D&D 5E (2014) What should be in the Advanced Tactical Module?

[Obryn]

For my part, I have much the same opinion as you, but my approach to satisfying them is that D&D ought to either be D&D or vanish. I felt this way six months after D&D4 launched (sorry), and I still feel this way now. Metagame and narrative license might make a great RPG, but it doesn't make a great D&D. If I want a different play experience I'll play a different game.

Whereas I think that D&D is at its strongest when it acknowledges and embraces its metagame. It's already got metagame mechanics deeply embedded into its system, many of which are "core" to D&D. Class. Level. Hit points. Experience points.

I don't think it should try to shove its metagame into a closet like it did for 3e. It should leverage metagame mechanics to make the slickest, most compelling fantasy adventure machine it can.

Look at 1e for a sec, rather than 3e/4e. XP for treasure is, in my mind, one of the damn best mechanics D&D has ever seen. (And i hope to see it return.) It's a perfect reward mechanism which matches what the characters want with what the players want. It sets the time and guides smart play even though it's totally metagame. There's no sensible reason (absent some major intellectual contortions) that it makes a link of sense or connects with the fictional game world, but it's a great mechanic nonetheless.

So yeah, I don't know how they can make us both happy here.

-O

 

[DMZ2112]

I hope we're still on topic, here. I think the split between metagame and tactics is still relevant to the thread.

Whereas I think that D&D is at its strongest when it acknowledges and embraces its metagame. It's already got metagame mechanics deeply embedded into its system, many of which are "core" to D&D. Class. Level. Hit points. Experience points.

This is why I hate popular terminology. I wouldn't call those things metagame elements -- they're abstractions, to be sure, but anyone wearing chainmail has an "armor class," even in the real world. It is harder to injure them than it is someone in plain clothes, even if the calculations of how much harder it is don't fit a neat linear scale.

Similarly, class, level, experience points, and hit points are /terrible/ approximations of real-world concepts, but they are reasonable compromises when you consider the unwelcome complexity of actually tracking the aspects of character they represent. To play D&D is to accept these half-truths -- the game embraces them with consistency as the core of the simulation. Put another way: they are the game itself, not the metagame.

Metagame kicks in, for me, when something happens because the rules say so, without the benefit of internal consistency. Magic happens by fiat, but the fiction allows for it so it is okay. By contrast, marking also happens by fiat, but if I were trying to goad a similarly focused (but non-violent) response to myself outside of combat, even in D&D4 that would require a skill check. Why can I "mark" someone in combat without even the need to touch them with my weapon, but have to make a skill check to goad someone outside of combat? More simply, why is there one set of rules for combat and another for peace?

If there's one thing I definitely must see in a tactical rules module for D&D5, it's that it must be internally consistent with the non-combat rules (aha, on topic!).

I guess 'internal consistency' might be what some people mean when they say 'verisimilitude?' It's not really what it means.

Look at 1e for a sec, rather than 3e/4e. XP for treasure is, in my mind, one of the damn best mechanics D&D has ever seen.

Man, now that is a blast from the past. I'm not even sure where to go with that. I will say that if you've already got something as abstract as experience points, what you hand them out for is pretty much up to you. However, I'd resist such a rule appearing in D&D5 for the simple reason that while no player ever complained about receiving /more/ XP, receiving /less/ XP is sure to create table strife. Beyond the basics (killing monsters, solving puzzles), this is a decision best left to the DM (or the group, if you prefer).

 

[Obryn]

Similarly, class, level, experience points, and hit points are /terrible/ approximations of real-world concepts, but they are reasonable compromises when you consider the unwelcome complexity of actually tracking the aspects of character they represent. To play D&D is to accept these half-truths -- the game embraces them with consistency as the core of the simulation. Put another way: they are the game itself, not the metagame.

