D&D 4E What Aspects of 4E Made It into 5E?

[Caliban]

I feel like I have wandered into a long running argument that I had no part in starting.

Oh, you didn't start anything. Saelorn simply has a very narrow and rigid view of the "correct" way to play D&D, and if you aren't playing that way you either aren't playing "real" D&D, or you are corrupting the game and being dishonest to your players.

It gets rather tiresome.

 

[cmad1977]

You need to ask yourself, as the DM, are you making the determination because that's your honest best understanding for what makes sense in the world? Or are you making that determination because it will enable something "interesting" to happen?

The role of the DM is to be honest. When you instead try to make something "interesting" happen by taking player ideas into account, that's meta-gaming, which is against the rules for a very good reason.

When you make determinations based on enabling (or disabling) player ideas, the players are forced to second-guess everything they say and do based on how it might affect the state of the world. It makes the game world less of an objective reality. The player is dragged out of the role of their character who exists in an objective world (where the layout of the room exists independently of your preferences and observations), and forced into the role of the player at the table (where you can inadvertently affect the layout of the room by the way in which you interact with the DM in the real world).

This is absolutely the worst advice anyone could give to anyone playing any RPG.

 

[Bradley Hindman]

When you make determinations based on enabling (or disabling) player ideas, the players are forced to second-guess everything they say and do based on how it might affect the state of the world. It makes the game world less of an objective reality. The player is dragged out of the role of their character who exists in an objective world (where the layout of the room exists independently of your preferences and observations), and forced into the role of the player at the table (where you can inadvertently affect the layout of the room by the way in which you interact with the DM in the real world).

Our table likes a more collaborative experience. I actively encourage players to invent and insert story elements into the campaign. In fact, our session zero is largely a cooperative world-building brain storm. I set up the basic premise of the campaign world and the players are asked to contribute three of four NPC sketches, interesting locales, bits of history, etc. You obviously have a different group dynamic that works for your table.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

This is absolutely the worst advice anyone could give to anyone playing any RPG.

"To add atmosphere, try cracking open a canister of tear gas!"

 

[TheCosmicKid]

The reality of the game world exists even before the DM states it publicly. It must, or else the DM wouldn't know how to declare it. Whether that determination takes place immediately before the declaration (i.e. the DM hadn't thought about it, and needs to make a judgment call on the spot) or weeks/months/years before (when the DM is generating maps and notes for the future) is not terribly relevant.

Nope. I recently retooled a section of my world map that the PCs hadn't explored yet. Because I hadn't stated any facts to them about that area, nothing about that area was yet factual. I have not yet been arrested by the RPG Police, and my players have not yet complained about my abusive decision (because they haven't got a clue that I did it), so I'm pretty sure I'm in the clear.

The only important aspect of that determination is that it is made honestly, based on the DMs understanding of the world and how it works; and that it doesn't depend on meta-game factors, such as what the player might think is a "cool" idea right now.

Nobody does this ever. Not me. Not you. Not even David Eddings. What, do you think the Orb of Aldur exists because it just so happened to make sense for it to be created in this imaginary universe he was simulating in his head? Of course not! He imagined the universe in the first place because he thought it would be a "cool" idea to write a story about a magic rock (because he never met a cliché he didn't like -- but that's beside the point). And you and I and every other DM run D&D campaigns for our players because it's "cool" for them to be heroes and fight dragons and whatnot. If we're just depicting events based on an "honest" understanding of the world and how it works, 99% of the time, the PCs are peasants who spend an uneventful day tending to their fields. And the 1% of the time that something more significant happens, it's still not a dragon, because dragons are unreal and, in fact, physically impossible animals, and the only justification for imagining them is that they're pretty damn cool. So if we're disallowing decisions about the game world being based on coolness, we have to assume that this significant event is instead, oh, let's say a dysentery outbreak. Constitution save to avoid pooping to death! What a compelling narrative we are weaving!

Meta-gaming is cheating, and explicitly against the rules of the game.

I guess we can add "explicitly" to the list of words that you do not know the meaning of. Either that, or you are deliberately misrepresenting what the rules do say, even though we've had this conversation before and I've quoted them directly at you. But that would be disappointing. And perhaps... oh, there's another D word for it... it's right on the tip of my tongue...

disingenuous

...nope, can't bring it to mind. Oh well.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Our table likes a more collaborative experience. I actively encourage players to invent and insert story elements into the campaign. In fact, our session zero is largely a cooperative world-building brain storm. I set up the basic premise of the campaign world and the players are asked to contribute three of four NPC sketches, interesting locales, bits of history, etc. You obviously have a different group dynamic that works for your table.

If you want a collaborative world-building experience, then out-of-game (before the first session, or between sessions) is definitely the place to do it. That way, the DM has a solid starting place from which to make determinations (and all of the other players understand that position), but the players don't have to worry about the world changing on them during the game, while they're in-character, as a result of their own actions.

If you want a shared story-telling experience, with shared narrative control where the players establish details during the game, or where the DM responds to the players out-of-game cues as to how they want things to unfold, then D&D really isn't the right game for that. D&D is an RPG where meta-gaming is explicitly called out as against the rules.

It's fine if you want to do that thing at your own table, but you need to be aware that you're breaking the rules by doing so, and your experience doesn't translate to anyone else in the world who is actually playing the game as it was written or intended.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

In your opinion. And your opinion is not objective reality. Or even true outside of your own subjective reality.

It is objectively true that meta-gaming is mutually exclusive with role-playing, by definition. If you can't understand that, then you're either too dumb to play, or you're trolling. In either case, your opinion is invalid.

 

[Morrus]

If you can't understand that, then you're either too dumb to play

Don't call people names, please.

 

[Riley37]

I feel like I have wandered into a long running argument that I had no part in starting. Who said anything about lying?

Was this argument in progress during 4E, and has it carried over into 5E?

When did it start? Saelorn, did you argue with Dave Arneson after the first session of Blackmoor, because he had the blob monster's initial ambush kill an NPC, rather than give it an equal chance of one-shotting a PC?

 

[Bradley Hindman]

If you want a collaborative world-building experience, then out-of-game (before the first session, or between sessions) is definitely the place to do it. That way, the DM has a solid starting place from which to make determinations (and all of the other players understand that position), but the players don't have to worry about the world changing on them during the game, while they're in-character, as a result of their own actions.

You keep saying this like the players have a textbook that they can compare against and cry foul when the DM invents a small feature during play. I honestly don't know how you can possibly run a game session without inventing material on the spot. My players are far too inventive for me to have prepared for every option.

If you want a shared story-telling experience, with shared narrative control where the players establish details during the game, or where the DM responds to the players out-of-game cues as to how they want things to unfold, then D&D really isn't the right game for that. D&D is an RPG where meta-gaming is explicitly called out as against the rules.

What you apparently called "meta-gaming" is what I call genre sensitivity. If we are playing a game of heroic action, then the players should play their characters as action heroes. If we have established that we are playing a campaign of dark political intrigue, then the players would be well-suited playing their characters as anti-heroes with shady morals. In both cases the players are using knowledge about the nature of the game to decide how their characters act. Good. That shows they understand the genre in which the game is rooted.

Here is the final point I will make on this issue, as I doubt anything else productive will come from this conversation. D&D is a game where the rules are mutable based on table preferences. Even meta-gaming. Some tables enjoy their meta-gaming, and I say more power to them. They have found what they like.