D&D 5E With Respect to the Door and Expectations....The REAL Reason 5e Can't Unite the Base

[pemerton]

from the DM perspective it is absolutely possible to force balance.

I think that many (most? all?) those who play high level D&D and don't find casters overshadowing martial types are using a lot of GM force to shut down the casters, as per your post and Ahnehnois's.

One thing I've always wanted to do is to run a D&D style session freeform without rules, then gradually add the rules back in to see what effect they have. Do they resolve problems? Introduce them? I think it would be very informative to see how the fighter/caster dynamic plays out when the only rule is "do whatever is appropriate for the character".

How would I know whether such a game was D&D (and which edition?), HeroWars/Quest, RuneQuest, Rolemaster, HARP, Fantasy HERO, Burning Wheel, etc?

I mean, if the freeform wizard says "I blast X with magical fire" is that Burning Hands, Fireball or Meteor Swarm? And if the player of X retorts "I dodge" the fire, is that hit points, or a Reflex save, or something else? And what happens when the player of the fighter says, after someone else narrates a weapon blow against said fighter, responds "I focus on why I have to win this fight, pull myself together and press on"? When you add "the rules" back in, what does that amount to? Hit point loss that leaves the fighter above zero hp? Second wind? Warlord healing? Stunned Manoeuvring (a Rolemaster skill). Mere colour (as it would be in RuneQuest, I think)?

All these games are presenting much the same fiction, although via different systems. There is no 1:1 fiction:system correspondence.

 

[pemerton]

I guess that's it. I hope that makes some sense to someone other than me.

That's an awesome post that deserves more XP (unfortunately I'm XP-barred at the moment).

Narrativism, heck story, really doesn't need much. You just need enough to set up/drive conflicts, and generally speaking some kind of random element to bounce creativity off of, maybe a bit more depending on the author's feelings and what he's aiming at.

I think the random element (or some other system technique) also has to, in some loose way of speaking, "channel" the conflict into resolutions (which can be temporary or partial), to give you the pass/fail, with either producing complications, structure that drives narrativist play.

The reason I add that bit is because I'm influenced by this blog in thinking that satisfying RPGing in narrativist mode requires the players not to have to take responsibility for the story - just for playing their PCs through those drives/conflicts. And because GM force (whether literally from the GM, or from another participant exercising scene-framing authority) is also highly regulated (so as to protect protagonism), the mechanics have to step in to help provide a guaranteed push-to-resolution.

I'm not saying, therefore, that the rules have to be fiddly. But that extra bit - the action resolution mechanics - is where some fiddliness can creep in. (Eg HeroWars bidding system before HeroQuest revised took it out.)

That doesn't mean that you can't have Narrative elements or support in a larger game. FATE is, perhaps, the most famous example now with Dresden Files, Legends of Anglerre, etc. demonstrating the ability for that system to support supplement generation. However, the underlying system is a vague, sloppy, Simulationist system. Depending on the aspects chosen, FATE doesn't have to be very Narrativist at all. I feel similarly about Burning Wheel, although I have less experience with it and am relying on online discussions that BW can be played very Sim and even Gamist (!?).

I don't know the FATE games except by reputation. BW I think could be played in a very Sim way - it would resemble RuneQuest a bit, or even HARP - but certain of its features wouldn't make sense for this play style - especially its advancement rules. (To advance, you have to use your skill/ability in a variety of situations of varying difficulties, including (near-)impossible ones. The purpose of this is to give the player a reason to set his/her PC up to fail - ie a metagame purpose that has no ingame correlation for a sim person to hook up to.) And Gamist BW would also make some sense to me - it has a lot of crunch for gamists to sink their teeth into - although some of the PC build costs are a bit out in this respect (eg various disadvantages still cost build points, because of the spotlight time they will generate), and the Belief mechanics might seem strangely out of synch - it would be strange to roleplay my guy's inner conflict really well so as to get the "mouldbreaker" award, without actually caring about the fictional stakes that the inner conflict expresses.

But I don't think it's right to therefore say that BW is really a sim system being twisted to narrativist goals. It's a narrativist system that heavily emphasises system, and exploration of system, as a subordinate aspect of play. (I know TRoS mostly by reptuation, but I think it would be similar to BW in this respect - and is mentiond as an influence in the Bibliography to revised BW.)

So, you're a publisher. You want to publish. You need to generate content for your game...which means proliferating rules. (Thus splat material outselling adventures/world material.) So, when you invent your game, you make sure to invent a game that makes proliferating rules easy....it will have fiddly bits!...and many types of fiddly bits!

