The Reduction of Uncertainty

[pukunui]

See, I don't think "story" is important except insofar as it matters when we're cracking a few beers and a few jokes after all is said and done. Story emerges from play, not the other way around.

I think you've misinterpreted what I was saying. Or else I just didn't articulate myself very well. I wasn't implying that I prefer railroading or anything like that. I've just had a number of instances in my experience as a DM where some really good potential plot points and roleplaying opportunities got ruined by random bad dice rolls that saw PCs die when the odds said they shouldn't have. Reducing the number of times that a single die roll can have a serious impact on the game is a good thing, in my opinion.

The thing is, though, that the whole reason I play d&d is to have fun. That's why the other guys in my group play as well. We all just want to have fun ... We've all been playing d&d for years, some of us since 1e, but we're all relatively new to 3.5 and none of us are finding it to be as fun as we remember d&d being in the past. My players often complain about the reliance on rules, their complexity, and the sheer number of them in 3.5. They feel a bit restricted by the rules (I think they'd actually prefer it if I handwaved more stuff so they could get on with the roleplaying), perhaps even a bit intimidated by all the options and such. Some things that come to mind that my group finds "unfun" are things like having to confirm criticals (especially when you fail to confirm them), getting totally smashed by monsters that they should be smashing because of bad rolls on their parts and good rolls on the monsters' parts, save-or-die (or similar) effects ...

The way I see it, 4e has got "this is for you" written all over it, and I'm pretty sure everyone else in my group feels the same way.

 

[ruleslawyer]

This argument presumes there is a story and that things aside from the player's actions can be important to it. i don't subscribe to this perspective and think gaming is more fun and more fulfilling without DM imposed stories.

I think you're misconstruing here. Call it a campaign as opposed to a story if you must, but the fact is that RPGs and stories do share some issues in common, even if an RPG is not a story. One of those is the potential for events, characters, etc. to show up in a manner that diminishes context. A random encounter with some dockyard thugs that's simply designed to show how rough the neighborhood is doesn't need to be run if it's going to turn into a 20-minute combat, because then, the actually *important* fight that comes later that game session loses its sense of importance. It's the "NPC with a name" problem; if every NPC is richly detailed and interesting, and the DM runs a cast of hundreds (I'm guilty of this problem myself), it's hard for the PCs to keep track of and adequately prioritize the ones who are actually important to the campaign.

 

[Reynard]

I think you've misinterpreted what I was saying. Or else I just didn't articulate myself very well. I wasn't implying that I prefer railroading or anything like that.

My fault -- when someone says or writes "story" in relation to gaming, my mind jumps immediately to the most extreme definition of that term. In reality, when most people say "story" they mean the same thing I do when I say "situational play". That is, while I try and avoid "plot" in the literary sense, there is definitely a plot in the sense of some stuff that's happening and people it involves and the like. I just don't like determing outcomes before play starts -- that's the players' job.

 

[pukunui]

My fault -- when someone says or writes "story" in relation to gaming, my mind jumps immediately to the most extreme definition of that term. In reality, when most people say "story" they mean the same thing I do when I say "situational play". That is, while I try and avoid "plot" in the literary sense, there is definitely a plot in the sense of some stuff that's happening and people it involves and the like. I just don't like determing outcomes before play starts -- that's the players' job.

Cool. Sweet as. We're definitely on the same page ... we're just not necessarily using the same dictionary.

Getting back to the OP ... the important thing about reducing uncertainty from my point of view is that it makes "meaningless PC death" much less likely, and to me, that's a good thing. That's all I was really trying to get at in my initial comments. Having your character die because of some unlucky rolls on your part and/or some very lucky rolls on the DM's part just isn't that fun. At least not for my group and me.

 

[Reynard]

Getting back to the OP ... the important thing about reducing uncertainty from my point of view is that it makes "meaningless PC death" much less likely, and to me, that's a good thing. That's all I was really trying to get at in my initial comments. Having your character die because of some unlucky rolls on your part and/or some very lucky rolls on the DM's part just isn't that fun. At least not for my group and me.

