Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 3234859" data-attributes="member: 42582">Your second claim here may well be true. I don't think the first is. A rules system can influence, facilitate or hinder without determining. Do you deny that Dying Earth facilitates repartee-based conflict in a manner, and to an extent, that D&D does not?I agree with your first claim. Rules don't determine play experience. But they do help shape it. I disagree with your second claim. The function of the rules is not to support the game once social contract breaks down - at least, not in most games I have played or seen played. For example, in most D&D games that I'm familiar with, combat between PC and NPCs or monsters does not signal a break down in the social contract, but is in fact demanded by it. And most such combat is resolved in accordance with the rules.It may be that our experiences are very different, and thus that we are reasoning from quite different pools of evidence. But (to pick one example) I have never seen a D&D game, or a set of D&D rules, that satisfactorily support a pacifist character. This is, in my view, non-coincidentally connected to the D&D ruleset.D&D does not support a super-hero approach very well, either, because the rules facilitate killing as the standard technique of combat resolution over disabling or knocking unconscious.These are examples of rules facilitating or hindering certain play experiences.The first claim here is something with which I agree, and is quite consistent with what I said about alignment. The second claim is something with which I disagree. There are clear rules in D&D that make skill and feat selection more important than selecting the colour of one's robe or weapon-belt. Off the top of my head, the only part of the D&D rules I can think of that makes robe colour important is the description of Robes of the Archmagi.I don't see the need to be rude. Reasons for disagreement will do.Which is to say, nothing prevents one from playing a different game. I'm sure someone out there has written a d20 game that has social aspects better developed than D&D.The main one I can think of is Hero Quest/Wars. Dying Earth also does a reasonable job. Rolemaster's rules are complex, but some disupte their adequacy.The final two sentences are highly contestable. Admittedly I have only ever encountered, or read the writings of, a miniscule proportion of the world's role players. But many of those, who want a politics-type or social-type game, do want action resolution mechanics (which I take to be what you mean by "gamist resolutions") to support it. Your experience of such players may be different, but I think your generalisation from that experience is in doubt.I also find it interesting that you contrast roleplaying and combat. I tend to regard resolving combats as one form of roleplaying - indeed, for many players of a typical fighter character, their main roleplaying outlet is through building their character to be good at fighting, and then playing their character during the fight.This seems to be the equivalent to the claim that D&D is good for supporting political games becaue all social conflict resolution is free-form.Obviously, player's preference for free-form game systems varies widely. But free-form is not the only way to do it. Just the same as combat, in D&D, is not simply "rolling a die" - there are all sorts of decisions to be made, like which manoeuvre to use, which foe to attack, which position to take, and so on - so rules for social interaction can be developed in the same vein.There are also questions about the relationship between free-form resolution and in-game versus meta-game considerations. If there is an expectation, for example, that a free-former will mould their behaviour to reflect his or her character's stats, then it makes a difference to the free form whether or not the game has a Charisma stat, a Diplomacy skill and so on.In any event I don't think it's true, of many incarnations of D&D, that it is free-form in the way you appear to suggest.1st Ed AD&D had highly structured rules for a number of social interactions: recruting henchman and hirelings, numbers of henchman, loyalty of henchman and hirelings, tricking monsters into giving up pursuit, etc.3E D&D also has rules for social interaction: Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidation, Gather Information and Sense Motive skills. To get free-form play you have to ignore these rules. This will tend to shortchange the players of Bards (and probably some Rogues, Paladins and Clerics). But when you want to take the rules into account, you find they are not all that well developed: the most detailed rules under Bluff and Intimidation, for example, concern their use to gain advantages in combat.Again, this is not criticism of D&D. It is observation.True. But it may discourage it, or encourage a different sort of play.It is becoming clear to me that we have quite different conceptions of what counts as the rules or mechanics of a game. You seem to have in mind the action resolution system (or perhaps a certain subset of it, like the combat rules - I get the impression that you may not regard such aspects of D&D as the list of example DCs in the DMG, or the Diplomacy reaction influencing table, as rules) and probably the character building system (or at least part of it - you don't seem to regard the XP system, which undergirds character development, as part of the rules).You seem to exclude from the rules such elements as the encounter and reward systems,  the equipment lists, I suspect perhaps the magic item building system, and I imagine the city-building system. I'm not sure whether you regard alignment as part of the rules or not.Of course, changing the cost of a longsword up or down by 5 gp may not have a huge impact on the game; changing armour prices will have a bigger impact, because it will affect the starting AC of 1st level characters - a very important part of the game for new players and new campaigns.These are still relatively minor aspects of the rules. But the fact that certain activities are supported by the equipment list provided - buying alchemical devices, or purchasing healing spells - but others are not - hiring an alchemist (compare this to 1st ed AD&D, which devotes quite a few column inches to hiring alchemists), or paying for a bed in a hospital - contributes to the support of certain play experiences rather than others.Of course I can make up my own prices for these things. I can also make up my own rules for social conflict. I can also make up my own rules for grappling. As I said above, D&D has always relied on players being prepared to adapt the rules to their own game. This is not evidence against the claim that rules contribute to, even shape, the play experience. It is evidence for it: if I want a certain play experience, I have to make up new rules.(As an aside: one interesting example within d20 of new rules for equipment buying, designed to support a different play experience from D&D, would be the wealth rules in D20 modern.)Or, alternatively, that different people are using the D&D rules as a starting point for playing different games - which is what I am contending. What counts as "playing D&D" as opposed to "playing XYZ"? How much variation do these descriptions tolerate? I don't really care. The publishers of D&D obviously do care, given their financial interest - they want people to think of their game as a D&D game, even if it varies quite significantly from the rules as written by WoTC in their Core Rulebooks.What I am interested in is the influence of game rules and mechanics - understood in the way I have characterised them, as those parts of the rules text which tell or show players how to play, and what counts as playing, the game - on play experience; and (in the context of this thread) on the compatability of adventures with the different play expectations generated by differences across games.I am sure that among 3E players these difference exist. It is undoubtedly true that they exist across editions. 1st ed AD&D and 3E D&D support quite different play experiences. As many have noted, 1st ed characters are quick and dirty to create; the mechanical experience of playing one 7th level fighter is much the same as playing any other; no wonder the game supports a style of play where meta-game thinking and puzzle-sovling is a good part of the fun! Such a character is well-suited to being a mere vehicle for bringing the player's mind to the situation.Contrast this with a 3E character. By the time a fighter is 7th level, it is likely that hours of planning, influenced by the lessons of actual play, have gone into the build of the character, selection of feats, planning of combat tactics and techniques, and so on. Who wouldn't be at least a bit frustrated by challenges in an adventure that make all that effort return no reward? 3E is geared to quite a different set of player expectations.(By the way, you suggest that my ideas are original to me, and novel in some way. While the details of the above analysis are my own, the basic idea of the influence of mechanics on play is not mine - I picked it up by reading Ron Edwards at The Forge.)</blockquote>

Verification