Lalato
Adventurer
Can you elaborate on what getting to the fun in 3e looks like? And please contrast that with what is fun about the 4e system.
The D&D Experience (or, All Roads lead to Rome)
Can you elaborate on what getting to the fun in 3e looks like? And please contrast that with what is fun about the 4e system.
Lalato
Adventurer
Thanks, Danny. Then I guess I wasn't getting it at all. Shouldn't this be a discussion for a different thread? If that is what it's really about, then I fail to see how it is germane to the topic of this thread.
It's a weird example anyway as no edition of D&D uses jump tokens or cards or what-have-you. As far as I remember... jumping has never been limited in the way that others are talking about so I guess I'm still a little confused on this one.
You guys are getting bogged down in fairly trivial aesthetic preferences. All game systems are arbitrary to some degree, all of them influence the narrative, and all of them make statements about the story world, whether they intend to or not.
This is what I mean:
1) Arbitrariness means that something other than what seems logical, reasonable or good will come out of any game system for no other reason than some structural outcome. D&D4 power use frequency leads to examples of this, where the "powerup" period can lead to various silly events. It is impossible to design a game system that doesn't do this, but it is possible to try and heavily indoctrinate a community to ignore these issues. Thanks to D&D's current instability, many people are now waking up from this indoctrination.
2) All game systems engage the story on a narrative meta-level as well as simulating physics or whatever. The popular notion of a divide between these things is false. That's because even a game that tries to be about fantasy physics must dwell on things that matter to the story (no "bathroom break frequency" rules!) and tune them for a desired effect, and games that are highly "meta" about conflict and story must eventually be rendered as *things* in a self-consistent fashion.
3) Game systems impart meaning to the world of the story because they provide our way in. We really cannot ignore the idea that the rules are a machine that makes the world happen, even if the game isn't intended to do that. This is part of our nature as en emotional, symbol-manipulating species. We do not have hard and fast "simulation" and "narrative" boxes.
One of piece of marketing indoctrination WotC pushed was that game design was a technology that objectively improved and definitively solved problems. This worked for 3e, because it was an update of a game that had not experienced a major design overhaul since the late 70s/early 80s (2e does not really mess with the fundamentals established by 1e). Then 4e came around, WotC pushed the same message, and you guys sensed something was up. Around the same time, the OSR established that the doctrine of progress was meaningless to them.
I think that in any mature consideration of what RPGs mean to us, we must admit that there are problems that *can't be solved* outside of the specifics of one's own table. A designer or design team can tell you what the rules are supposed to mean, and how they are supposed to work, but past a certain point they *cannot* help you. They can develop alternatives that you might not have the time or skill to create yourself, but they can't make you ignore 4e's arbitrary bits, or the weird feeling that a narrative rule makes a statement about the underlying nature of the game world. You can say, "This is how we assume you'll interpret the rules," and talk about tricky points, alternatives and so on, but you absolutely cannot make RPGs drop the three properties I listed above.
This is what I mean:
1) Arbitrariness means that something other than what seems logical, reasonable or good will come out of any game system for no other reason than some structural outcome. D&D4 power use frequency leads to examples of this, where the "powerup" period can lead to various silly events. It is impossible to design a game system that doesn't do this, but it is possible to try and heavily indoctrinate a community to ignore these issues. Thanks to D&D's current instability, many people are now waking up from this indoctrination.
2) All game systems engage the story on a narrative meta-level as well as simulating physics or whatever. The popular notion of a divide between these things is false. That's because even a game that tries to be about fantasy physics must dwell on things that matter to the story (no "bathroom break frequency" rules!) and tune them for a desired effect, and games that are highly "meta" about conflict and story must eventually be rendered as *things* in a self-consistent fashion.
3) Game systems impart meaning to the world of the story because they provide our way in. We really cannot ignore the idea that the rules are a machine that makes the world happen, even if the game isn't intended to do that. This is part of our nature as en emotional, symbol-manipulating species. We do not have hard and fast "simulation" and "narrative" boxes.
