When the system gets in the way

[The Shaman]

At some point, I think I'm going to re-read my 1e books and prep a game for Gameday; see how that old warhorse was really supposed to be played.

You may yet discover that that 'old warhorse' is really a proud Percheron.

 

[Wik]

So, I've run my second d6 game, and I think I know enough now to contrast d6 to D&D. I don't really want to get into a rules argument here, but I do want to explain how the play experience for us was different. That, to me, is the real fascinating thing.

Our session was pretty much a three-hour (we run shorter games) session that encompassed a sort of simple "shadowrun" in a large city (Tokyo, 2400 A.D.). The PCs did a lot of legwork, after vowing to not get into any more needless firefights. That didn't go so well, since one of the characters figured he ran into a brick wall when the hacker screwed up on one of her hacking runs, and picked a fight with one of their informants. There was also a "pickup" where the PCs abducted their target, although the plan was botched (Thanks to the informant that got his face kicked in calling to the authorities). This culminated in a high-speed chase over an oceanic train line. The final scene involved the knife-fighter crazy jumping from one flying car to another at 200 mph speeds, setting up a plastic explosive on the vehicle, and jumping back into the PCs' car before the security car exploded.

All in all, it was a helluva lotta fun.

There were a few major differences that I noted.

The first was the timing of the game. I'm used to D&D timing, where non-combat scenes rush by fairly quickly, and combat scenes seem to take longer. In fact, in most D&D sessions, I can run an average of three "scenes" per hour, with the average scene being 45 minutes, and the rest of my time being used to string the scenes together. In d6, I ran five scenes (legwork, casing out an airport, a quick combat with the informant, the failed abduction that turned into a running gunfight, and a high-speed chase scene). This puzzled me a little bit, since there is actually MORE dice-rolling in d6 combat, it seems. After all, in D&D you roll to hit a static armour class, and if you hit, you roll damage. In d6, you can generally make more dice rolls per round, and everytime you hit, your damage is opposed by the target's strength roll, and compared on a chart. In reality, though, the combat was much quicker, and - as I've mentioned before - a lot more open. As an example, in the abduction scene, one of the players wanted to blast a limo driver in the back of the head (hoping to stop the limo from escaping) with his shotgun, and then roll over the roof of the car so he could get to the driver's side backseat and pull out their target. He succeeded on his attack roll, but failed on his acrobatics check - miserably - and fell flat on his ass.

In D&D, that scene would have been possible, absolutely - it's really just a single attack followed by a move (That might provoke attacks of opportunity, had anyone a melee attack). Maybe a tumble check would have been used to enable the move. But, knowing my players, no one would have even thought of doing that, unless a player had invested points in tumble, in which case he'd be vaulting over cars whenever he had a chance to.

Our role-playing is definately picking up, too. During the "legwork" phase, our hacker player (who isn't too fond of investigation-style scenes as a rule) made her character go to the airport's arcade, and we played out a quick scene involving her and a twelve-year old kid jockeying for the high score on a space video game. It was simple, but the scene worked, and kept the player in the game while everyone else was doing more important things.

In fact, throughout the d6 game last night, I was able to inject many "tiny" scenes that I wouldn't have felt comfortable doing in D&D - there was a scene in the women's washroom that was sort of funny, a bribery at a limo kiosk that had the group laughing (even if it wasn't really funny), a conversation between two rent-a-cops that the group really latched upon, and our drugged-out knife fighter having a conversation with two "lizard aliens" over tattoos. Now, these were all scenes that didn't involve a die roll, and as such, would have worked EXACTLY the same in D&D. But they never would have; maybe it was because I was afraid they would turn into larger scenes that would slow the game. I think it's probably because there is a lot more characterization in this game than in my D&D games, and as such, I feel more confident in throwing the group chances to show off their characters' personalities.

THe more I think about it, the more I realize that really, the scenes in the game would havebeen similar had I been playing D&D (or d20 Future, or whatever). After all, players still fell into roles - we had the hacker doing all the computer work, the hit man is still our gun guy, we have a driver, and we have a crazy acrobat character. They all tended to latch onto things that they knew they were good at, generally speaking. The difference, I guess, is that everyone just felt a lot more confident.

One last thing I want to mention. It's probably a small thing, and I think a lot of you will laugh. In most of my games, there's been a tendency as of late to forget your character's name. You think "What's this half-elf fighter's name, again? It starts with a Y, I think" and that's that. This session, one of the players forgot the name of Julianna, our hacker. He eventually asked for it, and wrote it down on his character sheet, so he could use it while talking in character. The funny thing is, everyone else KNEW the names of the other characters in game, and absolutely knew their own character's name. Hell, it's the second session, and two of the four characters already have detailed backstories that are getting e-mailed to me, and the other two are very well-developed (for our style of play) as well.

OH, and my brother, the rules-lawyer? He told me the other day that he actually loves this game a lot more than D&D, simply because he feels he can do more with it. That was pretty cool.