Metagame kicks in, for me, when something happens because the rules say so, without the benefit of internal consistency. Magic happens by fiat, but the fiction allows for it so it is okay. By contrast, marking also happens by fiat, but if I were trying to goad a similarly focused (but non-violent) response to myself outside of combat, even in D&D4 that would require a skill check. Why can I "mark" someone in combat without even the need to touch them with my weapon, but have to make a skill check to goad someone outside of combat? More simply, why is there one set of rules for combat and another for peace?

By this standard, Marking is every bit as much an abstraction as XP, level, etc. The representation in the game world is, "this big mean Fighter is going to clean my clock if I don't pay attention to him" just as much as, "Bob is a powerful magic user and therefore 20th level." I don't think the distinction you're drawing is a particularly viable one.

(Speaking of - you can conclusively prove that a Wizard in 3e D&D should be able to determine what level he is, and should probably refer to himself as a "level 8" wizard, but that's a different topic.)

Man, now that is a blast from the past. I'm not even sure where to go with that. I will say that if you've already got something as abstract as experience points, what you hand them out for is pretty much up to you. However, I'd resist such a rule appearing in D&D5 for the simple reason that while no player ever complained about receiving /more/ XP, receiving /less/ XP is sure to create table strife. Beyond the basics (killing monsters, solving puzzles), this is a decision best left to the DM (or the group, if you prefer).

It's a good mechanic with no connection to the game world, is my point. And it makes for (IMO) a uniquely entertaining play experience.

-O

 

[Jester David]

Thinking about what I suggested earlier:

First, there needs to be rules for grids and gridded combat & movement. There are two big grids - square and hex - and both should be covered by the rules.

There should also be positioning-based bonuses such as flanking. Facing would also be a good idea. Because this is an optional module for people who want tactical details they can get finicky and detailed, adding things like facing. They can have flanking for when two allies are on either side of an opponent (the actual definition of flanking) and a better bonus when attack from behind.

There should also be maneuvers, stuff that anyone can do. Such as tripping, pushing, pulling, power attacking, etc. Where you take an attack penalty and attempt something. Someone with the feats will always be better, but anyone can attempt it. This dramatically increase the moves one can attempt in combat, giving everyone more choices based on the situation.

And I think you can break it down into two distinct and separate modules.

First, you have the Battle Map module(s) that give rules and advice for handling combat on a grid or hex, with some templates for spell effects, movement, and the like.
Because sometimes you just want to know where everyone is or break out the Dungeon Tiles/ Dwarven Forge. But you don't want to go full tactical.

Then there's the Tactical module that expands on the Map Module with facing, flanking, more granular movement, combat maneuvers, and the like.
But having it separate means you can still go Theater of the Mind while still breaking out the at-will maneuvers and greater options.

This gives you some great flexibility in the game. For the set piece fights you can have maps, but for the simple fights or spontaneous encounters you can stick with Theater of the Mind.

 

[Jester David]

This is why I hate popular terminology. I wouldn't call those things metagame elements -- they're abstractions, to be sure, but anyone wearing chainmail has an "armor class," even in the real world. It is harder to injure them than it is someone in plain clothes, even if the calculations of how much harder it is don't fit a neat linear scale.

Similarly, class, level, experience points, and hit points are /terrible/ approximations of real-world concepts, but they are reasonable compromises when you consider the unwelcome complexity of actually tracking the aspects of character they represent. To play D&D is to accept these half-truths -- the game embraces them with consistency as the core of the simulation. Put another way: they are the game itself, not the metagame.

Metagame kicks in, for me, when something happens because the rules say so, without the benefit of internal consistency. Magic happens by fiat, but the fiction allows for it so it is okay. By contrast, marking also happens by fiat, but if I were trying to goad a similarly focused (but non-violent) response to myself outside of combat, even in D&D4 that would require a skill check. Why can I "mark" someone in combat without even the need to touch them with my weapon, but have to make a skill check to goad someone outside of combat? More simply, why is there one set of rules for combat and another for peace?

