D&D 5E Why Balance is Bad

[billd91]

I think the bigger issue is that players can and often will find a way to "justify" almost any skill in any situation... so then it falls on the GM to determine whether their fiction was "good" enough to allow said skill to work in this situation... which can be a major hassle and lead to arguments or the DM just goes "yeah whatever..." and it does in fact turn into just a series of dice rolls. There is absolutely no guidance on how to decide if fiction is appropriate, no objective genre guide to tropes... so there is no adjudicating fiction by the book.

Meh. I can't help but say "Welcome to DMing." You listen to the player and if the plan is good, you say yes. If it's not helpful, you say no.

 

[billd91]

But doesn't this fly in the face of the player's protagonism? And what if the table can't agree on whether it's acceptable or not, especially since the players have a vested interest in succeeding at the SC.

EDIT: Actually according to the rulebooks it's solely up to the DM... not the table.

Of course not. The players still get to decide what they do and the rules are ultimately stacked in their favor so their protagonist status isn't threatened. For that matter, it isn't threatened by lack of specific narrative mechanics either, but that's not exactly what we're discussing here.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Meh. I can't help but say "Welcome to DMing." You listen to the player and if the plan is good, you say yes. If it's not helpful, you say no.

I'm going to concur on this. Deciding whether a skill use is appropriate or not is the D&D version of calling balls and strikes.

 

[Imaro]

and sometimes the DM is the only one to know what will or will not work...

I'm not in any way disagreeing with this...

 

[Hussar]

Reading Majoru's post really hammers home a point I've repeatedly made about 4e.

4e was/is the RPGA editition of DnD.

Which goes a huge distance in explaining the reactions to the game.

 

[pemerton]

But doesn't this fly in the face of the player's protagonism? And what if the table can't agree on whether it's acceptable or not, especially since the players have a vested interest in succeeding at the SC.

EDIT: Actually according to the rulebooks it's solely up to the DM... not the table.

I think the standard approach - somewhat spelled out in games like HeroQuest revised and Marvel Heroic RP (I say "somewhat" because it's not fully spelled out, but is discussed in more detail than in 4e) - is that the table agrees on genre in general terms, as part of setup and then reinforced through play, but when the crunch is on the line the GM is final arbiter of the "genre/credibility" test, precisely for the conflict-of-interest reasons that you mention.

The closest I can see to the genre/credibility test idea in the 4e DMG - and it's not crystal clear, but nor in my view is it hopelessy opaque - is on pp 42 and 75, in the context of player improvisation using PC skills:

This sort of action is exactly the kind of thinking you want to encourage . . .

Thinking players are engaged players. In skill challenges, players will come up with uses for skills that you didn’t expect to play a role. Try not to say no. . . This encourages players to think about the challenge in more depth and engages more players by making more skills useful.

However, it’s particularly important to make sure these checks are grounded in actions that make sense in the adventure and the situation. If a player asks [for instance,], “Can I use Diplomacy?” you should ask what exactly the character might be doing to help the party survive in the uninhabited sandy wastes by using that skill. Don’t say no too often, but don’t say yes if it doesn’t make sense in the context of the challenge.​

I think there is scope for interesting discussion about the similarities of and differences between the "mother may I" style that player protagonism gaming is contrasted with, and the "genre/credibility" test that flexible, free-descriptor-style scene resolution depends upon. It came up, for instance, on the "fighters vs casters" thread.

Unfortunately (from my point of view) that interesting discussion, at least in that thread, was somewhat foreclosed by a tendency of the "player protagonism" sceptics to begin from an assumption that GM authority in respect of genre/credibility must be equivalent to GM authority over outcomes. Given that I know from personal experience that there is a big difference between the two, any analysis - even a critical analysis - that begins from an implicit denial of that difference is a non-starter, as far as I am concerned.

 

[pemerton]

I think the bigger issue is that players can and often will find a way to "justify" almost any skill in any situation... so then it falls on the GM to determine whether their fiction was "good" enough to allow said skill to work in this situation... which can be a major hassle and lead to arguments or the DM just goes "yeah whatever..." and it does in fact turn into just a series of dice rolls.

Meh. I can't help but say "Welcome to DMing." You listen to the player and if the plan is good, you say yes. If it's not helpful, you say no.

Relating this to my post just above:

In play that strongly emphasises the logic of ingame causation - "process simulation" - and which in most cases defaults to GM adjudication and application of that logic, the approach that bill91 describes applies. This is the approach which the phrase "mother may I" is caricaturing.

I think the 4e approach - with its emphasis on "try not to say no" - is downplaying that style of adjudication, and emphasising genre credibility as the constraint. Hence when (on p 42) we have the ogre being kicked into the brazier, we don't investigate the physics of the situation (cf size mods to Bull Rush in 3E) but rather the genre character of the situation (qv Zorro).