I don't mind "meaningless" death because I don't think it is. If the player -- plyers, in fact, because we are talking about a group here -- are attached to the character, even an ignominous (sp?) death at the hands of a kobold with a scorpion on a stick is "meaningful" -- a beloved individual, no matter how fictional, died.

Example: In my first 3.0 campaign, which was a sequel to a 2E campaign, one of the PCs was a female bard, all of 16 years old. She was perky and fun and more than a little foolish. She bit it at the hands of some were-rats down at the docks (who hasn't used that schtick?). Because she was a sibling to half the other PCs, and because her player made her into a "real" person, her death -- the result of a critical, if I remmeber correctly -- was "meaningful". Every were-rat was gutted, the warehouse wherein they laired was gleefully raised, and there was a tear-jerker of a funeral. This happened in session 2. And the player, rather than mope about not being able to play, sat back and enjoyed the results of his character's death was sketching out a new character.

I've certainly seen "meaningless" deaths other than that one - I let the dice fall where they may, and I occasionally build encounters intended to be too strong for the PCs' current level (either because of versimilitude, or because I define certain encounters before play even begins "sandbox style"). IME, though, the "meaningless" deaths are only meaningless because the players don't actually care much about their characters. Which is fine -- stop your whining and roll up a new one if the last one didn't matter.

 

[pukunui]

I don't mind "meaningless" death because I don't think it is. If the player -- plyers, in fact, because we are talking about a group here -- are attached to the character, even an ignominous (sp?) death at the hands of a kobold with a scorpion on a stick is "meaningful" -- a beloved individual, no matter how fictional, died.

Example: In my first 3.0 campaign, which was a sequel to a 2E campaign, one of the PCs was a female bard, all of 16 years old. She was perky and fun and more than a little foolish. She bit it at the hands of some were-rats down at the docks (who hasn't used that schtick?). Because she was a sibling to half the other PCs, and because her player made her into a "real" person, her death -- the result of a critical, if I remmeber correctly -- was "meaningful". Every were-rat was gutted, the warehouse wherein they laired was gleefully raised, and there was a tear-jerker of a funeral. This happened in session 2. And the player, rather than mope about not being able to play, sat back and enjoyed the results of his character's death was sketching out a new character.

I've certainly seen "meaningless" deaths other than that one - I let the dice fall where they may, and I occasionally build encounters intended to be too strong for the PCs' current level (either because of versimilitude, or because I define certain encounters before play even begins "sandbox style"). IME, though, the "meaningless" deaths are only meaningless because the players don't actually care much about their characters. Which is fine -- stop your whining and roll up a new one if the last one didn't matter.

All right, I can accept that. But I still prefer a game that's more "point buy" in nature than "roll 4d6, drop the lowest", if that makes any sense.

Sticking with that analogy, I think point buy is inherently more fair than rolling for ability scores. I've gotten the short end of the stick with the rolling method more than once, and having a character that's weak compared to the others is not my idea of fun. I'll freely admit to being a control freak and a power gamer, so that could very well be while I prefer predictability over randomness. I also have what I call a "heightened sense of fairness". It's what led to me adopting a rather complicated method of ability score generation that involved both rolling and point buy. It allowed for some randomness but it was a "controlled" randomness in that no matter what people rolled, the end result would always end up being "fair" when compared to what other people got.

That being said, though, I think 3.5 went a little too far in the "fairness" direction with monster generation. As much as I want to "play by the same rules" as the players when I'm the DM, it ends up becoming a logistical nightmare. Math isn't my strong suit and I don't have a lot of spare time to prep, so I'm really looking forward to the simplified NPC/monster generation rules in 4e. If they cut down the amount of time I have to spend on the math, then I'll be able to spend more time on the roleplaying side of things (NPC personalities, plots, motivations, etc), which will make the game richer and more fun for me as the DM, and hopefully richer and more fun for the players as well.

 

[Terramotus]

Obviously, so long as the game uses dice, uncertainty will always be a part of it. But 4E appears to be designed to make it so that the die is less important, less powerful than it has traditionally been.

