D&D 5E Why the claim of combat and class balance between the classes is mainly a forum issue. (In my opinion)

[Manbearcat]

The game in an RPG is important. I'm merely saying that an RPG in our current social, technological, and entertainment climate is going to have a dramatically harder time differentiating itself as a gamist pursuit. In other words, when WotC made 4e, they attached the cart to the wrong horse. They thought an emphasis on encounter-level gamism was going to build their audience, when in fact, RPGs are now differentiated from other gamist pursuits by their narrative elements.

And quite literally, the moment I read the DMG Index and found 'Skill Challenges', I flipped there. The very first thing I thought of was one of my very favorites: "Dogs in the Vineyard. WotC is trying to move D&D into the world of unified conflict resolution for narrative trajectory and Story Now agenda. X successes or y failures is just the analogue to 'insufficient dice in your pool to See the decisive Raise.' Use of a Primary Skill being locked out from further usage is the analogue to 'exhausting Acuity, Body, Heart, Will, Trait (et al) dice from your pool.' Secondary Skills are just 'Belongings, Relationships, or Traits' that find their way into play due to the evolving narrative which augment Primary Skill checks (dice pools). The standard back and forth is the analogue to 'Raises and Sees' with the DCs arrangement as the GM's passive dice pool outcome to the complication/adversity. Healing Surge loss for micro-failures and/or worse for macro-failure is the analogue to post-conflict 'Fallout.'"

Then I thought "you know, like 1s coming up on Fallout Dice leading to character improvement, if they would have given XP solely for failures in Skill Challenges, that would have created great narrative tension within player choice and a better impetus to try to invoke sub-optimal skills."

Then, before reading the PHB I thought (predicting that they surely didn't), it would have been very cool if they would have gone all out and just turned D&D 4e into a fully unified conflict resolution framework replete 'Escalations' and 'Reversals.'

After I had digested all of the DMG and PHB advice about Passing Time (the abridged version would be "don't waste time where there is no conflict") and getting to the Encounters ("the conflict) and the PHB 'How Do You Play' about the game being a product of player's responding to the GM composed Combat and Noncombat Encounter Challenges and the "Get to the Fun" section (circumventing a mundane exchange with a gate guard to 'get to the conflict') I thought of Vincent Baker's Dogs in the Vineyard GM advice: "Every moment, drive play toward conflict".

Then I looked at the mechanisms for powers (keywords and guiding, but mutable/malleable flavor text) and the broad descriptor Skill system.

Then I fully noted that the unified framework of classes and resource schemes pushes play toward the Encounter (the scene of conflict) and its resolution as the nexus of narrative output.

Later looked at all of the class/race resources and I thought "wow, that is a lot of authority vested in the players to fluctuate their stance at their discretion...ardent deep immersionists that demand actor stance exclusively are going to flip their lids."

Then I did a lot of other things (playtested the combat engine and fell in love with its balance, dynamism and precise encounter budgeting, quest system) and I was amazed at how great it was...but knew it was going to be enormously controversial.

Nowhere did I think (nor did it turn out in my homegame's play...even with brand new players unacquainted to TTRPGs) WotC's focus/emphasis was exclusively or even primarily on encounter level gamism. Certainly it was there (the same as it can be for DitV if played in that way), and what was there was fantastic. However, I didn't remotely consider the adverbs of "primarily" or "exclusively", equating to emphasis.

 

[S'mon]

See, even though i dislike railroading, i think this is a pretty extreme (and frankly somewhat silly)thing to say. Not only that, but it really demands some kind of proof other than "I think". .

I have to prove I think it? Or I'm not allowed to think it without proof? I'm just going by my own experience of being a crap '90s GM myself (healed by 3.0e D&D, thankfully), and playing under some, all of a certain age, who never seem to have left the '90s.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I have to prove I think it? Or I'm not allowed to think it without proof? I'm just going by my own experience of being a crap '90s GM myself (healed by 3.0e D&D, thankfully), and playing under some, all of a certain age, who never seem to have left the '90s.

I was a 90s GM as well. you can believe whatever you want, but if you want others to take the notion of lasting damage seriously, then yes it requires more than "I think". If it were just a general statement of taste or preference that would be one thing, but you are essentially claiming that people who play the game a particular way are causing harm to their ability to be creative. That is a pretty outrageous statement in my view and I think it is fair to ask for more than a gut check and anecdotes from those who make such a statement.

And to be clear, I dislike linear railroads as well. But I do think there is a limit to what kind of criticism against it is valid. I find railroads un-fun, and constricting. But i don't think they dodactual damage to people.

 

[Imaro]

Nowhere did I think (nor did it turn out in my homegame's play...even with brand new players unacquainted to TTRPGs) WotC's focus/emphasis was exclusively or even primarily on encounter level gamism. Certainly it was there (the same as it can be for DitV if played in that way), and what was there was fantastic. However, I didn't remotely consider the adverbs of "primarily" or "exclusively", equating to emphasis.

Well I can say from experience that this was exactly what the new players being brought into 4e through encounters were learning, I attended a few because I felt like there was something about 4e I wasn't getting, I guess you had to buy a copy of DitV to get all the stuff you're citing... of course I also long ago voiced my suspicions that 4e advocates such as you and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] were using indie-rpg experience and texts to drift (not sure if drift is exactly what I am trying to say perhaps steer is a better word) 4e into narrativism, much more than the PHB, DMG and MM ever did.

