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View Full Version : Different rules for PCs and NPCs - a bad thing?



Winterwind
2009-03-06, 01:36 PM
Discussion that started in this thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=104812).


Thank you for the explaination , but i meant that if I roll a Wizard PC, and I meet a Wizard PC in 3.5, I'm sure he will follow the same rules. The Barbarian and the Frost Giant will power attack in the same way. For someone is importan for immersion. It's a crime?
Pardon me if I enter into a discussion once more that, by all rights, should not concern me as non-D&D player in the least, but that's another sentiment I keep seeing and that I totally do not understand. Why is it bad to have different rules for PCs and NPCs?

In the following, I will try to present my own philosophy regarding rules and their interaction and meaning for PCs/NPCs and the world as a whole.

The rules of an RPG serve one purpose only: To provide an interface between the game's world and the players. This is their goal, not simulating the world itself. The rules an NPC has to follow are completely irrelevant and could be as completely different from those the PCs follow as possible, as long as for the duration of the encounter between the PCs and the NPCs these rules would result in the NPC behaving in a manner similar to that of a comparable PC. All the players see are the results of the rules that arrive on their end. Whether the rules that led to these results are the same as for themselves or completely different is irrelevant - they do not get to see them at work anyway, all they get is the result. And as PCs are the protagonists in the story told in the game (which does not necessarily correlate with being important people within the world, mind you), it would make sense for them to have far more detailed and complex rules than the NPCs - as long as the NPC rules provide them with a decent enough approximation of how similar PCs would behave in their place as long as the PCs are present, it is completely irrelevant whether the rules would lead to different results when the PCs were gone, because the rules are not meant to describe the world with no PCs around.

Because, again, RPG rules do not serve to simulate a world while the PCs are gone - or, at least, there is no merit in such rules. Everything that happens in an RPG is always observed from a PC-perspective, with PCs around, because the senses of the PCs are all that allows the players to look into the game's world *1. That does not mean that the world does not exist when the PCs are gone - quite the opposite - but the rules do not apply to what happens in PC absence*2. One does not roll dice or apply other rules for every single spell cast by every wizard in the whole world every second, with no relation to the PCs and the story whatsoever. One does so only for the spells that might affect the PCs.

Of course, this does not mean that NPCs have to follow other rules - if the same rule set can be applied to both PCs and NPCs equally, fine. But if simpler and faster rules can make an NPC function in a similar manner for long enough for the players not to notice he uses different rules, then that's a benefit, and it doesn't matter that in the long run, with the PCs gone, these rules might yield different results, because all that matters is that they yielded the same results when the PCs could observe them.

I am having a bit of a hard time to formulate clearly what I mean; I hope it was somewhat understandable nonetheless. :smallfrown:



*1 Such narrative tricks as cut-aways notwithstanding; such scenes, that consist of nothing but gamemaster description, should not make use of rules anyway, as they would amount to the gamemaster playing alone with himself to the exclusion of the players.

*2 And for clarification, with "absence" I mean all things that happen without affecting the PCs directly. As in, the BBEG casting a spell from afar targeting the PCs should still adhere to the rules to see if s/he can break the PCs magical resistance, or whatever kind of defence they might have; that's not absence in the above sense.
See the thing is, they do follow the same rules, just not the same method of generation... now that may just seem to be empty somantics, but It encompasses the differance in out start points.
I say, it doesn't matter how you generate an NPC's stats as long as the GM makes them feel like a wizard in how they speak and act, and the game will show they have powers in keepiing with a wizard. Why does it matter that the stats that only the GM sees are arrived at and formatted differently?

I am having a bit of a hard time to formulate clearly what I mean; I hope it was somewhat understandable nonetheless. :smallfrown:It was, but there's nonetheless a big problem with this post: you say that rules are meant only to represent anything as long as PCs are around as it were an objective thruth, which it isn't. Far from it, in fact. For many people, internal consistency is very important, and such consistency requires PCs and NPCs to follow the same rules. Otherwise it breaks immersion.



