D&D 4E Two Camps of 4e Players (a rant)

[burntgerbil]

I know this has been probably discussed before, but I can't help but feel the need to discuss this now. I don't consider myself a stringent rules lawyer, although I do enjoy cohesion in rules systems in all games. I can't help but feel that a vast portion of people playing 4e simply haven't read their core books. Well, I mean to say read, comprehended and applied what they read. Our last gameday the other weekend, myself and another DM showed up to run the early (pre-noon) session. I had heard people rave about the quality of this other DM and with the D&D crowd being what they were, we didn't get enough early birds to fill both games - so I played his. This was the second time that I participated in a Games Day where there were fundamental areas of the rules that the DM's did not grasp - the biggest being skill challenges and use of non-attack powers out of combat.

The Boards are not encouraging either - new players asking questions is encouraging - but it seems like many people open the book, go to their class section and play from there. There's 300 pages in the PHB - of that what, 100ish is class data ? The single most used page in my PHB ? The index, easy.

I feel like if you want to host a game - especially as a card-carrying official DM, It should be a prerequisite to have a keen grasp on the games mechanical suggestions & understand that this game sets more mechanical guidelines than any edition before. Magic does this with the judge system, and the DCI getting involved in organized play for D&D would only help. An on-line test would probably be the easiest way to implement this.

Am I wrong to think that a registered DM should know the difference between entering and exiting difficult terrain, know what happens before a player or monster is pushed into a hazard of off of a precipice, know what constitutes a "Credible Threat" - but most of all, know that if you don't have time to memorize the rules, and don't intend on changing your game when situations arise, then you should consider either expanding your rules knowledge or run games of a more casual type.

I introduced a group of 8 25-30 year old non-rpg-gamers to 4th edition and they absolutely loved it. I understand that at the beginning some rules are not core to player experience, so we modified or glossed over them. Slowly, rules were introduced as players got a better grasp of the game. Soon, everyone was up to speed - each an expert on rules that specifically pertained to them. The guy with a lot of forced movement powers learned the specifics of forced movement - and the others learned from him. Appointing individual "experts" seemed to help immensely.

I understand that D&D gameday was at least partially intended to help raise the visibility of the game and get new players in - (and promote more new rules & guidelines) so this is not so much about the event as the frustration that stems from the conflict of necessity for moderate adherence of the new ruleset (for balance) and the mindset of some players and gamemasters that "have played D&D before" so that qualifies them to play a rule-intense edition.

So the question I pose is this : Does the source of the problem lie squarely on us - humans who (by nature) tend to gloss over and skim through text, or is the density and novel (no pun intended) approach of this new material the cause for this syndrome ?


Aside : In general, poor DM'ing* experiences are what got me out of the game. Good DM's are what got me into the game and kept me there.
Should there be more of a reward system for DM's that meet a certain criteria ? Does this happen already (more substantially than getting a 4e Hommelet) ? Another game I am deeply involved with - Shadowfist the CCG - rewards valuable and influential players and organizers by issuing product, promos and in some cases, immortalizing your valor with your own card in expansion sets. I can't help but think how much money poor DMing has lost the game over the years and how much traction the game could get if the good DM's were rewarded. This has nothing so much to do with rules at this point as


*My definition of a poor DM is one who fails to discuss, understand and adapt the game style to what the players and the DM agree upon.

 

[Infiniti2000]

It's not the second, so by your question it would have to be the first. I'm not 100% convinced it's people glossing over or skimming through text, but I do agree it's a consumer (DM) problem and not a producer (rules book) problem. Rather than glossing over, it could simply be an inability to understand the rules or an outright aversion to new rules.

 

[burntgerbil]

Thanks Infiniti - y'know maybe part of it is that one might read a rule, but until that rule is implemented and seen in practice, one might not always remember it (and by then it might be forgotten to be implemented).

I wish the PHB had more play examples within it - I remember Rupert and Falstaff, Lidda and others to this day. With play examples after small but important rules, it might sink in a little more permanently.

How about a 20-question DM Quiz in the back of Every DMG ? At least that would passively get some people thinking - but it's gotta be the DM's job. I don't think the DM should ever put the full responsibility of rule-knowledgery on a player or a group of players.

 

[CovertOps]

I run a monthly home game with a group of about 5-6 players each time. At once a month it would take forever to get all the way to 30 so I devised a way at certain points to just let the players go up several levels at once, but never more than about 3 because that would bring too much new content for the player to learn and become familiar with in my opinion.

The first of these level-ups was from level 3 to level 6. At the first game session after everyone had leveled up I had a player (2 weapon Ranger) come to the game with a feat (Staff Fighting or something similiar) that allowed him to use a staff as a double weapon (PHB2). This staff (don't recall the name) had a "Property" where it did an extra d6 damage with any melee attack. Combine this with the already broken Twin Strike and just wow....

Because character builder couldn't handle the staff he was having to manually calculate all his stuff and he was adding that damage to both main and off-hand attacks. I let it slide for the night with the intent of doing my research on RAW because that seemed really overpowered.

After several hours of reading through the books I found a section of rules on "Double Weapons" in PHB2 near the front (p14 ish -- near the weapon charts) that had a blurb that said "Weapon properties [/b]only[/b] apply to the main end of a double weapon. What this meant was that they had already anticipated that twin strike + weapon property = cheese and adjusted the rules so that you can't do this. In between game sessions I sent the player an email with all the rules references, page numbers, and relevant quotes showing that per RAW he was wrong to apply the "Property" damage to both swings of twin strike. I also called him to make sure he had read the email and if he had any questions. He basically bitched at me about how that made no real world sense and it was "stupid" and proceeded to not show up for the next 3 gaming sessions. To be fair I don't know why exactly he stopped coming, but it's a pretty strong case for cause and effect.

