[D&D 4E] My goth guy is much tougher than yours

[Callan S.]

I find escaping the dungeon as a finish line kind of awkward in a game with ongoing levels outside of that - but looking past that, that's defining a finish line.

The second quote is alot like the video game genre of infinite runners, or games like Tetris, where you just try to go as long as you can. The T&T text switching between the two is a bit indicative of the era's 'not sure what were doing'-ness. I don't think it helps make a topic clear.

And even with the latter, you don't just try to go as long as you can/try to not lose. If you got a T&T character up to fourth level, he dies, but then your next three characters you can't even get them off first level, would you think 'Hey, I'm winning!' or 'Dang, why can't I even get to third, let alone equal or surpass my old characters level?'? I'd be inclined to think 'don't lose' is really a shorthand that does not fully describe 'don't lose, so I can beat my old high score - which is the win I'm gunning for!'. Or am I wrong in how I imagine people would take it and folk would, even if they got to fourth initially before dying, would consider it winning after that for a first level character to get awhile in, die, then winning while getting awhile in, die, over and over, never leaving first level? If so I'd pay my understanding isn't on track.

I mean, I've played in games where were not losing...and we weren't winning, either. Limbo. There has to be a progression, I'm pretty sure. I get maybe 'not losing' refers to an organic creation of a finish line - you just wanna get to X or Y. It just comes to you instead of being printed in a book - and that's cool! But equally I throw down the gauntlet here of not just coming up with such in ones head, but saying it - for example, having gotten to fourth level and died, explicitly say in front of everyone else you want to get to fifth (or maybe atleast equal your old effort of fourth!). Sure it'll burn if you get to second level and die, having said that to everyone. Sure the text says during all the time your guy lived before dying at second, he was a winner. But...if you yourself as a player don't really see that as a win and was gunning for fifth level, did you win? C'mon, were tough - do we really need the protection of a text saying no matter what we do, were special?

To me, with a charitable reading, this 'don't lose' stuff is really refering to 'hey, organically generate your own win condition!'. When that's clear, that's cool to me! Maybe that doesn't seem contentious to say - if so, cool, just more random words on the web from me, then! I'd post cat pictures if I could! heh!


Mike,

Nice summery, particularly

Combat is about "Did we crush them mightily, or did we squeak by in a tense fight?"

The thing I'd very much like is if the texts of the book acknowledged this - as is, it's kinda like oh sure if you know the game really well you know it's this, but if you don't know the game really well, it all seems like a 'will you live or die' deal, so when you talk to anyone who's head of D&D 4th but you suspect they don't know the game like you do, then there's this misscommunication leading to a false challenge - if they don't die, they think they've won the challenge, even though they squeaked through. But really they suck at the true 'did we crush mightily or squeak through' challenge - which they don't know about, even though they THINK they know the books. Because the books hide the true nature of the challenge. Which, atleast for me, spoils the whole challenge thing. But it is nice to see the 'mightily or squeak though' thing recognised, for these reasons!

[glandis]

Callan,

This is just me, not Ron/GNS, using a not-RPG analogy that (while I think it can translate just fine) may not translate to RPG play like I think it does. Hopefully, you know/play poker, or that's another way this may not translate.

You know how, in poker, someone with a good hand (NOT the "nuts", the guaranteed best), may choose to fold their hand in the face of a big raise? And that the general reaction might (depending on a lot of complicated factors involving past history, pot size, stack size, etc.) NOT be "what a wimp!" but "smart laydown"? Or alternatively, if they don't fold and lose, the reaction at the table might be "gutsy call", not "hahha, you lost"?

Gamism is a lot more about "smart laydown" and "gutsy call" than it is about winning and losing.

At least, that's my current take on it.

[Marshall Burns]

Mike,
I think you're thinking of "strategy" differently than Eero does. At least, it seems to me that Eero is talking about, what I think he's talking about, which is the layer of the game that's about: Which challenges do you pursue and when? Where do you base your operations, and when do you get the hell outta Dodge? Which factions and power interests do you align yourself with, and which do you snub? When and how do you double-deal, betray, and/or Red Harvest them?

Many forms of D&D are ripe for this sort of thing, and all of them make me start drooling for it. I can't say whether Eero is right about 4e not supporting this stuff, because I'm almost completely ignorant of how 4e actually works.

[Mike Holmes]

Er... at first you seem to be talking about the same things I'm talking about with strategy, basically overall dungeon-level strategy, Marshall. Which has always boiled down essentially to "Do we stay or do we go?"

