Why is it so important?

[Brother MacLaren]

Why are people playing 3e different to 1e and 2e?

There were groups who used the '15 minute adventuring day' style in 1st and 2nd ed.
1/2e rewards that style just as much as 3e does.

Geoff.

3E introduced WAY more buff spells, and their effect was more dramatic. So you would use more spells if you were going nova.
In 1/2e, you'd have a few spells you'd use *during* a fight, but it might not go long enough to make a significant dent in your spell list. Buff spells just weren't that good. Look at Enlarge compared to Enlarge Person -- MUCH more potent in 3E. And Haste in 2e? Age 1 year and make a System Shock check or drop dead.

With 3e, buff spells are standard operating procedure, and by the time you've cast all of them, that's half your spell load right there.

 

[Hussar]

3E introduced WAY more buff spells, and their effect was more dramatic. So you would use more spells if you were going nova.
In 1/2e, you'd have a few spells you'd use *during* a fight, but it might not go long enough to make a significant dent in your spell list. Buff spells just weren't that good. Look at Enlarge compared to Enlarge Person -- MUCH more potent in 3E. And Haste in 2e? Age 1 year and make a System Shock check or drop dead.

With 3e, buff spells are standard operating procedure, and by the time you've cast all of them, that's half your spell load right there.

However, in 1e and 2e, the rest point happened whenever the cleric said, "Guys, I'm out of cures." In 3e, the spells might be different, but, at the end of the day, it's still the cleric calling the shots.

I know we certainly did the 15 minute adventuring day as well. Why not? In a lot of static dungeons, nothing was going to change from one day to the next, so, heck, rest after every encounter and start fresh.

 

[pemerton]

A very interesting thread. In my view, all the 4e design threads reinforce the obvious conclusion that 4e will not support a 1st ed style of play.

Some of this might come down to gaming style: I like to run a fairly open-ended adventure.

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In 4E apparently, my judgements are going to be pressured by the fact that certain situations that weren't so boring in the 3E paradigm are boring in the 4E paradigm.

A clock is only part of the equation in my games.

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Another group of villians might just move somewhere else if they get the idea that another group is hunting/killing them down.

Another option is if a party takes too long in a task, it can be accomplished by another, NPC party that will accept all the rewards.

4e is simply not intended to support this style of play - where, for example, a bad choice by the players means that the evening's fun has been stolen by the NPCs.

The only difference is that with one setup, the onus is on the party to keep things moving; with the other, it's on the DM.

Exactly right. In 4e the onus is on the GM to provide the players with challenges that they overcome by playing their PCs. The world does not "carry on" in the background, oozing verisimilitude. Rather, it is a bundle of "game elements" for the GM to use in order to build challenges.

Will this produce contrived plots? In a sense, yes, but only in the sense in which basically all heroic and genre narrative is contrived.

In prior editions of the game, and distinctively in 1st edition, a 'mook' encounter still demanded high attention to tactics and still represented a 'threat' because of its potential impact at the operational level.

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D&D has a 30 year history of that style of play, at its still supported if you choose to play the game that way even in 3rd edition, and now suddenly everyone is saying that is a boring way to play that shouldn't be supported anymore?

But 3E, while perhaps capable of handling this play style, is pretty clearly not aimed at it. Hence all those people (of whom I am one) who think that 3E games play very differently from 1st ed games. (And I'm surprised that no-one in this thread has yet referred to Monte Cook's column in which he discussed this very aspect of 3E mechanical design, and flagged a move to per-encounter abilities as consistent with that design.) 4e is just the next step in an existing trend.

The people that I know that like to play wizards prefer them over fighters because (for one reason) they'd rather have a few strategic, important effects on the adventure rather than the consistent slogging that fighters seem to offer. By evening out the wizard's combat ability to consistent slogging, wizards aren't offering what they used to as a class.

As Monte explains in his column, this was not part of the design goals even of 3E.

Simply knowing that an NPC holds a hostage means time is not on your side, that's just common sense and someone who doesn't get that IMO is not taking the versimilitude of the campaign world seriously, which is a fixable problem.

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In the rare instances where the players can be certain of no consequences from resting, then it plays out almost exactly as I would expect an "encounter-based" resource situation to play out. "PCs: We go outside and rest. DM: Ok, next day - here's what's going on..." In the case where there are no consequences to resting, then I don't see what the negative consequences are to the narrative.

Mr. Wyatt said that the reason that the game had evolved toward one big encounter per days was that according to the design the first three were boring, and only the fourth was challenging. But that wasn't the problem at all. The problem is as you say, that its almost impossible to get the PC's to try that fourth encounter in the first place. If the fourth encounter per day is the only one with risk, then the tendancy for smart players is to avoid the fourth encounter per day.