If there's one thing I definitely must see in a tactical rules module for D&D5, it's that it must be internally consistent with the non-combat rules (aha, on topic!).

I guess 'internal consistency' might be what some people mean when they say 'verisimilitude?' It's not really what it means.

Class, level, and experience are abstractions, but they're abstractions that take place outside of the action. It's off to the side where you don't see it at play. And they're very much conventions and necessary abstractions.

Hitpoints and Armour Class are the weird abstractions that each DM grapples with in their own way. Some accept the abstraction, some just ignore them, some just try not to draw attention to the abstraction, some just don't care.

Marking is a new one. But unlike other abstractions which represent a real thing in an abstract way (representing health, increasing skill, the protection of armour, an associated suite of skills) marking seems first and foremost to be a mechanic. It's not really an abstraction of anything, it's just abstract.
It's the equivalent of the threat/hate meters in most MMOs, but simplified because tracking a percentage is unneeded bookkeeping. Which are necessary in an MMO (or any multiplayer game) because the game needs some way for the AI to pick which target to attack. But these are unneeded in a tabletop RPG because the game is run by a DM who can decided for the monster, who the largest threat is, and choose variably based on the monster's intelligence: attacking the creature doing the most damage, the creature to hit it most recently, the nearest opponent, a certain race or class, or the most tactically sound target.

There's also the side intent: it denotes the ability of a defender to draw aggro. Because a problem with tanks in earlier editions was their inability to prevent an opponent from just walking around them to flatten the wizard.
However, this is a very mechanical problem, because there's very little to actually prevent an opponent in a real fight from dashing away from the heavy to attack the healer. You can see this a lot in role based FPS (Team Fortress comes to mind) or even in football: you can't just outright stop someone pulling away to go after the doctor/quarterback, but you can stand between them and make it difficult. Drawing aggro in MMOs is really a crutch for those games' inability to have a character block passage (as having toons unable to pass through each other causes even larger problems).

Getting past the intent and abstraction marks kinda sorta reflects the defender's ability to interfere with the attacks of an enemy, but it does so extremely poorly as you can mark someone you can't attack (the dragonborn breath weapon or fighter with a javelin), and marks don't go away if stunned, held, blinded, etc.
It also often reflects taunting, or an enemy's attention becoming focused, which is even more odd ("I have enraged the enemy so much it really wants to attack me... so it takes a penalty when attacking anyone else.")

More often than not, the story marking is trying to tell does not match the mechanics. It's a very simple expression of a couple opposing ideas. And simplicity & elegance certainly have their place in the rules. But I think marking is a little too simplistic. It tries to do too much.

I'll be very happy not to see marking show up again, and instead see more specific expressions of the rules. Such as fighters just being able to burn a reaction to attack an adjacent foe hitting an ally, or paladins using channel divinity to Challenge someone, or a taunt power that grants enemies a bonus to hit the taunter.

 

[Gorgoroth]

Similarly, class, level, experience points, and hit points are /terrible/ approximations of real-world concepts, but they are reasonable compromises when you consider the unwelcome complexity of actually tracking the aspects of character they represent. To play D&D is to accept these half-truths -- the game embraces them with consistency as the core of the simulation. Put another way: they are the game itself, not the metagame.

I've been scratching my head too at some of the metagame discussion. To me, the D&D core game is those things you roll and do. Metagame is stuff that affects those elements, in a way that has no easy mapping to what's actually happening in the game world, whether it's about modelling hit points, combat maneuvers, or knowing the stats of monsters. For us, the classic metagame "faux pas" is knowing the monsters' stats, or saying stuff out loud like "we know the DM won't put this in the game, or will do this if we do that, so we'll act accordingly, even though the characters would have no justifiable reason to act that way". That to me, is what metagame means. Disassociation of game rules or knowledge of the players that impact the world in a "glitch in the matrix" sort of way. Since AC is just an abstraction, and we're talking about marking mechanics, can we say that marking is an abstraction in the same way? Or is it pure metagame, or is it somewhere in between. I'd be fine with the equivalent of "marking" where a sentient opponent would see your stance that you're poised to whack him if he turns to swing at your ally, but ideally they shouldn't even know. It should be an ability of the fighter to do that, regardless of the state of mind of his opponent (otherwise how can you mark a non-rational or stupid creature that doesn't think in terms of tactics the same way your PC does).