One of piece of marketing indoctrination WotC pushed was that game design was a technology that objectively improved and definitively solved problems. This worked for 3e, because it was an update of a game that had not experienced a major design overhaul since the late 70s/early 80s (2e does not really mess with the fundamentals established by 1e). Then 4e came around, WotC pushed the same message, and you guys sensed something was up. Around the same time, the OSR established that the doctrine of progress was meaningless to them.
I think that in any mature consideration of what RPGs mean to us, we must admit that there are problems that *can't be solved* outside of the specifics of one's own table. A designer or design team can tell you what the rules are supposed to mean, and how they are supposed to work, but past a certain point they *cannot* help you. They can develop alternatives that you might not have the time or skill to create yourself, but they can't make you ignore 4e's arbitrary bits, or the weird feeling that a narrative rule makes a statement about the underlying nature of the game world. You can say, "This is how we assume you'll interpret the rules," and talk about tricky points, alternatives and so on, but you absolutely cannot make RPGs drop the three properties I listed above.
billd91
Not your screen monkey (he/him)
Let's not be too hasty here. From the context, it looks like some people see the 3-limit jump cards as the chances to jump 3 times - an act that normal people in real life can do all day. But with something like "Mighty" attached to the front of it, that sounds more like being able to exceed normal ability or perhaps achieve an auto-success a limited number of times per day. There's a world of difference between the two and, I'd say, many games including previous editions of D&D embrace the latter.
The reason there's a world of difference between the two is because the former is artificially limiting, mechanics running roughshod on narrative, while the latter sounds empowering, boosting normal abilities.
For the purpose of this discussion - which do you really mean and which do other people mean? If you're referring to the different varieties, you're talking past each other and not to each other.
And that's exactly what I mean by being artificially limiting. Suppose the PCs want to go adventuring in the craggy hills or compete in an athletics tournament? What then?
Well, I gave two examples upthread of how it is limited in 4e.
Bill91, thanks for a thoughtful response.
I'm assuming that - as eyebeams suggested upthread - when we're talking about playing "jump cards" we're not talking about a PC jumping over a dog turd so as to keep his boots clean walking down the city street. I assume that we're talking about using a jump to resolve some dramatic situation in the game.
4e's partial solution to this problem is the retraining rules (ie buy more "jump cards). But - to tie this point back to 4e as an example system, and thinking of "jump cards" just as a placeholder for more general mechanical features of the game - 4e is limited in the genres of RPGing that it will support. As has often been noted, for example, it won't work very well for a game that is mostly about the PCs setting up a business enterprise and engaging in mundane commerce.
Eyebeams, another interesting post.
I think the 4e books could have done a much better job thatn they do of telling us what the rules are supposed to mean, and how they are supposed to work. I think part of why these aesthetic preferences keep getting debated is that the failure of the 4e designers to do that has left a bit of a vacuum, where 4e players repeatedly find themselves being told that they are not really roleplaying.
I don't know what this means. The fun for me in playing 4e comes from participating in creating a story of heroic fantasy adventure with strongly (and growing) mythic overtones. The system is a means to this end.
You assert this as if it is self-evidently true. When in fact I can name a number of influential RPGs the systems of which are not mathematical models of anything: HeroWars/Quest, The Dying Earth, Maelstrom Storytelling, Nicotine Girls.
Not to mention The Shaman's encounter tables, which aren't models of anything, but rather techniques for injecting genre-appropriate coincidences into the game.
No. At most, they might realise that no character does ever jump more than three times per day. You would need to know a lot more than that to actually make an inference to the physics of the world - assuming that wondering about the physics of the world was even a salient issue! - which for those playing a non-exploration based game it probably is not!
Here is somf of what the HeroQuest 2nd ed rulebook has to say about the relationship between physics of the gameworld and the action resolution mechanics:
Pages 7-8
In a traditional, simulative game, you'd determine how hard [an action] is based on the physical constraints you've described [as obtaining in the fictional situation] . . . In HeroQuest, you start not with the physical details, but with the proposed action's position in the storyline.
