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Thing I thought 4e did better: Monsters
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6983932" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>The most simple FRPG I know, as far as combat resolution is concerned, is T&T: combat is just opposed dice pools with the losing side suffering the difference in the two pools as damage.</p><p></p><p>But even T&T adopted some special rules for magical and AoE attacks, to try and capture the fact that people on the winning side might still have been blasted by the magic missile or fireball or whatever.</p><p></p><p>And T&T also gives dragons a much bigger dice pool than giant rats - a non-trivial mechanical difference!</p><p></p><p>I'm not 100% sure what you mean by "the flavour of the application or damage or stress". Do you mean that we note that the victims were burned, and factor that into subsequent framing? - eg, if the damge is fire damage done to the ship then action declarations about sailing the ship, or even patching it up, become impermissible because the nature of the damage means its been burned to the waterline. That would fall within the scope of what I had in mind by mechanics - the stipulation of the damage as "fire damage" constrains the content of the unfolding fiction.</p><p></p><p>Are you making a claim about D&D as you play it, D&D in general, or RPGing in general?</p><p></p><p>I'm sure your description of your own play is accurate.</p><p></p><p>I don't think your description of D&D in general is accurate - the rules of AD&D, for instance, don't allow a GM to simply narrate a cutscene where a dragon eats a PC. That would be breaking the rules. Likewise the AD&D rules allow a GM to disregard a wandering monster roll, and also to make additional roles based on extra noise being made by the PCs; but I don't think that they allow a GM to stipulate that a wandering monster die comes up a 6.</p><p></p><p>And there are many RPGs which have rules that exercise much greater constraint on the GM than does AD&D. (Social contract is what stops a GM breaking those rules, just as it does in any other game - eg chess, Monopoly, hopscotch, etc.)</p><p></p><p>I chose an example that I think is fairly clear, and shows mechanics doing something different from what you said they are for. Because (I think) you subscribe to the view that the GM is under no rules constraints, giving example of a more contemporary sort naturally becomes more contentious.</p><p></p><p>But I can give an example from my own play, if you like: if a player makes a to hit roll for his/her PC, I'm not at liberty to disregard it. And vice versa when I make a to hit roll for the NPCs I control as GM. And the function of these rolls is not to introduce drama - it's to determine the outcome of the dramatic situation (which was dramatic because of what was at stake, which is not a mechanical state of affairs but rather an emergent and relational property of the fictional state of affairs).</p><p></p><p>Not all mechanics are about success/failure. Consider, for instance, rolls to determine content introduction: in clasic D&D this tended to be wandering monster rolls, number appearing, treasure rolls, etc; in modern D&D this is more likely to be something like, "OK, so you guys are looking for a sage in the village - there's a 20% chance you find one."</p><p></p><p>And "not a 100% chance of success" is ambiguous, because we're talking here about fiction (which is ipso facto authored), not reality (which unfolds through its own causal processes). Do you mean <em>is, from the point of view of the fiction, not guaranteed to succeed</em>? Or do you mean <em>is, from the point of view of authorship, not something in respect of which the GM is inclined just to let the players get what they want</em>? A lot of people tend to use the phrase as if the first meaning is intended - but this doesn't generalise across the D&D mechanics. For instance, casting most spells requires speaking, and no act of speech has a 100% chance of success - one might always sneeze, or cough, or hiccup, or get a dry throat, or have laryngitis, etc. But except in quite atypical circumstances, D&D allows player stipulations that a PC speaks the words of a spell to become true in the fiction without regard to these in-fiction possibilities of failure. Likewise, generally, for movement - PCs never trip up on their own shoelaces or sprain their ankles just from jogging across the battlefield.</p><p></p><p>Vincent Baker is one of the earliest clear proponents of the motto "say 'yes' or roll the dice". This motto brings out clearly the two possible meanings (ingame and meta-game) of "not a 100% chance of success". What Baker means by the motto is that, if the players want their PCs to do or achieve something, then either (i) it happens, or else (ii) the GM sets a difficulty (in accordance with whatever procedures the games specifies) and the players make a check. The GM chooses (i) if nothing of dramatic significance turns on the PC doing or achieving the thing in question. The GM chooses (ii) if something of dramatic significance does turn on the PC doing or achieving the thing in question. The GM might choose (i) even if, in the fiction, the thing is very hard or complicated, but does not give rise to dramatic stakes. (Eg the situation is building up to a dramatic confrontation between the PC and his/her nemesis, and the PC is constructing some defences or casting some illusions.) The GM might choose (ii) even if, in the fiction, the thing is very simple. (Eg the situation is that the PC is preparing a meal for a guest, and wants to make a good impression.)