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

[LostSoul]

In regards to Burning Wheel, I have never played it without a Story Now agenda, but I think it would be hard to do with a Right to Dream agenda.

The feeling I get playing BW is that your PC wants these things (Beliefs) within a tense situation that's been built around them. Your PC will fail and fail often, and those failures will force you to change your conception of your character. Like it says on the box, "Fight for what you believe in." At some point you're going to have to decide if what you believe in is worth fighting for - combat is deadly and the Duel of Wits forces you to make major concessions all the time.

All of that is going to break the Right to Dream, because BW doesn't give you that Right - your Dream is going to be tested and challenged at every point.

If you were to play it with a Right to Dream agenda, I think you'd have to make a relatively low-intensity situation, avoid challenging the PC's beliefs, and make the consequences of failure small. At that point I think you're throwing out Artha, skill advancement, combat, and Duel of Wits - because all of these require one or more of the above challenges to the Right to Dream. Well, not really getting rid of them, but I imagine those mechanics would put too much pressure on the Dream that players would start to avoid using them and "never touch the dice" - and they'd be better served that way.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Not quite, but pretty close to that.

Given that an rpg is a noncompetitive, open-ended game, it is inherently very difficult to "break".

False on literally every point if we look at even Gygaxian D&D.

Gygaxian D&D is competative. It's PCs vs the Dungeon. And sometimes PCs vs each other. It's also constrained into the dungeon most of the time - calling it open ended is dubious. As for very difficult to break, oD&D was playtested by dozens of players, used to the competative nature of wargames and looking for any advantage they can find. It is only hard to break because it got sandblasted in playtesting in a way arguably no RPG has been ever since. This isn't inherent.

Are you saying that Gary Gygax did not write an RPG?

For that matter are you calling Paranoia not an RPG? Because that can get competative. And for open ended, Dread and Fiasco aren't really.

Now I agree that many RPGs are noncompetative and open ended. But saying that all are is not a statement you can make.

Calling an entire game "broken" is a pretty spiteful and unproductive statement that is difficult to support for any system (especially with regards to the target in question), and that in practice is usually characteristic edition warring. That I'm taking a stand against that is indeed telling.

Bull! Your stand is an attempt to deny that Step On Up play has any place in the RPG hobby at all, despite D&D written to bring a level of stepping up play that was unavailable to wargamers. If you consider that Step On Up and gamism have any place at all in RPGs then you absolutely can declare things and even entire systems if the rot reaches deep to be broken. In order to deny that brokenness is meaningful, you need to throw vast swathes of roleplayers including Gygax, Arneson, and the entire Lake Geneva Tactical Studies Association out of the hobby.

And I stand against throwing people out of the hobby.

 

[Neonchameleon]

To expand, what Broken actually means is "Incompatable with an expected playstyle or purpose". Normally 'Step on up' - in which the players are supposed to do the best they can against an actively challenging environment. Although a high lethality game that penalised you for attempting stunts would be badly broken if marketed as a swashbuckler. A simulationist game is broken if, to put it bluntly, the sim works incredibly badly for the setting.

Step on Up is the agenda most likely to find games to be broken. Because if someone brings too much to bear the step on up challenge of climbing a mountain is short circuited by the ability to fly. And you are expected to stress the world during play or else you aren't stepping up.

 

[Ahnehnois]

False on literally every point if we look at even Gygaxian D&D.

I'm okay with that.

I also learned physics that Newton wouldn't understand, watch Batman movies that Bob Kane probably wouldn't like, and am currently watching sports that Babe Ruth wouldn't believe. I'm sure this Gygax guy was intelligent, a pioneer even (though not on the level of those above), but I'm not looking at his will as dogma (and I seriously doubt that you've captured it anyway).

That being said...

In order to deny that brokenness is meaningful, you need to throw vast swathes of roleplayers including Gygax, Arneson, and the entire Lake Geneva Tactical Studies Association out of the hobby.

Of course not. Those groups have enjoyed D&D for a while as a compromise between philosophies, and if I wrote a new edition, they'd probably enjoy it more. I don't believe in throwing them out, but I also don't believe in throwing out everyone else in a vain and futile effort to satisfy one particular minority.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Gygaxian D&D is competative. It's PCs vs the Dungeon. And sometimes PCs vs each other. It's also constrained into the dungeon most of the time - calling it open ended is dubious. As for very difficult to break, oD&D was playtested by dozens of players, used to the competative nature of wargames and looking for any advantage they can find. It is only hard to break because it got sandblasted in playtesting in a way arguably no RPG has been ever since. This isn't inherent.