I think you're totally off-base, at least as regards the stated design goals of 4E. Obviously we haven't seen the system, but the changes to "the math" have been stated to be for the purpose of keeping the numbers in the widely accepted "sweet spot" of 3E. The reason that's the sweet spot is because the system works well at that level. Characters tend not to have overwhelming bonuses that completely override the die result in that range so that they always succeed, or bonuses to saves so low that they always fail. That looks like preserving the importance of the die roll.

Perspective also matters. Sure, with the new crit rules you're less likely to face instant death from a foe who crits you who's optimized for critting. So from that perspective, uncertainty is diminished. But at the same time, rules that follow more predictable result trees are easier to balance. So there will probably be fewer opportunities for rules abuse, especially when the desire to do away with the multiple stacking bonuses from items and such is factored in. So while in some areas the uncertainty is reduced, the net effect is that the highly optimized character won't have such a huge advantage against a poorly optimized character (or NPC or monster, for that matter). That seems like an overall gain to me with regard to importance of the die rolls.

The only point I'll agree with you on is actual character death. With the new death and dying system, and the lack of save-or-die spells, it seems obvious that the designers don't want a single die roll to equal a character's death unless the odds are truly overwhelming.

 

[Lanefan]

Personally, I think of bigger import here is the question: "Is this fight important to the overall story?" If it's not, then why not handwave it?

Because even if you as DM know it to be a red herring, the players do not and should not; and neither you nor the players know if the fight will end up having any long-term consequences (e.g. a death, significant item loss, or whatever) until you run it and find out.

Why spend 15, 20, 30 minutes or more on what is, essentially, a throwaway, unimportant encounter when that time can be spent advancing the main story. Why not relegate it to a background thing, which also has the effect of possibly becoming a story later...

"Remember those thugs that accosted you in Sharn and you beat them so easily when looking for the Sword of Mighty Swordiness? Seems their leader has put out an assassination contract on you now."

If it's to be a story later then it's also a story now and should be treated as such...hm? I'd run the minor battle every time...I'm not that good a story designer to say that in a year or 2 or 5 that the "minor" battle won't be important; I might find a perfect way six months from now to work something in based on the outcome of that battle (you give a good example of such above) and if I don't run it as a "real" battle I don't do it...or the story...justice.

That, and I'm guessing your pace of play is much faster than mine...both by you saying you can get through any combat in 15-30 minutes (ours take ages) and by your suggesting it'd be wasted time to run it in the first place.

And I *do* run by the attrition model, and I do use wandering monsters...4e and I are going to have to disagree on this.

Lanefan

 

[Keenath]

The only point I'll agree with you on is actual character death. With the new death and dying system, and the lack of save-or-die spells, it seems obvious that the designers don't want a single die roll to equal a character's death unless the odds are truly overwhelming.

Well, that's really just an expansion of the sweet spot concept. When you're in that 'sweet spot' of levels, hits generally don't drop you to -10 with one shot. With the rare exception of a bad crit, a hit that drops you will normally take you to the middle of the negatives... unless you were foolish enough to keep fighting when you had four HP left.

The new death rules just expand on that so that it's the same at every level -- that you always have a good chance of surviving the shot that drops you but also won't survive long on the floor.

I really like the new death system for this -- you roll each round and die only if you fail three times. The most ridiculous death I ever had was a crit that dropped me to -9 and nobody could get to me that round. Bled out and died before anyone could reach me. Would've been better if I'd been killed by the hit instead.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I don't mind "meaningless" death because I don't think it is. If the player -- plyers, in fact, because we are talking about a group here -- are attached to the character, even an ignominous (sp?) death at the hands of a kobold with a scorpion on a stick is "meaningful" -- a beloved individual, no matter how fictional, died.

It is meaningless in the sense that he didn't die for his or his allies goals. That's fits my definition of meaningless.
If such death happen to often, you get players for which life or death of the character as a whole becomes indeed meaningless. (Call of Cthulhu players might feel similar...) You simply end up not caring any more, and you finally end up with Bob the Fighter #3.

Your understanding of meaningless might be different, and maybe there is a better term for it. (Is being annoyed by random death the same as a the death in question being meaningless?)