When you see in 4e char op boards about defenders talk about Catch-22 builds, how exactly can that work, against creatures that have no penchant or interest in tactics? You're anthropomorphising every single creature you go up against, as if it must have the same mind for tactics and tradeoffs and can contemplate the pros and cons between them in real time, in the midst of a battle. Against a smart opponent, sure, they might see your telegraph about what you "might" do if they do this or that, but in real fighting, "telegraphing" your intent is only a good move when you are trying to confuse your enemy, and not generally a good idea to warn them that you're gonna whack them. Classic silliness is that the DM must adjucate the lesser of two evils, regardless of the state of mind of the enemy, about whether to violate your mark or not. I know my 4e DM hated marks, and it was the one mechanic that was really annoying to me as a defender, taking feats to influence the tactics of the DM over all monsters, feats that shouldn't even be used. E.g. I could boost my Divine Challenge damage...but how on earth would the enemy know how much damage it'd take? It forces the DM to metagame waaaaaay too much. It turns the game into a board game and reduces the monsters to just tokens on a grid, their type is now just fluff and barely relevant.

This is a case of...why shoehorn D&D Next to what 4e does, when you can achieve the equivalent net effect of marking mechanics but without resorting to metagame "spooky action at a distance", or prescience, or telepathy. Marking the way it is in 4e worked well, but you have to admit, if you're not telegraphing what you're about to do as a reaction to its next action, how could it possibly be aware that it's "marked"? It simply can't. Unless all monsters and pcs are telepathic, which they're not.

Interposing Shield is the right template for a "marking" mechanic, IMO. I personally don't want stuff like 4e marking in Next, even in a tactical module optional book. Tactics should still make sense in the game world, and not kill your suspension of disbelief. Especially for at-will, every round mechanics. No way.

 

[Manbearcat]

Metagame literally means "beyond the game (world)". It is not a binary concept. It is a continuum. Something may be "all metagame" or (virtually) "0 metagame", but that doesn't mean that there is not a sliding scale between the two.

Accessing, referencing or leveraging the metagame as a verb means to eschew in-setting (game world), causal logic to one degree or another in order to handle or legitimize some aspect of play; effect/outcome primacy over the primacy of granular process simulation from 1st person perspective in the game world. This is why abstractions are bound into the determination of something "accesses or references" the metagame.

Hit Points are the original metagame tool. They are, at their most basic, "plot armor" and this conceptually has no place in the game world. They are first and foremost a means to propagate protagonism in the gameworld in a fun, simple, mechanical way. The simple is the abstraction; it minimizes table handling time thus speeding up play. However, as a result, if you push them too hard, you will find all sorts of in-world wonkiness that makes absolutely no sense because the 2nd and 3rd order interactions of HPs with the game-world are unintended consequences of the gross abstraction for the sake of ease of use in standard, 1st order play; eg, orc hits me with a sword and I "take" 8 HP damage and die at full HPs versus I achieve terminal velocity and smack the ground and survive with 100 % efficacy at full HPs.

We had a conversation about "slide" above. The word "slide" is purely metagame; the word itself only has meaning to the people at the table such that they may have shared language to facilitate play. However, conceptually, it can have as much process simulation primacy as you allow it; as I attempted to relay its in-game world application. In real life, when "sliding" takes place, we use language such as "wrong-footing", "juked", "faked out", "pulled the string", "broke your ankles", "you lost your jockstrap", "played you like a fiddle", "ring control" etc to describe the interaction between martial actors that "sliding" facilitates. Vernacular like that would take place in the game world between the same actors to describe the phenomenon they are witnessing or involved with.