Narrativism, IMO, makes fiddly bits difficult. The fiddly bits get too much like scripting, and Narration often approaches events and situations that are too open-ended and hard to write for.

I think the 4e "solution" to this was very clever (from the publisher piont of view). Instead of going for a free-descriptors game (like HeroWars/Quest, or - I gather from other posts of yours - Capes), they go for really, really long lists of fixed descriptors (races, classes, powers, paragon paths, epic destinies, equipment, etc). Which they then sell you in supplements.

While 4e supporters look at the explicit math in 4e as a balance-driven thing, I also see it as a defense mechanism against power creep. Having it there prevented them from "accidentally" releasing a later defender that was strictly better than the Fighter. Which is certainly a temptation when you're trying to sell books. In part, this is what made 4e so brilliant, it used a lot of gamist trappings, but actively and openly resisted gamism-creep. Unfortunately, it also managed to be a big turn-off for a lot of people.

I agree with this. Those long lists in 4e don't support gamism. They support either high concept sim ("Cool, now I can be a fey plant guy who shoots arrows infused with primal spirits") or light narrativism (I don't think Wilden and Seekers are very rich in this repsect, though maybe others find thematic richness in them that I miss - but (still in the PHB3) I think Minotaurs, Monks, Psions and Runepriests are reasonably thematically laden, within the context of a fantasy RPG).

try to make up an AEDU-like power structure for argument/social interaction rather than combat. Tough, isn't it? Worse, the results are unsatisfying or flat out weird. Notice how 4e flees the fiddly bits when you get into this territory, relegating itself to some comparatively vague skill checks in a skill challenge.* Yes, I know that "Narrativism doesn't have to be rules light.." is the mantra, but...

I no longer think this is choice on the designer's part. I'm looking at the "proof-of-concept" games out there, and I've never heard a whisper of one that handles things in a fundamentally Narrativist fashion, and yet has tons of fiddly bits. Plenty of FATEs, and BWs, which have a Narrativist bent or section tacked onto some other "big" frame, but no version of "social combat" that anywhere near approaches the level of finesse or detail that we're used to seeing for physical combat. If you know of a counter-example, I'd love to hear it.

<snip>

*A weird version of 4e: Create "Melee", "Missile", and (perhaps several) "Magic" skills. Forget AEDU powers, other than maybe the flavor text. Combat could then be resolved as a skill challenge(s) all in TotM.

Agreed on skill challenges and the possibility for TotM "skill challenge" combat in a 4e-like framework.

On fiddly social conflict resolution, BW Duel of Wits is the fiddliest I know of: you script your argument as you would your combat, and then resolve via versus tests as you would your combat (with special manouevres, including verbal "feints" and "knockdowns"). With an action economy (you can make your interlocutor "miss a turn"). And a "body of argument" that gets depleted via successful wordplay.

What mostly differentiates it from the combat mechanics is the comparative looseness of fit between mechanics and fiction: there is much more freedom to characterise what exactly it is that a character is saying when verbally "feinting" or trying for a "knockdown" (whereas in physical combat this is likely more of a given from the mechanics); and that fiction actually matters intimately to resolution. This is because, unless the winner's body of argument is completely untouched, at the end of the duel the loser is entitled to a compromise, the degree of which depends on the degree of "damage" to the winner's body of argument, and the terms of which are going to have to be derived from the fiction that was produced in the course of resolution. Whereas, in phsyical combat, I don't need the fiction to tell me what consequences flow from being hit by a weapon: the mechanics themselves answer that question, much like a traditional fantasy RPG.

I don't know if the above analysis of the Duel of Wits completely confirms your claim about narrativism and mechanics, but I think it is consistent with your view that there is something distinctive going on in the contrast between pysical combat and social conflict resolution.

 

[Sadras]

...A weird version of 4e: Create "Melee", "Missile", and (perhaps several) "Magic" skills. Forget AEDU powers, other than maybe the flavor text. Combat could then be resolved as a skill challenge(s) all in TotM.

What a beautiful thought! Using AEDU powers only for the flavour text within a narrative skill-challenge combat. Worth quoting again. Wish I'd thought of something so elegant before finishing my last boss encounter.

 

[Neonchameleon]

You also (as do many) seem to believe that whatever problem you have constitutes a blanket justification for making radical changes to basic game elements

The problem I have with 3.X is quite simple. There is literally one class in the PHB that isn't either a negative game experience for either me or a lot of the other people at the table. That class is the Bard.