But then you start talking about factions and such... which edition of D&D is "ripe" for that stuff? None that I can think of. Other than in the "Well the rules don't prevent you from doing it" POV. In which case 4E is just as good. Or bad, I guess.

The arguments I hear about stuff like this go like this:
Well, early D&D had so few rules that the GM was just forced to adjudicate things on the fly in anything outside a dungeon. And since dungeons were very lethal, this meant that players went around finding ways to avoid the dungeons, or at least straight up fights in dungeons. And since players didn't have any special mechanical options for doing these "other" things than fighting, the players had to "role-play" it. Which means that they were much more creative than players today, who are given options that allow them to win fights, and avoid "role-playing" by making diplomacy rolls.

All of which is complete tripe. OK, yeah, I'm sure that somewhere there were groups that played D&D with interesting strategic level politics and factions, etc, etc. Or maybe we're talking about the "solution" to Keep on the Borderlands here. Whatever. All I know is that for every group that may have played this way, there were many more groups that played it "straight," by which I mean killing things and taking their stuff. And PCs dying a lot. Again, again, again, most D&D groups never actually have much of anything that resembles a SIS or consistent in-game continuity even. So to say that the rules, by an absence of mechanics, support some specific style of strategic play, is patent nonsense.

Can you play this way with D&D? Sure. I'd argue that it's precisely as easy to ignore the thrust of the rules in 4E as it was in "OD&D," however. OK, actually not as easy in 4E, because you might actually have fun playing by the rules in 4E, and just do the tactical hack and slash stuff. You have to ignore more and better rules. Woohoo, old D&D is so bad, it's good!

The logical conclusion of this argument is that the best RPG for "role-players" is freeform... since the players can't possibly fall prey to the lure of a combat system. Which is, in fact, how all the freeformers got started. And which conclusion is falsified by the existence of hundreds of RPGs that exists now that actually support things like the sort of "strategic" play you mention. The only RPGs that make the "role-playing" difficult are, well, any that are like D&D, that have no particular support for it.

As I see it, and I don't think that Ron's latest observations go against this, the branch of the OSR that makes these claims comes from D&D players (DMs mostly) who have striven hard against the thrust of D&D for a long time, and were put off when the designers of D&D came out and said in 3E that, "Well this is what D&D has always supported most strongly, so we may as well make the game play to those strengths well." Which felt to them like they'd been abandoned. When, in fact, they'd been playing the wrong game system from day one. Not that they had any really better choices until this century.

Mike

[Ron Edwards]

Hi guys,

As so often happens, D&D threads tend both to sprawl in topic and heat up in tone. In this case, and my posts included, the discussion is encompassing both 4E and so-called "OD&D" to our collective disadvantage. That's why it's gone into three pages now, and although every post has been incredibly interesting, the agreements and disagreements aren't making much sense to me when I read it as a whole.

So let's put the old-days discussion aside, which I think did get a thorough workout, in favor of 4E and what it's good for now.

Mike, I thought you might be interested to know that the kind of inter-fight role-playing I'm talking about - and which I think Marshall was confirming - isn't avoidance of fights, it'd be a way to generate them. Maybe that's the best way to look at it, that since the game is about fighting, we have an opportunity through very colorful role-playing to set up the fights instead of merely wait for them to be delivered (and one person to compose and deliver them from scratch).

Another thing which seems to me central to having fun with 4E, is as much raw freaky hallucinogenic landscape and immediate circumstances as possible. This simply cannot be a "D&D fantasy world," and at the moment, my continued play in the game at the game store is confirming this to me. The characters are fifty times more vivid and interesting than anything and anyone in the setting or immediate situation, and as the latter are mainly being read to us straight from the adventure module, I think I'm pretty clear in thinking that 4E really should never have retooled "classic" (i.e. 80s) TSR settings, ever. What this game needs is a new way to generate awesome fights in situations which rise to the level of the character color. Buckets of nigh-random but provocative setting color ... with nigh-random reflecting a dangerous and unstable world as well as the simply unknowable impact of magic ... with "provocative" often focusing on understandable NPC priorities ... well, I can do that very easily.

What I'm saying is that I think I see agreement between the last two posts, as long as we aren't talking about the older history and its meaning. Everything that's been said about that is great on its own, but the question now is whether playing 4E can be good, which would be neither (i) the kill-it-all or avoid-fights conundrum Mike's talking about or (ii) the bogus GM's-story-players-fight Exalted deal. I think it can be.