***

In short, I've found that the d6 game doesn't really change how the game goes down, in theory. But in reality, it's changed the way that the players think of their characters, and frees them from "do the rules allow that" thinking that has been hindering us for a while. I think I'm going to miss d20, because I like playing in it, but I don't think I'm going to GM it for a long while yet. Tomorrow, I'm buying d6 Fantasy and I'm going to loosely convert a lot of D&D material to d6. I'm a total convert.

Your opinions may vary.

 

[buzz]

This is great stuff, Wik. It seems like it may not be so much the rules, but your comfort zone and the player's expectations. That you've found a system that accomodates the former and challeneges (in a good way) the latter is way cool.

 

[Hussar]

Do you mean things like attacking an opponent from the flank or rear to gain a to-hit bonus

Absolutely true. However, like Buzz, I never saw it.

, or getting a free attack on a disengaging opponent,

which meant that opponents NEVER ran away.

or backstabbing for extra damage,

only done by a thief who had surprise - never came up after the first round of combat

or emphasizing ranged attack bonuses over melee attack bonuses in ability score placement,

In other words, min/maxing for effect. Done at character creation time and never again.

or fighting with two weapons,

which carried such huge penalties that it was rarely done

or shield rushes,

Didn't know it could be done

or choosing light armor and a high movement rate over heavy armor and a low movement rate,

since the only movement that ever happened was rushing forward to engage the enemy and encounter distances are almost 60 feet or less unless you are outdoors, rarely made any difference

or charging with a polearm in order to strike before an opponent,

Didn't know this rule.

or setting polearms to receive charges,

in all your years of gaming, have you EVER seen a PC do this? Any time I tried, the bad guys never charged.

or striking to subdue, or grappling an opponent,

You could only subdue dragons as far as I knew and the grappling rules were so arcane that they might as well have not been there

or selecting lighter faster weapons in order to strike before an opponent,

since monsters used claws, they were almost always faster than any weapon[/quote] or choosing between party buffing spells versus attack spells versus healing spells versus defensive spells versus divination spells[/quote] Yeah, like any wizard ever memorized anything other than sleep, fireball and magic missile?

Those kinds of options? The kind that were all available in 1e AD&D?

They might have been there, but, they were either buried under 15 pounds of crap, or they were entirely ignored.

 

[LostSoul]

In The Shaman's defense, I did almost all of those actions at some time or another. (I can't remember ever grappling or doing a shield rush.) They didn't come up all that often, but they did come up.

I pretty vividly remember, in 2e days, a boar charging a PC who had a spear. The spear was set for a charge, and killed the boar; but boars had the special ability to keep going after they were at 0 hp, so I described the boar's wild attempt to continue the charge, driving the spear ever-deeper into its flesh.

I used to have my Cleric of St. Cuthbert wear a shield on his back in order to get the shield bonus from that side. Since normally it was only from the front and the right.

I remember always trying to get into a good position for a sneak attack whenever I played a Thief (which, with multiclassing, was almost always). But we were pretty lenient on when you could backstab.

But 3e does all that better for me. You still get the "hack until one falls" feeling sometimes, but less often.

I wonder why some groups used those options and other ones didn't.

 

[LostSoul]

In short, I've found that the d6 game doesn't really change how the game goes down, in theory. But in reality, it's changed the way that the players think of their characters, and frees them from "do the rules allow that" thinking that has been hindering us for a while. I think I'm going to miss d20, because I like playing in it, but I don't think I'm going to GM it for a long while yet. Tomorrow, I'm buying d6 Fantasy and I'm going to loosely convert a lot of D&D material to d6. I'm a total convert.

That's really cool that it's working out. Who knows why, all that matters is that it's fun. (Although my gut is saying that you guys are approaching it less competitively, less "win" in mind, and that may have something to do with how you get XP or Character Points; but I'm just shooting in the dark here. Maybe I'm projecting my own experiences, who knows.)

I played only Star Wars for a couple of years, and after that I found that I wanted to play some D&D again. I wonder if you guys will feel the same way. There was just something satisfying about the whole combat thing. Hmm, maybe it was that I missed the rush of the "win" in competitive play.

Anyway. If you start up a story hour, I'll follow along.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Stuff and things.

EDIT: Wow, I'm just ridiculously late on that. Ignore me.

 

[ThoughtBubble]

Fun thread. Hope it's not too late to chime in!

I think D&D lends itself to min-maxing and a focus on the numbers and combat acumen. That doesn't mean it's a bad system, or that you can't role-play in it. But, all things equal, it does a lot to bring those elements into play.

There are a lot of combat related rules in the game. Especially including spells, which add a lot more to track "So, what do I roll to get out of these tentacles?"

Here's some stuff, that all put together, can give you some perspective into the min-maxing portions of my little heart.

--
The game rewards mastery of the system. By looking into what goes well, you can gain big-time benifits. I mean, really, taking toughness isn't that useful, and guys who melee will want strength, and so on.

D&D rewards long term planning. Ever decide that your character would really be awesome dual-wielding? I hope you knew that when you picked your stats, because you need a 15+ dex to have a chance at being reasonably good at it. Oh, and I hope you're either a fighter, or about to hit a feat level, otherwise it may be a long while. Don't get me started on picking up whirlwind attack. You'll need to know that you're going to pick that up at level 12 when you first roll up the character. On a side tangent, I think dropping the stat pre-requisites from feats and dropping them on to the characters more would help the game system feel more open.

