D&D General Weekly Wrecana : The Three Pilasters of D&D 4 parts

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think the "Crafting System" and "Stronghold rules" touch upon one of the conclusions I've come to playing 4e (After having played 5e): Gold (As the regular currency in the setting) needs to be separate from the fungible currency players use for choosing their power progression. For my revision I've made Residuum the "Advancement currency", made it unusable for rituals besides Create Magic Item. Other ritual components are bought with gold. Gold I hand out with whatever logic the world uses, and helps define their out of combat place in the world, such as acquiring land and noble status.

I'm not sure its really an issue as long as you go entirely into a story-driven kind of mode of play. The issue arises when you have a sort of dichotomous play where half the time you're building a story and half the time you're trying to play simulationist mode. If its just all about plots and agendas and whatnot, then it doesn't really matter what kind of money you do or do not have. In fact what's better than the player being able to establish her agenda by mere use of cash? Its very straightforward. So for example the player chooses to engage in some adventuring that is likely to be monetarily remunerative instead of say saving the town. Now they're rich, because they wanted to build their own castle and they needed money. OK, now they can build the castle! And if they decided instead to buy some fabulous +N magic item? OK, they made a choice, no castle!

What happens next? Well, bad deeds always come back to bite you and there's that destroyed town that's on your books, so I'm figuring the GM is going to have plenty of material to hang the NEXT adventure on!

The problem is if you want to try to consider some sort of economic and political 'system' or something. Well, now maybe your stuck with how things go in that, and where is it building your story? If the characters get a bunch of money, now you have to deal with it in the context of that system, and presumably GM fiat is not so welcome here. I kind of like the Oriental Adventures concept of moving this kind of campaign more firmly into the realm of families, clans, honor, large-scale events, etc. Only personally I'd have the players derive all of the details of their backgrounds as they see fit instead of using a whole lot of random rolls (they can always roll if they want). Then have a whole list of event ideas that the GM can pull out whenever it makes sense, or that the players can even trigger.

 

[ChaosOS]

I prefer the dichotomy 4e draws between combat effectiveness (Big +N weapon) and non-combat effectiveness elsewhere in the system, which is why I create the delineation. Furthermore, my players like having more concrete gold amounts that fit in a logical fashion into the rest of the world, so 4e's exponential wealth scaling is problematic.

 

[Garthanos]

For my revision I've made Residuum the "Advancement currency", made it unusable for rituals besides Create Magic Item. Other ritual components are bought with gold. Gold I hand out with whatever logic the world uses, and helps define their out of combat place in the world, such as acquiring land and noble status.

Well that is a pretty straightforward way to distinguish

 

[Garthanos]

I had just the other day written up a section of my own game/notes on Challenges and Interludes, which provides for an approach to many of these things. So, in my own play at this time, there are only 2 states of game play, Challenge, or Interlude (I admit, I use the term 'interlude' very broadly, Wrecan parses this a lot more finely). During challenges dice are employed in the adjudication of risk incurred as a result of conflict, which the challenge resolves (or maybe fails to resolve, or partly resolves, etc).

Everything else works dicelessly. You don't roll dice to see if you were able to make 12cp today begging, or if you managed to smith a fine sword or a merely ordinary one for resale. These non-conflict situations simply get resolved as the GM and players wish, taking into account character's various attributes and resources.

So, how to handle some of the situations Wrecan touched on? Why handle them at all? That is to say, suppose a group of players decide their characters will build a fortress for the group to use as a base. Assuming that the way is clear to do so, its not really something that involves conflict, so simply decide on some cost and assess it to the characters. Time passes, gold is spent, some sort of results are obtained. Perhaps some great difficulty arises? The GM has now injected some form of conflict, a challenge can resolve this. If the whole enterprise is problematic then it can be a single challenge, or a whole adventure. It obviously isn't an interlude anymore at that point...

I am pretty much in agreement across the board.. of course I also like the idea atleast of enabling resources akin to karma and luck as it seems genre appropriate that heros have more of it and particular heros, perhaps more or less.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I am pretty much in agreement across the board.. of course I also like the idea atleast of enabling resources akin to karma and luck as it seems genre appropriate that heros have more of it and particular heros, perhaps more or less.

Sure, I would say things like that should have mechanical impact. Obviously that won't be on DICE outside of conflict, but then again when would luck come up EXCEPT in a dangerous situation? Now, maybe you can spend a 'karma point' on something that doesn't involve conflict, during an interlude, but its likely to be sort of like spending gold in the same way, it might relate to acquiring resources by spending other resources, but not to accomplishing any deeds.

