Look, fourth edition players aren't stupid, they're just playing a lame fuckin' game.
But that's their right. I'm sure the hardcore 4e players think our games are fuckin' lame.
And that's the way it's supposed to be. People have preferences, and should heed those preferences and express those preferences.
But that's their right. I'm sure the hardcore 4e players think our games are fuckin' lame.
And that's the way it's supposed to be. People have preferences, and should heed those preferences and express those preferences.
Trust my judgment, for I dwell in darkness.Let's talk about the watering down of the play experience of the clones, or even older editions of D&D, in order to accommodate the fragile sensibilities of 4th edition players.
Look, 4th edition players are right hard and are willing to put up with a lot of shit in a game. They have to be in order to spend 5 hours doing a 1st level combat against 3 kobolds which they had to spend $250 to get the minis for because of the "surprise!" random minis business model that 4th edition uses.
And they're perfectly capable of playing another game. Do you think 4th edition players sit down to play Monopoly and argue that their Hat doesn't give them kool powerz and that it's unbalanced against that dumb shit little dog? (seriously, who plays the dog? I always want to run it over with the car. But there are no rules for that. It has a car, a dog, tons of streets, but no driving rules. Fucking broken stupid shit game.)
So when you sit these people down to play Swords & Wizardry, Labyrinth Lord, OSRIC, or god forbid Lamentations of the Flame Princess, they will understand that game play isn't just like 4th edition. They can handle the concept, and they will adapt to your powertripping bully methods of running a game quite quickly. Ron Edwards was not correct - games different than your own do not cause brain damage and inability to grasp differences between playstyles and different atmospheres and intentions of different games.
Really!
Just point out a few things. Take LotFP/LL/S&W. Maximum hit points for fighters? 8 (unless someone cheats and gets a high ability score roll that happens to be in the Constitution slot - yeah, right). How much damage does a normal sword potentially do? 8.
Tells you something about the game, right? You think the stereotypical system mastery youngster is going to miss a detail like that?
Don't go easy on the players. They'll get it soon enough. For all the crap on the LotFP character sheet, the process of creating a character and filling out the sheet took 10 minutes, tops, last weekend. With total newbies. Not counting equipment. That's another matter. But all the mechanics and game stat junk? No time at all. (LL and S&W characters even take fractionally less time) So who cares if the front door kills somebody? It'll take less time for that player to make a new character and rejoin the game (they'll know how to make a character and how to choose equipment already) than it will for the other players to figure out how to get in the damn door.
And they'll be on notice that shit ain't there to provide cinematic adventure and thrilling victory as a default state and that death can come cheap if you aren't careful.
Tower of the Stargazer is supposed to be an introductory adventure. Fresh off the farm players playing fresh off the farm characters. The front door kills. Shit, walking to the front door may kill. Have you played through the solo adventure in the Tutorial book? If anyone survives it on the first try, I'd be inclined to say they cheated.
I don't think that the LotFP game is any deadlier or nastier than any of the other traditional games out there. Shit, I'm still surprised that people see it as any different at all.
My point is that LotFP really doesn't have any different assumptions or provides different gameplay than any of the other games in its class - not at first level, anyway - but that it doesn't hide those assumptions. It doesn't hold anybody's hand and try to hide the nastiness from any of these new school role-players running around. It introduces those assumptions as a matter-of-fact everyday part of the game. "Hi! I'm low-level character mortality! Nice to meet you!"
Look, old school or neoclassical or traditional (or whatever word we need to use to communicate that it's a normal frickin game and not some newfangled overcomplicated monstrosity of a play experience) games are different games than 4e.
Trying to smooth out the differences for 4e players because you assume they'll reject the differences is just fucking dumb.
The differences between the games should be highlighted, spotlighted, given center stage, strung up with lights, sing and dance, and shown directly to the players. "Danger, uncertainty, excitement!" over treasure parcels, balanced encounters, and default assumptions of heroism. Simple character archetypes allowing you to get straight to it instead of special snowflake individual exceptionalism.
Those differences are the whole point of using one game instead of another. If you smooth out the differences between games, what you're giving people is a watered-down play experience. Period. You can't out-4e 4e because, well, 4e is sitting right there and it's better at catering to 4e-centric tastes than what you're trying to introduce them to, no matter how you dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodge around the issue. Don't snuff the candle out at both ends.