Also, I played another session, so I'll post about that soon.

Best, Ron

[Marshall Burns]

Just clarifying real quick:
I think Ron's got the right idea about what I mean: the part of the game that leads you to the fights and dungeons (which are kinda just a really long fight), wherein the quest-giving, appeals for the party's martial aid, sale of treasure to interested parties, etc. occurs. As far as I can tell, this meta-dungeon layer is present in nearly all D&D play; the part that might not be present is a certain form of player agency -- such as having quests and appeals from multiple sides and allowing the players to choose -- that creates the possibility of a strategic game at this level.

Since I'm not informed enough to know how well this concept can apply to 4e, I think now it's time for me to start a new thread about it. Gimme a few days, and I'll tell y'all all about The World Is Your Ashtray play.

[Mike Holmes]

OK, I get what you're talking about now in terms of "strategic" play. But what I'd emphasize is that in my experience, in all versions of D&D, for many groups, that "strategic" level stuff ends up being the GM just laying down what's going to happen. Possibly even just reading some text from the module at times. Which is hardly "play" of any sort to me, rather just situational set-up. I'm not seeing any "support" for this sort of play at all, and the fact that many D&D groups play sans any sort of intra-dungeon play seems to me to say that there really isn't any such thing.

Or, put another way, when I ran my 4E game (in Greyhawk), I took it as a personal challenge. The challenge was to run a "Story-game" using D&D as the system. And I managed to make it work, pretty much entirely by relying on skills I had developed using systems that DO support non-tactical play. But in the end, the game collapsed, because my players said to me that it was useless using 4E for the game I was running, because we were pretty much ignoring 90% of the character mechanics all the time, since there were few combats. In the end, they basically said that in order to continue playing in the style that we had, that I ought to switch systems. So what does that say about D&D's ability to support anything outside of combat?

I think you guys are saying something about positioning with characters or something that D&D supposedly does? Well I'm just not seeing it. Do we have any practical examples, say from your recent 4E play Ron?

[Eero Tuovinen]

How about my campaign from last year, Mike? It self-identifies as D&D, and it's fully strategic. Of course we could say that it's not D&D because D&D is X, but then we're no longer asking for an example of how D&D is played strategically, but rather merely defining: it's not D&D if it's strategic.

However, before we jump to that conclusion, a thought: the original Greyhawk campaign was strategic in its later stages (that is, the players negotiated with the GM for what they wanted to do and with which characters), apparently the Blackmoor campaign was as well (I don't know enough about it to say for certain), and the AD&D DMG (which arguably is the clearest early description of how the game should be arranged) is strategic; the Mentzer D&D (the last influential old school D&D core text) is strategic as well, with even the first red box outlining clear precepts for how the players can take control of the play outside the dungeon.

(I should clarify that the only reason ever that I'd argue from historical precedent on this topic is that we're now talking about "what D&D is", presumably as a historical phenomenon. In no way do I want to claim that it's important that Gygax played this way or that way. The only importance is that I'm trying to point out that if both Gygax and Mentzer did it, it's funny say that it's not D&D.)

Considering the above points, and also fully acknowledging that all sorts of railroading, illusionism and GM's story play is common a fuck in the rpg culture (fully embraced by TSR, too), I don't think that it's fair to attempt an essentialist reading of D&D where we just decide that D&D is strategic, or is not strategic. It's a too wide tradition of play and text to make an universal judgement, both of these types of play have a long and vivacious tradition as something called "D&D". If you were saying that D&D is a game that uses hit points, sure, that'd be on a historically supported characterization; claiming that real D&D is linear and illusionistic, not so much.

[Mike Holmes]

You'll note that in all of my posts I'm saying things like "for many groups." Not all play the way I'm saying. What I'm saying is that if D&D provided support for the way you play, most groups would play that way.

Put another way, what is it about D&D that you find supports your methodologies, Eero? Simply saying that you managed to pound a nail in with a screwdriver is not the same thing as saying that a screwdriver is a hammer. Maybe you're just a very talented carpenter? In fact, I know you are.

Note, too, that I don't claim that D&D is supportive of Illusionism at all. In fact, rather the opposite. I can't take credit for figuring this out, once again it was Ron who pointed out way back that simple dungeoneering, which the game obviously supports, gives players complete agency within it's confines.