 

[S'mon]

I was a 90s GM as well. you can believe whatever you want, but if you want others to take the notion of lasting damage seriously, then yes it requires more than "I think". If it were just a general statement of taste or preference that would be one thing, but you are essentially claiming that people who play the game a particular way are causing harm to their ability to be creative. That is a pretty outrageous statement in my view and I think it is fair to ask for more than a gut check and anecdotes from those who make such a statement.

And to be clear, I dislike linear railroads as well. But I do think there is a limit to what kind of criticism against it is valid. I find railroads un-fun, and constricting. But i don't think they dodactual damage to people.

Have you never seen the passivity of players used to railroaded games, when you or
another GM try to run a game where they need to be proactive? Have you never seen players
start off bright eyed and bushy tailed at this wonderful new thing called RPGs - then they get into a railroad game and the light in their eyes slowly dies...

OTOH, yes, a bunch of people seem to enjoy this style perfectly well. They're having fun.
Badwrongfun, but what the heck.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Yes .. like this "Can I make an OOP?" "Can I stop this attack?" "Can I stop that movement?" "How many orcs can I hit with my burning hands?"

accidents happen you just keep going...

we mostly just played and trusted eachother...

Yeah, most of my players don't trust DMs. They don't forgive DMs their mistakes. I had to have the entire rules memorized from beginning to end because any mistake would be pointed out to me quickly and with a tone that says "Seriously, why are you the one DMing if you don't even know the rules?"

It would cause an argument that would take too much time away from the game. A rough example would be:

"How many Orcs can I hit with my burning hands?"
"2"
"Wait. A burning hands is a 15 ft cone. That means it affects 1 square then 2 squares then 3 squares in front of me. You said last turn that there were 3 orcs in melee with the fighter who is 20 feet away from me. You said they were standing in a line. So that means if I put the 3 squares of my burning hands 15 ft away from me, I should be able to hit all 3. Plus, there's one in melee with me, that means I should be able to hit 4 of them, not 2."
(The DM gets flustered because they weren't keeping that close track of the relative positions of all of the enemies, they were just kind of winging it and figured 2 was a good answer to how many should be hit) "Uhh...yeah, I guess you can hit 4 of them then. Sorry."
"You know, maybe we should just put down some minis so we all know where the orcs are. It's situations like this that makes me not trust DMs."

even in 4e we run some battles without them... and it is much more mini heavy...

I'm not saying it isn't possible. However, it seems out of the spirit of the game whose rules really want you to know the exact position of everything. I had so many of the above arguments whenever I tried to play without minis that I decided it was for the best.

Though, I currently run D&D Next without minis but I find it has very few rules that require you to know the exact position of everyone so there's been less issues. I'm really happy to go back to having a game with less fiddly rules because that way players can't spend all their time throwing them in my face.

we never saw that problem...

I'm not saying everyone would see that problem. But it's indicative of the attitude of my players. And many players. I used to run Living Greyhawk about 3-5 adventures per week with the random people who'd show up for our games days and at GenCon. Ran an entire GenCon straight once, 7 5-hour long slots...which was exhausting, but I met a lot of players and many of them don't trust DMs and feel that DMs will do whatever it takes to kill them off. Especially random DMs that they haven't met before and are running only at a convention. The best way to put these people at ease was to follow the rules precisely to the letter to make sure they understood that everything was fair and above board.

I once saw a set of 9th level PCs down a CR 24 dragon with 1 spell...

Err....I guess it's always possible for the dragon to roll a natural 1 on his save. But my math kind of says that a level 9 character with an extreme amount of equipment(+6 stat booster) who started with a 20 in their prime stat and put all their boosts into it would have a 28 and could cast 5th level spells, and have a feat to increase their DCs by 1. That would put their DCs at 25. Given the 610 hitpoints of a Red Dragon of that CR, it couldn't be a spell that just does damage as none of them do 610 damage. The Dragon's Fort and Will saves are both higher than +25, so he makes the saves against all spells that would kill him outright on anything but a natural 1. Most of these spells allow spell resistance. The Dragon's spell resistance is 30. That means it is impossible for a level 9 character to even succeed on that roll. Though if they somehow boosted their caster level, they'd still need to make a natural 20.

So killing a dragon of that CR would require a natural 20 followed by a natural 1. That is a 25 in 10 thousand chance to happen.

Unless we are talking about a situation of DM Fiat where a PC said something like "I shoot a spell at that pillar over there, collapsing the entire building on the dragon. I'm sure a building does instant death damage." in which the CR and rules of the game don't actually matter, since it wasn't actually a fair fight between the PCs and the dragon.

we just add them and go...

As I mentioned, adding a bunch of numbers together isn't easy for most people. It's not very fast either. It's not super slow, but each person's turn at higher levels took at least a minute(and often 2-3 minutes) for the process of deciding what action to take, figuring out the bonuses they got, rolling multiple attacks one at a time, adding the bonuses to their die rolls, the DM looking up the defenses of the monster, figuring out exactly which monster was being hit, and minusing the damage from the monsters hitpoints and writing it down.

The enemy's turn often took a minute PER enemy to do.

When each person's turn takes a minute and 5 enemies take another 5 minutes, then battles took a minimum of 10 minutes per round. Even one round battles came in over the 5 minute mark.

Sorry, I'm just really trying to wrap my head around battles in 3.5e taking 5 minutes. I'm trying to understand how it is possible. In my 4 years of running 3.5e alone, having run about 15 battles per week for about 3000 battles total, the average always came out to 30-60 minutes with obvious outliers of monsters who died in one hit and monsters that were nearly impossible to kill taking over an hour.

you know, that is normally something I disagree with, but for once I can honestly say "We play VERY different games"

This is the thing I'm most curious about. I want to know exactly how they are different. I really can't wrap my head around what a game where most of the battles were avoidable and were avoided on purpose by the PCs would even look like.

