Why is it so important?

[Mallus]

Many people are sloppy and impulsive.

Which are shameful traits in people pretending to be elves.

Give them a big gun with three bullets, and four rounds into the first battle they'll be screaming for everyone to retreat until they can find more bullets.

What part of 'cathartic power-fantasy' don't you understand?

The discipline it takes to pace oneself, to plan ahead, just isn't there.

You realize that you're turning a play style preference into a value judgment, right?

This is a change in playstyle from the gygaxian days when frequently the price for impatience was one character sheet.

And the price of trying to rationalize a dungeon was a stupendous headache.

Taste's change, it's as simple as that.

 

[gizmo33]

BTW, does this (http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=207912) sound like encounter design that will be encouraging win/lose scenarios to you?

By itself, IMO, no. (If this wasn't a general question I apologize for chiming in.)

I can't see the content that you have to sign in for, but the quotes say three things:
1. encounters are going to assume a number of monsters equal to the number of PCs
2. the idea of "monster roles"
3. the use of "hazards" in an encounter

I don't see (perhaps missing some context) how any of the three ideas relate to deadliness. All three ideas were concepts that existed in 3E as well.

 

[gizmo33]

Taste's change, it's as simple as that.

So is that why Paizo sells so well revamping old Greyhawk ideas? Maybe it's not as simple as you're trying to suggest. I guess "progress" can be used as a justification for itself. Change for the sake of change.

"Tastes" don't exist anyway. There are just tastes of individuals, and perhaps a general collective will at times, but it's presumptuous to give your tastes some sort of weight in this area.

Ironically it seems you're implying that change by itself is a virtue in a game that is recycling characters and themes that are thousands of years old. I think you're overstating the simplicity (though I could be wrong as the sentence is somewhat cryptic).

 

[Jackelope King]

You need to state how many hit points the PCs have in this system, and then I'll be happy to use it for further discussion.

JK, does this work for you?

That works fine by me, since getting something more accurate will require either precognition or unfettered access to Mike Mearls' desk

 

[Raven Crowking]

That works fine by me, since getting something more accurate will require either precognition or unfettered access to Mike Mearls' desk

OK, then. We need to determine how many hit points this PC has, and then we can use him to examine sample encounters. That 4e apparently makes the assumption of one monster per PC can help us in our work.

 

[pemerton]

your statement that I infer "because the players do not know, at time T, whether or not they will win or lose, it is therefore (objectively) a win/lose situation." Not what I said. "

RC, you said (and I quoted in my post):

An encounter unfolds, "in any round of which the players do not know whether or not it will result in resource-attrition". This is a win/lose situation. The players know they might win; they know they might lose. They do not know which it is going to be.​

Here are your three sentences, rendered into a form and sequence more tractable to analysis:

*The encounter is one in which, in any round, the players do not know whether or not it will result in resource attrition.

*The players know they might win; they know they might lose.

*The encounter is a win/lose encounter.​

The first sentence is what I asserted in an earlier post. It attributes a certain ignorance or doubt to the players.

The second you seem to treat as equivalent, or else infer - if I've labelled as an inference what you take to be an equivalence, I apologise, but it is not always easy to tell the difference in an informally-presented passage of text, and you had in earlier post stressed your preference for "if-then" assertions.

But it is not equivalent - "A does not know which of P or Q" does not entail "A knows that it might be that P or might be that Q." It may be that A does not which of P or Q, but one of P or Q is definitely true, and the other is not a possibility.

The second sentence does entail the third, as knowledge of P entails the truth of P. Hence, I focussed on the step I have identified - the relationship between the epistemic situation of the players, and the outcome of the encounter, and on what I took to be the two interesting features of that relationship: the possibility of player ignorance, and the impact upon the outcome of the choices the players make within their dynamic epistemic situation.

You and I are done, though.

I gather you think I have behaved in some reprehensible manner.

I find this puzzling. You have accused me of not understanding the nature of argument and rebuttal, of not being able to follow the logic of "if-then" sentences, of logical incompetence in general, and (by implication, in your reply above to Jackelope King) of dishonesty.

On the other hand, I have tried to isolate the character of your reasoning, and present it as clearly as I can so as to respond to it. This is the normal way in which argument proceeds. I have responded to your responses, I have indicated where I think your claims to be true or plausible, I have tried to identify the points of our disagreement. I have not engaged in any personal abuse.

As far as I can tell, we have three principal points of disagreement:

*You appear to think that prudent players will always lead with their per-day resources. I disagree, holding that this depends entirely on what those resources are. I have given examples to try and illustrate this.

*You appear to think that encounters will not be interesting if they have no mechanical impact on the subsequent play of the game. I do not agree. It is possible to generate interest by requiring sophisticated tactical play in order to bring it about that there is no long-term mechanical impact.