My default play style is one of two things. Either "Batman Wizard" relying on preparation or a well rounded rogue who improvises out of trouble (whatever the official character class is).

If I play Batman Wizard, the game twists hard. I'm damn good at this type of play and I've a head for rules and synergy.

So let's try the other option. The rogue (whatever class). In 3.X, let's assume I want to play a burglar. Simple concept. As a rogue you get 8+Int modifier skill points. Sounds like a lot.

But. How many skills do I need?

Core 3.5 has 33 skills and 3 further skill families (Craft, Profession, Perform).

For a burglar I need to be good at hiding and good at noticing guards. That's Hide, Move Silently, Spot, and Listen. Four skills. I need to be a second story man. Which means I need Climb, Jump, Tumble (to fall), and Balance. We're up to eight skills. I need to be able to find the valuables and eyeball how much they are worth (Search, Appraise). I need to be able to get through locks and deal with traps intended to keep me out. That's Open Lock and Disable Device. We're up to 12 skills for my character concept before I've even thought of a profession skill, haggling with the fence if I need to, picking pockets if I started out that way, Use Rope, or others. I'm feeling hamstrung.

In 1e I have most of the burglar skills that exist as thief skills. I have Scale Sheer Surface, Disable Device, Open Lock, Hide In Shadows, Move Silently. And I'm not explicitely lacking the others. In 4e to cover the entire range of the 12 skills (excluding Appraise) I need: Stealth, Thievery, Perception, Acrobatics, Athletics. Five skills. I can do that with a fourth level fighter if I need to. And with utility powers I get to specialise above and beyond the norm if I feel the need.

Now. Let's take another example just to prove it wasn't a fluke. I want to play someone based on Templeton Peck (better known simply as Face). I'm going to need the social package (Bluff, Sense Motive, Diplomacy - I don't think I need intimidate). I'm going to need to be able sneak around (Hide, Move Silently, Spot, Listen). I need to be able to open safes and defeat security systems. (Pick Lock, Disable Device). I deifinitely need Appraise. Disguise is, of course, a no-brainer. Also Forgery and Perform (Acting). 14 skills. Ouch. For 4e to cover that range it's Bluff, Sense Motive, Diplomacy, Perception, Stealth, Thievery. Or within the ordinary range of a rogue and more than doable for a bard. (I probably also need Arcana given the way the world's different from the A Team universe).

Yes, I believe radical surgery to the 3.X system was necessary. The skill system needed to go. The Vancian casters needed crippling one way or the other. One of my default playstyles was hyper-rewarded, the other was hamstrung. Combat - I don't get anything out of 3.X combat as a non-caster and not really as a caster. (Other than Bo9S).

 

[Nytmare]

*A weird version of 4e: Create "Melee", "Missile", and (perhaps several) "Magic" skills. Forget AEDU powers, other than maybe the flavor text. Combat could then be resolved as a skill challenge(s) all in TotM.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/329231-d-d-lite-brainstorming.html

 

[Grimmjow]

So seeing as how the original discussion on this thread was about how DnD Next wont be able to unite the base, ill bring that back up. in This article by Mike Mearls he discusses multi-classing. After reading this article do you feel that this will help unite the different editions or push them apart? What would you guys do to change this.

Go ahead and continue with your topics that you are working on but please take some time to address this also.

I come from 4e and really dont like the multi-classing rules given then. While the rules they are presenting here are nothing like 4e, i would prefer to see them thrown out. The 3e way needs some work (no cherry picking) but works much better than 4e. The way it is talked about here i think will work. At least for me

 

[Hussar]

I think that's a point where a lot of people will agree; that the game plays best in those low middle levels. There might be disagreement as to when it drops off and how badly, but I think it's pretty well recognized that characters actually being able to cast Wish is a niche style of game. I don't see that as such a bad thing though. Every game will have a sweet spot, and that's not a small one.

One third isn't small? You're talking about seven levels out of twenty as being the sweet spot. I'd say that's extremely poor design when 2/3rds of your game is outside the sweet spot. And the prime reason for that 2/3rds is the magic system.

See, I don't believe that I should have to rewrite adventures based on what characters the players bring to the table. In a reasonably balanced system, the players can play whatever they want to play and it works. In a reasonably balanced system, you should not be able to easily pick a Dream Team of characters (2 druids, a cleric and a wizard). There should be no "tiers" in a reasonably balanced system.