What would the PCs do? What kind of adventures do they go on that don't require killing monsters? Do they play business men who go to the office every day and fill out forms? What kind of jobs do they have that are that safe?

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Have you never seen the passivity of players used to railroaded games, when you or
another GM try to run a game where they need to be proactive? Have you never seen players
start off bright eyed and bushy tailed at this wonderful new thing called RPGs - then they get into a railroad game and the light in their eyes slowly dies...

OTOH, yes, a bunch of people seem to enjoy this style perfectly well. They're having fun.
Badwrongfun, but what the heck.

Honestly, some people don't want to be proactive. I've played in both kinds of games. I want a story told to me. I get super frustrated in sandbox games because I feel like the DM is offloading his or her work to me. Instead of them coming up with an interesting plot, they expect me to.

Since I don't show up to games expecting to put this effort in, my character's often have little motivation. I expect the adventure and the DM to give me motivation, not the other way around.

For instance, my current character in one of the D&D games I'm in is a book worm who spends his time at the church library researching the past of his goddess who used to be a mortal before she ascended.

Left to his own devices, he'd read books for the rest of his life and never go on an adventure. But since we were having wrongbadfun the DM came up with a plot where the church needed me to recover something, made up a journal of a party who had gone looking for it before me and arranged it so the other PCs were looking for work and I needed help fighting off the monsters in the cave the object was located in. I hired them, we became a party and later friends. I continue to adventure because they keep asking me to go along with them on their quests, that are also given to us by the DM.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Have you never seen the passivity of players used to railroaded games, when you or
another GM try to run a game where they need to be proactive? Have you never seen players
start off bright eyed and bushy tailed at this wonderful new thing called RPGs - then they get into a railroad game and the light in their eyes slowly dies...

OTOH, yes, a bunch of people seem to enjoy this style perfectly well. They're having fun.
Badwrongfun, but what the heck.

i have never seen it do lasting damage to anyone or impair their ability to be creative. And this desription is a bit melodramatic for my tastes. My experience with players who have been playing railroads or more linear games (since it feels like we are using railroad broadly) and enter a group with a more open structure is they either appreciate the ability to go off the rails, or they feel tge game isn't structured enough. People want different things.

 

[Mistwell]

Yeah, most of my players don't trust DMs. They don't forgive DMs their mistakes. I had to have the entire rules memorized from beginning to end because any mistake would be pointed out to me quickly and with a tone that says "Seriously, why are you the one DMing if you don't even know the rules?"

That sounds like a serious problem. I'd be kicking such players out of my games. The flow of the game is seriously impeded if players are constantly questioning the decisions of the DM. All rules are guidelines and not law, and the DM's judgement is final during the game. Bring up issues after the game, not during the game.

 

[Manbearcat]

Well I can say from experience that this was exactly what the new players being brought into 4e through encounters were learning, I attended a few because I felt like there was something about 4e I wasn't getting, I guess you had to buy a copy of DitV to get all the stuff you're citing... of course I also long ago voiced my suspicions that 4e advocates such as you and @pemerton were using indie-rpg experience and texts to drift (not sure if drift is exactly what I am trying to say perhaps steer is a better word) 4e into narrativism, much more than the PHB, DMG and MM ever did.

I'll propose an alternative hypothesis. I've seen a fair number of folks (on this board and elsewhere) asserting that Cortex+ MHRP's conflict resolution system (with its open descriptor PC build resources and accompanying broad applications) is a dissociative, gamist mess. Same indictment as 4e.

I suspect that the same charge would be levied at Dogs in the Vineyard except the poker jargon used to facilitate the premise of the component parts of the conflict resolution system would likely make the response more visceral for its detractors. In total, the dice pool mechanics and keywords would make the architecture (by itself) possibly "feel" more gamist and "jarring" to those who prefer serial world exploration instead of hard framing of conflict-charged scenes and more rulings in the stead of transparent, hard codification.

 

[LostSoul]

It's been over two years since I really sat down and thoroughly went through Ron Edwards' GNS essays, but I don't recall that particular verbiage. If you have some supporting evidence that suggests it's valid in this context, I'd love to see it; otherwise, as it is "aesthetic priority" is too nebulous in this context to provide any real meaning here.

It's from this: http://big-model.info/ Click on the "Creative Agenda" arrow: "The aesthetic priorities and any matters of imaginative interest regarding role-playing."

In this sense, an RPG with nothing but gamist rules structures is nothing more than "an arena for competition." Taken to its absolute extreme, gamism removes "narrative" and "story" from the equation entirely, and inhabits its own self-contained competitive space, with victory and loss conditions that reflect actual play strategy.

Sure, Edwards recognizes that there are both short- and long-term "win and loss" conditions----but unless the players and group ascribe some kind of narrative form, element, or substance to those conditions, they cease to exist beyond any single "step on up" encounter. Gamism in an RPG only achieves meaning in the fiction when it is necessarily attached to some kind of narrative structure---"We did this, and as a consequence this happened, and as such, we are now faced with challenges X, Y, and Z." Now, in some instances, a GM may only care about X, Y, and Z as situational variables to set up the next gamist encounter, to provide "flavor" for the next "step on up." But even in as minimal fashion as that, a gamist agenda still relies upon something besides pure gamism to create the "shared fiction" and flow of events happening in an RPG.