I'm not sure I exactly buy all of that. In reverse order:

True, there's nothing inherently un-breakable about RPGs nor cooperative games, in general. Quite the contrary, balance is /more/ important in cooperative games because you're playing against the game, not against eachother, and imbalances can quickly marginalize a player (so he might as well not be playing at all) or remove all challenge from the game. In a multi-player competitive game, if one player uses a loophole or imbalanced choice to gain an advantage, the other players can often 'gang up' on him in whatever way the game allows. In a cooperative game, you're actually playing 'right' if you do whatever you can to help the the player keep his loophole advantage going.

Old-school D&D breaks easily and often, it's just most of the breaking is done by the DM, not the player. There's none of the facile over-rewarding of system mastery or player-driven 'builds,' but every trap, trick, monster & magic item is utterly arbitrary, and any decision could turn out to be a catch-22. Thus the two most familiar DM'ing styles of the classic D&D era: Monty Haul and Killer.

While the early 0D&D campaigns were traditionally dungeons, other environments were being used quite early. Blackmoor, the 2nd 0D&D supplement, had all sorts of stuff for underwater adventures, for instance, and 0D&D has some oddball rules for wilderness adventure.

I will agree that the little I've heard about the earliest days of 0D&D, especially when Gygax & co were developing it, certainly seem to suggest a certain competitive spirit. And, the catch-22 nature of many traps and cursed items we see suggested in AD&D makes me think of DMs trying to deal with the consequences of such competition, and getting the party to have to depend on eachother and maybe not just fight over the latest goodie.

Are you saying that Gary Gygax did not write an RPG?

The original books said 'Wargame' right on the cover.

In order to deny that brokenness is meaningful, you need to throw vast swathes of roleplayers including Gygax, Arneson, and the entire Lake Geneva Tactical Studies Association out of the hobby.

And I stand against throwing people out of the hobby.

The better-balanced the game, the more the expectations, attitudes, and styles of those at the table playing it can vary before they start ruining the game for eachother. A less balanced game tends to meet only certain expectations or over-reward only certain styles, a badly-balanced enough one still likely has one (often quite obvious but also often quite bizarre) 'right' way to play. If you're playing with a sufficiently homogeneous group, you may not 'need' much in the way of balance, and if you find a game whose imbalances meet your expectations and over-reward your style of play, you might be very satisfied with it, indeed...

 

[Crazy Jerome]

If you were to play it with a Right to Dream agenda, I think you'd have to make a relatively low-intensity situation, avoid challenging the PC's beliefs, and make the consequences of failure small. At that point I think you're throwing out Artha, skill advancement, combat, and Duel of Wits - because all of these require one or more of the above challenges to the Right to Dream. Well, not really getting rid of them, but I imagine those mechanics would put too much pressure on the Dream that players would start to avoid using them and "never touch the dice" - and they'd be better served that way.

Right. Which would break the reward cycle in BW, which is the best thing about it. People see the Beliefs and read "Fate Aspects" as if the Beliefs were central, but it's the "Fight for what you Believe" that is central, because that is the reward cycle in BW. Everything in BW is in there either as pursuit of that reward cycle or color (or often, both).

The reward cycle is player driven. The emergent story is character driven. The player picks beliefs that will be challenged or pushed. The character is just some guy that has those beliefs. The player then must push the action to get situations that are risky, in order to advance. The character doesn't want to confront the orcs, but the player does--preferably in some way that pushes skills that the player wants to advance as his conception. Some of these confrontations will include failure--which the character most emphatically does not want but that gives the player a nifty test or three--and maybe even some Artha. This Artha is then spent to eventually succeed and gain another test. Meanwhile, the goals are met or changed, and thus Beliefs evolve.

Now, that's not exactly Forge Narrativism as I understand it. (And I don't think the BW folks think it is, either.) It is a form of narrative play that has some parts outside the gamist/simulation spheres. A Right to Dream character, pushed faithfully in that way, would practically never grow in BW--and probably wouldn't be very interesting.

Meanwhile, a properly pushed and engaged BW group is being constantly put in the position of seeking out ways to get their characters in trouble, but not necessarily in ways that they can directly solve. Basically, since the DM can run BW full out (and Say Yes on the trivial stuff), the players are expected to bring enough rope to hang their characters. The DM will then try to hang them. The players will try to escape unhung. This works only because the DM can try to hang them.

I don't know how Fate aspects work, but I get the impression from what other people have said about it that it's reward cycle is not quite so dedicated and tight--almost more of a Karma effect than a true reward cycle. Maybe I'm misunderstanding.

BW groups don't so much "address premise" as "saunter by premise in a nonchalant manner, suddenly make rude gestures, and then run away." Naturally, this leads to something a bit like "story now," but likewise twisted into "story as soon as premise catches up with you in a dark alley."

 

[Ratskinner]

Right. Which would break the reward cycle in BW, which is the best thing about it. People see the Beliefs and read "Fate Aspects" as if the Beliefs were central, but it's the "Fight for what you Believe" that is central, because that is the reward cycle in BW. Everything in BW is in there either as pursuit of that reward cycle or color (or often, both).