Why does it matter that the stats that only the GM sees are arrived at and formatted differently?Because it gives a distinct impression that world is just an unimportant background to the Mary Sues PCs. Which, surprise, bothers people.
It was, but there's nonetheless a big problem with this post: you say that rules are meant only to represent anything as long as PCs are around as it were an objective thruth, which it isn't. Far from it, in fact. For many people, internal consistency is very important, and such consistency requires PCs and NPCs to follow the same rules. Otherwise it breaks immersion.
But... you don't roll dice for things when the PCs aren't around, do you? I mean, that's several ten thousand dice rolls for the Profession checks of all blacksmiths in the world alone, add every other profession, every fight in the world, every animal on the hunt, etc., and you would end up at billions or more dice rolls you would have to make to simulate every second. No, you just ignore all these irrelevant aspects of the world, and very likely just state what happens for aspects that are not irrelevant to the story, but still do not affect the players immediately (example, I imagine if a murder investigation was part of the story you had in mind, you wouldn't roll dice for the fight between the murderer and the victim if the PCs weren't around - you would simply declare that the murderer kills the victim (and, maybe, suffers a harmless but potentially revealing wound on the upper arm).

At any rate, yes, I stated it as objective truth (though with the qualifier that this entire passage constituted my personal philosophy), but a major reason for that is that I really, honestly do not see any alternative. That's, actually, the reason why I made that lengthy post in the first place - because some people have an attitude towards the rules that I find, frankly, absolutely alien, and that I would very much like to understand.

From my point of view - what other purpose could RPG rules serve but to act as interface between the world and the players? Rules for what happens outside of PC presence simply make no sense, because all they would accomplish would be to waste time that could be used for the players to actually play the game; why would the GM roll any dice or do any such things if these things did not actually affect the PCs somehow? The rules exist for the benefit of the players only, they have no value, no justification for their existence of their own, separated from the players.
The purpose of a rule set describing an NPC wizard is not to simulate an wizard; it is to provide the PCs with the impression of a wizard, which is a subtle, but important difference.
I'm struggling for a formulation of what I mean again, and failing to find one that satisfies me. :smallsigh:

And I don't see how different rules for PCs and NPCs would lead to internal inconsistency, unless they made PCs and NPCs function completely differently during the duration of the encounter between the two (which is not so much an issue of a different rule set between PCs and NPCs as the issue of the NPC rules being bad and failing at what they are supposed to accomplish*1). Outside the encounter, nobody is going to see what happens.

*1 That's under the assumption of a playstyle and setting that calls for consistency between PCs and NPCs in the first place, of course, otherwise these rules could actually be exactly the right ones, but that's the assumption on which our discussion is founded.

EDIT:
Because it gives a distinct impression that world is just an unimportant background to the Mary Sues PCs. How so? :smallconfused:
So what system do you play that builds NPCs and PCs by the same rules?

It sure isn't 3.5 I can tell you that. That Frost Giant NPC power attacks by the same rules as a PC, but he gets FAR less gear, his levels count for less (add the same number of class levels of cleric and compare the ECL to CR, and note that PCs have no CR and NPCs have no ECL, they work by different rules. Oh wait, does a Frost Giant NPC even HAVE a LA? Is he even POSSIBLE as a PC?). His abilities are almost certainly generated differently (elite array as opposed to rolling or point buy).

I can keep going. NPCs and PCs are in fact BUILT by different rules in both 3.5 and in 4.0, but they function by the same rules in both. So where is the difference other than that in 4.0 I can do a good job in 5 minutes and in 3.5 I can do a crappy job if I "only" spend a couple of hours at it.

How so? :smallconfused:In 3.X, players can instant kill, lock enemies and a unleash a thousand other horrors on the party.

But...So can the monsters. Players gotta watch out. That monster's finger of death is just as deadly as the wizard's finger of death. The dragon's full attack will make you in mince meat just as the barbarian's full attack would.

Same for defences. Rogues have evasion, and some monsters also have evasion. Wizards hide behind illusions and so do other monsters. Barbarians can go around triping and so can the dragon. If the cleric invisibility purges, it also reveals his teammate wizard as well as that hiding demon.

In 4e, players can't instantly kill enemies any more(except minions), but they can still do some nasty stuff like stun-sleep locks. Players also get a bundle of defensive interrupts and powers to screw up with monster's attacks, plus powerfull feats like evasion and mettle.