I don't really disagree with you. My point is that pure gamism relies on "Exploration" (the shared fiction) as the arena in which the player's aesthetic priorities are realized (in this case, challenged). The fiction (characters, setting, situation, system, and colour) is necessary to RPGs. Without that, talk about creative agenda doesn't make sense - "Gamism" only applies to games that have that fictional component.

A game that only has "gamist rules" - I'd say rules that are only designed to support gamism - in my mind looks a lot like B/X. That game has a lot of fictional content for the players to interact with, and its fictional content is necessary for the players to gain any sort of rewarding experience. The interaction of the system with the fictional content is what makes it such a good tool for players looking for gamism.

Now, the flip side to this, is that narrativism without a rules structure literally is "a bunch of people sitting around a campfire telling stories." There's no interactive "space" for dramatic resolution other than simply everyone agreeing, "Yeah, that's what really happened." The game in an RPG is important. I'm merely saying that an RPG in our current social, technological, and entertainment climate is going to have a dramatically harder time differentiating itself as a gamist pursuit. In other words, when WotC made 4e, they attached the cart to the wrong horse. They thought an emphasis on encounter-level gamism was going to build their audience, when in fact, RPGs are now differentiated from other gamist pursuits by their narrative elements.

No real disagreement here - except: I think 4E was not designed to support gamism but instead simulationism. What does it say on the back of the PHB - "The world needs heroes?" I think the message is that you are going to play big damn heroes who change the world. I think it's difficult for 4E to not deliver on that promise.

I think the problem with 4E is that it's too easy to play without reference to the fictional content. I think that's an interesting discussion, but it's not really one about creative agendas and supporting one over another.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

That sounds like a serious problem. I'd be kicking such players out of my games. The flow of the game is seriously impeded if players are constantly questioning the decisions of the DM. All rules are guidelines and not law, and the DM's judgement is final during the game. Bring up issues after the game, not during the game.

Well, our group jointly agreed(me included) that rules aren't guidelines. They are the way the game works. If we aren't going to follow the rules then we are creating an imbalance between the monsters and the PCs favoring one side or another. The designers created the rules to create a certain balance. If you forget to apply an AOO or just decide not to do it for sake of time, that could be the damage that kills one of the PCs or one of the monsters which makes the difference between winning and losing.

Our official rule always was "If you want to change any of the rules, bring it up after the game. Even the DM. During the game, we follow the rules as written precisely." With the unwritten rule that it was everyone at the table's job to make sure the rules were followed, even by the DM. After all, the DM is human, he can forget a rule and misapply a rule the same way anyone else can. If I were to suggest that someone stop correcting me in the middle of the game, the likely response would be "Great, you get to kill all of us off because you keep getting the rules wrong, then after we ALL die we can discuss it afterwards and we then have to go back to this battle and refight the whole thing with the correct rules. Seems like a big waste of time when we can just correct the mistake right now."

I've always felt that the DM should be mostly an equal in the group. His job is to make the game interesting, balanced and fair. If rules are being broken, it really is up to the DM to correct them no matter who broke the rule, even themselves. That way it didn't appear like he was playing favorites. Also, I don't really view the DM has having the power to kick people out of the group. I won't kick people out of my group without a VERY good reason. Even then, I take a vote amongst the other players to make sure I'm not the only one bothered by the behavior. If I'm outvoted, I'll let them stay.

It didn't hurt that although I was running a home game once a week, I was generally running 3-4 sessions of Living Greyhawk a week for most of the same players. The LG rules were very specific. The DMs were judges, they were impartial. They did NOT change the rules. They were there to interpret the rules and adjudicate if the rules were not clear about a specific situation but there were to be no house rules or changing of the adventure. All rules applied and you were not allowed to ignore a rule because you didn't like it.

I certainly couldn't imagine telling Dave Christ at Gencon that I kicked a player out of a LG session that they paid for simply because they said "shouldn't I hit more enemies with that burning hands?" Questioning the DM isn't against any RPGA, D&D or Convention rule.

I admit, that I got very used to running LG adventures and my DMing style outside of LG adventures basically was the same as during them. My players got used to this style as well. But it wasn't just Living Greyhawk that made us play that way. My very first game of 3e D&D ever(long before I had even heard of Organized Play or Living Greyhawk) the DM didn't like the fact that his 5th level fighter had died in 1 round to 1st level characters. So he just kept adding hitpoints to the enemy so it would survive longer. I read the rule book all the way through and a rough calculation of the damage we had done seemed to be over 150 and I knew there was no way for a 5th level fighter to have that many hitpoints. It coloured me against the DM and the game was no fun at all for me because I wanted to play a game where the rules were followed. We defeated the enemy fair and square but the DM was cheating because he didn't want his precious NPC to die so easily.

 

[pemerton]

I do not believe use of message baord resources oughtt o mean a game is a "forge game" a n "en world game", etc. Lots of companies use message boards and even in different ways but that doesn't automatically link their gaming philosophy to the philosophies of those sites

<snip>

Maybe we are disccussing to seperate things though: the forge's contribution to the industry by assisting smaler companies by giving them a page on the site, and the forge's contribution to design approaches via GNS.

the Forge has certain "views" (or maybe ideologies would be a better word??) as far as making role playing games, and if you use their message boards but none of their theories, ideology, views, etc. I don't see how you've created a "Forge game"

This is along the lines of what I think when someone says something is a "Forge game"... that the game was designed around and with their principles in mind

I was reacting specifically to the phrase "deep within the Forge" applying to Fate, which would indicate to me a game whose design is heavily influenced by the GNS theory discussions on the Forge (or possibly even an "experimental" game within that framework.)

