reality, it is a bit tendentious to say (in simulationist fashion) that their mechanics are the physics of that fictional reality. Because what those players tried to do is have a game where the physics of the ingame world are whatever they are, and the players have a duty to fit their narrations to those physics, but the players also have a duty to fit their narration within the parameters determined by the mechanics.

(Is there a mutually acceptable, non-tendentious way of describing differing play styles? I would like to think so, but it's certainly not a given. Anymore than we can take it for granted that there is some non-tendentious way of describing what it is that a modernist likes about modernism and what it is that a romantic likes about romanticism.)

Can the sort of RPG design I have tried to describe above cause problems if the two sets of constraints come into conflict? Of course. But two factors mitigate the practical consequences of this: (i) the causal constraints on any imagined fictional situation are normally pretty loose, allowing a lot of free narration to plug any gaps - for example, it is almost always feasible to narrate an unexpected gust of wind to explain a surprsing outcome of an attempt to jump, because in most cases the imgained fictional situation doesn't have its details specified to a degree of precision that would exclude wind gusts; (ii) if the action resolution and encounter building guidelines of the ruleset are well-integrated, then comparatively few situations will be ones where corner cases will arise (in 4e, for example, the game simply takes for granted that epic tier demigods will not be enaged in life or death situations involving ordinary orcs, mundane locks or 10' wide chasms).

As for Come and Get It, that power tells us nothing about the physics of the gameworld. What the power does is give the fighter player a 1x/encounter token that says "When you play this token, all the foes within 3 squares move adjacent to your PC. You and/or your GM are free to work out whatever story explains this." It's like a Fate Point or Hero Point or Luck Point that exists in many games.

Typically, when the polearm fighter in my game uses this power he chooses to narrate some story about his deft use of his polearm and/or the biting character of his insult of the gnoll warrior ancestors. When something tricker is required I'm happy to help him out with his story. But his repeated use of Come and Get It doesn't reflect on the physics of the gameworld. It's a metagame technique.

(EDIT: I don't know if this is quite what Hussar means by a metagame construct. I think it is, though. Where I think I differ from Hussar is this: while I agree with Hussar that spotting the difference, at the table, between a metagame heavy game and a simulationist game might be hard - the two games might look very similar - I nevertheless think that the difference in the purposes and self-conception of the players is a real one. And conversations like this - where, rather than playing, we try to bring to mind our purposes and our self-conceptions as RPGers and explain them to our fellows - make those differences in experience become all the more salient. This is what I was getting at upthread when I said that the move from metagame heavy encounter desing to metagame heavy action resolution might be one step too far for many ENworlders.)

(BONUS EDIT: If you stumble into a recitation of the "what a piece of work is man" soliloquy from Hamlet, it might sound the same whether it is part of a very sincere and purposeful performance of the play, or is instead the ironic culmination to a story (at least arguably) about an aspiring actor wasting his life, as in the movie Withnail and I. The fact that you can't tell, just from experiencing the recitation, which purpose it was serving, doesn't make it unimportant either to the performer, or to the other members of the audience, that it was one thing and not the other. In my view the same point, mutatis mutandis, applies to episodes of play in an RPG.)

 

[Beginning of the End]

So, you actually would put CR 16 and CR 1/2 encounters on a random encounter table in a EL 10 adventure?

I realize this is a tangent, but...

This used to happen all the time.

For example, D1 was designed for 9th-10th level characters. In 3E terms, the first twelve entries on the random encounter table breakdown like this:

- EL 8 to 9
- EL 8 or EL 12
- EL 5 to EL 11
- EL 5 to EL 11
- EL 3 or EL 1/2 to EL 2
- EL 8 to EL 9
- EL 8 to EL 9
- EL 13 or EL 1/2 to EL 2
- EL 10 to EL 12
- EL 4 or EL 1/2 to EL 2
- EL 6 to EL 10 or EL 1/2 to EL 2
- EL 8 to EL 11

The highest level encounters in the adventure look like they're hitting the EL 14-15 range.

