What the heck is "Unfun"?

[Glyfair]

I'm really confused now. What's this thread about?

At this point, absolutely nothing.

 

[Wolv0rine]

I'm holding out for the "More Fun" version of Trivial Pursuit where even if you know nothing you still win so you can still feel good about yourself.

My son was playing the "More Fun" version of football where everyone won just by stepping onto the field.....of course he was only 6 at the time. Unfortunately, he is forced to play the "unfun" version of football where one team wins and one team loses.

Life is tough sometimes when your 9yrs old, deal with it.

I'm thinking that this is a lesson some D&D players need to learn....::ducks and runs for cover::

Sundragon

*Falls out of his chair laughing*
You, sir, have grasped the concept fully. Good on ya!

 

[SavageRobby]

I'm really confused now. What's this thread about?

Unfun.

Can't you tell?

 

[Just Another User]

I actually changed spells like destruction, FoD et al to deal Con damage (4d6). It wasn't really worth it. Blasphemy and harm were much better if you just wanted to deal lots of damage, so they got used all the time and the instakills became peripheral.

The other issue I have is with dramatic pacing (or lack thereof). I'd like some way to encourage people to save their biggest guns for late in the fight, instead of opening with them. Just switching instakills to deal damage doesn't address this issue, whereas having a hit point threshold does.

I think that if you want them to use those effects later in the combat, those should have some kind of negative backslash, so they use them only as a last resort (i.e. after using it they get fatigued, or suffer some temporary stat damage (temporay could mean, pass in 1 day or pass with 5 minutes of rest or something between, it depend), or something like that) so using it first thing in combat is not always a good idea. This could be used even for the more powerful attack of some creature (i.e. every time a dragon use his breath weapon he get 1 point of temporary CON damage).

All IMHO, of course.

 

[Horacio]

Unfun.

Can't you tell?

It's the right thread for this night of insomnia...
Going back to sleep, people, I feel sleepy now.

 

[KarinsDad]

Where were you when this topic was being raised originally in order to stonewall the thread?

Ignoring the attempts like most reasonable people should have been.

If you have an outstanding issue that you want to be addressed, just simply indicate what it is.

I find it unfun when a DM's campaign is more important then the PCs and their goals.

I find it unfun when I spell Greyhawk Grayhawk. Doh!

I find it unfun when as DM, I have to pull out the PHB. I don't know if I am just getting old, but I've been having to do that about 5+ times per game these days. It used to be that I would tell a player to look something up and I would tell him what page to find it on. Sigh.

I find it unfun when Gnomes disappear from the PHB. I like having a vastly inferior PC race to pick on. Ditto for Half Elves.

I find it unfun when bread and butter abilities rarely work in combat: Turn Undead, especially with a PrC.

I find it unfun when bread and butter abilities always work in combat: Tumbling and Cast Defensively.

I previously had not thought about this one before the 4E discussions started, but I am coming to the conclusion that I find it unfun when I have to keep track of how many rounds an effect will last during combat. If Durations in 4E are something like: One round, Entire Encounter, Ten Minutes, One Hour, 5 Hours, One Day, One Week, One Month, etc. I think multiples of ~4x to ~7x work reasonably well for this. Once one is at the 10 minute mark, it doesn't really matter which spell is cast first and all of those discussions about which spell gets cast before which other spell all go away.

I find it unfun when it is obvious that a game element has never ever been playtested: Darkness spell, Find Traps spell.

There are others, but many of them have already been mentioned in this thread.

 

[Hairfoot]

Players want their PCs to shine. And, they also want their PC to be the best in some areas. And I think the designers of 4E understand that.

The designers of 3E understood it as well, but their solution to the problem was problematic at best. Their solution was to give the PCs more and more, better and better. More feats. More PrCs. More magic items. More capability. Part of this is pure business and marketing, but it did hurt the versimilitude of the game for some people by making the cinematic "too fantastic" and overwhelming.
...
Sometimes, bad things happen in a game. A PC can be heroic and a game can be a lot of fun without him being protected from all of the bad things that can happen.
...
It's all a matter of balance... Win some, win some is really not as much fun as win some, lose some.

I wish I'd entered this thread earlier, because this sums up almost perfectly my feelings about the direction of D&D, and so far I'm looking forward to 4E in the hope that it pulls back on some of the superhero-ish-ness of 3E.

 

[hong]

That's what asking for proof of the existence of people that don't matter to the conversation was doing in the original situation. The "proof" being asked for was actually supporting an assertion that was not the central point of the case being made.

The assertion, however, forms the basis on which the claim can be said to have any relationship with reality.

See, reality is kinda important. "If the flying spaghetti monster played D&D, he surely would ban wizards" is rather hard to disprove, you know?

 

[gizmo33]

See, reality is kinda important. "If the flying spaghetti monster played D&D, he surely would ban wizards" is rather hard to disprove, you know?

Though it is hard to disprove, fortunately there's also not much to be gained by doing so. Reality would be just where you left it.

 

[pemerton]

"You win some, you lose some," is a necessary element of sustained enjoyment. "You win some, and then you win some more," is a surefire recipe for people quickly becoming tired of the game and finding something else to do with their Saturday night.

D&D isn't supposed to be competitive between the DM and the players. I am 100% against an adversarial relationship between DM and players. However, where you have it wrong is that there is a distinct competition for survival between PCs and their enemies.

The PCs and their enemies are in competition. It does not follow from that that the players are necessarily doing anything competitive at all, either with one another or the GM. They may be, of course, but they need not be. Depending on how the players derive their pleasure, the notion of "win some, lose some" may or may not have useful applicaiton in a roleplaying game.