 

[Ahnehnois]

One third isn't small? You're talking about seven levels out of twenty as being the sweet spot. I'd say that's extremely poor design when 2/3rds of your game is outside the sweet spot. And the prime reason for that 2/3rds is the magic system.

In practice, it's a lot more than a third, because of the conventions of starting at 1st level and earning advancement. (Nor would I expect the game to cater to high level play as much as low level play in any level-based system). In any case, I'd say yes, a third is a pretty big "spot".

For example, I find that in playing Civilization 4, my "sweet spot" is playing on one of two difficulty levels (out of roughly ten), with one of a couple of civilizations (out of dozens), and with a variety of options and mods. Any other way, I don't enjoy it. That's a lot smaller sweet spot, but it's still a great game.

See, I don't believe that I should have to rewrite adventures based on what characters the players bring to the table.

I don't think that an adventure prepared independently of a group of characters should be expected to work very well with those characters, regardless of what they are. Certainly not without a lot of alteration and interpretation. D&D is just too open-ended.

In a reasonably balanced system, the players can play whatever they want to play and it works.

I don't really agree with that either. If a player plays a wizard with 3 Int, it shouldn't work. If a party plays all bards, they shouldn't be able to take out an all fighter party in melee.

In fact, the "gamist" aspect of rpgs is precisely this: player choices should matter.

If all available player choices (at any stage of the game) are assured an equal chance of success, the game has failed on that level.

In a reasonably balanced system, you should not be able to easily pick a Dream Team of characters (2 druids, a cleric and a wizard). There should be no "tiers" in a reasonably balanced system.

That I disagree with only slightly less. Chess, for example, is a very balanced game, but queens clearly aren't equal to pawns. Much of chess strategy, however, revolves around what you do with your pawns. And fighters are much more interesting to play than a pawn would be.

I would argue that if I'm playing a wizard and I make it to really high level and I can't do a variety of things that are utterly beyond what a nonmagical character (of any level can do), I'm not playing a fantasy rpg. You can tack limitations on magic (which D&D in general and 3e in particular don't do a lot of), but it should be break the laws of the game world and be open-ended, and, on some fundamental level, unbalanced.

 

[Hussar]

Whereas I don't believe that magic needs to be so open-ended or unbalanced. It's certainly not a genre convention in many fantasy stories where powerful wizards need gobs of time to really do anything of note and are still killed by that well thrown sword. It's not until you get into fairly recent fantasy, say about the early 80's, where you get magic as fundamentally unbalanced, with writers like David Eddings and later JK Rowlings.

Looking at magic in pre-1980 genre fiction and suddenly wizards are not the uber-powerful characters. Generally they're the sidekick.

Heck, for much of D&D's history, casters were not so powerful either. Expert rules go up to 18th level (IIRC, might be 14th) and only have 6 spells per spell level. Guess what? Casters not so much of a problem. AD&D had a MUCH more restricted spell list for casters - about half or less as many spells of any given level. Add in memorization times and suddenly the caster issues go away. 2e allowed melee characters to absolutely rock - massive damage per round - so that non-casters were always on par with casters.

This is particularly a 3e issue.

 

[Ratskinner]

I think the random element (or some other system technique) also has to, in some loose way of speaking, "channel" the conflict into resolutions (which can be temporary or partial), to give you the pass/fail, with either producing complications, structure that drives narrativist play.

I accept that without objection.

I don't know the FATE games except by reputation. BW I think could be played in a very Sim way - it would resemble RuneQuest a bit, or even HARP - but certain of its features wouldn't make sense for this play style - especially its advancement rules. (To advance, you have to use your skill/ability in a variety of situations of varying difficulties, including (near-)impossible ones. The purpose of this is to give the player a reason to set his/her PC up to fail - ie a metagame purpose that has no ingame correlation for a sim person to hook up to.)

I dunno about that. Haven't you heard the proverb: "You learn more from your mistakes than your successes."

But I don't think it's right to therefore say that BW is really a sim system being twisted to narrativist goals. It's a narrativist system that heavily emphasises system, and exploration of system, as a subordinate aspect of play. (I know TRoS mostly by reptuation, but I think it would be similar to BW in this respect - and is mentiond as an influence in the Bibliography to revised BW.)

I wouldn't say "twisted". I think more like a Sim system with a Narrativist incentive engine "bolted on". Before I go on, I know that BW is a darling of the Forge community, and I haven't gotten a chance to play it. So I apologize to anyone who might take this more seriously than I do.

