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

[pemerton]

I guess some folks would rather talk about fiction-first and rules-first and gamist and a lot of other semantic gobbledygook instead of actually finding common ground. Why? I have no idea

In my case, because I hope that by explaining how I play the game will help others see that even though I'm not playing quite like them, I'm still RPGing and not just playing a skirmish game, or Monopoly with a bit of irrelevant characterisation, or . . .

Unfortunately, those on the "skeptics" side of the fence aren't willing to share their experiences.

I like to use actual play examples in my posts whenever I can. And I have two recent actual play threads (here and here) that I'd love you to go and resurrect - comment on my experiences or share some of your own! A lot of what I know about running my game I've learned from actual play posts on these boards (I'll call out LostSoul for special mention, but he's by no means the only one).

 

[Nagol]

<snip>

As for the consummable, I may retract it. I wasn't reaching for HP in the consummable sense as much trying to exclude wound track, death spiral type systems from consideration and the body/fatigue systems. What I am reaching for is a good statement of abstraction in combat resolution. The more crunchy, simulation bits you add to combat (wound penalties, hit location rules, armor as damage reduction, etc.) the further you move out of the core.

Let me ask this, Is there a difference between a significantly house ruled D&D game and a fantasy clone for purposes of this discussion?

There has to be a limit on house-ruling as I could turn D&D into rummoli with enough house rules. A fantasy clone, especailly one specifically constructed as such, can be incredibly close to D&D -- the only difference is a bit of trade dress.

 

[Nagol]

Is this really true of 3E?

I think so. Granted, late 3.5e had archtypes separated by a knife's edge and PCs could be more like mutts than pure-breds.. I think it's less true of late 2e after Skills and Powers, but that was optional.

 

[Nagol]

I agree that the explanations are poor. But I put this down to the sorts of weaknesses in RPG rules-writing that Ron Edwards has been talking about for some time now.

Your point about lack of player inducements is more interesting. I see 4e character building as being permeated with flavour that is more than just colour, because it has implications for the play of the PC and the thematic consequences of the game. And for me, this is where the player incorporates narrative hooks. The DMG builds on this with it's discussion of player-designed quests. I agree it is all a bit understated. But I don't think it's unintended. Worlds and Monsters, for example, makes it clear that the design team was looking at all this flavour stuff with a very keen eye on the contribution that it makes to play. (The first time, I think, that D&D world design has been approached in this sort of way, as opposed to a "what would a cool fantasy world look like?" sort of way.)

I certainly agree it can read this way, especially at first blush, and this is strongly reinforced by the published modules (but not by supplements like Underdark or The Plane Above).

I'm personally not very interested in this sort of play - it fits my description upthread of being degenerate dice rolling play where the PCs add a bit of characterisation and a bit of colour and not much else. I personally had enough of this in 2nd ed.

I look at the two preview books as a statement of ambition, similar to the hype released prior to a MMORPG, if you'll excuse the analogy.

The hype offers a glimpse as to what the developers want to do. The game offers what the developers were able to do. Often there is a wide gulf.

I never hold developers accountable for where the actuality fails to live up to their initial vison, but judge the game separate from it.

Although character design decisions can offer a small glimpse into player preference and a potential glimpse into character background, I think it'd be tough to build a lot of world hooks around it.

If a player chooses something that lets his character kill orcs more easily, does that mean he wants to fight more orcs or that he wants fights with orc over more quickly so he can get to someting interesting? Or is his choice just the best choice of the limited options available based on player expectation of campaign content and the player is completely ambivalent to orcs? Does it mean the character fears orcs or that he has encountered them in the past and developed techniques as he overcame them? Perhaps the character actually likes orcs and his study and insight gives him an edge? Perhaps the training was the only one avaialble to the PC and he has it because that's what he was taught and he is ambivalent to orcs.

The character design is too mechanical to pin much in the way of motivation - either for the character or the player. Contrast this with say Pendragon where the character has a family history, the virtue/vice character traits and passions that inflame his ability or Hero Games where the character has a set of Perks and Disadvantages that describe the character's personality and place in the world.

 

[Nagol]

If you're thinking of the various adventure modules written for play by a solo character, those still required a DM. If you're thinking of the choose-your-own-adventure paperbacks, to me those aren't D+D.

Lan-"you kill the Hobgoblins. Turn to page 10."-efan

Thanks. It saved me digging them out. For some reason I thought the "challenge of" series was a solo like the Tunnel and Trolls solo adventures i.e. choose-your-own adventures.