The poor monsters, however, don't get this chance. They can't stun lock players, they have very scarce defensive and utility tricks if any at all, they're only a threat by HP damage to the players, and their only true defense is their huge amounts of personal HP.

So while players are, well, guys with plenty of powers and options, monsters are mostly HP sacks who dish out damage at a regular rate. A trick here and there, but nothing that can really take down a player by suprise like the players can do with the monsters.Which sounds as if monsters might be too weak in 4e, at least for your liking, but doesn't seem to have much to do with whether different rules for PCs and NPCs are inherently too weak or not.


Winterwind, while I agree with your position, I can see the reasoning behind those who require identical mechanics. If somebody does X and says Y, then he does X and says Y, regardless of the mechanics behind it. It doesn't make a difference.

IF doing X and saying Y are all you, as a player, see.

Players realize that there are different mechanics, and despite the outcome being the exact same, there is still that knowledge that the means of getting there is different. For some, that breaks verisimilitude.



[...]All of which has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Winterwind's post.Well, I sort of understand the underlying logic - the rules supposedly form the laws governing the world, and obviously the laws of the world should be the same for everyone, unless it's explicitly part of the setting that they are not.
The problem is, I don't understand why one would adopt this logic. For starters, verisimilitude, as in believability of the world, should depend on the results, not the rules themselves. If rule set A applies to PCs and rule set B to NPCs, and rule set A leads to result X in a given situation, and rule set A is commonly accepted as a good rule set that leads to believable results, then logically it follows that result X means that something believable happens. If now rule set B comes along and leads to the same result X, then whatever X means happening cannot break verisimilitude, as we have already established that it is a believable course of action. Why would it matter that the rules, that the players ideally should forget for the sake of immersion anyway, are different in both cases, if the results are believable (and in fact, identical).

What astonishes me the most about this entire argument is that people complain different rules break immersion for them, but then proceed with a metagaming level of thought, as they care about the rules rather than the in-game result itself.



It was, but there's nonetheless a big problem with this post: you say that rules are meant only to represent anything as long as PCs are around as it were an objective thruth, which it isn't. Far from it, in fact. For many people, internal consistency is very important, and such consistency requires PCs and NPCs to follow the same rules. Otherwise it breaks immersion.It also over-complicates the game needlessly (especially for the DM) and leads to nonsense like dirt farmers with multiple levels in Commoner. (I guess them dirt piles were particularly fierce, 'cause they shore netted a lot of XP.)


Because it gives a distinct impression that world is just an unimportant background to the Mary Sues PCs. Which, surprise, bothers people.And conversely, the notion that everyone should play by the same rules decreases the importance of PCs.

____

So, all of the above is a discussion about whether different rules for PCs and NPCs are inherently bad and destructive for immersion and consistency. Please note that, while you can feel free to bring examples from D&D and its various versions to prove your points, the discussion is meant to be general and not necessary limited to D&D.

Artanis
2009-03-06, 01:47 PM
I personally don't think they're bad. I think, in fact, that in many cases they are necessary for something to work at all.

However, I also think that it's "just one of those things." Some things just stick in your craw and bother you, and different people have different things that do that. For some, the fact that PCs and monsters use different rulesets is just one of those things, regardless of whether it is or is not logical.

There is a certain logic behind it though. It's that the PCs are part of the world. Being really really good at stabbing people doesn't change the fact that they are still every bit as human/elf/whatever as Joe the Dirt Farmer. If they don't at least pretend to work by the same rules, then they aren't really people anymore, are they?

FoE
2009-03-06, 02:02 PM
Being really really good at stabbing people doesn't change the fact that they are still every bit as human/elf/whatever as Joe the Dirt Farmer. If they don't at least pretend to work by the same rules, then they aren't really people anymore, are they?

But they aren't the same as regular people. The higher a PC advances in levels, the more they surpass everyone around them, until they eventually reach a state close to godhood.

The New Bruceski
2009-03-06, 02:03 PM
I'd like to mention, for the "monsters in 4e can't stunlock" argument, I've definitely spent an entire fight shaking off multiple dazes and such while my allies try to keep the enemy from taking advantage of it.