 

[Garthanos]

Sure, I would say things like that should have mechanical impact. Obviously that won't be on DICE outside of conflict, but then again when would luck come up EXCEPT in a dangerous situation? Now, maybe you can spend a 'karma point' on something that doesn't involve conflict, during an interlude, but its likely to be sort of like spending gold in the same way, it might relate to acquiring resources by spending other resources, but not to accomplishing any deeds.

Yes it becomes mechanically resource juggling... I spend karma points to find a master to teach me the GMT... master doesnt ask for gold, insert trope "When the student is ready the master will appear"

I do very much like your idea of treating all gains of new capability as a form of GMT/Boon so it is tied to the actual play experience.
I keep thinking a different base game might be a better starting point though.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yes it becomes mechanically resource juggling... I spend karma points to find a master to teach me the GMT... master doesnt ask for gold, insert trope "When the student is ready the master will appear"

I do very much like your idea of treating all gains of new capability as a form of GMT/Boon so it is tied to the actual play experience.
I keep thinking a different base game might be a better starting point though.

Eh, but most games lack the sheer variety and yet also the mechanical unity of the 4e engine. And that is what makes it so cool. You couldn't REALLY do this in 5e for instance, because there's no common mechanics between a wizard and a fighter to base a boon on (I mean you could do SOME, like there are a very few select feats in 5e anyone could take, but the list is short). With 4e ALMOST anything can be slapped on any PC, and its almost always possible to make it work (and I've removed most of the speed bumps that 4e has for doing that).

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I identify three or four "subludes" in each of the three 'ludes. In preludes, there is birth, upbringing, and training. In interludes, there is crafting, leveling, earning, and shopping. In postludes, there is destiny, politics, and strongholds.

It’s wild how well this maps to my own philosophy on TTRPGs.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It’s wild how well this maps to my own philosophy on TTRPGs.

Yeah, though I never found a really convincing argument for why there needed to be distinctions. I like to erase distinctions instead of creating them. So, for instance, there are 'interludes' in HoML, and they all follow the simple rule that you are not allowed to touch dice. Its a talky time, you can use 'powers' or whatever, but nothing risky is happening. Its transition, set up, intra-party interaction, etc. Or maybe things like flashbacks and dream sequences (DMG2 has these types) can also be lumped in there, although those COULD also become SCs. As soon as risks are being taken (significant ones anyway, not maybe a friendly drinking contest/bar brawl) you go to the challenge (SC) rules.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Yeah, though I never found a really convincing argument for why there needed to be distinctions. I like to erase distinctions instead of creating them. So, for instance, there are 'interludes' in HoML, and they all follow the simple rule that you are not allowed to touch dice. Its a talky time, you can use 'powers' or whatever, but nothing risky is happening. Its transition, set up, intra-party interaction, etc. Or maybe things like flashbacks and dream sequences (DMG2 has these types) can also be lumped in there, although those COULD also become SCs. As soon as risks are being taken (significant ones anyway, not maybe a friendly drinking contest/bar brawl) you go to the challenge (SC) rules.

IMO/IME most players enjoy rolling dice, even when they aren’t there to determine whether a thing succeeds, or the scenario doesn’t involve any real risk.

For an interlude, my thought is to use dice to determine some of the details and consequences of what the PCs are doing, things like how long a thing takes (and thus whether they can finish it now or must come back to it), how NPCs react to a thing (like whether you strain a relationship with a contact by calling in a favor from them), etc.

Since my game uses dice pools and not everything can be tied to a specific skill, many of these rolls are just a d6 or a d12, but a die is still being rolled.

One idea I had recently is to port my Heat mechanic from running magitech in Eberron into relationships. So, a relationship would have a Strain Die and an amount of current Strain, and you roll it every time you call upon that relationship. If you roll the current Strain or lower, the relationship gains 1 Strain. Eg, a basic contact might have d4 Strain, starting at 1. You call in a favor from them, with no immediate favor to give in return, so you roll a d4. If it comes up 1, the Strain increases to 2, otherwise it stays at 1. Next time you call upon them, if you’ve done nothing to repair the relationship, you increase strain on a 1 or 2.

Relationships can range from d4 to d12, probably. I’ll run some simulations in anydice and compare this scale vs “increasing numbers of d6s”, though.

Anyway, the main thing I’m surprised at how similar I’ve come around to wrecan’s ideas is simply the idea of having mechanics for interludes, thinking about knowledge and research differently than adventuring, and thinking about travel differently from adventuring.