howandwhy99 said:
I don't happen to believe thinking in rules vs. thinking in terms of the world is irrelevant. In abstract, let's say your character's to-hit ability is a +3. That is pretty good. You know from playing the game that you get 3 more points on that d20 roll when you try and hit something. Small things are harder to hit as are touch and armored. But all that may mean nothing when it is a ring you're trying to catch on the end of your epee. What are the rules for that in 3e? Do you have any idea how difficult that might be? What should the rule be to accurately represent the real world difficulty?
I don't know how difficult that would be in real life, but I suspect it would be about as hard as hitting any object that size with my epee. Maybe a bit harder since I have to get the right angle to put it through the ring instead of just hit it. In 3e I'd use the AC of an object that size and probably give you minus 2(the DM's best friend) to the roll to account for the "extra difficulty". It isn't too difficult to use established rules to do things that are very similar. The PCs may not know that the DM applied a -2 to their roll, but they do know that an object that size should have around ac 9 or 10 normally to hit with their weapon. They can guess it might be a bit harder to hit than usual. But if there is a set of rules, they know approximately what the chances are. If the AC is 11, then they know that someone who had +10 to hit in an expert at it and someone who have +0 still has a 50-50 chance of succeeding.
Which is much better than having a DM tell me "You miss". Really? I rolled a 15, that seems high. Something seems wrong with me missing. "Don't worry, you missed." Maybe it's magical or something or maybe I've been cursed. I go see if someone can remove the curse on me. "Ok, you search all over and no one seems to be able to remove the curse" and so on and so on...wasting game time when there was no curse, no magic...just a DM who thought something should be a lot harder than I thought it should be.
I mean, the DM could step out of character and say "Don't worry, you aren't cursed, it was just REALLY hard. I figured you needed to hit AC 30 or so." But how many times do you have to have this sort of misunderstanding? How many times does the DM have to explain that it was a quirk of the "rules" that caused it, not an in character reason?
howandwhy99 said:
See how that works? Real world representation is the key. Yes, it will be the DM and original game designer's interpretation of what best works, but as a Player you can always bring up how a 17 not hitting that small stone seemed very odd. And the Ref might confer with you afterward about making the rule better.
But if he discusses the rules with you, then you might know them. If the idea is for no one to know the rules and for the DM to be the one completely in charge, then explaining the rules of any part of the system to the players is bad, they should figure it out on their own.
howandwhy99 said:
On the other hand, the Ref might agree with you, "very odd". And all of a sudden you have to start thinking maybe something more is going on here than meets the eye. So you start inspecting it. Was it a glamoured hummingbird? Did the Ref's description of what happened when you missed any clue? Or is one going to attempt to rule lawyer the game from the player's seat?
And the same thing works the same way with game mechanics, only with less misunderstanding. You know that if you hit ac 30 and still miss something is severely wrong, since the rules state it should be much easier than that. And if you say "Hey, you aren't following the rules, DM." He might say "Ahh, it IS odd that didn't hit." And you have the same situation. Only with rules you don't have to guess if your DM just has a different perception of the difficulty than you, since you're both working off the same rules.
howandwhy99 said:
I'm not saying "You all must play this way". I'm suggesting that playstyles, like mine, may be obsolete in the next version of the game. And I hope they aren't. I have heard both encouraging and discouraging hints.
I'm suggesting that playstyles like yours were obsolete since 2nd Edition, maybe even 1st. Certainly 4th edition isn't going to discourage your playstyle any MORE than 3e already does.
You may not have said "you must all play this way" but you did say that your way was much more intuitive and you did say that the new rules shouldn't be written in such a way to prevent your playstyle. My biggest wish is that they ARE written in such a way to prevent your playstyle since allowing your playstyle prevents mine.
howandwhy99 said:
IME, playing the game as a learning game means the Players can't jump ahead. One can't pretend to know the whole of the time and space as Multiverse Emperor Eternal. The world is learned as the Players/Characters explore. This is a major part of the game for me. This style includes magic and how it works. How many iterations of magic are there? Who's to say they work the same everywhere? Even in our world few people claim to hold the absolute truth on anything. And then it's normally in regard to the unprovable. How I like to play neither the Players nor the Characters know the the absolute truth either. They can think they do, and get pretty darn close to a correspondence theory of truth, but it is always an in-character belief.
There are a lot of things I know in real life. I know that if I get shot by a gun I'm likely going to die. I know that if I want to know movie times I use the internet to search for them.
Sure, no one knows absolutely everything. But no one knows NOTHING either. Not even 16 year olds know nothing at all. They've learned a LOT about the way the world works from their parents, their teachers, their mentors, friends, books, etc.
And the cop out of "it's a fantasy world, it's MYSTERIOUS" is a lame one. Every world has "rules", they might just be different then the real world. One doesn't survive even 5 years of their life without knowing the basics.
howandwhy99 said:
If a group were to start a high level game, then they would need to know what their characters knew prior to play. That means a lot of knowledge read vs. played.