I am curious, for supporters of the same-rules ideas who actually run campaigns instead of just playing, how far do you take this idea? If you plan a story around an assassin destabilizing a neighboring kingdom, do you make all the stealth checks, attack rolls, rolls for public reaction, et cetera? Doesn't that run the risk of spending days building the thing, and what reaches the players is "A group of corrupt nobles tried to terrorize their country, but were caught and executed."?

Dixieboy
2009-03-06, 02:04 PM
But they aren't the same as regular people. The higher a PC advances in levels, the more they surpass everyone around them, until they eventually reach a state close to godhood.

However there are already people at that level, some have attained godhood even

so yea

FoE
2009-03-06, 02:14 PM
However there are already people at that level, some have attained godhood even

So? The fact that others have attained nearly-godlike power does not make the PCs unique, merely very, very rare. Again, these are all people who had the ability to transcend their initial limitations.

Satyr
2009-03-06, 02:18 PM
The rules of an RPG serve one purpose only: To provide an interface between the game's world and the players. This is their goal, not simulating the world itself.

That is a highly debatable statement and I would outright claim that is utterly wrong in its absoluteness; the best games I was involved in treated the characters as a part of the world, not the world as a colportage for the characters - but I favor a very strongly author/gamemaster-fixated gaming style, where the characters - and the players- aren't just as important as you seem to assume.


But... you don't roll dice for things when the PCs aren't around, do you? I mean, that's several ten thousand dice rolls for the Profession checks of all blacksmiths in the world alone, add every other profession, every fight in the world, every animal on the hunt, etc., and you would end up at billions or more dice rolls you would have to make to simulate every second.

I prefer a school of thought were dice rolls - any dice rolls - are only made when an arbitrary resolution for the situation is favorable. When the plot doesn't continue when the player character do not find the secret entrance or research the crucial information, or manage to jump over the large shark in the pool, than it is not a very good idea to include a skill roll that would tear the plot apart when it fails.

This also means that I don't have to make thousand and one skill and ability check to emulate a living, breathing world, because 99% of these rolls aren't relevant enough for the narrative. But that doesn't mean that, in an action scene, the same requirements are used, no matter of the character is controlled by a player or not.


I think your arguementation has two significant weaknesses, one of them is even a more or less objective one. on a subjective level I think that special rules for PCs lead to an exagerated regard for the player characters, who are raised to a I really don't like the idea that the whole universe of the game circulates only around the player characters and have no other purpose but its relationship to the player characters; then again, in my prefered playing style, the importance of players and PCs is comparatively low.

Objectively, two different sets of rules for PCs or NPCs means that you have unnecessarily complicated rules at hand and at least one of the sets of rules is completey superfluous. One rule to bind them all is just much simpler and easier to learn and use. For the same reason, very comprehensive rules, where the same mechanic is constantly used are preferable to systems which uses several different ways of resolution. A general rule which is always applied is just the more elegant and less clunky approach.

Dixieboy
2009-03-06, 02:20 PM
So? The fact that others have attained nearly-godlike power does not make the PCs unique, merely very, very rare. Again, these are all people who had the ability to transcend their initial limitations.

But that leaves your point moot since these guys may or may not be NPC's

Douglas
2009-03-06, 02:23 PM
My view on this:
A) The rules define what is and is not possible in the game world for characters. If something is legal by the PC rules and your players decide to do it, then it works. If you as a DM rule that it does not, this still does not change the fundamental truth of the first sentence, as your new house rule is now part of the rules.
B) Any character's status as a PC or NPC should not by itself affect what is or is not possible for that character to do.
C) A and B in combination imply that the rules should make no distinction between PCs and NPCs and that (theoretically, in an ideal rule set) all typical PC and NPC activities should be accounted for in the rules somehow. Practically, many things are almost exclusively "off screen" NPC activities due to typical narrative structure rather than any actual rules concerns and can be glossed over. Anything that is actually addressed, however, should be the same regardless of PC status.

There is no need to actually simulate all NPC activities and roll dice for every blacksmith's daily craft - that would be an absurd amount of work to no practical benefit - but how an NPC functions "on screen" should be no different from how a PC functions and the theoretical possibilities should be no different whether an NPC is "on screen" or "off screen".