I've only got the BW "hub and spokes" (I think its called this. Its the freebie system core.), but reading it....FATE and BW are very similar indeed. IMO, both have a root system which is Sim-lite, and a Narrativist incentive system riding along;

• ability rating/score corresponds to the characters in-universe ability. (in fact, some versions of FATE have almost precisely the same table of ability rating as the BW "expertise by exponent" p12, in mine.)
• base difficulty of a task reflects the fictional difficulty.
• base difficulty can be modified by fictional circumstance. (Heck, BW even has a specific "Take 10" analog for working "Patiently".)

If anything, BW is more Simulationist, taking steps not found in most versions of FATE:

• specified timeframes for skill tests
• 3e-like "skill-synergy" analog in FoRKs
• a (tedious, to my eyes) "learning process" for advancing skills/abilities
• the 6 traditional ability scores, renamed and in reverse order (although not utilized in as strictly a Sim manner as in D&D)
• a few derived stats...derived in a marginally "simmy" manner

Now that takes me up to page 53 of 74 in my freebie guide. Some of the other Narrative bits have been mentioned, but not mechanically addressed yet. My Freebie doesn't have the combat/injury or magic system, nor any substantial explanation of what "Emotional Attributes" may be. I submit that by tearing out the last 21 pages, and the judicious use of a Sharpie, I have a semi-complete, generic, classless, rules-Lite Sim system. I can do the same thing to FATE by removing any references to Aspects outside the Maneuver rules. The FATE version would be a more complete rpg, but more abstract wrt Sim. (Both, I would think, would be generally unsatisfying to Sim players, but imminently subject to houserules, as Fudge, FATE's ancestor system, is.)

Most importantly, there's absolutely nothing "Narrativist" in these parts. No motivations, no premises, no drives, no nothing. Just plain little abilities with numbers to denote "how good you are" with each ability. I suppose that means you can use it Narrativistly, but no more so than most other games...

Now on to the Narrative engines:
I'll tackle FATE first, because its Narrative engine is simpler and I'm more familiar with it. Characters (heck sometimes even locations, items, etc.) in FATE have Aspects. Aspects don't have to be good or bad, in fact its usually better for your character if they are interesting rather than strictly beneficial or harmful. Aspects are a relatively open-ended descriptor. "Good ol' boy", "Yeah, I dated her.", "Devoted to Erathis" and "Courage indistinguishable from stupidity" all qualify as aspects. "Strong as an Ox", "Always check if you're being tailed", "So pretty it hurts", and "I must protect Susie" are good as well. If you "play up" an Aspect of your character, especially in a way that makes the story more interesting or that impact your character "negatively", you can receive a FATE point from the GM. This transaction may be initiated by either the GM or player. This FATE point can later be spent to modify/reroll the outcome of die rolls and issue minor narrative declarations. If you spend a FATE point in a manner aligned with one of you Aspects, these effects are amplified. Additionally, if you act in opposition to one of your aspects, you can lose a FATE point. Optionally, some aspects, like "Dwarven Infravision", would just grant that ability and rarely interact with the FATE points. There's a few more details, but that's the gist of it.

The BW system is slightly more complicated; PCs have Beliefs, Instincts, and Traits. Beliefs appear to be fairly straightforward drive statements for a PC; "I will protect X at any cost", "I must do X to prove Y", "My life belongs to X", etc. Instincts are part auto-action and part GM-protection; "I always do X", "I Never do Y", and "If X occurs, then I do Y." Traits are again subdivided into three types (yeesh!) for either cosmetics, situational bonuses, or constant bonuses. All three forms of BITs may be used to leverage "Artha". (Like almost everything else in BW it seems,) there are three subtypes of Artha; Fate, Persona, and Deeds. There's a lot of complicated business that amounts to "You get Artha for really feeling/playing your character's BITs, making the game interesting, and for being a good guy 'round the table." My freebie rules are skimpy on how much and from whom Artha is earned, but apparently the GM can award it, and the other players can award it at the end of session by voting. You can spend Artha in a number of ways (most of which are almost identical to the ways in which you can spend FATE points in FATE) to modify rolls or events in play, although this is complicated by the fact that only certain types of Artha can do certain things. Additionally, Artha can be spent as a kind of "super advancement" called an Epiphany, which affects BW's unusual Black/Grey/White ability notation.