Encounters used to have a much wider dynamic range. And most of the problems people ascribe to the 3rd Edition ruleset actually derive primarily from abandoning this dynamic encounter range and replacing it with My Precious Encounters design.

 

[Aberzanzorax]

And also - unless I've missed it - you don't post that 4e isn't an RPG. You don't project your preferences onto others. Quite the opposite - otherwise we could never have compared notes on running Night's Dark Terror!

What sometimes frustrates me is other posts - again, it would be rude to name names - who sometimes do seem to infer that, because a design doesn't seem to look like the sort of RPG they're familiar with, therefore it's not an RPG, or will spell the death of all serious RPGing.

Hold on here. Are people saying 4e isn't "an RPG"?

I mean, I've seen it "isn't D&D" and I've seen "it doesn't feel like D&D".

Do people actually claim it isn't an RPG?

 

[Nagol]

Hold on here. Are people saying 4e isn't "an RPG"?

I mean, I've seen it "isn't D&D" and I've seen "it doesn't feel like D&D".

Do people actually claim it isn't an RPG?

There were historical claims during 4e's release that it was just a tactical skirmish game and it had lost its RPG lustre.

I haven't seen any such in a long time though.

 

[Nagol]

As for fiction-first through metagame resolution, I find them easy to spot.

In fiction-first, the players and by extension the PCs, rely on what they believe plausible and likely to happen based the current environment and previous experience with the described game reality and campaign history.

In mechanical resolution, the players rely on the rule description and the PCs effects manifest in the specified way inside the world.

In metagame resolution, the players rely on the rule description and have to come up with a narrative manifestation inside the game world that matches that effect.

Let's look at Lightning Bolt to see the difference

In fiction first (1e), a Lightning Bolt bounced when it couldn't penetrate a barrier, turned into a globe of destructive energy underwater, and generally interacted with the game world as the creator's/DM's believed electricity would including suggestions to reduce saving throws if the party is standing in water, etc. The Lightning bolt is a manifestation in the world as is affected by the world as much as it affects the world.

In mechanical play (3e), a Lightning Bolt is a line of damage that stops at a barrier, and is unaffected by water or generally any other effect not specific to affecting the spell. The Lightning Bolt is a manifestation in the world but not really affected by the world.

In a more narrative game, a player uses a power that causes damage to a fixed area in a line extending from the PC. The player decides the PC shot a lightning bolt from his hand into the enemy. Later, the same player activates a power that stuns all creatures in a circle around his PC. Since he's standing knee deep water at the time, the player narrates using the same lightning bolt to shock everyone in the water. The lightning bolt has become a special effect for powers activated by the player rather than being a resource of the character.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I think that to say, in a game like 4e, that the mechanics become the physics of the fictional reality is a little unfair

It isn't a criticism.

As physics are a model for our expectations in the real world, based on past observation, so the mechanics form our basis for expectations in the fictional world. I've been on record before that, where mechanics are consistently used, they may be treated as the physics of the game world. I hold this true for any edition.

The only time that this doesn't hold true is when the mechanics are not consistently used, either because the players and/or GM fail to understand the mechanics, they fudge, or they grant authority to override the mechanics in order to more closely simulate some other "physics".

at least some practitioners of formalist or non-representationalist styles of art might reject an attempt to characterise what they're doing as just some special variant on representationalism - perhaps the representation of certain abstract concepts.

Hey, that's cool. Really.

But anyone doing so already sees the difference, and my post was an attempt to help someone who does not see the difference to see it. One can go on and on about all of the possible flavours of ice cream, but if someone thinks it is all vanilla, it is sometimes better to get them to grok one exception before trying to pile on all those others.



So, I was just offering a way to look at things which might make the difference transparent. It isn't the only way. I thought it might be the easiest.