That the very real possibility of character death is unfun in an adventure game where the point is to face terrible foes and hopefully be victorious, but with absolutely no guarantees. There is NOTHING heroic about guaranteed victory.

Sucks to have to worry about proper provisioning for a life threatening expidition to the underworld where you are guaranteed to be attacked and likely injured and perhaps even killed.

<snip>

Oh yeah, they still want to be heroes but risk nothing and have to put no thought into preparation for their undangerous, undeadly, unheroic adventures.

Again, there seems to be a confusion here between the PCs and the players. The PCs are heroic adventurers. The players may or may not want to themselves engage in the thought processes that such heroes would engage in in planning their expedition. Likewise, the players may or may not want to experience the loss that the PCs feel when they are defeated or killed.

The DM has to keep track of this stuff for all of his NPCs. Each player has to keep track of it for one PC (typically unless they have a cohort).

<snip>

if a player is incapable of keeping track of the dynamic elements of his PC, then he's doing it wrong.

The player may not want to live through the experience that her PC does, of having to scrounge and tally every piece of equipment that is essential to the success of the mission.

I think I have to speak up in defense of save or dies.

1) The 'save or die' effects are a main part of the fantasy genre.

<snip>

3) This is a fight, you know. You guys are engaged in mortal combat with the enemy. They are not expected to be nice. They will try their best to kill you. If you do not like this, go ask the DM to give the orcs wiffle bats, or, better yet, play Candyland. This is D&D.

The players may want to experience the adversity that the PCs do. But they may not.

this game is about heroic adventurers, going out and slaying creatures and evil people! Even in the movies the hero dies! So if you take out the auto fail on a "1", and also take out the Save or die spells, why even have spells? What is the point of adventuring?

But RPGs are not movies. If the PC dies, the player has nothing to do in the game. This is a problem if the player turned up to play the game.

Re: save-or-die effects, paralyzation, etc., I truly don't understand why so many people are defending a mechanic that tells players to stop playing for modest-to-long stretches of time during a session. I mean, did you come to play D&D, or did you come to play Nintendo while your friends play D&D? That is why so many people want to say good-bye to save-or-die; it's nothing to do with challenge. After all, what's challenging about rolling a 1 and then going to read a book while your pals continue with the fun?

Agreed.

As I pointed out in another thread, death is not a necessary element in D&D to provide risk to the player characters. A game could be structured so that the PCs will never die unless they choose to die. When they fight they are risking things other than their life.

However, what is also clear from those discussions is that there are a large number of D&D players who feel that isn't playing D&D "right." Without the risk of death there is no risk, in their opinion. They wouldn't want to play D&D if there was no risk of death.

Agreed.

I see a bigger and bigger disconnect between those who want verisimilitude (or a close portrayal of reality, as close as you can get with Dragons and magic and such), and those who want cinematic action. IMO, gritty & verisimilitude come at the expense of having some of the "unfun" elements discussed. To solve those "unfun" issues, you get a more cinematic game. I see a place for both, but I think the market researchers have decided that cinematic wins out in terms of sales to the new gamer (or the WOW players).

For me, the disconnect consists more in the inability to recognise that different player preferences can be supported or hindered by different rulesets. Thus, instead of discussing the utility of different rulesets for different purposes, debate degenerates into a question of which preferences constitute "genuine D&D". Looking at the early texts of D&D will show there always to have been very different approaches to play (compare Roger Musson and Lewis Pulsipher in early numbers of White Dwarf, for instance).

In my view 1st ed AD&D, with its emphasis on large parties of multiple PCs per player (whether literally, or via henchmen & hirelings), lent itself well to a play style in which the pervasive risk of character death was not an obstacle to fun - because each player would always have a character to manipulate in the gameworld - and in which the main pleasure in play was operational success (and thus it did not matter which of "your guys" you ended up playing as the ingame vehicle to that success).

That is not to say that all 1st ed play was wargaming play - just that the rules offered firm support for that style of play.

Later editions have tended to emphasise a greater degree of player identification with a single PC. This style of play also attracts players who are not interested in the operational minutiae of wargaming play. Hence the complaints about tracking arrows and encumbrance.

A consequence of this widespread change in play style is that the death of that PC means the player is unable to play. Perhaps ironically, therefore, this more contemporary style of play can draw support from mechanics which actually separate the player's experience from the PC's experience - ie which do not require the players to undergo the adversities of the PCs. Mechanics which give the players control over aspects of the gameworld other than their PCs' decision-making - of which Fate Points are a common instance - are one example. With such mechanics in play, when a PC faces adversity the player does not experience that adversity him- or herself, but rather spends a Fate Point to relieve the adversity. I believe that this sort of play can be fun - but the fun will no longer consist in overcoming operational challenges.

As a trivial example, these sorst of mechanics can be used to give a satisfactory solution to the arrow problem:

Or, put in the player's hands. Want an extra Action Point when you really need it? Take a setback -- you run out of arrows, your sword breaks, your horse steps in a gopher hole, whatever fits the circumstances.

Of course, an equally acceptable approach for those who do not care for operational play would be simply to ignore or handwave arrows, as Cadfan has been arguing.

In any event, the game designers have to choose which sorts of mechanics to use, and thereby which style of play to support. My feeling is that operational play is losing out - this would be just a continuation of a trend which has been unidirectional since the end of 1st ed, and is pretty common across the RPG world. If this is correct, it is rational for those who enjoy operational play, and want rules to support it, to be disappointed. But I don't think there is any basis for them attacking the play preferences of others.