As long as you're in the "My character does X" range, you're alright, outside of that characters tend to falter (total skill modifiers of +1, or 1/2 bab for examples) . D&D has a lot of hefty penalties that proper planning can avert. Firing into melee, unfamiliar weapons, wearing armor, cross class skills (1/2 skill on non class skills really tends to hurt the classes with few skill points), or trying to hit things with 1/2 bab. Again, planning for this reduces the situations where a character is unprepared.

There are preciously few ways to spontaniously say "The outcome of this roll matters so much to me I'll give up a lot to change it." You can't call upon the dark side, or channel your teleport spell into a point blank attack, or re-roll that 3 that had it been a 7 would have let you save the princess and accomplish your life's goal. So, it pays to have the things that you think will matter as high as possible. Hero points are one of my best friends and are getting imported into any D&D game I run from here on out.

D&D likes to say "No... Unless..." In my expierence in the game, generally there seems to be a large list of things I can't do, and some very specific criteria I need to hit to be able to do what I want. Often that's taking a prestige class, often it's multi-classing, or buying up the right feat chain, or making sure to get at least 8 ranks in tumble, climb, balance, and swim. This gets compounded with the fact that there are a lot of penalties and tough rolls that await the unprepared. So it's best to know what I want early and get it as soon as possible.

The DM can do anything at any time. Not a problem, per se, but it's an important point leading up to the next.

All I really have control of is my character. By using the rules as well as I can to make my character as good as possible, I have the best chance of getting what I want out of the game.
--

It really boils down to that last point. It's not always easy to get what you want in the game. Sure, good groups help with that, but they're not always good groups. There are games when all the good character actions in the world can't change a thing (because the character acting portions are entirely GM defined), but a readied action with an arrow has a much more predictable result. The rules can back you, in some places, when you need them.

Some days a wisdom of 8 is a cool chance to play a trusting character who lacks basic suspicions about other people. But it's always a -1 to will saves.

I like D&D, it's a fun game.

I hope that this helped anyone wondering about "Why ever min-max" .

I just have one question. Why is it that doing something cool seems to have a -2 modifier?

 

[Raven Crowking]

As a DM, I certainly made much use out of the tactical information available in 1E -- I'm rather surprised that no one mentioned bonuses for cover and concealment. My players certainly knew that, by picking the ground upon which you fought, you could defeat far more powerful creatures than otherwise.

Consider the humble giant slug. Because 1e had facing and absolute sizes over "squares", that slug could devastate you if you were in front of it....but if you came up behind it in a tunnel? If you could lure it to a place of your choosing? You could kill it with much less chance of it doing anything in return.

Of course, D&D has always assumed that the characters understand tactics better than the players. That is why fighters, say, have such an easier time hitting things than wizards. They know when to strike, and where. It is also why they have so many more hit points -- they know how to minimize blows against them. In AD&D 1e, tactics were treated rather like social skills are in 3e -- just because you don't understand them doesn't mean that your character doesn't.

This is still held over in 3e, btw, or there would be a flat BAB and HP progression to go along with that flat XP progression.

I am at work right now, and don't have the 1e books available, but I believe that things like flanking, choosing facing to maximize bonuses, etc., all existed -- they were just not as well codified in 1e as in 3e, and it was not assumed that those rules would come up in every combat. As a result, combats were a lot quicker, and a lot more of a "hit point race". Tactical decisions often dealt with what one could do within a given day, rather than within a given combat.

In 3e, this has given rise to two problems. Both are fairly easy to fix, but both occur across a fairly broad spectrum of players.

The first problem is that, with so many tactical options and such importance given to choosing the "right" option, some players will agonize over decisions, slowing combats down considerably. The easiest fixes are to set a time limit, or to resign oneself to having fewer encouners per play session.

The second problem is that of the "One Combat A Day" party, who will use their resources in a single combat (or a very small number of combats), then go hide and rest -- usually using rope trick or some variation thereof. The easiest fix is to keep track of time, and only allow the PCs the benefits of one 8-hour rest period within 24 hours. Monsters keep moving (and searching for the PCs), treasures are hauled away, reinforcements are summoned, additional guards are posted, etc. Or you could just role-play the waiting .

I third problem I see, although I don't think that it is universally (or even close to) regarded as a problem is reliance on the grid. Sometimes it shouldn't be obvious how many creatures you are fighting, and some fights are simply not worth mapping onto the grid. "Guys, it's just one dire rat." Yet the combat rules in 3.X make some players feel cheated if there isn't a grid involved in just about everything. If you find this a problem, then the easiest solution is to just say No.

Overall, I'd have to say that the combat system in 3.X is worlds better than the combat systems of previous editions. However, combat is a lot slower, and becomes the major focus of the game unless you work to prevent it from doing so.

RC

 

[RFisher]

One of those options gives you no advantage - move.

(O_O)

I give up.