Give the whole game experience of the game you're going to play (and not the game they played before!) to them. Full-on. And let them make their own damn mind up for themselves. Some will like it and prefer it. Most don't give a fuck at all as long as they're with agreeable people and the guy running the game isn't shit at it. Some won't like it, but screw them, and find someone to replace them. But don't go all pansy-wansy like you're apologizing that the game you're offering isn't the game they've expressed a liking for.
Don't fudge a system or an adventure like you would a die roll that "doesn't come up the way it's supposed to." Have confidence in it.
That's not a suggestion.
That's an order.
LotFP 2010, Left to Right: Wallet, Brain, Face
Now there's a good old-fashioned (neoclassical?) LotFP post, welcome back Jim! :)
ReplyDeleteGood points on the 8hp fighter and the 1d8dmg sword, by the way. Also worth mentioning the Giant Spider over there does 1d8, but has 25hp. What does this mean?
It means standing and swinging your sword over and over is a good way of becoming Giant Spider Food. It means there's a good chance the players are going to start looking for a flaming brazier to tip over or a ceiling collapse to cause - in other words, an interesting memorable combat for player and ref alike.
Good post and excellent points. If it weren't for the swearing, I'd think it wasn't Raggi. ;-)
ReplyDelete>Ron Edwards was not correct
ReplyDeleteTruer words . . .
>games different than your own do not cause brain damage and inability to grasp differences between playstyles and different atmospheres and intentions of different games.
Sadly, however, the argument you're referencing did not concern encountering novelty. It was a different message entirely.
Regarding mortality in games, this is one of those areas where 4th edition/OSR players seem to be standing with their backs to one another, failing to notice that the other is right there.
The only thing the mechanics of 4th edition shy away from is "cheap" mortality (all or nothing save or die effects and the like), which is of course an issue of taste. Not only can the game be made deadly, it is explicitly described how one should tailor one's encounters to be so. There is *no* assumption that encounters are "balanced" for the players. A DM who wants to make an extremely challenging situation for his players doesn't need to fight against the system to do so, it helps him, whether by monster, or trap, or puzzle, or front door.
>>"cheap" mortality (all or nothing save or die effects and the like)
ReplyDeleteSee, I don't see that as cheap. It's the great equalizer. "I don't care if you're 500th level with 4234348 hit points, that 1hp giant centipede bites you, that could be it right there because you're a lowly mortal just like 0 level Bob the Barkeep." You can escalate combat over an adventurer's career ("Through my skill I can now fight off 10 orcs by myself and go at a manticore!") and still have instant death hanging over the proceedings without introducing massive damage anywhere.
That's a feature of the game. Players aren't supposed to like it. They're supposed to work hard to avoid it!
Nice post James, I had a good laugh at that (my wife was most surprised since I was supposed to be watching a Life-style TV show with her.
ReplyDeleteYou're right of course, 4E is the ultimate Politically Correct RPG.
In Australia, teachers are no longer allowed to mark their pupils' homework in red pen because the poor kids might develop some 'achievement issues'. In 4E we've designed this adventure to ensure you do make it to level 2 - that way you feel like you've achieved something and won't suffer from the ever present fear of failure.
>See, I don't see that as cheap. It's the great equalizer.
ReplyDeleteIt certainly has that effect, yes. The room for disagreement here is why I put it in quotes.
You do however, get something of a cognitive dissonance between the idea that characters are gaining levels and becoming "harder to kill" (via gaining hit points) but yet some monster gets to kill them with a coin flip. This can be fair in context, i.e. with fair warning, but if it's just "oh, you're dead now, make a new guy", that strains a lot of moving parts that are tacit within a roleplaying game, like character attachment, which is still important (perhaps more so!) even in a "high mortality" game. These parts are strained further when players are expected to sacrifice their first several characters in learning about the instant death mechanics. In the worst cases, it leads to everyone tacitly playing an evil character (whether their alignment field says so or not) by pushing retainers ahead of them in the dungeon.
Keeping the metaphor of hit points, you keep "instant death hanging over the proceedings" by making antagonists that do more damage. Lesser mortals couldn't hope to fight a dragon, unlike that high level fighter. Instant save-or-die death is like having a "special hit point", of which you have just one.
> You're right of course, 4E is the ultimate Politically Correct RPG.