FoE
2009-03-06, 02:29 PM
But that leaves your point moot since these guys may or may not be NPC's

Your argument does not make a goddamn lick of sense to me. If PCs reach higher levels and find others who have also reached that level, then those "others" are NPCs. What the hell else could they be?

Behold_the_Void
2009-03-06, 02:36 PM
I think that special rules for PCs lead to an exagerated regard for the player characters, who are raised to a I really don't like the idea that the whole universe of the game circulates only around the player characters and have no other purpose but its relationship to the player characters; then again, in my prefered playing style, the importance of players and PCs is comparatively low.

This right here I think is the crux of the inability to understand, since I don't get that mindset at all myself.

Honestly? When I'm running a game, first and foremost on my mind is I want to have fun with my friends. Which means my friends, the players, are the stars of the story. That doesn't mean the world doesn't keep moving without their interference, but everything I do is tailor-made to encourage the enjoyment of the players, not satisfy the requirements of the world. If it exists, it's so the players can interact with it in some fashion. Otherwise, it can happily be shunted into the background and if the players care to ask about it I can explain it as necessary.

Douglas
2009-03-06, 02:40 PM
I am curious, for supporters of the same-rules ideas who actually run campaigns instead of just playing, how far do you take this idea? If you plan a story around an assassin destabilizing a neighboring kingdom, do you make all the stealth checks, attack rolls, rolls for public reaction, et cetera? Doesn't that run the risk of spending days building the thing, and what reaches the players is "A group of corrupt nobles tried to terrorize their country, but were caught and executed."?
No, I do not. When events are happening offscreen and a particular outcome is desirable for the story, every die roll is effectively automatically fudged. I do consider it important, however, that the outcome is compatible with the rules such that if I had played it out in detail complete with die rolls there would have been a reasonable chance of the chosen outcome happening by the rules.

For example, if the PCs include a 9th level cleric (assuming 3.5 D&D) I would be sure to provide a rules mechanical reason why they could not simply cast Raise Dead. Even if the PCs are lower level or do not include a cleric, I would be sure to explain why no NPC cleric of sufficient level steps in to solve the issue the same way. In either case the reason would be a part of the game world, available to all, I would try to find an existing RAW way before even considering a house rule, and I would consider the consequences of its availability regardless.

In the case of assassination, I would probably note the Thinaun material from Complete Warrior, and declare that high level assassins generally have several weapons made of it, along with hidden vaults to prevent recovery and an assortment of schemes and measures to get the weapons there in secret and without repeated use after a successful assassination. I would then design the vault, weapon, and protections used for this particular case, put in some appropriate clues, etc., and if the PCs ever had to prevent an opponent's resurrection later in the campaign they would be able to do so by using the same material in the same way.

I would also decide what protections against assassination the target is likely to have given his personality, station, and resources, and design the assassin - by the same rules as PCs, though material resources can be hand-waved within reason - to have a way to defeat each one. The abilities used to defeat each protection on the target might later appear "on screen" if the PCs track down and fight the assassin.

Dixieboy
2009-03-06, 02:55 PM
Your argument does not make a goddamn lick of sense to me. If PCs reach higher levels and find others who have also reached that level, then those "others" are NPCs. What the hell else could they be?

These guys have done the exact same thing as the PC's and have equal powers, and are thus their equal in everything (Not really, but you get my point i would hope)
Which means they could just as well have been pc's

Maxymiuk
2009-03-06, 02:58 PM
Forgive me if the following is somewhat disjointed. I'm a bit under the weather today and I might end up rambling.


First, I don't think there's a definite "yes" or "no" answer. It depends on the system and the tone it tries to set, on what the players expect out of the game and their individual playing styles. Some people like to play big damned heroes, and for them there's systems like Savage Worlds and D&D 4E, where from the outset you're told "you're a big damned hero!". Some like to feel constantly threatened and hounded - for them the challenge lies in seeing how long they can have their shmuck of an avatar survive. For them, there's systems like Paranoia and Call of Cthulu.

