What would WotC need to do to win back the disenchanted?

[Belen]

Simple answer: WOTC can release Saga Edition as a new d20 modern.

 

[BryonD]

CAGI is an excellent dramatist power. The fighter glances round, smiles, gestures, and the enemies all rush as in a martial arts film. Rule of Cool. It's just not simulationist.

First, let me say that I've been in discussions focused on CAGI before, and it is certainly low hanging fruit. But, there are plenty of bad feats, from WotC alone, in 3.X. So, I don't see specific cases as the problem. It is the larger approach to what is and isn't fun in gaming that is the issue. (Not saying is/isn't is remotely a universal truth, just that differences in perception here is the basis of the issue)

But, your approach to how to solve that problem is exactly in tune with one of the elements of 4E I find detrimental to the experience.

The mechanics LEAD the roleplay. A player, or DM, uses a power and then it is the job of the roleplaying to catch up and fill in the blanks. I've used the term before: "pop quiz role-playing".

It is exactly the same as what I was describing was wrong with Andy's comment. You have a tabletop mini mechanical ability and the behavior of your character is subservient to fitting that mechanic.

The character's behavior should come first and the mechanics should do the best they can to model the results. It doesn't always work in a perfect manner in 3E. I'm far from declaring 3E/PF the perfect, utopian ideal of RPGs.

But even on a bad day, mechanics doing a meh job of living up to the game is far far better (to me) than roleplay that is reactionary to the mechanics.

Make being the character be first.

 

[Ulrick]

That's it! I've figured out what it would take for WotC to "win" me back!


$100,000.


If WotC paid me $100,000 I would whole-heartedly promote 4e games, run D&D Encounters at my FLGS, become a poster-child, and tell everybody who does not play 4e to get off their duff and truly support the hobby. New recruits are needed to keep the hobby strong! Are you doing your part?

 

[Umbran]

By the rules, the high level barbarian is fantastical, yes, but by this view, the rules are not taken as axiomatic first principles. They can be wrong.

I don't see how this follows, at all.

I think may still be confusing "realism" with "verisimilitude". Realism is about matching the real world behavior. Verisimilitude is about supporting suspension of disbelief - setting you up so your mind shifts gracefully to the alternate reality of the fiction, so that you don't trip over how it doesn't match the real world.

The barbarian, as expressed by the rules (not by the fluff, by the rules) was never mundane. He, the fighter, the rouge - all the martial classes are (and always have been, through every edition) fantastical. You seem to have failed to grok that in fullness, for some reason, so you apparently keep thinking of the barbarian as "just this guy" who should be able to do what real-world people do.

Being a 'tough guy' doesn't cut it for me, it's not a strong enough justification.

Ah, you see, I'd not say that is the rules lacking verisimilitude - so far the rules have been internally consistent. That's the fluff lacking verisimilitude. You haven't been given a strong enough justification within the fiction for what the barbarian can do. The rules were never supposed to give you that justification, so that's not where the problem lies.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Ah, you see, I'd not say that is the rules lacking verisimilitude - so far the rules have been internally consistent.

What would it be then, for rules to lack verisimilitude? Contain contradictions? Say in one place that magic armor is half the weight of normal armor and in another that it is virtually weightless? Contain multiple discrete subsystems? Like overbearing and pummeling and turning undead all use different mechanics?

I don't think that's what people mean when they talk about a ruleset lacking verisimilitude. They are referring to a contradiction in what the rules say and in what they perceive as the reality of the game world. A disconnect so large, as with all wounds being healed in six hours, that it jars one's suspension of disbelief.

Realism and verisimilitude are both broad terms, hard to pin down. Sometimes they have the same meaning. Resemble reality, semblance of truth. What is reality if not the way the world truly is? If A resembles B then it surely has a semblance of B.

Sometimes verisimilitude is used to mean a weaker version of realism. Something that is like the real world, but only in some areas. There are wizards and dragons and superheroes, which is unlike our world, but they act in a consistent manner, which is like reality.