> In 4E we've designed this adventure to ensure you do make it to level 2 - that way you feel like you've achieved something and won't suffer from the ever present fear of failure.
This is just false.
>>Instant save-or-die death is like having a "special hit point", of which you have just one.
ReplyDeleteLike an anti-Fate point (or drama point or whatever they're usually called).
>>In the worst cases, it leads to everyone tacitly playing an evil character (whether their alignment field says so or not) by pushing retainers ahead of them in the dungeon.
I see this a lot. I always do loyalty checks when PCs do this, but it does make the game resemble the real world. Those willing to step on other people's faces rise up...
>Like an anti-Fate point (or drama point or whatever they're usually called).
ReplyDeleteFate points are not in fixed finite supply nor does their depletion result in instant death. That's an entirely different metaphor and game mechanic, unless I'm misunderstanding you.
> it does make the game resemble the real world. Those willing to step on other people's faces rise up...
In the real world, perfidy has many consequences, some subtle, some not. Far from demanding loyalty checks, I'd start docking Charisma points and having antagonists use healthy doses of Protection from Evil type spells.
Great post Jim.
ReplyDeleteMany of the points you make in the post are reasons why my gaming group stopped playing 4e and have now moved to Sword's and Wizardry.
Just goes to show that some people still like the thrill of not knowing if death is lurking at the end of the hallway or infront of that door.
As a player of 4e and LotFP RPG I can only say that this is an awesome post.
ReplyDeleteAnd, by the way, I survived the solo adventure. Maybe I'm very very lucky.
You did find something to rant about, did you?
ReplyDeleteI'm a 4e player; this is ridiculously good advice.
ReplyDeleteObviously, if you get an OSR player in your 4e game, there's no need to coddle the crap out of them or go to any lengths to dispel their weird assumptions. They'll figure out that they have to actually think the first time a running monster gets the next five rooms of goblins and they die a horrible death.
In my 30 years playing D&D, I've been involved (whether as a player or as the DM) in games that are very lethal, in games that have very little lethality, and all points in between. This includes in the days before there was such a thing as 2nd edition AD&D (much less 3rd edition or 4th edition).
ReplyDeleteB1: In Search of the Unknown and S1: Tomb of Horrors are equally old-school.
So I don't think a deadly campaign is a necessary aspect of old-school D&D play. What makes it old-school for me is A) exploration is primary, and B) my character took mere minutes to create, doesn't have very many numbers on the character sheet, and is defined by what I can imagine him doing rather than by an extensive skill system.
Further, to get the full-on experience of old-school play, the lethality has to curbed at some point, or the players will never have the experience of starting a 1st-level magic-user and getting him to 18th level so he can cast 9th-level spells.
Of course, a way around that is by having relatively plentiful raise dead spells and wishes to undo character deaths. But then death isn't really death anymore, but more akin to getting knocked unconscious.
The LotFP RPG tosses-out all the raise dead spells, wishes, etc. Thus how could a person possibly get from 1st level all the way up to 17th level (so as to be able to cast 9th-level spells)? There is only one way: blunting the lethality of the game. According to Gygax, it should take about 7 years of actual play to attain 17th level. I don't care how cautious or skillful a player is: Sooner or later he's going to miss a saving throw in a "save or die" situation. There's no way a person could play in 7 years' worth of game sessions (say, about 350 sessions, at an average of 4 hours each, totalling 1,400 hours of play) and not miss a save or die roll.
The only other choice besides curbing the lethality of the game is to let the players skip levels: "OK, everybody roll-up new characters and make them 15th level."
My current campaign has run about two years (most of that using BFRPG) and the highest level character is 6th. The AD&D group I had a few years back lasted about 18 months and some of them got to level 7.
ReplyDeleteConfession: I'm honestly not all that concerned with campaigns reaching high level play, certainly not level 18. You can give the PCs tastes of high level spells through scrolls...
My current campaign has run about two years (most of that using BFRPG) and the highest level character is 6th. The AD&D group I had a few years back lasted about 18 months and some of them got to level 7.
ReplyDeleteThis matches my experiences. I'm heading into 2 years of biweekly play (give or take) and the highest level character is 6th level. I use the Supplement I XP awards and give 1 XP per gp spent, so I'm a little stingier than standard but not that much (you'd be amazed how creative players are in shedding their gold if there's incentive to do so).