Ron Edwards had certain views and wrote most of the columns for the Forge. The Forge itself was about encouraging people to publish RPGs.

<snip>

Ron Edwards had views. Ron Edwards was also a big contributor to The Forge. Doesn't mean they were the same thing

Yes, I'm somewhat puzzled by this imputation of a monolithic set of principles to "The Forge". The only principles that apply to The Forge as such, I would have thought, are sincerity in discussion: talk honestly about actual play, and post under your own name. The Forge also advocates for player-protagonist RPGing, but is not hostile to other forms of RPGing in which players make meaningful decisions (eg gamism).

As far as Edwards's analytical theory goes, I think Robin Laws summed it up well in the blog that Ratskinner linked to upthread:

Since our education system teaches us to train certain analytical beacons on literature and its offshoots, it should come as no surprise when folks adapt these tools to the study of roleplaying narrative. These are people who already think that analysis and criticism are important and worthy pursuits. To call out our most prominent theorist by name, Ron Edwards is an academic. As such, there is no greater act of benediction he can perform for a pursuit he loves than to swaddle it in a thick, protective layer of theory.​

I think GNS theory should be seen as having the same relationship to RPGing as any other form of criticism has to the production of the works that are its object. In methodological terms, GNS is analysis in terms of ideal types. The connection between theory and production, even in the avant garde, is complex and dynamic. But you wouldn't expect the best critic of surrealism, or the best theorist of absurdism, to necessarily produce the best piece of surrealist painting. And you might even expect the best piece of art in that general style to transcend theory in some fashion.

(An interesting example with the same person as both theorist and creator is Wagner's Ring Cycle: the Rheingold, which is by any measure a fine piece of music, adheres in its composition most closely to his theory of "the opera of the future" - eg voices and instrumentation in different registers so as not to compete - but the later music in the cycle is truly astounding in its richness and power, even though it doesn't always adhere to the technical requirements of the theory.)

calling something a "Forge game" has come to mean a lot more than just "indie". Forge fans seem to want to give the site credit for anything rpg and "indie", even though other indie games existed before the Forge. I would hope that you are not claiming that the Forge is responsible for inventing the ideas of player protagonism, metagame mechanics (still hate that phrase), or using fictional positioning for either.

Of course not. Nor does Edwards.

Over the Edge (1992) and Maelstrom Storytelling (1997) are the two earliest games I know with the "classic" indie features of free descriptors as the vector for player input into narrative-oriented resolution, and I learned about both of them from Edwards' acknowledgement of their influence and importance. (Though he is also critical of the setting-content aspects of OtE.)

My contention upthread was that the Forge was (or was associated with) a cultural movement promoting (i) creator owned and published RPGs (indie rpgs in the literal sense), and (ii) RPGing which involves player protagonism rather than 90s-style "storytelling" ("indie" rpgs in the stylistic sense - a game like Marvel Heroic RP is indie in sense (ii) though not in the literal sense). And I said that I find it hard to believe that the current success of Fate - which is indie in both senses, as far as I understand things - is a mark of failure rather than success for that cultural movement. And nothing in the intervening 100-odd posts is making me change my mind on that. (Ditto for the success of Dungeon World.)

Burning Wheel <snip> in no way appears to be in line with GNS theory or look like a stereotypical Forge Game.

Burning Wheel is a darling of folks looking for a "Narrativism" example.

I see BW as in the same general design approach as The Riddle of Steel (and Jake Norwood - who is acknowledged by Edwards in some of his essays - wrote the foreword for the latest edition of BW). Edwards summed that up nicely here:

The Riddle of Steel includes multiple text pieces regarding the thematic drive of the game, which I have paraphrased to the Premise: "What is worth killing for?" It also includes a tremendously detailed, in-game-causal combat system. My call is that we are looking at Narrativist-Simulationist hybrid design, with the latter in a distinctly subordinate/supportive role. This is a scary and difficult thing to do.

The first game to try it was RuneQuest. Realism, so-called, was supposed to be the foundation for heroic, mythic tale-creation. However, without metagame mechanics or any other mechanisms regarding protagonism, the realism-Sim took over, and RuneQuest became, essentially, a wargame at the individual level. The BRP (RuneQuest) system is right up there with AD&D and Champions in terms of its historical influence on other games, and no game design attempted to "power Narrativism with Simulationist combat" from the ground up again. I can even see dating the false dichotomy of "roll vs. role playing" back to this very moment in RPG history.

One functional solution to the problem, as illustrated for just about every Narrativist game out there, is to move combat mechanics very far into the metagame realm: Sorcerer, . . . Hero Wars, [etc] take that road to various distances, and it works. Until recently, I would have said these and similar designs presented the only functional solution from a Narrativism-first perspective.

However, The Riddle of Steel is like a guy waving his hand in the back of the room - "Scuse me, scuse me, what about that first road? I'm not ready to jettison that idea yet." It's as if someone stepped into The Chaosium in 1977, and said, "Hey, you know, if you don't put some kind of player-modulated personality mechanic in there, this game is going to be all about killing monsters and collecting Clacks." This didn't happen in 1977, and that's why RuneQuest play was often indeed all about those things. But it's happened now ...​

Dan Davenport had a similar take on RPG.net:

If you’ve ever wanted to combine the powerful emotions and epic grandeur of Lord of the Rings with the brutally detailed combat of RuneQuest, then boy, do I have the game for you​

Burning Wheel is a narrativist game - in that its main goal is an emotionally and thematically deep, player-driven experience - but it uses techniques more often associated with process-sim design. (Edward has often said that techniques and creative agendas are only loosely related.) I think it has a high degree of affinity to 4e (though much grittier and thematically "heavier) - but rather than process sim 4e uses techniques more often associated with gamist design!