Casting Detect Magic would allow a caster to actually learn what auras meant, for one. Yes, it is possible your mentor told you what these meant beforehand. But where's the fun in that? Why bother exploring the world, if you already know what it holds? The point to remember here is: this is not a modern world. Knowledge is rarely common, abundant, jointly agreed upon, or carelessly disseminated. It's as much a treasure as the bouncing baubles that have auras.
The fun has to do with WHERE the focus of the game is. In your playstyle the focus is on "How do my abilities work?" and "Will I survive attacking that dragon?" and "I HOPE this works."
I like the focus of the game to be on "Let's see what's in this cave, there might be dangerous creatures and treasure." rather than "Let's cast the spell called 'Magic Muffin' and see what it does. Now let's see if it works differently inside than it does outside."
I prefer a focus on "If I stop it from moving with my web spell, you can hit it with some arrows" rather than "I hope web spells can attach themselves to stone or that beholders even get stuck in them. I've never tried casting the spell at night...maybe it doesn't work then?"
The fun for me, is in being a hero. I don't feel very heroic when I don't know what my own abilities are capable of or what I can do. I've played like that and it wasn't fun.
howandwhy99 said:
Relying on shared assumptions to all be true would rarely work. Thankfully, the real world, IMHO, actually has a single truth to it. A "reality" so to speak. And it doesn't care about my assumptions about it. In the game, the Ref's judgment and consistent application of the rules are the "game's reality". Knowing that BASIC reality is generally as shared as your and I's beliefs about what "green" or "tree" means. And judging in character how long a fire takes to burn is random.. and requires a roll. So would anything that has element of assumption to it. But trying to live without some assumption would be downright impossible. Who knows if the PC's roll meant the Ref's answer was truthful anyways?
That's the problem...you'd be surprised how many time "basic" assumptions are completely different. Simply because we've all had different experiences in real life. So, without rules, you NEED to live without assumptions, since they might be wrong.
An example was back in 2nd edition when there were no rules for jumping, so one of our group members decided to jump over a 10 foot gap. The DM said "You realize it's over 100 ft down and you're likely dead if you fail." The player said "Umm..yeah, but it's only 10 feet across." So, he jumped. DM didn't have any rules for jumping so asked him to make a strength check. He rolled a 5 or something(rolling low was good back then) and the DM told him he fell to his death and to roll up a new character. The player got angry since it was ONLY 10 feet across and he could jump that far in REAL life without even trying. The DM said that the player was lying and most people could only jump around 2 or 3 feet without trying, and he certainly wasn't going to make it wearing a suit of armor. The player then proceeded to stand up and attempt to SHOW the DM how far he could jump in real life, while another player got involved and pulled out the Book of World Records to see how far people jump in real life.
The DM argued that it didn't matter that the world record was much higher than 10 feet, since that was done in optimal situations. Even if the player could SHOW the DM that he could jump 10 feet in real life, he wouldn't care since his character was carrying a lot of equipment and couldn't do the same. Now, raise the tempers of everyone in the room as even the rest of the players take one side or another in order to continue actually playing the game. Have the argument continue for about 2 hours.
There are a lot of things that. Our group managed to have an argument of that scale once every...2 sessions or so. They only occurred in areas where the rules weren't clear or didn't exist. Basically, any time there was a DM fiat situation, the players would argue that the DM's opinion as to what would happen was the wrong one. Since there were no RULES for anything, it was just what we thought would happen in real life, then the DM couldn't say that the game worked differently than real life.
Another example was(I've posted this in other threads as well) when I attempted to fire a crossbow from the back of the party at an enemy, confident that I was so bad a shot I couldn't hit anyone at all, but didn't have anything better to do. I was under the assumption that the game world worked the way it did in 3.5e D&D, where having one of my party members between me and the target meant no chance of hitting my party members, just harder to hit the enemy. I fire based on that assumption then the DM hits me with the fact it was OBVIOUS to him and anyone with a brain that there was nearly 100% chance of hitting one of my friends if I fired down a 5 foot wide hallway where it needed to pass by 5 allies before even reaching the enemy. He wouldn't let me reverse my decision since I had to be an idiot for not having any common sense at all. I managed to hit one of my party members who then demanded that the party leave me behind since I was too reckless. And I had to make a new character when the party agreed.
Thus, my point that your playstyle only works with the proper players. Namely, ones who either have a very close vision of the game world to the one you have or ones who are willing to accept whatever you tell them. If no one disagrees that 5 feet is the maximum jumping distance of a person wearing armor, then you can run through that part of the adventure without any problems at all. No one attempts to jump over the 10 foot gap, no argument starts, everyone has fun. If everyone already believes there's a huge chance of hitting their party members with a ranged weapon, then no one tries anything "stupid" and everyone gets along and has a lot of fun.
It has included many utter newcomers to the hobby. They had no idea how to play D&D, but after a couple of minutes of rolling up a character they swam right into that sea of roleplaying and have had little problem since. You may not be convinced that our gaming style works without numerous shared preconceptions or like-mindedness, but it does. I've seen it work again and again for over two years. Game reality is as we learn it to be through our experience of playing the game. The same could be said of any make-believe game where players learn it is not who argues best for who shot whom, but understanding why, in that world, the shots both ended in their particular results. It is as simple as that.
Gamma World was on the horizon. I think it was published in 1978 or 1979.