Page 36
Your resolution point score tells you how well you're doing [in an extended contest], relative to your opponent . . . However, the exact physical harm you've dished out to him [in a combat resolved via extended contest] remains unclear until the contest's end. . . In interpreting the results . . . (1) No consequence is certain until the entire extended contest is over [and] (2) When a character scores points, it can reflect any positive change in fortunes, not just the most obvious one.
Page 74
The process of deciding whether a proposed outcome is possible is called a credibility test. . . As Narrator, you are never obliged to allow a contest just because two characer's have abilities the can be brought into conflict. If the character's proposed result would seem absurd, you disallow the contest, period. . . Players are typically as attuned to common sense narrative realit as you are, and wil not routinely propose patently absurd actions. You'll find that they do almost all of your credibility testing for you. [This if followed by a discussion of varying thresholds of credibility across settings and genres.]
In a traditional, simulative game, you'd determine how hard [an action] is based on the physical constraints you've described [as obtaining in the fictional situation] . . . In HeroQuest, you start not with the physical details, but with the proposed action's position in the storyline.
Page 36
Your resolution point score tells you how well you're doing [in an extended contest], relative to your opponent . . . However, the exact physical harm you've dished out to him [in a combat resolved via extended contest] remains unclear until the contest's end. . . In interpreting the results . . . (1) No consequence is certain until the entire extended contest is over [and] (2) When a character scores points, it can reflect any positive change in fortunes, not just the most obvious one.
Page 74
The process of deciding whether a proposed outcome is possible is called a credibility test. . . As Narrator, you are never obliged to allow a contest just because two characer's have abilities the can be brought into conflict. If the character's proposed result would seem absurd, you disallow the contest, period. . . Players are typically as attuned to common sense narrative realit as you are, and wil not routinely propose patently absurd actions. You'll find that they do almost all of your credibility testing for you. [This if followed by a discussion of varying thresholds of credibility across settings and genres.]
This is a RPG sytsem that is not a mathematical model.
All of those *are* models, however, and all of them say something about the internal logic of the worlds they create, regardless of whether the designer wants you to pay attention to those things. It doesn't really matter if these things fall under the framework of "physics" or "narrative." The difference between the two is arbitrary.
HeroQuest is pretty straightforward, as one could advance an argument that Glorantha is pretty effectively simulated by the rules, as gods and the assumption of mythic roles is embedded into Glorantha's world logic. In the case of Nicotine Girls, we learn about the dynamics of a very constrained world based on what a middle class man believes about poor women.
(Note: This kind of analysis isn't going to make you any friends.)
These models cover some things, but not others, and players will eventually find the constraints of each. Now if you're an indie type person, this is where you start spouting about "social contracts" and advocate doctrinaire obedience to keep the game working. In Mike Mearls' conception of D&D, this force is rendered subtly around what he at one time called D&D's "core story" and which has now developed into the notion of an "essence" -- the idea that there is a set thing D&D is about.
The problem is that there really is no "essence." Game designers find it useful to have a structured set of ideas about what games are and aren't, but players don't. It's popular to pretend that they ought to, but this is really a sort of self-serving argument from game designers. Players pursue various impulses that change from game to game and moment to moment, and frequently contradict each other.
There's no real fix here. We just need to accept that there are limits to how satisfying a game design can be, and take responsibility for our relationship with the game. The best game designers can do is explain what they want to do, and take into account the reality that people will want to do something different.
pawsplay
Hero
I agree that arbitrariness is inevitible, I do not agree that significant indoctrination is the only antidote. As long as the game is somewhat self-correcting, by design or during play, the arbitrariness does not have to be battled consciously as all times.
Agreed. I think this viewpoint is congruent to what I said about jump cards being equivalent to arbitrary mechanical resolutions in that either is arbitrary and does not serve story. I distinguish between narration and resolution, but as with thought and emotion, one never occurs without the other.
You make a good point. As human beings we are always seeking a unified logos. It doesn't work unless we contact it internally, probably strongly related to what is sometimes called immersion.