I think that what Hussar is calling "metagame constructs" are mechanics where the mechanic is applied, and then the narrative is then shaped to fit. IOW, the same thing (or closely akin to) what I am calling "rules-first" mechanics. The converse would be where the narrative is applied, and then the mechanic is chosen which best fits the narrative, or no mechanic is used if the players/GM don't deem it necessary.



RC


EDIT: Really good post, Nagol.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Hold on here. Are people saying 4e isn't "an RPG"?

I mean, I've seen it "isn't D&D" and I've seen "it doesn't feel like D&D".

Do people actually claim it isn't an RPG?

I wouldn't make that claim, but I would make the claim that, if you remove enough "gamist" features (in the Forge sense, via pemerton's post) that the term "game" ceases to apply in the way it is typically used in the term "role-playing game".

IMHO, not all entertainments are games. A game has a win condition (or, in the case of an rpgs, a series of subjective and/or mutable win conditions related to the scenario or session, and/or the long-term goals of the PCs), elements of player skill (i.e., the choices of players must affect the outcome), and the outcome of the win condition must not be known aforehand (which, IMHO, is also necessary for there to be elements of player skill).

I'll freely grant that this is not the only possible definition of game. It is, however, what I mean by the "game" in rpg. And 4e does qualify.

Whether/how the "meta-game constructs"/"rules-first elements" interfere with role assumption is another question, but I believe that 4e easily passes the test here as well.

There are things people call "games", though, that I would not. Snakes & Ladders springs swiftly to mind. Give each player 2+ tokens, and allow them to determine which to move on each roll, and S&L becomes a game (as I am using the term). With a single token, there is no element of player skill.

(Many "games" designed for small children are like this -- they teach the child how to follow the rules, while making it equally likely that the child, who is presumably less skilled than his/her parents and/or older sibs, has an equal chance of winning, because the "players" contribute no meaningful decisions to the outcome.

This is useful when teaching good sportsmanship, and is far less frustrating for the child. However, IMHO and IME, for most adults, meaningful contribution to the outcome is a mandatory feature for actual games. Most children IME rapidly outgrow Snakes & Ladders.

There is an interesting aside to be made about entertainments like Snakes & Ladders and some forms of gambling, though, such as playing slot machines.)

Likewise, some things that might look on the surface as if they have no win conditions, actually do. It is possible to both win or lose at Spin the Bottle. A game might have a mutable win condition of "sustain this narrative thread as long as possible", where the length that the narrative thread is sustained determines the degree of success (and the satisfaction of the players).

Anyway, all IMHO. YMMV.

People have made that claim. I have defended their right to judge whether or not something is a game based on its perceived merits (rather than what is on the tin). This may be what pemerton is referring to.


RC

 

[NoWayJose]

In fiction first (1e), a Lightning Bolt bounced when it couldn't penetrate a barrier, turned into a globe of destructive energy underwater, and generally interacted with the game world as the creator's/DM's believed electricity would including suggestions to reduce saving throws if the party is standing in water, etc. The Lightning bolt is a manifestation in the world as is affected by the world as much as it affects the world.

In mechanical play (3e), a Lightning Bolt is a line of damage that stops at a barrier, and is unaffected by water or generally any other effect not specific to affecting the spell. The Lightning Bolt is a manifestation in the world but not really affected by the world.

In a more narrative game, a player uses a power that causes damage to a fixed area in a line extending from the PC. The player decides the PC shot a lightning bolt from his hand into the enemy. Later, the same player activates a power that stuns all creatures in a circle around his PC. Since he's standing knee deep water at the time, the player narrates using the same lightning bolt to shock everyone in the water. The lightning bolt has become a special effect for powers activated by the player rather than being a resource of the character.

Not sure that's a fair or accurate example.

In real life, lightning bolts don't bounce. They move through conductive materials. Then again, in real life, lightning bolts don't appear like magic from an outstretched hand. Does a magical lightning bolt act exactly like a real-life natural lightning?