In a pure Gamist Agenda where your primary concern is accepting and defeating challenges, accessing the metagame comes in the way of strategic and tactical decision-making that may be partially or fully unrelated to what could legitimately be interpreted as a decision that stemmed from the Character in the Situation in the Setting. For instance:

Bob the Fighter has 121 HPs. Bob personally has no concept of his HPs; when he loses them there may be something internal to Bob (fatigue, a scratch or bruise, "just-missed" due to Bob's skill) Bob happening that he can reference or nothing (manifest destiny/plot armor, luck, divine intervention). Bob is at the top of a mountain, facing down 5 giants after attaining the McGuffin. He estimates a 50 % chance of death here. Not so good. Bob knows that he can jump off the side of the mountain and survive at 100 % clip due to the 20d6 threshold for terminal velocity. Better odds. Bob jumps from the precipice, falling 10000 feet to the ground, suffering 67 damage, gets up, brushes himself off and whistles Dixie as he casually walks away, McGuffin in hand.

"Marking" much like "Sliding" requires matching of the game language to what is actually happening in the fiction. Marking is a Hockey Defenseman sitting in the hip pocket of the Forward or Center who is just outside the crease looking for a pass or an opportunity for a deflection or a putback on a rebound. That Defenseman is "marking" that offensive player, protecting his goalie (and his goal) from the threat of a clean, free, weak-side defender. He physically jousts for position to keep him away from the opportunity of getting his stick on a puck for a deflection. He ties up his stick to keep him from getting a wrist shot off on a pass or a clean swipe at a rebound off the goalie. And if a pass makes it through or a rebound is available, such that the offensive player now has legitimate "control of the puck" (such that there will be no penalty) and decides to "attack the goalie/goal", the Defenseman plants him on the ice. That is "marking" in action in the world...the same way Fighters do it in world. There are multiple analogs in American Football and Basketball with Defenders and Offenders.

I have spent my entire life playing sports at every level of play (except for professional). "Marking" and "Sliding" (forced movement) requires considerably less metagame leveraging to make sense of than HPs, saving throws versus Rod/Staff/Wand and XP as gold ever will.

Martial Encounter Powers are much more overtly metagame mechanics. Martial Dailies more overtly metagame still. These are mechanics that let mundane/martial players move from actor stance to author stance (and sometimes director stance) and impose their will upon the fiction by amping up the cool. Post-hoc narrative justification will be contrived to make sense of the fictional positioning but at their core, these abilities are effects/outcome primacy over process simulation primacy. And this is a beloved feature of 4th edition for martial players and GMs who want martial players to have the same narrative authority/fiat as spellcasters have historically had "because magic".

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

Besides grid rules for movement and resolving area of effect stuff what else does the ATM need?

Usually a pin code.

 

[Manbearcat]

Usually a pin code.

Lol. Freudian slip riposted with a razor wit!

 

[Walking Dad]

I mentioned in another thread, there seem to be a few very distinct and deeply-felt reasons why people like 4e (if they do).

I suspect that for the "tactical combat" folks, a good module will do it.

For the more esoterically motivated, I wonder if the "4e-narrative" module is as impossible as is often presumed. However, that's probably a topic for another thread.

Well, I like 4e for the better balance between the races and classes. "Better" could be subjective in this case.

---

And what should NOT be in it:
The only grid rules for Next. Sorry, I often play with beginners and kids and most can get the make-believe talks with NPCs and have no problems with having a counter representing themselves on a map. But they have serious trouble with pretending flanking, positioning and where they are during a combat. They can better fight the orcs they see them on map, who is in greater danger and the likes.
Grips and counters can actually be a help and are not the devil that distracts from good roleplaying or over-complicates combat