</p><p></p><p>D&D - with the partial exception of 4e - tends not to use this sort of "say 'yes' or roll the dice" approach. Rather, the rules stipulate when dice are to be rolled and when not (so the rules mandate "saying 'yes'" to most spell casting, even if the possibility of failure would be dramatically engaging; and the rules mandate "roll the dice" for most attacks, attempts to find secret doors, and the like, even if there are no dramatic stakes - hence D&D adventure building guidelines are full of advice on what to do if these sorts of checks are failed).</p><p></p><p>These rules mandates can create the illusion that "roll the dice" corresponds to "has an in-fiction chance of failure", but - as the spell-casting and jogging examples show, this is an illusion. The only FRPGs I'm familiar with that aspire to every roll of the dice corresponding precisely to the in-fiction chance of failure are Rolemaster and Runequest, and even they don't quite get there.</p><p></p><p> <a href="http://lumpley.com/hardcore.html" target="_blank">Here's some.</a> Not very far down is the heading "Roleplaying's Fundamental Act", which is one of the things I have in mind.</p><p></p><p>I'm familiar with this story. It's an example of differences of dramatic significance to a confronation (none vs some). Assuming that the GM is accepted as having authority to establish campaign backstory, it doesn't involve mechanics at all.</p><p></p><p>Here's when mechanics come in: do the PCs get eaten by Strahd, or do they defeat him? This is a question about the (evolving, unfolding) content of the shared fiction. How do we decide? Generally, most GMs aren't just goig to "say 'yes'" to a PC narration along the lines of "OK, we put one our cult robes, sneak into Strahd's organ room and stake him!" Generally, most players will revolt if the GM just says "OK, Strahd uses his bat and wolf spies to find your camp, flies over and drains all of you dry while you're sleeping."</p><p></p><p>Hence, we break out the d20s. The mechanics aren't "a crutch to add tension and drama when there's nothing else more interesting going on in the campaign" (I'm quoting you from post 94). They're a device to find out what happens in the fiction - does Strahd get staked, or do the PCs get drained? So far from being irrelevant to <em>real</em> drama, they are crucial to its resolution. I think a "say 'yes' or roll the dice" approach tends to maximise this correlation of mechanics and resolution of drama - because that is the entire logic of such an approach - but it should roughly be the case in D&D as well. (There are exceptions, like "die, no save" effects, which are widely regarded as degenerate - but not too may except perhaps in 3E.)</p><p></p><p>(That said: there's an approach to RPGing that seems fairly popular, athough I'm personally not a big fan. Among D&D players it has its origins more-or-less in the 2nd ed era. In this approach, the GM has already decided what the outcome in the fiction will be - eg that Strahd will get staked - and the mechanics are just used as a device to add a bit of colour and fill in a bit of time on the way to that outcome. In terms of Baker's analysis, the GM has all the authority over the stuff in the fiction that anyone cares about, but the mechanics are used as a type of smoke-screen to conceal this - hence this is sometimes called "illusionistic" RPGing.)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 6983932, member: 42582"] The most simple FRPG I know, as far as combat resolution is concerned, is T&T: combat is just opposed dice pools with the losing side suffering the difference in the two pools as damage. But even T&T adopted some special rules for magical and AoE attacks, to try and capture the fact that people on the winning side might still have been blasted by the magic missile or fireball or whatever. And T&T also gives dragons a much bigger dice pool than giant rats - a non-trivial mechanical difference! I'm not 100% sure what you mean by "the flavour of the application or damage or stress". Do you mean that we note that the victims were burned, and factor that into subsequent framing? - eg, if the damge is fire damage done to the ship then action declarations about sailing the ship, or even patching it up, become impermissible because the nature of the damage means its been burned to the waterline. That would fall within the scope of what I had in mind by mechanics - the stipulation of the damage as "fire damage" constrains the content of the unfolding fiction. Are you making a claim about D&D as you play it, D&D in general, or RPGing in general? I'm sure your description of your own play is accurate. I don't think your description of D&D in general is accurate - the rules of AD&D, for instance, don't allow a GM to simply narrate a cutscene where a dragon eats a PC. That would be breaking the rules. Likewise the AD&D rules allow a GM to disregard a wandering monster roll, and also to make additional roles based on extra noise being made by the PCs; but I don't think that they allow a GM to stipulate that a wandering monster die comes up a 6. And there are many RPGs which have rules that exercise much greater constraint on the GM than does AD&D. (Social contract is what stops a GM breaking those rules, just as it does in any other game - eg chess, Monopoly, hopscotch, etc.) I chose an example that I think is fairly clear, and shows mechanics doing something different from what you said they are for. Because (I think) you subscribe to the view that the GM is under no rules constraints, giving example of a more contemporary sort naturally becomes more contentious. But I can give an example from my own play, if you like: if a player makes a to hit roll for his/her PC, I'm not at liberty to disregard it. And vice versa when I make a to hit roll for the NPCs I control as GM. And the function of these rolls is not to introduce drama - it's to determine the outcome of the dramatic situation (which was dramatic because of what was at stake, which is not a mechanical state of affairs but rather an emergent and relational property of the fictional state of affairs). Not all mechanics are about