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But so long as ANY resources aren't recovered after one encounter, the smart players are going to choose to stop as soon as they lose any critical resource (even if only hit points). Because, why risk it?

Again, 4e is pretty explicitly not aimed at supporting this sort of resource-management playstyle.

In real life, people have all sorts of reasons for acting "irrationally" from the point of view of resource management: impetuousness, anger, a taste for the dramatic, a love of risk, etc. And much genre narrative presents stories where these sorts of motivations, rather than rational resource management, drive the adventure. I think 4e is looking to support this style of play. Per-encounter resources make it possible in a way that per-day do not. Of course, they don't therefore mandate it, and what I'm interested in is what other mechanics may be introduced to support this play style.

That kind of strategic play depends entirely on a kind of contrivance that I dislike, the assumption that the encounters/encounter rate are predictable enough so that I can utilize my fixed resources smartly over time. And framing the majority of encounters as accounting problems rather than imaginary life-or-death situations pulls me out of the game.

I try to emphasize the individual scenes, not the 'operational level planning' (which is invaluable seeing as I rarely know ahead of time how each scene will fit together with the rest, given the open, dungeon-free quality of my setting).

The simple problem I have with all this "resource management problem" posts right now is that I never ran adventures that were based around the simple entering and plundering of a dungeon outside of any other story element. The heroes are always under some time pressure, and can't simply go back to rest after every major encounter.

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Classic dungeon crawling is a planned exploration of an underground area, with the equipment, companions and organization that comes with that. Heroic adventures are tension-filled and, in many parts, fast-paced affairs where the heroes simply can't sit down and rest again after the first fight, but have to press on

Agreed with both these pasages. Between heroic passions and the tensions of the plot, the pace of the game is intended to be driven by something other than the rational management of resources. In the Gary Gygax 1st Ed DMG sense, it will no longer reward good play. But then, good play will no longer be defined in those terms.

If each encounter does not depend on previous encounters for its tactical significance, then designing the overall adventure becomes so much easier, as does managing the consequences if the party deviates from the anticipated route.

Agreed. The game will support a different sort of open-ended adventure - one in which the climax is known in advance, at least in general terms (unlike the games in which a delay can mean the NPCs preempt the PCs), and is guaranteed to be climactic, but in which the path to it is not predetermined.

By your own admission you already 'hand wave' operational considerations, so the style of play you want to have is handled simply by treating existing rules as optional and ignoring certain rules. And that's fine, and you are the DM and should be able to make that call. But its much easier to take something out that you don't like than to put something back in that is missing.

But hand-waving, while easy for experience GMs, is very hard for inexperienced ones. And it seems that 4e, like 3E before it, is aimed mostly at supporting inexperienced GMs. Thus it will expressly abandon the "operational considerations" approach to play. Whether or not this is a misjudgement of the market only time will tell. My own feeling is that it is not, and that Hong is correct with respect to the zeitgesit.

It is my opinion that a game designer should first ask "What are players intended to do?" and then "What incentives can I give them to do that?" before asking "What is fun?" Simply put, it is easier to make a game with clear goals, and incentives to follow those goals, fun than it is to make players do your "fun" stuff if they are rewarded for doing something else entirely.

I suspect that the 4e designers have asked and answered that question. We can infer their answer from the direction in which they seem to be taking the game.

Good! The less of the s*mul*tionist baggage from 3E remains, the better.

It is not quite true that all the simulationism is being dropped. In many ways it is just going more high-concept: a good part of the fun of play is meant to be derived from the experience of "my guy" cutting down hordes of mooks before blowing up the dragon. I haven't seen any indication that the designers intend to introduce mechanics to support thematically-oriented play (eg like Spiritual Attributes or Fate Points that are activated by the pursuit of player-determined character goals).

But much of the tension between simulationism and gamism seems to be going. For example, the monster design rules look like they will be much closer to Tunnels and Trolls, than to 3E's simulationist nightmare.

 

[pemerton]

When resource management goes away as a skill (operational level as opposed to tactical level planning), then in order for any encounter to be 'interesting' it must involve considerable risk of tactical failure in and of itself. What that means is that every 'interesting' encounter involves the possibility of player/party death. Now, there isn't necessarily anything wrong with every fight being a 'real fight', but what it will tend to do is increase character fragility.

There are mechanics to handle this, like Spiritual Attributes, Fate Points etc. Of course, they push the game even further away from the "operational considerations" paradigm.