A consequence of the 4e approach is that - as Imaro points out - clever players, who can come up with innovative but genre-fitting ways to use their skills - will "justify" almost anything. Imaro presents that as an issue - and for competivitve, challenge-focused play perhaps it is. But I think for the sort of play 4e is best at it is not an issue or a hassle. There is nothing wrong with genre-clever players mostly getting to have their PCs win. This is (in part, at least) what the game is about. And approached in this spirit there is no reason to think the fiction will "drop out" - because the players' cleverness manifests itself in engaging with the fiction and presenting clever ideas that play on it.

and sometimes the DM is the only one to know what will or will not work.

I think that applying secret backstory known only to the GM in action resolution puts a lot of pressure on "player protagonist" play. For instance, players can come up with clever, genre appropriate stuff yet have no chance of success. It makes ingame causal logic more important than genre and theme, and pushes players towards a different style of play - what, at it's limits, gets caricatured as "pixel bitching".

There is obviously nothing wrong with that playstyle - for instance, classic D&D exploration (say, as described by Gygax and Moldvay) depends on it - but I don't think it is well-suited to resolution by the skill challenge mechanic, because there is (i) no reason to think that the players can resolve the situation in any number of checks, if they aren't engaging the right bit of the gameworld in the right way (as determined by the secret backstory), and (ii) once they engage that bit of the gameworld in the right way then the challenge should be over no matter how many checks have been made or not made.

The example of the Duke who can't be Inimitedated in the 4e DMG comes close to this, but I think it's important that it's not secret backstory - it's accessible to the players with a successful Insight check. I think this is a problematic example of a skill challenge, particularly as their are no design notes, but it probably falls just on the viable side of the "secret backstory" line for skill challenge play.

 

[billd91]

Relating this to my post just above:

In play that strongly emphasises the logic of ingame causation - "process simulation" - and which in most cases defaults to GM adjudication and application of that logic, the approach that bill91 describes applies. This is the approach which the phrase "mother may I" is caricaturing.

I think the 4e approach - with its emphasis on "try not to say no" - is downplaying that style of adjudication, and emphasising genre credibility as the constraint. Hence when (on p 42) we have the ogre being kicked into the brazier, we don't investigate the physics of the situation (cf size mods to Bull Rush in 3E) but rather the genre character of the situation (qv Zorro).

I think your prejudices are imprinting more information on my statement than exists. There's nothing in what I said that wouldn't also incorporate "genre credibility" to the same degree you think 4e enhances it. The plans I would consider good will depend a lot on genre conventions and the type of game I'm running. I'm going to be a lot stricter about the physical stunts characters in Call of Cthulhu might succeed at than I would in Villains and Vigilantes or Mutants and Masterminds, for example, because the genres are very different. The same is true when comparing plans and actions in D&D compared to the superhero games.

I don't know what exactly you mean by "ingame causation" (other than being coherent with the game's world and its assumptions - which fairly obviously include genre conventions). So please elaborate on what you think that means.

 

[pemerton]

I don't know what exactly you mean by "ingame causation" (other than being coherent with the game's world and its assumptions - which fairly obviously include genre conventions).

By "ingame causation" I mean extropalting consequences from known fictional states via application of the causal reasoning that operates within the fiction.

Runequest and Classic Traveller are poster-children for systems where ingame causation is the primary constraint on, and guide to, resolution.

Jump checks in 3E, and the comparable Athletic checks used to jump on the grid in 4e, are also examples of the phenomenon at the more local level.

The resolution of a grapple check in 3E is another example, and one of the WotC designers - Monte Cook, maybe? - once posted expressly that grapple was designed on this sort of model.

Hit point loss is an example of action resolution in which ingame causation plays little to no adjudicative role: we don't really know the prior state of the character's health, and determing damage taken and subtracting it from the hit point total doesn't tell us what new state is arrived at, except in certain cases where we know the character might be disabled (but not why - concussion? a numbed limb? something else?) or dead (but not why - decaptitated? pierced heart? brain damage?).

A system that generalised the hp style of resolution across the whole game is HeroWars/Quest. I think skill challenges work better when used in this sort of way.

 

[billd91]

By "ingame causation" I mean extropalting consequences from known fictional states via application of the causal reasoning that operates within the fiction.

Runequest and Classic Traveller are poster-children for systems where ingame causation is the primary constraint on, and guide to, resolution.

Jump checks in 3E, and the comparable Athletic checks used to jump on the grid in 4e, are also examples of the phenomenon at the more local level.

The resolution of a grapple check in 3E is another example, and one of the WotC designers - Monte Cook, maybe? - once posted expressly that grapple was designed on this sort of model.

Hit point loss is an example of action resolution in which ingame causation plays little to no adjudicative role: we don't really know the prior state of the character's health, and determing damage taken and subtracting it from the hit point total doesn't tell us what new state is arrived at, except in certain cases where we know the character might be disabled (but not why - concussion? a numbed limb? something else?) or dead (but not why - decaptitated? pierced heart? brain damage?).

A system that generalised the hp style of resolution across the whole game is HeroWars/Quest. I think skill challenges work better when used in this sort of way.

Yeah, try that again without trying to show off with the obfuscation of a misapplied academic vocabulary.