I'm a fan of save or die. I am a fan of the ever present possibility of quick death. As a matter of fact, I'm not a fan of the escalating hit points and the barrier against death via combat they create at higher levels. In my opinion a sword should always be deadly, just like the giant centipede. Furthermore, the standard hit point abstraction makes no sense to me once missile fire starts. That's why my combat house rules put death on the table every time in every fight, regardless of level.
ReplyDeleteBeyond that, I don't think there's any need to compare old style games to 4e. The differences will become immediately obvious during play.
Given the facts of play today - few if any players are willing to dedicate most of their weeknights and weekends to tabletop gaming - does it even make sense to have >any< rules for handling player characters above, say, 11th level? Or even 7th?
ReplyDeleteThe many advocates of the E6 variant for 3rd edition, in which characters have a maximum level of 6 (but can gain feats and skills beyond that) have a point - keeping character levels restricted means that the scary iconic TPK monsters stay scary iconic TPK monsters, without a need to create super-beholders, tarrasques, or other such nonsense.
High-level NPCs and one-shots adventures are two reasons to have rules for high-level characters (which in my game basically only means saving throw adjustments and then access to more spells for spellcasters).
ReplyDeleteinteresting you invited Messiah Marcolin on your underground journey. Oh wait...that's you!
ReplyDeleteThe lantern is the Brains behind the operation? Weird indeed.
ReplyDeleteIf we are having a conversation that starts with the assumption that different games deliver different experiences; and argues we should play each game for what it is rather than pretending they are all of a piece, then Ron Edwards has already won... ;)
ReplyDeleteAlright, I just got to say that this blog post totally turned me off from purchasing your product. Way to insult potential customers, bro.
ReplyDeleteYou must be new here.
ReplyDeleteGreat post. I just started playing in an old school campaign after suffering through 4e for the last 2 years. Our DM did a great job of making 4e palatable, but the old school game is pure fun.
ReplyDeleteI wish this matched with my experience. However I've run OD&D twice, had a more-than-TPK twice, and no one wanted to play again twice. Also, going by the OSR forums, most people beef up first level characters to make them more likely to survive.
ReplyDeletePS The reasonably frequent assertion that 3rd and 4th edition D&D represent 'politically-correct gaming' doesn't hold up. You could equally argue that 3rd and 4th edition are 'elitist gaming' because the characters are inherently better than those around them.
ReplyDeleteanarchist, sounds like you're doing something wrong. My guess is your players are too combat-oriented, and come into the game with the assumption that everything the group meets in-game should be beatable in a straight-up fight. In 3.5 and 4e, sure, it is the basic assumption. In older versions of the game, not so.
ReplyDeleteCombat should be avoided like the plague in OD&D. Dungeons should be explored with caution, proper equipment and time, as any hazard might get characters killed. Big, nasty monsters should be dealt with either by running away, or using trickery and guile, as charging straight into combat is in most cases only going to net you a party of dead characters.
It's not the basic assumption in 3E or 4E that everything the group meets should be beatable in a straight-up fight. This is a fiction which was probably originally based on a misunderstanding, but has since become a too-oft-repeated distortion and falsehood.
ReplyDeleteshimrod,
ReplyDeleteBelieve it or not, I have actually played a lot of 3.5 modules, both for organized play and otherwise, and more often than not, encounters are designed to be tackled head on by the party, and the difficulty of said encounters is balanced for the party to manage without loss of life.
I've had several die-hard 3.5-players tell me that if an encounter gets even one party member killed, it was too difficult, and therefore unbalanced. I stand by my opinion (which is based on extensive observation of gaming trends) that combat encounters in 3.5 are designed to offer varying challenges, where more difficult equals a bigger drain on party resources, and the goal of a string of such encounters should be character advancement without unreasonable resource drain (e.g. gold).
I'm sure there are people out there who play a more deadly variety of 3.5 or 4e. These are, however, not the norm.
PS The reasonably frequent assertion that 3rd and 4th edition D&D represent 'politically-correct gaming' doesn't hold up.
ReplyDeleteExcept it's a stated goal of the designers. It's why there are no save-or-die effects, why rust monsters don't destroy items any more, why mages never run out of spells, why everyone has more hit points, and why all classes have the same number of abilities.