success/failure. Consider, for instance, rolls to determine content introduction: in clasic D&D this tended to be wandering monster rolls, number appearing, treasure rolls, etc; in modern D&D this is more likely to be something like, "OK, so you guys are looking for a sage in the village - there's a 20% chance you find one." And "not a 100% chance of success" is ambiguous, because we're talking here about fiction (which is ipso facto authored), not reality (which unfolds through its own causal processes). Do you mean [I]is, from the point of view of the fiction, not guaranteed to succeed[/I]? Or do you mean [I]is, from the point of view of authorship, not something in respect of which the GM is inclined just to let the players get what they want[/I]? A lot of people tend to use the phrase as if the first meaning is intended - but this doesn't generalise across the D&D mechanics. For instance, casting most spells requires speaking, and no act of speech has a 100% chance of success - one might always sneeze, or cough, or hiccup, or get a dry throat, or have laryngitis, etc. But except in quite atypical circumstances, D&D allows player stipulations that a PC speaks the words of a spell to become true in the fiction without regard to these in-fiction possibilities of failure. Likewise, generally, for movement - PCs never trip up on their own shoelaces or sprain their ankles just from jogging across the battlefield. Vincent Baker is one of the earliest clear proponents of the motto "say 'yes' or roll the dice". This motto brings out clearly the two possible meanings (ingame and meta-game) of "not a 100% chance of success". What Baker means by the motto is that, if the players want their PCs to do or achieve something, then either (i) it happens, or else (ii) the GM sets a difficulty (in accordance with whatever procedures the games specifies) and the players make a check. The GM chooses (i) if nothing of dramatic significance turns on the PC doing or achieving the thing in question. The GM chooses (ii) if something of dramatic significance does turn on the PC doing or achieving the thing in question. The GM might choose (i) even if, in the fiction, the thing is very hard or complicated, but does not give rise to dramatic stakes. (Eg the situation is building up to a dramatic confrontation between the PC and his/her nemesis, and the PC is constructing some defences or casting some illusions.) The GM might choose (ii) even if, in the fiction, the thing is very simple. (Eg the situation is that the PC is preparing a meal for a guest, and wants to make a good impression.) D&D - with the partial exception of 4e - tends not to use this sort of "say 'yes' or roll the dice" approach. Rather, the rules stipulate when dice are to be rolled and when not (so the rules mandate "saying 'yes'" to most spell casting, even if the possibility of failure would be dramatically engaging; and the rules mandate "roll the dice" for most attacks, attempts to find secret doors, and the like, even if there are no dramatic stakes - hence D&D adventure building guidelines are full of advice on what to do if these sorts of checks are failed). These rules mandates can create the illusion that "roll the dice" corresponds to "has an in-fiction chance of failure", but - as the spell-casting and jogging examples show, this is an illusion. The only FRPGs I'm familiar with that aspire to every roll of the dice corresponding precisely to the in-fiction chance of failure are Rolemaster and Runequest, and even they don't quite get there. [url=http://lumpley.com/hardcore.html]Here's some.[/url] Not very far down is the heading "Roleplaying's Fundamental Act", which is one of the things I have in mind. I'm familiar with this story. It's an example of differences of dramatic significance to a confronation (none vs some). Assuming that the GM is accepted as having authority to establish campaign backstory, it doesn't involve mechanics at all. Here's when mechanics come in: do the PCs get eaten by Strahd, or do they defeat him? This is a question about the (evolving, unfolding) content of the shared fiction. How do we decide? Generally, most GMs aren't just goig to "say 'yes'" to a PC narration along the lines of "OK, we put one our cult robes, sneak into Strahd's organ room and stake him!" Generally, most players will revolt if the GM just says "OK, Strahd uses his bat and wolf spies to find your camp, flies over and drains all of you dry while you're sleeping." Hence, we break out the d20s. The mechanics aren't "a crutch to add tension and drama when there's nothing else more interesting going on in the campaign" (I'm quoting you from post 94). They're a device to find out what happens in the fiction - does Strahd get staked, or do the PCs get drained? So far from being irrelevant to [I]real[/I] drama, they are crucial to its resolution. I think a "say 'yes' or roll the dice" approach tends to maximise this correlation of mechanics and resolution of drama - because that is the entire logic of such an approach - but it should roughly be the case in D&D as well. (There are exceptions, like "die, no save" effects, which are widely regarded as degenerate - but not too may except perhaps in 3E.) (That said: there's an approach to RPGing that seems fairly popular, athough I'm personally not a big fan. Among D&D players it has its origins more-or-less in the 2nd ed era. In this approach, the GM has already decided what the outcome in the fiction will be - eg that Strahd will get staked - and the mechanics are just used as a device to add a bit of colour and fill in a bit of time on the way to that outcome. In terms of Baker's analysis, the GM has all the authority over the stuff in the fiction that anyone cares about, but the mechanics are used as a type of smoke-screen to conceal this - hence this is sometimes called "illusionistic" RPGing.) [/QUOTE]
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