Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6049164" data-attributes="member: 42582">I haven't said anything about the fiction that produces the result (if you like, the "input fiction"). I've talked about the fiction that results from using it however (the "output fiction"). Come and Get It is designed with that output fiction in mind from the get-go. It's as fiction-first as anything else in D&D - it's just not process first.On the "process" interpretation, acuity matters to AC in D&D only if you're a monk. Agility matters to attacking in D&D only if you have the Weapon Finesse feat (or some similar ability).I prefer to assume that, in the gameworld as in the real world, acuity and agility matter in combat, and that they are factors in play even though the system doesn't model them. For example, I assume that it a possible explanation of a successful hit is that the enemy's sweat ran into his eye, distracting him - even though there is no mechanical support for that narration.Come and Get It involves processes that aren't fully modelled by the mechanics. But, to borrow your phrase, "there is always something to fall back on", namely, the preestablished fiction (the personality of the PC, the NPCs, the present combat situation, etc), plus whatever is narrated around the use of Come and Get It.My point is that this is, in effect, already the case. Did your lack of proficiency cause you to miss? The rules don't answer that question - when you roll with a proficiency penalty, and miss, the rules don't explain whether this was due to lack of proficiency, or due to slipping on mud, or due to the impenetrability of the enemy's armour, or any of a number of possible factors. (Runequest is a contrast here - it provides more detailed answers to some of these questions, for example by distinguishing between failure due to failed attack and failure due to successful parry or dodge. That's not to say there aren't infelicities in going RQ's way.)The standard format of D&D rules, especially in 4e, is to draw no distinction between character and player. So when the rules say that the target knows they're marked, I think this is easily enough read as "the player of the character knows they're marked" as "the character, in game, knows they're marked". After all, the language for gaining Action Points is expressed the same way, but presumably the character doesn't know they have action points (given that, as you say, they are a metagame resource). And the language for gaining and losing hit points is expressed the same way too, but presumably the character doesn't know how many hit points they have (the character doesn't have an internal meter for "reservoirs of divine luck", I'm assuming).So in fact I don't agree that there is something observable about being marked. I think it can differ from case to case. Paladins are different from fighters, for example, in the way I run them.I don't agree with this. What information is the PC obtaining and processing, exactly? How much divine favour s/he has left in the tank?Of course, the player knows, and acts on that basis. In my view all that the PC can say, in character, is "I feel lucky!" or "I'll take my chances!".That's perhaps one way to go. You might go the same way with hit points. My own view is that it leads to Order-of-the-Stick style absurdities, but tastes obviously differ.Whatever it is that you leran when you research the use of Soul Bind, for example, in my own game it would not be "level".Here is a justification for Come and Get It: it reliably delivers compelling episodes of combat, in a way that empowers the player whose PC has the power.I assume that's not the sort of justification you are interested in. As best I can tell, by "justification" you mean "mechanics that more-or-less model the ingame causal process of action resolution".This is all true. But it's not about "fiction first" vs "mechanics first". It's about degree of preference for process simulation in the mechanics, as opposed to fortune-in-the-middle, metagame, and other non-process-simulation approaches.  [MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION], for example, has written an essay (earlier this year, from memory, but I could be misremembering) arguing that fortune-in-the-middle is incompatible, as such, with the essence of roleplaying. Naturally enough I disagree, if only on the following basis: HeroWars/Quest is a quintessential example of a certain style of RPG, and uses exclusively FitM mechanics.I don't understand the difference between "harder to kill" and "it just makes it take longer." That it takes longer to do X rather than Y, after all, is one typical way of showing that doing X is harder than doing Y!But that to one side, your whole point here is already permeated with process-simulation assumptions - for example, that the greater deadliness of the ranger is evident to the inhabitants of the gameworld as some sort of empirical fact, rather than a metagame stipulation intended to give difference PCs certain flavours and their players certain options at the table. Also, that gaming and fiction have different expectations.I also don't agree that I don't understand your objections. I understand them; I just don't share them. Process simulation, as such, holds no special attraction for me in RPG resolution. (Which is not to say I'm against it - some process-simulation systems do a very good job of producing gripping RPG moments - Rolemaster melee combat resolution, at it's best, is one example in my experience.)Of course from the process simulation perspective 4e is not very attractive. But that's no great surprise. The key points of criticism of 4e by those who prefer process simulation mechanics were identified by Ron Edwards in an <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/21/" target="_blank">essay</a> written in 2003, more than 5 years before 4e was released:f Simulationist-facilitating design is not involved, then the whole picture changes. Step On Up is actually quite similar, in social and interactive terms, to Story Now. Gamist and Narrativist play often share the following things: * Common use of player Author Stance (Pawn or non-Pawn) to set up the arena for conflict. This isn't an issue of whether Author (or any) Stance is employed at all, but rather when and for what. * Fortune-in-the-middle during resolution, to whatever degree - the point is that Exploration as such [ie explanation by reference to ingame causal processes] can be deferred, rather than established at every point during play in a linear fashion. * More generally, Exploration overall is negotiated in a casual fashion through ongoing dialogue, using system for input (which may be constraining), rather than explicitly delivered by system per se. * Reward systems that reflect player choices (strategy, aesthetics, whatever) rather than on in-game character logic or on conformity to a pre-stated plan of play. Every contentious feature of 4e lives in one or more of Edwards' dot points. Which is to say, the contention was entirely forseeable. The only reason I assume that WotC didn't worry about is that they (wrongly, as it turned out) assumed that no one playing D&D would have such strong simulationist preferences, given how non-simulationist it is in its design. (Even 3E, the most simulationist version of D&D, doesn't hold a candle to a game like Rolemaster or Runequest, or even a narrativist game like Burning Wheel that nevertheless has a highly simulationist basic underlying chassis.)As to why I don't want process simulation changes of the sort you're proposing: for the reasons  [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] has posted. They are clunky, limiting, and get in the way. They impose needless obstacles between the declaration of actions by participants, and the generation of gripping and compelling episodes of play. And for all the well-known reasons, they tend to burden non-spell-casters far more heavily than casters, because casters are allowed to get all the benefits of metagame power while cloaking it a thin veneer of "this all has an ingame explanation, though none of us actually know what it is and it never actually figures in any action resolution".</blockquote>

Verification