*You appear to deny that purely per-day resources impose obstacles to the use of non-mechanical thresholds of significance in adventure design. For the reasons I have given in earlier posts, I don't agree.​

A further matter which I belive, but which you may dispute (although I'm not sure) is this:

*The introduction of a mix of per-encounter and per-day resources increases the range of options available to wizard PCs, increasing the range of options beyond "do nothing or deplete resources" and thereby also making it viable to reduce the power of wizard spells, thus dealing with the nova problem.​

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

You need to state how many hit points the PCs have in this system, and then I'll be happy to use it for further discussion.

JK, does this work for you?

Well, I assumed that the most important thing is the relative power of these powers *note to self: need a thesaurus*.

Furthermore, not the PC hitpoints matter, the NPC / enemy hitpoints. (this might actually boil down to be the same, but it's important to remind that the player's abilities are not used against the player themself)

Typical Minion (used in group size three to four times the party size): 10-20 hp
Typical Monster (used in group size equal to party size): 60-100 hp
Typical "Boss" Monster (used alone, possible augmented by a few minions): 400+ hp

General numbers:
The offensive At Will Powers will often be enough to kill a minion.
The offensive Per Encounter Power will often be enough to kill a group of minions or a typical monster.
No offensive power can directly take out the boss monster.

Keep in mind that encounters might be mixed with the various "sizes" of monsters, and that the terrain and distribution of monsters is variable (there is no guarantee that all minion type monsters cluster in a 20 ft area, for example - but they might). Some monsters have different movement capabilities, monsters have various types of attacks (spells, arrows, natural or manufactured melee weapons and so on)

 

[pemerton]

Strange analogy because marraige is a good example of a resource that is *NOT* per encounter. Unless your wife forgets everything that you do a minute after you do it. It's your aggregate behavior over weeks and years that determines the character of your marraige AFAIK and so I really see this analogy as making my case.

the marriage is not the resource in question, I think. The marriage is the same as "survival or succeeding at the adventures goal".

What I had in mind is the marriage as encounter. It does not follow that cultivating a successful relationship is uninteresting, just because if I do it well the relationship has no chance of failing. It is not uninteresting even if I believe that I will do it well, and therefore there is very little chance of failure.

If all of your resources in marriage "reset" after each encounter, then this would be an adequate analogy. However, they don't even "reset" per day.

I had in mind the marriage as an encounter, and one in which (by rough analogy) one has a mix of "at will" and "per encounter" resources.

This is a strange example to me. One reason is that you are the one deciding if you win or lose in this situation - I'm not really sure this is comparable to what goes on in DnD where there's more of an objective system exposed to the players that tells them whether they succeed or fail. You're "winning" these arguments AFAIK because you say that you do.

I'm "winning" these arguments because arguments that refute my position are not being made. In my experience this is pretty common in academia - at least in literary disciplines, but I'd be surprised if many undergraduate maths students are capable of finding holes in the proofs that their teachers are producing.

Another thing is that something is interesting for a variety of reasons and I can't tell what those are in your example.

<snip>

Your students are also learning something, presumably, and seeing how they'll react might be interesting. As a player I'm not all that interested in how the 3 goblins conduct themselves during the battle - they get killed and the game moves on. I'm also not interested in how impressed the goblins are with my fighting ability.

Finally, in order to defend your position you have to do some "interesting thinking" but I don't see really why it's all that interesting. With a 0% chance (as you describe) of actually choosing an ineffective argument, how is it all that interesting? In my own experiences situations that have a 0% chance of failure don't seem to me to have the characteristics you describe.

Now most of what you say here is true - different experiences have different sources of interest. But one thing you suggest I don't agree with: it can be interesting to work out an argument that has a negligible chance of failing. In fact, that's my job: I'm not a practising lawyer, nor am I a debater, and so don't get the thrill of having to put my arguments in court. My job is to come up with arguments that persuade my students and my colleagues.

Of course, when I'm addressing my colleagues, the likelihood of holeproof arguments first time round is less than with students, but the aim is to eventually tighten the thing up until it does withstand all criticism. The pleasure, for me, is not in the risk of being torn apart in a colloquium.

But you are right that this activity might be uninteresting for some people. And of course, therefore, this example doesn't prove that per-encounter resources will produce fun D&D. It does show, however, that the general proposition "If you have no chance of failure, it won't be interesting" is false. It all depends on why there is no chance of failure - some ways of ensuring there is no chance of failure are themselves interesting. I think the 4e designers are capable of thinking of such ways in the context of RPG design. Jackelope King and I have both given examples of such mechanics from existing games.