That said, I myself fall on the "rule consistency" side of the fence, and here's why:

- Immersion. Yes, we all metagame on some level. In any given group, there's going to be people who lean more towards rollplay than roleplay, or the kind of player that memorized the bestiary and NPC creation rules by heart. So when I'm going to have them held up by a crazed junkie looking for a fix, who's waving around a sawed-off, I want everyone at the table do go "oh crap, this is trouble". Make the PC's significantly stronger than NPC's and I end up with the rollplayer going "bah, he only has a 15% chance to hit any one of us, and can't possibly do enough damage to kill someone, even on a critical". Make them significantly weaker, and I end up with the roleplayer asking "so why exactly is some street punk still standing after my gunslinger gentleman put half a revolver clip in his head?"

- Interaction. From my experience, player interaction with the world I create is, by and large, based on expectation. Unless I explicitly state otherwise, they assume that things such as gravity, air composition, day length, or taste of mutton are "earth-like". Almost all of their decisions will be based on such assumptions.
The rules governing the system, simply add another level of expectation. They expect consistency in how the system behaves, and consequently they expect that even unknown factors will behave in a way that is in some way governed by the system.
Say, that I have the BBEG scrying on the group to find out their plans to thwart him, and thwart them in turn. Once the players twig in to what is happening, they will assume that the ability to scry is supported by the system, and will seek methods to study it, disrupt it, block it, perhaps even subvert it. Which segues neatly into the third reason, that is:

- Fairness. As a GM, it's my job to make sure the players have fun. Sure, I may fudge every so often in the interest of making a given fight more interesting, but by and large, I have an obligation to challenge the group without pulling stuff out of my Auxiliary Solution Storage. And if I have access to the same toolkit when it comes to designing NPC's, as the one that the PC's are using, I have to admit that it's far easier for me to "eyeball" the difficulty of the challenge, especially given that I almost always fiddle with things such as monster stats in order to make them more interesting and/or deter metagaming.

To end this post, I'll once again reiterate that I don't think my opinion is a be-all, end-all of gaming. It's simply what works best for me.

Talyn
2009-03-06, 03:04 PM
I'm okay with different rules for PCs and for NPCs, generally. For example: realistic or quasi-realistic consequences for ingesting poison are simply not fun when they happen to player characters - weakness, delirium, weeks or months of recovery, permanent damage to body or mind, etc. The "combat" rules for poison - damage over time and some secondary effects until the player makes his save - make for a more fun experience for everyone.

But does that mean that when the assassin poisons the Royal Princess, I apply the poison rules? Of course not. It gets in the way of the story. Having the princess take 5 poison damage/round until she makes her save is far less interesting than a princess who is weak and delirious and slowly fades as the PCs desperately scramble to track down the legendary alchemist who might have the cure...

Even in combat, I'm okay with monsters doing things that the players simply cannot do, and vice versa. I'm okay with them not having healing surges, for example - monsters tend to have lots of other powers and lots more hit points to make up for it. Having the monsters and players work by different rules actually makes combat more exciting, and, to contradict the quoted Mr. Oslecamo, allows the monsters far greater versatility then they had in the old editions. Nowadays, if my orc shaman can summon ghosts from his dead comrades to fight again, he has a power where he can just do that, rather than my having to go through the process of giving him levels in a class until he knows that spell. It makes for a far more robust game, in my experience.

Person_Man
2009-03-06, 03:17 PM
This is an old but occasionally useful RPG debate: Simulation (GURPS) vs. Roleplaying (LARP) vs. Tactical Combat (4E) vs Hybrid (any earlier edition of D&D).

The more you make your rules accurately simulate "reality" the harder it becomes to balance tactical combat and make it fun. And the more players have to know and use specific crunch to solve plot issues (especially combat), the less time you have for more genuine roleplaying.

But in many ways it's a false issue. Often times people accuse a game of not honoring one aspect or another, when the real issue is cruddy writing and editing.