 

[Neonchameleon]

Over the Edge (1992) and Maelstrom Storytelling (1997) are the two earliest games I know with the "classic" indie features of free descriptors as the vector for player input into narrative-oriented resolution, and I learned about both of them from Edwards' acknowledgement of their influence and importance. (Though he is also critical of the setting-content aspects of OtE.)

On a random and complete tangent, if anyone's interested in Over the Edge it and its supplements are the current bundle of holding.

 

[pemerton]

We were talking about the ideologies of the Forge and you jumped in with a broad statement concerning "Forge games". Well if everyone else in the conversation has been discussing the Forge to mean GNS, Edwards ideologies, and their effects on games in the hobby... then you jump in with a statement about "Forge games", but with a totally different meaning for it than almost everyone else

Who is "we"?

Upthread I was the one who disagreed with [MENTION=2525]Mistwell[/MENTION] and asserted that The Forge had been a success. And I meant exactly what [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION] means. The examples I pointed to included Burning Wheel, and also the acknowledged influence of Vincent Baker on as mainstream a game as Marvel Heroic RP. Neonchameleon has defended and amplified my claim by pointing to further games that illustrate the point.

 

[Imaro]

Who is "we"?

Upthread I was the one who disagreed with @Mistwell and asserted that The Forge had been a success. And I meant exactly what @Neonchameleon means. The examples I pointed to included Burning Wheel, and also the acknowledged influence of Vincent Baker on as mainstream a game as Marvel Heroic RP. Neonchameleon has defended and amplified my claim by pointing to further games that illustrate the point.

Of course you do... well next time please clarify what you mean since even now the definition of "Forge game" keeps changing"... apparently now the definition also means any game that may have taken any type of influence from anyone associated in any way with the Forge, no matter how small the influence. Again your definition seems to equate any and all indie-rpg's as "Forge games".

 

[pemerton]

i do think you implied in one of your posts (though you not very comittal) you agree with edward's conclusion that these other styles cause lasting damage to one's creative abiltiies.

In a post to which you replied, I said that I thought it went against board rules (namely, the no-politics rule) to talk about the scope and nature of cultural criticism by cultural critics. So I didn't talk about it.

In a reply to [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] I said that I didn't have enough experience to have a view on the "permanent damage" issue, but that I had welcomed into my gaming group people who have been stuck in 90s-style "storyteller" campaigns and are looking for something better.

Besides that, all I have said on the "brain damage" issue (in reply, I think, to @d.d.stevenson) is what I think Edwards was actually trying to convey about the trajectory of RPG play, and its consequences.

i do think speaking of people who have moved from those styles into your group as "refugees" suggests the same

I used the word "refugee" in its standard sense - someone who is in a situation they wish to escape from, and is looking for someone to take them in.

Have you never seen players start off bright eyed and bushy tailed at this wonderful new thing called RPGs - then they get into a railroad game and the light in their eyes slowly dies...

Yep - that's what I have in mind in talking about "refugees" - rekindled hope for RPGing!

I find what you describe particularly striking when the railroad GM explains RPGing in terms of "you can try anything you can think of" - and then proceeds to adjudicate every declared action that is not story-compliant by reference to degrees of failure!

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Yeah, most of my players don't trust DMs.

Why would anyone play with a DM they don't trust? that is so against my thoughts on what a DM is that we can't even hope to have any common ground... DO you trust them to have the right number HP on a monster, or do you track it?

They don't forgive DMs their mistakes. I had to have the entire rules memorized from beginning to end because any mistake would be pointed out to me quickly and with a tone that says "Seriously, why are you the one DMing if you don't even know the rules?"

My answer is and always has been "I've run games longer then anyone else, and have the highest amount of acceptance in the group... if you think you can do better... go try." and I mean it I would love for others to run games so I can play more...

My Tuesday night game has always run by "who ever the group wants" and if someone thinks they can do better we give them a shot... most of the time that doesn't work out... I've had most players back down once they find how hard it is to keep everyone happy behind the screen.

It would cause an argument that would take too much time away from the game. A rough example would be:

"How many Orcs can I hit with my burning hands?"
"2"
"Wait. A burning hands is a 15 ft cone. That means it affects 1 square then 2 squares then 3 squares in front of me. You said last turn that there were 3 orcs in melee with the fighter who is 20 feet away from me. You said they were standing in a line. So that means if I put the 3 squares of my burning hands 15 ft away from me, I should be able to hit all 3. Plus, there's one in melee with me, that means I should be able to hit 4 of them, not 2."

IN my game it would go like this:

"How many Orcs can I hit with my burning hands?"
"2"
"Wait. I think I can hit 4 based on your description."
"Lets just call it three then, and keep going:
"OK"

The DM gets flustered because they weren't keeping that close track of the relative positions of all of the enemies, they were just kind of winging it and figured 2 was a good answer to how many should be hit) "Uhh...yeah, I guess you can hit 4 of them then. Sorry."
"You know, maybe we should just put down some minis so we all know where the orcs are. It's situations like this that makes me not trust DMs."

