Tony Vargas
Legend
There was no normal.
Which implies play is meant to progress beyond those levels, so those limits will be meaningful, No?
Campbell
Relaxed Intensity
Think of it this way: you yourself - the real-world Garthanos - and a few halfway-skilled but not-street-wise buddies (the party) walk into a room and interrupt a couple of badass bikers (the orcs). There's no-one else around for miles; you're on your own thus your options are to fight, flee or parlay. Parlay ain't gonna get anywhere with these guys, and if you flee chances are they'll come after you and fight you anyway.
So you collectively fight them, and barely win.
Yeah, you and your crew are probably gonna feel pretty good about yourselves after that - maybe even a bit like heroes.
Obviously when we talk about heroic or epic fantasy we are not talking about the same sort heroism as the heroism of everyday cops or soldiers. I like games about that stuff too, but that is not the experience I was looking for when I ran Fourth Edition. It definitely is not what I look for when I run Exalted 3rd Edition. I want grand conflicts, sweeping narrative, passionate heroes and even more passionate antagonists.
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Lanefan
Victoria Rules
I don't mind the grand sweeping stuff at all but I don't want to start with it, I'd rather take the time and slowly build up to it. In part this is because the grand sweeping stuff can only be sustained and built up for so long until it eventually gets to 11, and where do you go after that?
I'm not one for starting new campaigns - each time I start one it's with the specific intent of it being open-ended enough to last for the rest of my life...which means the longer I can put off the grand sweeping things the better, as once they arise I know the campaign's end is in sight.
And all this talk about heroes. Some of us don't do heroes, or at best rarely. We do characters, warts and all, who may or may not stumble into doing something heroic but aren't at all likely to do it in any heroic way.
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
Actually, if you take all the anecdotes from all the players/DMs you'll find there is, if not a true 'normal', certainly a clear average as to where 1e campaigns got to.
That might have been the designers' intention, sure, but all that high-level design largely ended up as rubber that never met the road.
Except to provide DMs with the mechanics needed to create high-level NPCs, mentors, and opponents.
Zardnaar
Legend
This a level 18 wizard was probably a villian.
Tony Vargas
Legend
Garthanos
Arcadian Knight
I have intimidated a bunch of minion class punks (backed off en mass about 4 to 6 with a step and and a look) it was interesting and also backed down a guy who was rode raging (he had a crow bar and machismo - I had confidence, high ground and a witness), Hello party bard here I was the football playing artist who loved ancient history and physics in high school ... lol.
Garthanos
Arcadian Knight
D&D screamed with the potential for the Heroic (which is a scale and attitude not necessarily a behavior - look at some of the ick done by the Greek heros their title, in greek hero, meant defender, but not necessarily nice). It was something RuneQuest really kind of lacked was achieving. D&D concept of hit points for instance (it was in there somewhere)
But yes you do fantasy vietnam where players are subject to death after death after death where you celebrate the awesome of random chance etc .. I keep saying serves me incredibly poorly and the people saying but that isnt the way it was intended I think are ignoring huge amounts of DM advice and the raw implications of the system. WHAT you don't have even from the people saying that wasn't intended is them telling you that you arent playing D&D.
Now Tony is very much right one can play any rpg with such a take on it. 4e had someone come out with a set of guidelines for doing something much like it called 4Core or 4thCore or similar (without changing the rules) It was I think in part to demonstrate how versatile the game was.
Honestly my D&D delivered on Heroic fantasy and it was very much D&D it delivered on so many of the promises of earlier D&D.
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Garthanos
Arcadian Knight
You don't seem to make it to 3 that fragility and easily death teaches you not to take risks to play like you are yourself meeting a thug in an ally.... further you become the cautious sneak thief rewarded systematically more for gold than helping people and so on fearful non-heroic in the other sense is pushed on your character - its also small in attitude as that life is cheap is a wonderful lesson to learn too. Ironic to become awesome you had best be a coward cause that is what the game rewarded UNLESS a DM fought against the system.
Of course the build up in 1e ended so soon it went down hill afterwards unless you were a caster.
I think I am unfollowing this thread. We got this teeny tiny club your game isnt D&D you arent "Really" in it... Sorry @lowkey13
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Lanefan
Victoria Rules
The lesson learned is very simple: adventuring is bloody dangerous!
Put another way: D&D is war, not sport.
Actually, and somewhat counterintuitively, I find the game doesn't reward cowards nearly as well as you might think, thanks to individual xp per encounter. With group xp, then yes: cowardice is overly rewarded.
Heh - tell that to the Fighter from whom I get my name here. Rolled up in early 1984 and still going* today.
* - or he would be, if he hadn't recently been Thanos-snapped into some far-realm plane; leading to an in-progress (though on hold) adventure to go rescue he and a whole lot of other people.
I think you have me confused with someone else.
My position isn't that 4e is not D&D.
My position is that 4e, despite some good-to-excellent individual ideas within its design, has enough bad ideas within its design to make it a version of D&D I wouldn't want to play or DM.