Winterwind
2009-03-06, 03:28 PM
That is a highly debatable statement and I would outright claim that is utterly wrong in its absoluteness; the best games I was involved in treated the characters as a part of the world, not the world as a colportage for the characters - but I favor a very strongly author/gamemaster-fixated gaming style, where the characters - and the players- aren't just as important as you seem to assume.Just to avoid a misunderstanding - so what exactly is your stance on the relation and function of gamemaster and players?
My point of view is that the player characters are the protagonists of the story about to unfold. They may not be important within the world as a whole (for example, they may not be in a position to influence who will win the big war, though if they want to try to get into such a position, they are of course welcome to try - I'm not going to try to prevent them from doing that, but I'll not make it any easier either), but they are central to the actual plot that will be told (for example, if they cannot influence the outcome of the war, then the war obviously is only background for the actual story, and not the story itself). Any cut-aways or other scenes that do not include the player characters are typically brief, definitely not using any rules that might slow them down. Whatever the story might be, it will be the PCs who will make it turn out the way it will turn out. Deliberately setting up situations where players have no choice whatsoever is railroading and taboo, though the players are free to forge such situations themselves.
I am also of the opinion that this is the minimum of power that players must have, so I (as gamemaster) can tell the story with them, not at them. If the story would not unfold much differently if a player [character] wasn't there at all, then obviously I am not including the player into the game properly. And since the people I play with are there to play the game with me, instead of merely listening, that's utterly inacceptable.
I say minimum, because from there on, it is perfectly legitimate to expand on it, by setting up criteria under which a player can take over the gamemaster function and act as arbitrator instead of the gamemaster proper.
If, of course, the players preferred to, essentially, you telling them a story, with significantly less input from them than I outlined above, then that's perfectly fine, too, of course, but I haven't met even a single player with that attitude yet amongst the, what, two or three dozen players I have known so far?

Also, 'colportage'? How do people going from door to door to sell books come into this? :smallconfused:


I prefer a school of thought were dice rolls - any dice rolls - are only made when an arbitrary resolution for the situation is favorable. When the plot doesn't continue when the player character do not find the secret entrance or research the crucial information, or manage to jump over the large shark in the pool, than it is not a very good idea to include a skill roll that would tear the plot apart when it fails. Okay, I guess this would be an example for the lesser focus on players you mentioned before. I would argue (and this is, also, why the players in my group would not accept such an approach, unless we were playing freeform) that by doing that, you took away the importance of the character's skills right at the moment when it would matter the most. I prefer to set up my plots in a way where they will not tear apart that easily, but allow the players to affect the story's outcome more according to whether they succeed or fail at something. Which is not to say we roll that many dice, actually; we have had plenty of sessions where we didn't roll any, in fact, in spite of not playing freeform at that time.


This also means that I don't have to make thousand and one skill and ability check to emulate a living, breathing world, because 99% of these rolls aren't relevant enough for the narrative. But that doesn't mean that, in an action scene, the same requirements are used, no matter of the character is controlled by a player or not.Fair enough, but, as far as I see it, that has little to do with whether the rules you decide to use after all have to be the same ones for PCs and NPCs.


I think your arguementation has two significant weaknesses, one of them is even a more or less objective one. on a subjective level I think that special rules for PCs lead to an exagerated regard for the player characters, who are raised to a I really don't like the idea that the whole universe of the game circulates only around the player characters and have no other purpose but its relationship to the player characters; then again, in my prefered playing style, the importance of players and PCs is comparatively low.I never said the universe of the game circulates around the player characters.
The game itself does, however.
The player characters could be the most unimportant, filthy beggars in the most forgotten backwater town of the kingdom of Nowhere (insert OotS joke here), and nobody could care about them less. However, in the plot about to unfold, they will be the protagonists nonetheless, even if the story might not be of any importance or concern to anyone but themselves.
And as the players see the story from their characters' eyes, all the rules have to do is to convey the world as the characters see it believably.


Objectively, two different sets of rules for PCs or NPCs means that you have unnecessarily complicated rules at hand and at least one of the sets of rules is completey superfluous. One rule to bind them all is just much simpler and easier to learn and use. For the same reason, very comprehensive rules, where the same mechanic is constantly used are preferable to systems which uses several different ways of resolution. A general rule which is always applied is just the more elegant and less clunky approach.An example, then.
The BattleTech RPG uses a mechanic for character creation where one rolls dice to determine critical events that happened during the various phases of a character's life. These influence both his backstory and impact his actual abilities, partially quite signficantly. This process, quite different from the usual method of character creation and providing additional interesting details to a character's backstory for free while still leaving the player the freedom to come up with a story of her/his own, can be quite amusing, but also rather lengthy (though from what I hear it's still short by D&D standards; I wouldn't know). Would I go through this entire process for every NPCs I wanted to use? Hell no! The NPC shall have exactly the backstory I have in mind for him, and I can perfectly well wing the abilities s/he shall possess, thank you very much.
So, disconnect - more complicated rules that make sense for PCs on whom the story focuses, but are complete overkill for NPCs.