 

[Raven Crowking]

What about those few solo adventures issued by TSR?

As Lanefan said. No DM's role, and I do not agree it is D&D.

[MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION]: This might cause some squawking, but I am comfortable with the notion that alternate rules that replace core D&D pieces rather than adding to them, even when they come from the publisher, moves the game out of the core experience.

I would agree.

A class based system
A system which presumes the presence of a DM (although it doesn't necessarily require it as evinced by solo modules.)

Again, for me, no DM, no D&D.

But why is it arbitrary? It's not arbitrary that a 1st level AD&D mage has only 1 sleep spell per day. That's a part of the game balance (and then we tell a story about the ingame capacity of the mage's brain).

Dishing out 3 jump cards is the same.

No.

The rules for any magical system are modelling a fantasy, and therefore can be devised however you like. The rules for modelling real-world physical systems should model real-world physical systems at least to some playable degree. Limitations on how many times you can jump, or swing a sword, are arbitrary in ways that limitations on magic (which brings no real world expectations) are not.

Lan-"you kill the Hobgoblins. Turn to page 10."-efan

Thanks for being such a good sport when I was stealing your sig yesterday.

It was fun.



RC

 

[NoWayJose]

But why is it arbitrary? It's not arbitrary that a 1st level AD&D mage has only 1 sleep spell per day. That's a part of the game balance (and then we tell a story about the ingame capacity of the mage's brain).

Although I have my own POV (which I've kept to myself), I don't think I argued about the arbitrariness of the mechanics. I believe all my posts on this thread referred to jumping 3 x day as being arbitrary in-game/fictionally/narratively.

By default, it would have been arbitrary that a mage has only 1 sleep spell per day. However, early D&D created the in-game/fictional/narrative Vancian system to mesh with the mechanical rules. Not everyone accepts the Vancian system mechanically, but I think everyone accepts the Vancian system fictionally, it's such a common fantasy D&D trope.

4E is too lazy/uncaring to do the same for many new 4E mechanics, particularily those that tend to clash with versimilitude, leaving the narrative burden almost entirely on the players and DM.

Dishing out 3 jump cards is the same. It's just that instead of telling the ingame story at the start, as a story about the capacity of the PC's leg muscles, we instead tell the story each time the possibility to jump a chasm comes up during play.

With all due respect, how about you attend a gym class in real-life. When the gym instructor asks you to jump a 4th time, you tell him "Sorry, I can only jump 3 times a day".

Well, you might get such a narration - for example, if the player thinks that (for whatever reason) it is better to fall down the chasm then stay on one side of it (maybe a Balor is coming!). Or maybe the player knows (or hopes) that another player's PC will do something like cast a feather fall spell.

What do these oddball scenarios have to do with the unlikelihood of players commonly attempting to roleplay a a 4th jump attempt narratively when they only have 3 jump cards mechanically?

In game, he's not doomed to failure. It's just that we, the real world players, know what the outcome will be. It's as if the GM has an "unluck" card that s/he's obliged to play if the player's PC tries to jump (sort of the opposite of a "fate" card that - in some games at least - a player can play to make his/her PC's attempt an automatic success).

If you have 3 jump cards mechanically, you cannot successfully jump a 4th time, period. Narratively and mechanically, you ARE doomed to failure. Yes, the player "know what the outcome will be" and that is failure.

Well, I've just given some examples of how it might play out. I don't see why it's any more half-baked than the story AD&D tells about the size of a young wizard's brain.

With all due respect, these examples don't work for me... at all... whatsoever. Spell runes fading from a spellbook... I dig it. The jumping stuff is inconsistent and incoherent.

I don't think anyone disputes that 4e has more mechanics that require the narrative explanation to be introduced during the course of play, rather than being worked out before play. As a result, the correlation between mechanics and ingame causal logic is a lot more relaxed (as Hussar has pointed out upthread).

All I'm disagreeing with is the suggestion that a story to explain a mechanical limitation becomes more half-baked when it's told at the time of action resolution, rather than at the time of character building.

OK, fine. Keep going to gym class and keep trying to explain a new excuse why you can jump 3 x day, every day, 365 days a year. It doesn't matter whether you're refreshed or exhausted, sick or healthy. It doesn't even matter if your leg capacity still allows you to do cartwheels, jumping jacks, squats and run a marathon -- you will never successfully jump a 4th time that day. I'm so sure everyone will buy your every excuse as being completely plausible all the time every time.