As you might guess, I see the BW BITs/Artha system as a more complicated version of the FATE aspect/FP system. (I'm not sure which came first, and its irrelevant to my point.) They both have the following basic structure:

1. Characters have a set of freeform traits
2. Playing up those traits earns N-points
3. N-Points may be spent to alter the course of play later

Many people have taken FATE's aspect/FP system and bolted it onto 3e, simply by adding and tweaking the structure above. (I'll leave the Google search results as an exercise for the reader.) Do you think that would suddenly transform 3e into "a narrativist system that heavily emphasises system, and exploration of system, as a subordinate aspect of play."? I don't. To take it a half-step farther, I really don't see anything about the BITs/Artha system that couldn't just slide over to 3e (re-work the mechanics from the die-pool... or not, +1d6 would probably work okay as a bonus in d20.) Does that suddenly transform 3e? I still don't think so. I don't see anything about the non-BITs/Artha parts of BW that makes me think its more Narrative-friendly than 3e (other than, perhaps, being Lite-er).

I think the 4e "solution" to this was very clever (from the publisher piont of view). Instead of going for a free-descriptors game (like HeroWars/Quest, or - I gather from other posts of yours - Capes), they go for really, really long lists of fixed descriptors (races, classes, powers, paragon paths, epic destinies, equipment, etc). Which they then sell you in supplements.

Well sure, but they're not just descriptors, are they? They have mechanical implications that are not necessarily obvious. The Eladrin Fey Step ability, for instance, is not something that I would intuit from the rest of the Eladrin description. People can choose to make these choices not for the narrative flavor, but for the mechanical impact. I know that seeking those great combos was part of the early 4e games I played at my FLGS. People were thrilled that I played a Warlord, because he was the "boring" half of a lot of the combos they were looking for.

To further extend this point. During combat, that Warlord made a lot of decisions that were against my feelings/intuition, but that were strictly better mechanically than what I might have wanted to do for emotional/creative reasons. Isn't that the same issue that people point at for 3e's caster dominance, but on a smaller scale? I point this out, not to disrespect 4e, but to show that Gamism can also "creep" over Narrative.

I agree with this. Those long lists in 4e don't support gamism. They support either high concept sim ("Cool, now I can be a fey plant guy who shoots arrows infused with primal spirits") or light narrativism (I don't think Wilden and Seekers are very rich in this repsect, though maybe others find thematic richness in them that I miss - but (still in the PHB3) I think Minotaurs, Monks, Psions and Runepriests are reasonably thematically laden, within the context of a fantasy RPG).

I think they definitely do support Gamist objectives. I recall that shortly after 4e's release, complaints of "I can't (yet) play an X!" were regularly met with the rejoinder "Just reflavor a Y!..or a Z!" Even you, Pemerton, have recently suggested in other threads that the flavor text of powers is irrelevant, and should be ignored or reworked as needed. This would mean that the important bit of those long lists is not the increased availability of flavor, but the increased availability of mechanics. Gamism doesn't require victory so much as earning points by making cool things happen (proving your worth, so to speak), its the mechanics that allow that, not the "fluff."

4e's explicit power curves limit power creep over the game's life. Generally, a combo or class or ability you found in later 4e is no more powerful than one you found at its opening. Which is a good thing, to be sure. Its what allows without encouraging people to make those choices for non-Gamist reasons. The attendant tightness of the balance between classes also means that those combos don't have to overwhelm your creative choices as a player. The tables where I saw it at my FLGS were very competitive-minded. My much more casual home game never even had people looking for combos (it took them 'till third level to accidentally realize that it was a possibility, but they didn't think it worth the extra effort.)

The thing that makes the explicit power curve brilliant is the recognition and taming of Gamism's self-destructive tendencies in an expansion-oriented game. These tendencies don't really show up in static games. Imagine what Chess would be like if, every few years, a new piece with new rules was introduced that players could choose to replace another piece. I submit that it would not take long for Chess to degenerate into a game that would be dominated by a particular set of pieces and that games would be over in just a few moves. I believe WotC saw that happen with Magic:the Gathering (and possibly 2e) and intentionally wanted to avoid that in 4e. The explicit math supports 4e and Gamism by preventing it from echoing 2e and degenerating into parties composed entirely of Elven Specialty Priests tweaked with Skills and Powers (or whatever 4e's hot spot would have been.)

I don't know if the above analysis of the Duel of Wits completely confirms your claim about narrativism and mechanics, but I think it is consistent with your view that there is something distinctive going on in the contrast between pysical combat and social conflict resolution.

I'd agree.