Not everyone will want to play that game - just as not everyone wants to play 1st ed AD&D. WoTC obviously has a reason to think that one sort of game will be more popular than the other.

 

[gizmo33]

Now most of what you say here is true - different experiences have different sources of interest. But one thing you suggest I don't agree with: it can be interesting to work out an argument that has a negligible chance of failing. In fact, that's my job: I'm not a practising lawyer, nor am I a debater, and so don't get the thrill of having to put my arguments in court. My job is to come up with arguments that persuade my students and my colleagues.

I think I see what you're saying here. It reminds me of one thing I said earlier: if I was suddenly transported into a DnD world as a 20th level fighter, I think I would find a fight with a goblin to be extremely fascinating. Partly because of a lack of familiarity, perhaps not being able to see the dice, and just the sights, sounds, and whatever that would all be unique and interesting. If WotC can create such an experience with 4E then I'm sold, but I would consider it highly improbable that they would make such a leap.

But that aside, your analogy speaks more for what I'd call, maybe, "aesthetic pleasure" or something. I don't need to win or lose in order to enjoy playing music for instance. I don't need to win or lose this conversation to enjoy having it as another example. Maybe there's some way of making DnD combat aesthetically pleasing by itself, like I allude to in my first paragraph. I'm not familiar with a game or game system that has ever done this, though I haven't played many outside of DnD. Those games that I've played that have focus on aethetically pleasing elements have, IME, avoided combat altogether.

But you are right that this activity might be uninteresting for some people.

I've seen wordsmith-type DMs try to salvage a boring combat encounter by lots of flavor text - "that lone wolverine is really scary and you 10th level PCs should be shaking in your boots" kind of thing.

What you describe AFAICT is interesting in the abstract, I'm not that much of a hack-and-slasher that I would/do pass up chances to add other elements to the game other than win/loss. The bottom line though is that based on my (perhaps limited, mortal that I am) experience, there's no real advantage to a per-encounter resource situation that enhances any of those things, they're all possible in the 3E system.

One thing I will acknowledge is that any given "dimension of interest" of an encounter has the chance to interfere with the other dimensions. Resource management can interfere with the story (or vice versa). Then again death can interfere with the story. Pretty much anything can beside the story.

So, a thousand posts later, I'm starting to make a short list of things that I think that the per-encounter side of this argument could acknowledge and get us closer to agreeing to disagree. One is that the per-encounter resource game will be more dangerous - although from your arguments above we're some ways from that. The other is that per-encounter reduces the "dimensions of interest" of encounters by one, in order to facilitate story-based play. Maybe we're close to agreeing on that?

I think the 4e designers are capable of thinking of such ways in the context of RPG design. Jackelope King and I have both given examples of such mechanics from existing games.

Was the "archer with the tokens for various combat actions" one of the examples you mean here?

Not everyone will want to play that game - just as not everyone wants to play 1st ed AD&D. WoTC obviously has a reason to think that one sort of game will be more popular than the other.

On that topic, I've posted links from two blogs, one from a WotC designer and one from a former one, and both seem to recognize and appreciate the inherent benefits of retaining some per-day resource management in the game. My guess is that 4E will include this as well, and the increase in per-encounter resources for certain classes will get us the best of both worlds. My guess is that this debate about "per-encounter" resources is largely an excercise in logic because I really don't think 4E is going to go this direction. Wyatt indicated in his blog that "early versions of 4E" had gone this route, but the implication was that it was found to be undesireable.

 

[Mallus]

So is that why Paizo sells so well revamping old Greyhawk ideas?

Because some people's taste didn't change.

Maybe it's not as simple as you're trying to suggest.

Yes it is. There are any number of legitimate play styles, and 'smart play' is entirely dependent on your priorities. It's fine to state a preference for Gygaxian-style play, but infering that you're a superior player because of that preference is absurd. In order for that to be true there'd have to be one ideal/preferred mode of play, wouldn't there?

See, it is that simple.

Change for the sake of change.

Does it really look like that to you? It looks to me like WotC has been incorporating a lot of the design changes for 4e in the 3.5e supplements over the last several years, like per-encounter resources for fighter-types and rogues, at-will magic use, etc. They've been been working on the prototype for 4e while selling us 3.5 material, not to mention the near-beta version of 4e, SWSE...

WotC has been collecting data on what sells/works. Seems pretty savvy to me. While that's no ironclad guarantee of the finished product's quality, it sure as hell doesn't look like 'change for the sake of change'.

I think you're overstating the simplicity (though I could be wrong as the sentence is somewhat cryptic).

Try this: the predominant mode of play has changed significantly since 1st edition. One cannot infer the growing stupidity of the D&D playing audience from this.

Clearer, yes? I'm really not a cryptic person.