Re-doing your example:
1) Fiction first: Let's design a new spell that is fun and cool for wizards! OK, what should it be? How about a lightning spell? OK, cool, should that be like Dark Jedi lightning, or a lightning blast? And what happens when it hits water or a wall? Are we trying to simulate real-life or just a basic suspension of disbelief? Hey, are there any other lightning spells already, because it would be inconsistent if magical lightning spread through water in one spell but not with another. Then, what spell level is this? Does it work with game balance?

2) Mechanics first: Let's design a new Controller class! Cool, so obviously, we need a damage + push spell. OK, um, how about Lightning Ram -- a blast of lightning pushes you 3 squares. So, um, do we have to worry about the lightning ram reflecting off walls and water? Do we have to worry about consistency with other lightning spells? Silly, of course not! We decided we need a Controller because the supplement needs more controllers. Controllers need a damage + push spell for this level slot. The fluff is irrelevant, let the DM and players figure it out. We'll tell them something like 'The game is yours, YOU decide if it's lightning ram or football ram or whatever, use your imagination!'

Fiction first --> what can we add to make the narrative more fun and fantastic, then see how it fits the rules and game balance.

Mechanics first --> what can we add to game mechanics and tactics, then let the people reverse-engineer the fluff and narrative.

 

[Hussar]

NowayJose - my response to all that, and I largely agree, is that the end result is largely indistinguishable. In both cases, you wind up with some sort of ability that shoots lightning and has specific in-game results that are largely dictated by the mechanics.

While the route might be different, what you end up with is generally pretty close. Yes, a square fireball is wonky - but, in play it's largely indistinguishable from a round (or pixelated) fireball since it's extremely rare that round or square will actually matter one whit. You cast fireball, you blow up a group of baddies - and it will be a very blue moon event that being round or square actually matters.

Granted it mattered a lot more when you had blowback on fireballs.

I think that what Hussar is calling "metagame constructs" are mechanics where the mechanic is applied, and then the narrative is then shaped to fit. IOW, the same thing (or closely akin to) what I am calling "rules-first" mechanics. The converse would be where the narrative is applied, and then the mechanic is chosen which best fits the narrative, or no mechanic is used if the players/GM don't deem it necessary.

I would largely agree with that. The question I would ask though, is that if an event does not require any mechanics to resolve, (unless you're outright free forming), then the outcome of that event is predetermined. Trying to bluff the guard in 1e was an exercise in free-form gaming, fair enough. But, we've already struck that off the table though. I've been told that free form isn't the goal. BryonD clearly stated that he likes mechanics, but, he wants the mechanics to be informed by the narrative.

My point is that its circular. When you invoke mechanics to resolve an event, that event cannot be narrated without the mechanics, thus the narrative is largely shaped by the mechanics. Which comes first? IMO, who cares. The end result is largely the same - do you move slower in plate mail than in chain mail because it makes narrative sense to do so, or because there should be a mechanical trade off for having a higher AC?

IMO, the question is largely irrelavent - the point is that you arrive at the same end destination.

Getting away from hypotheticals for a second. Here's a situation from the session we played today. Now, I was a player, not the DM. In the scenario, we were defending a ruined keep from a large invading force. The large force had a bullette ridden by a hobgoblin that battered down the gate. Ok, no problem so far.

Once they entered the gate, we, the PC's, smoked the hobgoblin rider quite quickly. My eladrin warlord's turn came up. Now, my character is narrated as being a knightly sort, horse, lance, the whole bit. So, I fey step from the back of my horse to the back of the now riderless bullette in an attempt to take control of it.

Short conversation with the DM later and we decide that Athletics is the applicable skill (although Nature certainly was a contender here). I make my roll and the DM tells me that I can control where the bullette goes, but, that's about it. I can't order it to attack my enemies nor not attack my allies.

Now, here's my question to all of you. How would this be resolved in an earlier edition and what are the differences in how that would be resolved? After all, it's been repeatedly stated that 4e is completely different from any other edition, so, it stands to reason that this sequence should be resolved in completely different ways from what came before. So, how would taking control of the bullette be resolved in pre-4e D&D?