If you think you can do better run one...

I'm not saying it isn't possible. However, it seems out of the spirit of the game whose rules really want you to know the exact position of everything. I had so many of the above arguments whenever I tried to play without minis that I decided it was for the best.

Sometimes it happens, but you just do your best and keep going...

Though, I currently run D&D Next without minis but I find it has very few rules that require you to know the exact position of everyone so there's been less issues. I'm really happy to go back to having a game with less fiddly rules because that way players can't spend all their time throwing them in my face.

I guess...

I'm not saying everyone would see that problem.

of course not, and I'm not even saying you don't see it (((Take a lessen LFQW deniers))) I'm very happy your getting rules that will help you not run into it in 5th...

But it's indicative of the attitude of my players. And many players. I used to run Living Greyhawk about 3-5 adventures per week with the random people who'd show up for our games days and at GenCon. Ran an entire GenCon straight once, 7 5-hour long slots...which was exhausting, but I met a lot of players and many of them don't trust DMs and feel that DMs will do whatever it takes to kill them off.

I run ALOT more then I play every year I run at 2 local cons, and I ran at gen con in 2002, 2006, 2008, and 2009 and found that opposite... infact most people after only a minute or two of talking and jokeing with me trust me... and I didn't think I was a people person

Especially random DMs that they haven't met before and are running only at a convention. The best way to put these people at ease was to follow the rules precisely to the letter to make sure they understood that everything was fair and above board.

I've found quite the opposite... the best way is to always rule in favor or fun and speed even if it is against the letter or spirit of the rules or even both...

Err....I guess it's always possible for the dragon to roll a natural 1 on his save. But my math kind of says that a level 9 character with an extreme amount of equipment(+6 stat booster) who started with a 20 in their prime stat and put all their boosts into it would have a 28 and could cast 5th level spells, and have a feat to increase their DCs by 1. That would put their DCs at 25. Given the 610 hitpoints of a Red Dragon of that CR, it couldn't be a spell that just does damage as none of them do 610 damage. The Dragon's Fort and Will saves are both higher than +25, so he makes the saves against all spells that would kill him outright on anything but a natural 1. Most of these spells allow spell resistance. The Dragon's spell resistance is 30. That means it is impossible for a level 9 character to even succeed on that roll. Though if they somehow boosted their caster level, they'd still need to make a natural 20

.
Cast wall of force in there throat and choke him to death... no spell casting without silent spell and no way to breath... it was awesome...

The dragon landed to throw his weight around and tell the PCs they had to do something for him or he would destroy the town... the wizard told him "Treat us with respect and we will consider an offer of employment, brag again and I will end you..."
The dragon laughed and said "Take your best shot a..."
"Wall of force"
"Wait, where?"

So killing a dragon of that CR would require a natural 20 followed by a natural 1. That is a 25 in 10 thousand chance to happen.

0 dice rolled, 1 spell and a great story,

Unless we are talking about a situation of DM Fiat where a PC said something like "I shoot a spell at that pillar over there, collapsing the entire building on the dragon. I'm sure a building does instant death damage." in which the CR and rules of the game don't actually matter, since it wasn't actually a fair fight between the PCs and the dragon.

I will await your thoughts on what it was...

Sorry, I'm just really trying to wrap my head around battles in 3.5e taking 5 minutes. I'm trying to understand how it is possible. In my 4 years of running 3.5e alone, having run about 15 battles per week for about 3000 battles total, the average always came out to 30-60 minutes with obvious outliers of monsters who died in one hit and monsters that were nearly impossible to kill taking over an hour.

Well I have seen half hour fights they were not regular.... I mean having 5-10 min fights happened when ever we had SoS or SoD spells in opening rounds...

This is the thing I'm most curious about. I want to know exactly how they are different. I really can't wrap my head around what a game where most of the battles were avoidable and were avoided on purpose by the PCs would even look like.

What would the PCs do? What kind of adventures do they go on that don't require killing monsters? Do they play business men who go to the office every day and fill out forms? What kind of jobs do they have that are that safe?

OK, lets take one recent game, goblins have been stealing from farms for years, but they have grown more brazen last year and attacked some travlers... this last few weeks they sacked a full caravan.

game 1 PCs go to caravan site and track goblin tribe... they find a hobgoblin from the scar tribe is there... they are viscus and he took over and is bullying the goblins.
So the PCs walk in and tell the goblins there is a better way... they are going to kill the hobgoblin and feed them and give them a better way to defend themselves... once they win over a few goblins the hobgoblin runs rather then fight 1 on 6 (4 PCs, 2 NPCs).
PCs then go and explain to the town guard the goblins are a resource to be used... because they are evil they are predictable they are out for themselves... just make working with you what is in there best intrest... and it is way better to pay them to fight with you and train with you then to fight them...
TH PCs then went to track the hobgoblin to an advance camp of the Scar clan... they found it was within the area where Orcs normaly patrol... well if the hobgoblins are in orc territory then they must be enemies of the orcs (or atleast someone they can convince the orcs to fight.)
Game 3 started with the 2nd time we rolled initative when the PCs lead an Orc/Goblin/Townguard assault against the Scar clan... they are smart though, so most Hobgoblins surrender or flee when bloodied... they aren't here to throw away there lives....

 

[pemerton]

In this sense, an RPG with nothing but gamist rules structures is nothing more than "an arena for competition." Taken to its absolute extreme, gamism removes "narrative" and "story" from the equation entirely, and inhabits its own self-contained competitive space, with victory and loss conditions that reflect actual play strategy.