FATE's aspects, if you choose a "Belief"-type aspect work in this way as well. You would gain FP for taking on risk for the aspect and reap far greater rewards for spending FP in pursuit of the aspect. Ignoring such an aspect would cost you FATE points. (FATE points can be spent on other things as well, but the mechanical impact is lessened.) Of course, FATE would (in most versions) not force a player to take such an aspect, although such a thing is probably well within most groups' conceptions of GM purview.

I kinda wish there was someone experienced in both systems here, because I'm not seeing (in the rules I have, anyway) what, the significant difference between FATE and BW is, other than the dice mechanics...

The reward cycle is player driven. The emergent story is character driven. The player picks beliefs that will be challenged or pushed. The character is just some guy that has those beliefs. The player then must push the action to get situations that are risky, in order to advance. The character doesn't want to confront the orcs, but the player does--preferably in some way that pushes skills that the player wants to advance as his conception. Some of these confrontations will include failure--which the character most emphatically does not want but that gives the player a nifty test or three--and maybe even some Artha. This Artha is then spent to eventually succeed and gain another test. Meanwhile, the goals are met or changed, and thus Beliefs evolve.

I think I get most of that about the system as a whole (so much as the "intro" rules I have represent the whole. I just don't see what, outside the BITs, drives that. Or is the advancement-dependence much more of a thing than I think it is? FATE implementations are very diverse in advancement expectations, and its one of the "hazier" areas of the FATE-verse.

I don't know how Fate aspects work, but I get the impression from what other people have said about it that it's reward cycle is not quite so dedicated and tight--almost more of a Karma effect than a true reward cycle. Maybe I'm misunderstanding.

Probably no more than I'm misunderstanding BW, anyway. I would certainly say that the aspect/FP reward cycle is far less structured than the BW one. Tight....I dunno. In some ways, the FATE version is/can be a little stronger (I think) on the reward end of things. Karma...I suppose that depends on how you view Karma wrt rpgs.

OTOH, FATE's aspects do a lot of mechanical heavy lifting, not just the belief/drive end of things. They can represent all sorts of things, as well as temporary conditions and the like. FATE can play up and down along the N-S axis quite a bit, even within the same game.

BW groups don't so much "address premise" as "saunter by premise in a nonchalant manner, suddenly make rude gestures, and then run away." Naturally, this leads to something a bit like "story now," but likewise twisted into "story as soon as premise catches up with you in a dark alley."

I have no idea what that means, but I find it very entertaining nonetheless.

 

[slobo777]

Thus the two most familiar DM'ing styles of the classic D&D era: Monty Haul and Killer.

I thought these were the two most familiar derogatory terms for unwanted DM styles?

The terms "railroad" and "sandbox" hadn't really been outed, but were definitely being explored IME.

 

[LostSoul]

I think I get most of that about the system as a whole (so much as the "intro" rules I have represent the whole. I just don't see what, outside the BITs, drives that. Or is the advancement-dependence much more of a thing than I think it is? FATE implementations are very diverse in advancement expectations, and its one of the "hazier" areas of the FATE-verse.

I think it's because compromise is built into the system - in both Duels of Wits, the deadliness of combat, and the requirement for failure in order to advance. Compromise + NPCs with BITs of their own (important NPCs are supposed to be "burned" up, I believe) + Artha rewards for play that incorporates BITs means that your PC's BITs are going to be challenged - driven NPCs are going to push you to pick your battles. "Fight for what you believe." Once you make your choices, there's a Trait Vote where other players explicitly judge your choices and change your PC.

With FATE, I don't think there's as much pressure on your Aspects. You might have an Aspect that says "Honourable" and the DM can offer you Fate Points if you play it up - or drain some if you don't play it - but whatever you do, there's not that same kind of change forced on the character. You still have the Honourable Aspect to draw on, even if your PC doesn't act particularly honourable.

Which isn't to say that can't happen - changing your Aspects through play - but the system doesn't push as hard toward that end.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I thought these were the two most familiar derogatory terms for unwanted DM styles?

Monty Haul & Killer tended to indicate extremes, sure, but in classic D&D, the DM dispensed magic items and tried to kill you(r character), Monty Haul was just too much of the former and Killer DMs just did too much of the latter, but both were expected DM functions. Players having more of a hand in shaping the development of their characters was a later development...

The terms "railroad" and "sandbox" hadn't really been outed, but were definitely being explored IME.

I think I may have heard 'railroad' back in the day. Sandbox feels a lot more recent.

Speaking of connotations, I get the sense that 'railroad' is pretty negative compared to 'sandbox,' yet there are circumstances in which a tightly scripted or directive 'railroad' style is a very good approach.