That's not necessarily a criticism, by the way, but I don't think you can say that the game hasn't been evened out, when not only is it obvious that it's the case, but the designers themselves have confirmed that such a flattening was one of their aims.
It's not the basic assumption in 3E or 4E that everything the group meets should be beatable in a straight-up fight.
Not so. This is the point of the Encounter Level system:
"Building an encounter is a matter of choosing threats appropriate to the characters and combining them in interesting and challenging ways."
"A standard encounter should challenge a typical group of characters but not overwhelm them. The characters should prevail if they haven’t depleted their daily resources or had a streak of bad luck."
Those are from the D&D4 GM's guide. I don't have any D&D3 materials to hand.
Again, I don't think this is a bad thing if that's the kind of game you want to play, but it's disingenuous to suggest that it's not in the game.
@kelvingreen:
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like your definition of 'politically correct' is much broader than the one used in general discourse - but similar to how it's used in terms of this specific accusation.
anarchist, in this context I understand it to mean that the game has a perceived culture of "everyone is a special snowflake", and I can certainly see where that perception comes from.
ReplyDeleteI do think that in flattening the classes so that everyone has the same power structure, and all the powers work in the same way they have fallen into the trap of "if everyone is special, then no one is". This does not make it a bad game, but it's not to my tastes; I've come to appreciate the mechanical differences between the thief, fighter and mage in the older editions.
@kelvingreen wrote:
ReplyDelete"anarchist, in this context I understand it to mean that the game has a perceived culture of 'everyone is a special snowflake'"...
By that definition John Carter of Mars (the greatest swordsman on Mars, eventually the king of the planet, and also immortal) is the most politically correct hero ever.
Thus, that definition of 'politically correct' is misleadingly broad and vague.
A lot of words used in politics eventually get used for more and more things, until they just mean 'something I don't like'. I think 'politically correct' has clearly suffered that fate, at least in the context of "3rd and 4th edition are politically correct."
Er, no, not quite. I think you may have got a bit sidetracked there.
ReplyDeleteOne of the first rules I ditched in 3rd edition was the assumption of "balanced" encounters.
ReplyDeleteI every environment there are Monsters on the end of the food chain and there are the top tier predators. And the players never know where they might fit in.
If the PCs are are to stupid to run when they enccounter an Ogre,Dragon, Demon or what have you and are outclassed, I will kill them (messily).
>Those are from the D&D4 GM's guide. I don't have any D&D3 materials to hand.
ReplyDeletekelvingreen, if you're going to quote, keep on going. The paragraph you quoted from defines a "standard" encounter as balanced. The very next statements in the DMG are about adjusting encounters to be more or less difficult according to taste. "Step 1" in the encounter design sidebar on that page is "Choose an encounter level", i.e. decide how hard you want the encounter to be.
Something I don't understand is the point of view which treats 4e as this rigorous, narrow system when in fact it has been designed to be efficient and flexible for DMs. It *is* in fact very old school in this respect and the encounter design philosophy reflects this.
Regarding political correctness, that concept is a social issue concerning the insult of groups perceived to be marginalized. Trying to tell James that he can't dish out his trademark wit to "new schoolers" and white wolfers is political correctness. Thus the following:
> It's why there are no save-or-die effects, why rust monsters don't destroy items any more, why mages never run out of spells, why everyone has more hit points, and why all classes have the same number of abilities.
are nothing more than what they are, design choices to mold a particular experience, for example one where a wizard doesn't spend 4 hours sitting around a table deciding to fire his crossbow and precisely 1 turn casting Sleep.
@Michael
ReplyDeleteSitting around a table for 4 hours as a magic user and only doing something "meaningful" for 1 turn has nothing to do with game design.
But it has everything to do with bad refereing and bad gaming!
Bad refereing in not providing the player with the chance to do something "meaningful". and in older editions that does not necessarily is the ability to kill/wound/heal something.
Bad gaming in not looking for chances to add a meaningful contribution. Again, in older editions that does not necessarily is the ability to kill/wound/heal something.
James,
ReplyDeleteAwesome post.
Awesome. You did show some stripes though.
Delineating that they are separate games, like Neanderthals cohabitating with "Modern man" at the same time.... very true!
And, that someone can adapt is key.