<snip>

Gamism in an RPG only achieves meaning in the fiction when it is necessarily attached to some kind of narrative structure---"We did this, and as a consequence this happened, and as such, we are now faced with challenges X, Y, and Z." Now, in some instances, a GM may only care about X, Y, and Z as situational variables to set up the next gamist encounter, to provide "flavor" for the next "step on up." But even in as minimal fashion as that, a gamist agenda still relies upon something besides pure gamism to create the "shared fiction" and flow of events happening in an RPG.

Unless I've misunderstood, your "narrative structure" is simply an enduring shared imaginary space: what LostSoul has called (following Forge terminology) "exploration". That is inherent to RPGing, but it doesn't show we're doing anything but play in a gamist style.

For instance, White Plume Mountain or Tomb of Horrors has a shared imaginary space, and it has causal sequence within that space - "We're in room 3 becaue we walked down the corridor from room 2" - but they are not about anything other than gamist play. There is no story or narrative structure in any rich sense of those terms (eg no dramatic climax and resolution).

A game that only has "gamist rules" - I'd say rules that are only designed to support gamism - in my mind looks a lot like B/X.

That sounds fair to me.

I think 4E was not designed to support gamism but instead simulationism. What does it say on the back of the PHB - "The world needs heroes?" I think the message is that you are going to play big damn heroes who change the world. I think it's difficult for 4E to not deliver on that promise.

Yes, I mentioned this upthread. I agree with [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]'s post about a dozen or so upthread (except I don't have his DitV experience), but he is pointing to techniques, and while those techniques are normally associated with narrativist play, 4e shows that they can be used for high concept sim too.

I think the room for drift arises at the point of "changing the world": who gets to decide what the change will be? To the extent that this is not inherent in the system itself, but up for grabs by the participants (and especially the players), narrativist drift is feasible - though the GM will have to deliberately deploy the system tools to force the choice (the forcing of the choice isn't inherent in the system).

I think the problem with 4E is that it's too easy to play without reference to the fictional content. I think that's an interesting discussion, but it's not really one about creative agendas and supporting one over another.

I agree with your second sentence. I agree with your first sentence too, but I don't think the problem is as big as you do, although there are ways of (mis)reading the rules text that can exacerbate it.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Our official rule always was "If you want to change any of the rules, bring it up after the game. Even the DM. During the game, we follow the rules as written precisely." With the unwritten rule that it was everyone at the table's job to make sure the rules were followed, even by the DM. After all, the DM is human, he can forget a rule and misapply a rule the same way anyone else can. If I were to suggest that someone stop correcting me in the middle of the game, the likely response would be "Great, you get to kill all of us off because you keep getting the rules wrong, then after we ALL die we can discuss it afterwards and we then have to go back to this battle and refight the whole thing with the correct rules. Seems like a big waste of time when we can just correct the mistake right now."

I've had so few TPKs on either side of the table that I can't imgine making that argument.... heck we wouldn't re roll it either....

I've always felt that the DM should be mostly an equal in the group.

wait... something our groups agree on

His job is to make the game interesting, balanced and fair.

with you so far... 100%

Also, I don't really view the DM has having the power to kick people out of the group. I won't kick people out of my group without a VERY good reason. Even then, I take a vote amongst the other players to make sure I'm not the only one bothered by the behavior. If I'm outvoted, I'll let them stay.

agree...

If rules are being broken, it really is up to the DM to correct them no matter who broke the rule, even themselves. That way it didn't appear like he was playing favorites.

I don't see winging it as breaking rules... it's just how we play...

It didn't hurt that although I was running a home game once a week, I was generally running 3-4 sessions of Living Greyhawk a week for most of the same players.

I didn't get into LG that much, but I did have some experience... I never had a DM get mad at us for not taking the game too seriuse though...

The LG rules were very specific. The DMs were judges, they were impartial. They did NOT change the rules. They were there to interpret the rules and adjudicate if the rules were not clear about a specific situation but there were to be no house rules or changing of the adventure. All rules applied and you were not allowed to ignore a rule because you didn't like it.

well we did house rule a lot in 2e and 3e (we even house rule 4e but less so) but we could play default too, stll without minis

My very first game of 3e D&D ever(long before I had even heard of Organized Play or Living Greyhawk) the DM didn't like the fact that his 5th level fighter had died in 1 round to 1st level characters. So he just kept adding hitpoints to the enemy so it would survive longer. I read the rule book all the way through and a rough calculation of the damage we had done seemed to be over 150 and I knew there was no way for a 5th level fighter to have that many hitpoints. It coloured me against the DM and the game was no fun at all for me because I wanted to play a game where the rules were followed. We defeated the enemy fair and square but the DM was cheating because he didn't want his precious NPC to die so easily.

wow... my first 3e game I ran had a 'knight' that had a 40 con and that was just to test out the new stat rules... He was a 4th level fighter (so he could weapon specilze) and had an axe... he had 3d10+70hp... so I just said 100 out right... No one questioned me. I didn't make an NPC I just through some stats down...

I once took a monster from a 3rd party (white wolf inprint) that had this monster that showed up as like 5 or six brutes and each time you killed one the others looked like they healed, but in reality gained a HD... so the last one had a better AC and to hit and damge... I then made a 10th level ninja, 2 7th level ninja's 3 5th level ninja's and 5 3rd level ninja's... the inverse law of ninitsu got a lot of laughs... until I sudden striked for +5d6 damage.... still no one complained (well there were a few growns at the joke)...