Verisimilitude might mean writerly tricks, like the use of specific times and places (as in X-Files) or technical language, to fool the viewer or reader into thinking this isn't just a pile of nonsense. A carefully worked out, internally consistent magic system could be said to do the same job. Or a huge world with lots of little details and fiddly bits, like Middle-Earth.

 

[Dausuul]

What would it be then, for rules to lack verisimilitude? Contain contradictions? Say in one place that magic armor is half the weight of normal armor and in another that it is virtually weightless? Contain multiple discrete subsystems? Like overbearing and pummeling and turning undead all use different mechanics?

The rules are purely abstract, quasi-mathematical constructs. Verisimilitude doesn't mean anything in the context of rules qua rules.

Questions of verisimilitude arise when you look at the interface between the rules and the imaginary world of the game. Wizards refers to that interface, rather dismissively, as "fluff," and clearly regards it as a matter of secondary importance. But it goes straight to the heart of what we find believable, what doesn't stand up to scrutiny but can be glossed over in play, and what yanks us right out of the imagined reality.

To a great extent, the interface between rules and game world consists of names. You can put in all the "fluff text" you like, but names trump fluff text every time. Look at how much trouble people have with the idea that you get all your hit points back after a night's rest. Why is that? It's because of the name. "Hit points" suggests "that which you lose when somebody hits you," in other words, physical health. And this is supported by the other names surrounding it: "attack," "hit," "miss," "damage," "healing surge," et cetera.

This issue is by no means confined to 4E, by the way. Every single edition of D&D has gone on at some length about how hit points are this, that, and the other thing, blah, blah, blah. But as long as they're called "hit points," people are going to think of them as physical health and be bothered when the mechanic doesn't behave the way they think it should.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Questions of verisimilitude arise when you look at the interface between the rules and the imaginary world of the game.

Yeah, the game text always at least suggests, and often describes, a world. In the case of D&D it's a world that seems somewhat like our own. Horses act like horses, swords like swords, physical objects move in the same way. The laws of physics are the same. Or at least they are until you add magic and other weird stuff.

And yet the rules part of the game text seems to contradict that. People act at full capacity until they drop, men who have acquired a lot of gold can survive falls from great heights, old people have very good eyesight and hearing, domestic cats are very dangerous, and so forth.

But going by the game text these do not seem to be areas where magic reigns. So how do we explain the contradiction? Maybe they are in fact magical, as Gary says hit points partly are in 1e ('magical protections and/or divine protection'). Maybe the rules only imperfectly describe the game world and should be overruled sometimes. Maybe the rules are right, the world of D&D is a strange place, even when it isn't magical.

So it's down, imo, to a contradiction between the 'world describing' parts of the game text, and the rules parts.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I read somewhere that the rules for hit points and armor class in D&D come from Don't Give Up The Ship!, a naval warfare game written by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson.

This is what happens when you take a rule that works fine for ships and try to apply it to men. D&D - too 19th century naval wargame-y!

 

[Wicht]

I read somewhere that the rules for hit points and armor class in D&D come from Don't Give Up The Ship!, a naval warfare game written by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson.

This is what happens when you take a rule that works fine for ships and try to apply it to men. D&D - too 19th century naval wargame-y!

So are you suggesting that WotC can win you back as a customer by dropping hit-points?

 

[Dykstrav]

This issue is by no means confined to 4E, by the way. Every single edition of D&D has gone on at some length about how hit points are this, that, and the other thing, blah, blah, blah. But as long as they're called "hit points," people are going to think of them as physical health and be bothered when the mechanic doesn't behave the way they think it should.

One of the best things that I've ever done for my own 3.5 and Pathfinder games was to use the vitality/wound point system as described in Unearthed Arcana. Although it has little impact on the game in and of itself, a simple name change has done wonders for my player's immersion. The people who play clerics especially love it--it suddenly makes sense for the characters to actually want to rest, and the cleric doesn't have to blow through half of their spells in a given day to heal their allies.