I will say a few things regarding the "game intent" going back and forth. Everyone is referencing "encounters". Anyone could make a 4-cruddy game OSR "in spirit" just by having higher level monsters and threats, or adding a metaphorical powder keg here or there.
It is style over substance, even if the inherent game mechanics point you in a certain direction. Anyone who needs rules to tell them this... well some of us do.
Ah, about the "stripes":
I have mentioned before that being a "deadly" old school DM correlates (not always, correlates) highly with two tendencies:
1) Tacit or explicit fear/hatred of developing a high-level campaign that remains engaging and challenging.
Despite the save-or-die centipede reference, the reality is at higher levels spells offset these things - e.g., resurrect
By reducing player capability via remaining around low levels, and by implication spells and magic, one can control the adventure train and "keep it on tracks".
2) Use of "fixed fortifications" rather than dynamics in adventuring.
What do I mean about this? Imagine "rooms" or "encounters" as fortifications of the Maginot Line in WWII. Dangerous, unless you simply go around them through Belgium.
These "fixed" set piece encounters tend to be backed by elaborate magical contrivances / poisonous monsters / Rube-Goldberg traps that often lead to a "don't touch anything", my guy isn't in the room mentality.
Example: an OSR adventure rarely will have a critical milestone dependent upon hacking and slashing through multiple incremental damage opponents, like 10 Ogres.
Spells and magic and circumspect tactics allows for circumvention of a Maginot Line of threats.
The idea that high level character rules are there for one-shots or anything of that ilk is a revealing statement. As is "tastes" of high level spells via scrolls. At least you are consistent old friend!
To each their own! I would love to play in a James Raggi game. He does reward creativity, but as players, not as leveraging a character build / power level.
So, I run mine differently. It is what it is.
Incidentally, I did die in the tutorial.
And, three players perished in Stargazer. And that was while adapted to 3.5-ish. Style can be brought into any system.
>>By reducing player capability via remaining around low levels, and by implication spells and magic, one can control the adventure train and "keep it on tracks".
ReplyDeleteIt's the campaign world I'm worried about keeping "on the tracks." High level adventures are no big deal as long as they're "out there," but if one tries to keep a coherent campaign world where most everyone, including rulers, are 0 level, high level characters basically becomes super heroes and never have to worry about adventures.
... or you have all the rulers and "power players" be high level and loaded up with magic and then the world looks completely alien. And I don't like that.
The campaign on track comment is a good point: World balance and the ecosystem there always has been unclear.
ReplyDeleteThat's why I have always hated Forgotten Realms with its ultra-uber NPCs like Elminster. Greyhawk had a little of that, but the characters like Rary are somewhat compelling.
@KristianH
ReplyDelete>But it has everything to do with bad refereing and bad gaming!
>Bad refereing in not providing the player with the chance to do something "meaningful". and in older editions that does not necessarily is the ability to kill/wound/heal something.
My comment doesn't have anything to do with the ability to "kill/wound/heal" something. The only way to provide the role of "wizard" in older editions of D&D is to simply event mechanics to do it. A 20th level wizard in older D&D editions barely approximates the picture of a wizard from fantasy literature. If someone signed up to play this, they are SOL.
More to the point, the only meaningful mechanics in terms of player empowerment granted to the magic-user is to cast a spell once per adventure (more or less). Anything else is outside the strict scope of the mechanics provided. A DM has to stretch beyond the rules on the page in order to provide the magic-user player with opportunities to be important.
>Bad gaming in not looking for chances to add a meaningful contribution. Again, in older editions that does not necessarily is the ability to kill/wound/heal something.
If I sat down at the table with the expectation of "playing a wizard", it is not "bad gaming" to decide that D&D does not grant that. I can find ways to make do, but why is it expected that I have to do this? Two decades ago, I drifted away from D&D because I had to fight against the mechanics in order to approximate elements from the fiction I was reading and enjoying at the time (namely, anything that had to do with fantastic magic, or, in particular, Elric, which is why I moved on to Stormbringer (btw, it seems to me Stormbringer would make for a better substrate for LotFP:WFP than D&D, but that's just me)).
If a player has to leap for extra-mechanical devices in order to have meaningful input to the game, why are the mechanics there in the first place, and are they doing their job?
>>A DM has to stretch beyond the rules on the page in order to provide the magic-user player with opportunities to be important.