That play of D&D often evolves into illusionism is, to me, due to the fact that you get players like myself who want more out of play than just the dungeon, and just combat, and who found that (not having at the time the tools I have today ported over from play of OTHER RPGs), I could not get drama out of play without railroading it. D&D supports Gamism. I've given a recent example of how I myself used D&D to run a strongly Narrativism-seeking game. I also admit that I was pretty crazy to have done so, when I could have used something like Dungeon World. And that the game suffered for it.

From what I read about your D&D game (which hasn't been a thorough reading, I'll admit), is that you used a lot of good role-playing technique to accomplish what you did. Which is great. It's just not included in the box with D&D, and most people don't have those additional tools. To whit, their games don't look like yours.

[Eero Tuovinen]

I agree that everything you need to play D&D as a complete game is not in the box; in fact, the developers of the box have failed again and again in expressing the game in a manner that would satisfy e.g. myself - and of course often they have chosen a different game, a different D&D to put in the box instead of the one I would prefer. I would like to argue that this does not mean that the game is incomplete or does not exist, it just means that it hasn't been put in the box very well so far.

(I'll note that the dungeoneering part is actually pretty well boxed. For example, the Mentzer red box is, I'd like to argue, up to modern standards as a game text, and I think it captures the spirit of the sort of D&D I play pretty well. It's limited and has some funky mechanical elements due to the tradition, but within its confines it describes the game correctly and clearly.)

How, then, can I refer to the game, if I do not refer to the box it comes in? D&D is, I think, in an unique position where the textual and oral transmission has been so complex and varied that considering any single text as "the" D&D would be a mistake. It's better to deal with it as a tradition of play and focus on observing actual play habits (largely as explained to us by the people playing). This enables us to ask not merely what TSR thinks you should do while playing this game, but rather how the game is in fact played.

In other words: judging D&D on the basis of selected game texts is like trying to analyze the Nordic larp tradition with a Whitewolf larp handbook as a reference. The text is only barely relevant, and any given individual you accost might reject it altogether. To get deeper we are forced to consider play qua play.

Assuming for the sake of argument that we can agree on the above, you can see how the question of "support" is something of a red herring here. I mean, I could name D&D texts that "support" the kind of play I propose here, but if you're invested in following a certain textual transmission as the only legitimate D&D, then you'll find it easy to brush anything like that aside. For example, volume III of the original -74 edition of D&D has clear procedural description of how to play wilderness exploration (so-called "hexcrawl") where the players are assumed to be in control of intent and direction of play (the book refers to the possible motivation of players exploring to find an appropriate location for their castle, but that's just one possibility); would you consider this book to be sufficiently D&D for it to count as support material for the style of play I suggest here? Or is it more significant that ten years later TSR had largely abandoned this particular tool-set in favour of GM-controlled railroads or (at best) pearls-on-a-string dungeons? Which is the real D&D that we must evaluate to find out whether support for this style of play exists?

That aside, I think I can answer this question:

Put another way, what is it about D&D that you find supports your methodologies, Eero? Simply saying that you managed to pound a nail in with a screwdriver is not the same thing as saying that a screwdriver is a hammer. Maybe you're just a very talented carpenter? In fact, I know you are.

Off the top of my head, the following elements of D&D make it particularly fulfilling for the creative agenda I use it for:
- The default situation with the adventuring party and a drive to get from rags to riches puts the players in the driver's seat from the very beginning: in this harsh world, how will you survive and prosper?
- The default challenge the game provides, exploration, is a fun activity that suits well to be performed in a SIS. The procedures the game provides for the purpose work well and are interesting. (The two big ones are dungeon exploration and wilderness exploration. Both are complex procedural entities with plenty of nuances.)
- The game's basic methodology of play (the way the GM/player roles are differentiated, and the way rulings are made) enables us to establish and abandon mechanical solutions in direct service to the creative agenda, without stopping play and doing game design. This in turn makes the game superbly flexible as regards discovering new challenges and expanding the scope of play when necessary; few games handle switching from dungeon exploration to epic sea voyage to wargame campaign as well.
- The conflict-resolution method is all about player ability to visualize the SIS and perform snap judgements about it. This is perfect for our purposes.
- The experience system is elegant and goal-based, which makes the xp an excellent score-keeping device for gauging success in the game. The score-keeping makes the game surprisingly addictive, even a small group of players may find that they can generate enough social esteem for the best players that they'll be motivated to try hard to succeed.
- The hit point system is an elegant abstraction of combat, and it suits well the exploration focus of the game.
- The character class system provides players with operative specialist identities, which helps with team-building. The dungeoneering procedure further helps the players in forming a functional, goal-oriented party. The party system in turn has proved massively robust socially: D&D is one of the few games that can genuinely handle tired and inexperienced players alongside sharp veterans.
- The quick randomized character generation, character development (not primarily mechanically, but rather in terms of positioning and identity) and character death as failure condition work together beautifully to produce arcs of challenge. Player characters are like shooting stars the players shoot over the horizon, hoping for the best and slowly learning the skills it takes to lead a character to success. Very satisfying as a framing device.