Another thing that happened 2 days ago at my game was we were again leveling up from 6 to 8 and Saturday being the first session at level 8 with new magic items one of the players came to me to show me an item he had picked (house rules) for his level up. They were boots (can't recall the name atm) that when activated gave a +2 bonus to AC as long as you didn't move from the square you were standing in. The phrasing is something like this: "As long as you don't move from the square you are in you gain a +2 bonus to AC until the start (end?) of your next turn". The player was trying to tell me that as long as he didn't move the bonus continued every round. I'm not sure how he thought an encounter power would last for an entire encounter or how he made his reading of the item, but what I told him was that he had an item with 2 possible conditions under which it's bonus would no longer apply.

My point? I think this new system is very complicated in some ways and even 20 year RPG veterans have trouble decoding plain English or in some cases don't even read all the rules that pertain to what they are trying to accomplish.

 

[burntgerbil]

I concur...

I think that playing Magic since '93 (competitively since '96) and playing D&D and seeing how the once simple game systems had grown more complex and stratified with periodic rules additions helped "Understand" the approach of 4th better.

Anyone else a Magic player - ex or otherwise see a similarity in the direction that the rules have taken ?


Ops - I originally missed the rules about the double weapons my first time through the book awhile back. It seems to me like the player was upset that his attempt to break the system and be the "best" in the party was thwarted by a rule that in my opinion*, makes sense. 4e should be about a group of friends telling a story and not about trying to beat the DM by broken & esoteric character construction. I agree about the boots - some powers & Items (especially the PHB ones) could benefit from re-templating.

It should probably read something like the following :
Minor Action (Encounter) : You gain +2 bonus to your AC until the end of your next turn unless you move or are moved from your space.

PHB 2 Did a good job of clearing up a lot of rules snafus in the appendix in the back. Everyone should have access to a copy just for that.


*My opinion is based entirely on 1)Watching classic shaw-brothers era wuxia films where shaolin monks more often than not, do their business with only one end of the big-stick. 2)The above being reinforced as "more or less accurate" by a stage-combat actress certified in the staff.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think the style in which the PHB was written was a bit rough. I found it somewhat difficult to digest and some of the more subtle points will likely escape people who have made only a cursory reading of the book. Most people who only play and don't DM probably aren't aware of many of the trickier implications of things like immediate actions unless they have a significant amount of experience under their belts.

You'll always run into people who aren't any good at mastering rules too. Honestly though I don't think 3.x was any easier to grasp or simpler than 4e is. 1e and 2e, yes, the rules were quite a lot simpler mechanically, so it wasn't so much of a problem there. I think 3.x has just been around so long people have forgotten how hard it was to learn.

And I agree, a lot of the material in the 4e PHB was written in such a way that there are ambiguities, loopholes, etc. Anyone who played MTG before the 3rd edition rules came out will remember it was the same story. The difference being its a MUCH smaller rules set and was not that big a deal to rewrite. Heck, you got a new copy with every full deck you bought.

 

[Blackbrrd]

I don't think anybody in my group has read the PHB, including both DM's (myself included). I have read parts of the PHB and skimmed much of it. If there are rules that are unclear we usually make a quick ruling and check what the book says after the session.

I have played since AD&D 2nd edition, so I have a good sense of what should be possible. Sometimes a player nags about one of my rulings, in which case I usually change it. They only nag when I have made a annoying ruling.

We did an amusing mistake one of the first sessions, we just added up ongoing damage. If you got 3xtimes for ongoing damage it went from 5 to 15 ongoing damage. We had a TPK because of it, and a weird-ass DM-fiddle-our-way out of it end to the session. We had a good laugh when we discovered our mistake*.

And, yeah... Different kinds of ongoing damage works... so you are quite likely to get 5 ongoing poison, fire and cold damage, for a total of 15 ongoing damage a round. Auch that hurts.

*I wasn't DM-ing but I didn't complain either, it just felt a bit weird.

 

[Atlemar]

I think the order of chapters of the PHB is a problem. We've always had Abilities, Races, Classes in that order in PHBs. But the rules of the game -- the part where you play -- are back in the Combat and Adventuring chapters. I think those should have been chapters 2 and 3, with the classes (and all the powers) afterward, like the spells were in the old edition. First you learn the basics of the game, and then you learn how the classes break, bend, fold, spindle and mutilate the rules.

 

[Derren]

Another thing to consider is that many rules in 4E simply do not make any sense and are thus difficult to accept for beginners. The two weapon example is such a rule. It makes no sense that a magical property only applies to one attack and not to the others made with the same weapon. Yes, it is there for balance, but some people have problems with turning off common sense and only think about balance. And this are the people who will have problems accepting 4Es abstract rules which put balance over simulation.

 

[Saeviomagy]

The problem, I think, is this:

1. The design of classes makes it possible to play a character entirely off of the character sheet as long as all you do is make use of your class powers. The design of monsters makes the same thing true for the DM.

2. The layout of the rulebook means that if you do this, you will not ever read most of the combat rules, and you definately won't read any of the non-combat rules.

3. Plenty of people are lazy and do not enjoy reading rulebooks end-to-end.

That pretty much covers it.