Somehow, perhaps after all that sarcasm, it's not half-baked to you, but I call that delusional. Fictionally, that character is a freak, unable to live life to the fullest. It's a pity that he got his prescription from a surrealist doctor obsessed only with rules and balance and without a care for the "reality" of the gym environment.

 

[Mallus]

4E is too lazy/uncaring to do the same for many new 4E mechanics, particularly those that tend to clash with verisimilitude, leaving the narrative burden almost entirely on the players and DM.

I think that's one of the reasons 4e really works for my group. What you're calling the 'narrative burden' is viewed by us as an opportunity to be creative. We provide the narrative that describes/explains/positions the mechanics within the in-game fiction. We prefer to do this, mainly because we prefer the shi stuff we make up ourselves over that of some game designer who doesn't share our influences, sense of humor, and naked, adulterated brilliance !

For example, in the absence of a satisfying explanation of how the 4e paladin's marking/divine challenge worked, I added/substituted my own, which was clever, vulgar, and wholly inappropriate for publication in a game aimed, at least in part, at kids. And thus one of our campaign's great running jokes was born, not to mention the part of the characterization of an entire race and culture.

In this way, D&D 4e resembles the HERO system. Powers are described almost entirely in mechanical terms; the fiction is up to the players. In HERO, the rocket launcher used by an insurgent and the boomerang used by Captain Koala --which hits every target in a radius-- could have the exact same mechanical description. Their difference would reside entirely in how they were described, ie in the mechanics attached to the fiction at run-time. This is a plus in my book, not laziness or lack of concern. It's a smart and deliberate choice.

I like systems that leave room for the player's fiction. They're more flexible.

 

[Mallus]

Is this really true of 3E?

Not really.

In 3e, classes became packages of abilities. Some mapped pretty closely to fantasy fiction archetypes, others did not, particularly Prestige Classes, which strayed quite far from archetypal, unless you use 'archetypal' to mean something it does not. And a lot of people, primarily those not playing full spell progression casters, mixed and matched classes to create their own take on the fantasy archetypes. Playing the 'character-building mini-game' was one of the great pleasures of the system. The close mapping between class and archetype pretty much bit the dust.

3e also, probably more so than any other edition, created new archetypes thanks to quirks in the system, like the dreaded CoDZilla.

 

[NoWayJose]

I think that's one of the reasons 4e really works for my group. What you're calling the 'narrative burden' is viewed by us as an opportunity to be creative. We provide the narrative that describes/explains/positions the mechanics within the in-game fiction. We prefer to do this, mainly because we prefer the shi stuff we make up ourselves over that of some game designer who doesn't share our influences, sense of humor, and naked, adulterated brilliance !

For example, in the absence of a satisfying explanation of how the 4e paladin's marking/divine challenge worked, I added/substituted my own, which was clever, vulgar, and wholly inappropriate for publication in a game aimed, at least in part, at kids. And thus one of our campaign's great running jokes was born, not to mention the part of the characterization of an entire race and culture.

I don't mean any offense when I say that not everyone is as creative as you. If 4E offered a default narrative for all/most mechanics, then you have 3 choices:
1) use the default fluff (especially, if you're not as creative as Mallus)
2) ignore the default fluff and substitute your own (if you're like Mallus)
3) ignore all fluff and play mechanically/tactically

These 3 choices would not be *worst* than the status quo. The qualifier, however, is that WoTC's official default fluff should satisfying and effective for in-game versimilitude. I can say that some of the default fluff in 4E powers is ridiculous to me, so that precedent worries me.

In this way, D&D 4e resembles the HERO system. Powers are described almost entirely in mechanical terms; the fiction is up to the players. In HERO, the rocket launcher used by an insurgent and the boomerang used by Captain Koala --which hits every target in a radius-- could have the exact same mechanical description. Their difference would reside entirely in how they were described, ie in the mechanics attached to the fiction at run-time. This is a plus in my book, not laziness or lack of concern.

That's fine as long as its fun and easy and plausible to reconcile or "marry" the 4E mechanics with in-game fiction/narrative. Since that can be quite difficult (as I have maintained over many, many posts), I think that 4E designers realized it was just too difficult and thus I must continue to assume that 4E is too lazy/uncaring and prefers to offload the burden of the narrative on DMs and players.