(To be entirely explicit, the creative agenda here is "to mess about with some fantasy stuff, discover interesting conundrums and challenges, and then tackle them for greater glory and satisfaction of success.")

I can already see how you might read the above with an eye towards dismissing most of those points because they don't actually exist in D&D. I might grant the point regarding the conflict resolution method (it's an annoying blind spot in the D&D tradition, these people are very unable to talk about how conflicts are actually resolved due to the viking hat DM mythology), that one is really deep and you have to basically set up all the other pieces to discern the missing conflict resolution theory by the shape of the hole the other elements leave. All of the other points, though, are very clearly and consistently available in almost any edition of D&D.

It is interesting to compare the above with Tunnels & Trolls, which I also find entirely piquant; the games have a very similar creative agenda (that is, I have a very similar agenda I project upon them) and methodology and procedural tradition, but their fundamental mechanical cornerstones are different, which causes them to parse the fiction differently, resulting in a fresh experience.

[Mike Holmes]

Well, yes, D&D is incomplete. But I agree with you that what D&D can be defined as is in terms of how it is played. And mostly it's played in a way that has little of the "Strategic" play under discussion, that being what Marshall was saying that you were saying it was. If I understand correctly, stuff to do with role-playing stuff to do with factions and the like. Fun intra-dungeon stuff that has to do with character motives and the like (note that "dungeon" here can mean a set of outdoor encounters or whatever you like, but simply a set of linked encounters). I totally agree that the dungeoneering part is well supported and have said so; as such I won't address any of your points regarding how well it supports that portion of play (though I'm tempted to really call BS on he HP thing, which I abhor.)

Your comments about the GM/player power split sound a lot like Rule Zero to me. That the GM should feel free to ignore the rules or change them when it furthers play. As I've always claimed, this is not a feature of a game any more than saying you can add foglights to a car a feature of said car. Sure, you can do it, but you can do it with any game, so it's not a particular feature of D&D. Worse, D&D texts often establish that it's essentially OK for the GM to do this clandestinely (fudging, for example), which is really problematic. Maybe I misunderstand your point, however.

The goal-based XP system only exists in some editions, and does, yes, support pretty much whatever sort of play you want to angle for when it's both actively used, and not ignored. In most games I've seen, mostly EXP are rewarde for killing things, and sometimes for taking their stuff. In no edition is this omitted. The end result is that hack and slash is most strongly supported, so it gets the most attention in play (again, in MOST games of D&D). 4E, interestingly, gives the best description of how to use EXP for "Quests" than any other edition.

From what I've seen, classes (especially when combined with alignment) result often in the complete opposite of a "goal-oriented party." I often see it lead, in fact, to intra-party conflicts that the system doesn't help handle in any way that leads to dysfunctional play - up to and including the game being disbanded altogether. As far as being "robust socially," my experiences have been very different, in that newer players are often left feeling like clueless newbs, and they often drop out of play because of it. I'll admit that this has become even MORE of a problem in later editions than it was early on, but my first game to fall apart because of such issues was in 1978 using Holmes Basic (BBB), which is extremely pretty simple in these regards.

Your last point about "shooting stars" seems to militate directly AGAINST the point of it supporting strategic play. When you don't even survive the dungeon to get to the strategic part, how can you enjoy it? Even if you survive one to die in the next one, where's any sense of strategic continuity?

Again, I'm not saying that D&D is getting in the way a ton in these regards as (especially if you're playing an early edition, say Mentzer), the system is very much silent on these portions of play. But the result of that for most groups is that they end up playing sans much, if any, of the intra-dungeon play.

I can still recall when "Town" was a new concept to us. D&D so omits the "how to play" that for a cargo cult, they may well assume in early editions that there is NOTHING that exists between dungeons. That's not common now, no. But if you want to hearken to the traditions of play, well they're mostly lacking in this department.