Yes. But I find that to be a slippery slope, because fate points, raise dead, etc. really make death not that much of a death. And so you increase the percieved risk of an encounter but then turn around and add things to mitigate it. Intelligent people, in short order, will recalculate their perceived risk.

This is not necessarily true. In a game in which players can determine how many Fate Points they earn, because Fate Points are earned by pursuing player-determined thematic goals, then Fate Points do not become a resource to be managed. The players can generate as many as they need, by pursuing the goals that they have determined as the ones they want to pursue.

In this sort of the game, "winning" is not beating the monsters, but rather realising one's goals in a way that constitutes a satisfying exploration/resolution of the theme in question.

I dont' think that 4e will go in this direction, however. If it does have a Fate Point mechanism, I suspect that the earning of Fate Points will be placed in the hands of the GM rather than the players. This does encourage treating Fate Points as a resource, for the reasons that you indicate, because (from the players' point of view, when the GM cannot necessarily relied upon) they become a limited quantity outside the players' control.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

However, in 1e and 2e, the rest point happened whenever the cleric said, "Guys, I'm out of cures." In 3e, the spells might be different, but, at the end of the day, it's still the cleric calling the shots.

Sure, but I think it's worse in 3e. In 1e or 2e, the party might bust into a room, have a fairly easy fight without using any spells or taking much damage, and keep going. In 3e, that won't happen, since before they've gone into the room they've cast Enlarge Person, Haste, Bull's Strength, Divine Favor, and Mass Resist Energy.

 

[Hussar]

Sure, but I think it's worse in 3e. In 1e or 2e, the party might bust into a room, have a fairly easy fight without using any spells or taking much damage, and keep going. In 3e, that won't happen, since before they've gone into the room they've cast Enlarge Person, Haste, Bull's Strength, Divine Favor, and Mass Resist Energy.

That's a playstyle thing to be quite honest. Sure, some people play this way, others don't. Considering how many more spells casters get in 3e, I'm not really sure if there is much difference.

 

[med stud]

Nice way to twist what I'm saying. Let me clarify, no tactical and strategic combat are not the end all and be all of a good battle in D&D. However if the tactics of the fight break down to the same thing over and over again(more likely when you have per-encounter abilities then per day abilities) it becomes more an excercise in tediousness IMHO.

Why is this more likely? If you look at chess, you have the same "powers" in the start of each "encounter" but lots of people still like to play chess all the time. That's one objection I have against thinking that per-encounter powers will be a detriment to tactics. My other objection is that if you keep the opposition different or just change the scenery a little the tactics for the encounter will change. Your fight encounter of the day may be against three ogres, a straight up fight with much tumbling and exploiting the ogres' lack of intelligence. You only use per encounter powers, go further down the dungeon (if you are into playing those) and in a dark hall with lots of pillars you are ambushed by shadow ninjas, which demand another approach.

There are tactics in both of those situations and even if all powers are per encounter (which I senserily doubt) you can still have all the tactics you want, every encounter.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Why is this more likely? If you look at chess, you have the same "powers" in the start of each "encounter" but lots of people still like to play chess all the time. That's one objection I have against thinking that per-encounter powers will be a detriment to tactics.

That's the best counter to Celebrim's posts thus far.

OTOH, I know very few people who play chess as often as fights occur in D&D, and chess is an adversarial game....if one followed the analogy, then the DM would be trying to "beat" the player's tactics using a preset "allowable monster limit" (effectively, a board limit to the DM's pieces so that they couldn't automatically overwhelm the players' pieces).

I am not sure that people would continue to play non-adversarial chess.


RC

 

[med stud]

(...)
The thing is, every edition of D&D has supported tactical play just fine. But now it seems like we are hearing a group of people saying that operational play is 'badwrongfun' and should not be supported.

By your own admission you already 'hand wave' operational considerations, so the style of play you want to have is handled simply by treating existing rules as optional and ignoring certain rules. And that's fine, and you are the DM and should be able to make that call. But its much easier to take something out that you don't like than to put something back in that is missing.

There are not people saying that operational level is badwrongfun, I suspect that many people think it's boring, but I think the main problem with that style is that it is hard to execute well.

You have to know what encounters that will drain a meaningful amount of resources from the party without being so easy that it's boring and without being so hard that you have to do something about the coming BBEG. It's way easier for a beginner to plan the encounters encounter-per-encounter instead.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I tend to think that the attrition model allows for an aggregate effect, where bad things can happen to the PCs without the DM being adversarial; whereas the "per encounter" model almost mandates adversarial DMing (within whatever limits the game describes as being "fair") in order to keep it interesting.

YMMV, and probably does.

RC