ReplyDeleteI'll say this applies to every class. I have sessions with no combat, and that doesn't mean the fighting classes sit around with their thumbs up their ass.
>>If a player has to leap for extra-mechanical devices in order to have meaningful input to the game, why are the mechanics there in the first place, and are they doing their job?
Mechanics exist to provide an impartial source to resolve situations in play. Nothing more.
"More to the point, the only meaningful mechanics in terms of player empowerment granted to the magic-user is to cast a spell once per adventure (more or less). Anything else is outside the strict scope of the mechanics provided."
ReplyDeleteI would say that anything else is roleplaying. IMHO it is not the mechanics that empower the player. It is the players imagination that empowers him. The rules only translate these ideas into usable terms.
"If I sat down at the table with the expectation of "playing a wizard", it is not "bad gaming" to decide that D&D does not grant that."
I would say that it depends on what you expect a wizard to be able to do. In older D&D you start as someone barely out of apprenticeship.
"Two decades ago, I drifted away from D&D because I had to fight against the mechanics in order to approximate elements from the fiction I was reading and enjoying at the time (namely, anything that had to do with fantastic magic, or, in particular, Elric, which is why I moved on to Stormbringer (btw, it seems to me Stormbringer would make for a better substrate for LotFP:WFP than D&D, but that's just me))."
And this is what I woould do too.
Theoretically you cann use every RPG and play every kind of style. Practically every RPG favors a special kind of style.
For example, if I want to do SF space Opera Style i would use Star Frontiers. But If I want to go Trading, Exploring and do a more realistic game I would use Traveller. And lastly, if I want to do Cthulhu meets Gothic meets Space Opera I would use Warhammer 40k RPG.
D&D in every edition favors a game where you gain personal power as you explore and defeat the hostile environment. You start out weak and end up powerful.
"So I don't think a deadly campaign is a necessary aspect of old-school D&D play."
ReplyDeleteI would agree...with the caveat that I feel a potentially deadly campaign is. :)
Sorry I lost track of this one and didn't come back to it sooner.
ReplyDeletenavdi said...
shimrod,
Believe it or not, I have actually played a lot of 3.5 modules, both for organized play and otherwise, and more often than not, encounters are designed to be tackled head on by the party, and the difficulty of said encounters is balanced for the party to manage without loss of life.
But that's also true of encounters and modules in every other edition of D&D. MOST encounters are expected not to be ones with a high chance of killing PCs (at least after 1st or 2nd level, in the case of older editions). If a high percentage of combat encounters have a strong chance of killing one or more PCs, mathematically it works out that everyone dies too often to ever really advance. What 3E & 4E did is give the DM better tools to be able to judge the difficulty. They both explicitly support having softer encounters and harder encounters. They never say that you're not supposed to give the PCs encounters not matching their level; that's a canard. What they DO is give you tools to help you avoid throwing stuff that's tougher than the PCs can handle too often, and kill them so often that it sabotages your game.
Prior to 3E, the only tools a DM had to judge this were eyeballing monster hit dice and personal experience. Which is okay, but very little help to a new DM. Even 3E's CR wasn't always accurate, but it was an improvement. 4E's system's still not perfect, nor do I think any ever will be, but overall it works the best so far, IME.
That being said, inspired by the OSR and by playing a couple of Con games with Frank Mentzer in the last couple of years, a good chunk of my 4E game is sandboxy, with monsters placed without direct reference to the PCs' capabilities, so they can encounter stuff weaker or stronger than they are depending on where they choose to go. When I write up wandering monster charts/random encounters, I usually make them a d6 chart of stuff deliberately ranging from a couple of levels below to a few levels above the PCs. It keeps it feeling organic, makes sure I don't necessarily know what's coming, and makes sure the PCs think on their feet and know that sometimes they're better off talking, retreating, or evading. But knowing the difficulty of each encounter pretty well, I know what they're getting into once I do roll it up.
One thing I will agree with is that the majority of encounters in prepared adventures are designed to be faced head-on, and that it would be nice if more were set up to be avoided or circumvented. The tough thing there has always been that when writing a prepared adventure, it can feel like a waste of paper if you spend space detailing an encounter and then it's completely avoided. This is definitely an area where early editions have an advantage over newer, because the monster encounters generally take less space to describe.