Oooh, or another example, from D&D, in fact (please correct me if I misunderstand something here - keep in mind I'm not a D&D player and all my D&D knowledge comes from these fine forums here).
4e minions. Dead after a single hit. What does that mean? Are they really in danger of dying because a falling autumn leaf steers into their general direction? Of course not. In a fight against a commoner, the very same enemy might have plentiful of hitpoints, and be a tough and resilient foe. The point is, the rules do not simulate the minion - what would be the purpose of that? - they simulate what the player characters perceive the minion as. And that is: An opponent of vastly inferior skill, one whom they can defeat at their leisure. This is a rule where, to get rid of pointless book keeping, the rules actively consider an enemy in the relation to the PCs, rather than on his own. Because it doesn't matter how resilient that opponent actually might be if faced by someone else - all that matters is that compared to the PCs, he is weak enough for these simpler rules to be a good enough approximation.


I will reply to the other posts at a further time (unless the discussion will have moved on too much by then); my apologies, but I don't have the time for a much longer post now. :smallwink:

krossbow
2009-03-06, 03:39 PM
But does that mean that when the assassin poisons the Royal Princess, I apply the poison rules? Of course not. It gets in the way of the story. Having the princess take 5 poison damage/round until she makes her save is far less interesting than a princess who is weak and delirious and slowly fades as the PCs desperately scramble to track down the legendary alchemist who might have the cure...




You see, here's the rub. Almost all people i've ever run with would greatly take offense to the fact that A. their neutralize poison spell is not exactly what it says on the tin (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin), The high level alchemist in the group will wonder why he can't attempt an alchemy check to make an antidote, ect.

And once you've actually SAVED the princess, the PC's will be even more annoyed that this magical poison can never be manufactured by them in any way shape or form, as giving them access to such a poison will inevitably upset game balance.

One could say that the poison was made from rare reagents and the like, but at the point one wonders why an assasin spent thousands of gold on a poison that doesn't kill rather than much cheaper ones that do.




It'll smack of "videogamey" when they can't manufacture either the poison or antidote even when they know what they are or have found a sample, for no other real reason than that the rest of the world is playing with a stacked deck.

Doug Lampert
2009-03-06, 03:47 PM
This is an old but occasionally useful RPG debate: Simulation (GURPS) vs. Roleplaying (LARP) vs. Tactical Combat (4E) vs Hybrid (any earlier edition of D&D).Huh? Have you ever SEEN the original D&D game? It was basically a pure tactical combat simulator with FAR FAR less room for roleplaying in the rules than 4th ed.

3.x works fine for Simulation, as long as you don't try to actually simulate anything since in a world that actually worked by those rules some version of PunPun rules the universe (there are DOZENS of different builds to achieve infinite power with a level 1 Kobold in the PunPun thread).

Or consider what happens if ONE Spectre gets loose in a major city for a minute or two. What magic stops this from happening and why can't the PCs use it.

Emperor Tippy on this board seems fond of pointing out it's fairly trivial to break the assumed setting in 3.x without using infinite power loops and with fairly low powered magic taking the spells individually.

AD&D (and 3.x) is a "simulation" where most foes able to threaten a city can fly, and yet most cities are defended by extremely expensive, hard to maintain, hard to man walls.

And because they give more details this is WORSE in 3.x. How many chickens are available for sale in a large city?

As for roleplaying? Rules don't roleplay but they can help or hinder and D&D has always put negligable emphasis on helping, far less than any other published system I'm aware of outside of a few humor and joke systems.

3.x only worked played nearly pure gamist. The universe convienently arranged something like 267 fights for the PCs over their career with almost every one of those fights "just happening" to be something close to a moving target called a "level appropriate CR encounter". Note that a "level appropriate CR encounter" at level 20 is nearly 700 times as dangerous as at level 1, there's fairly little room for error here, even ONE substantially over expected CR encounter is a TPK.

Run simulationist and what you encounter when should be more or less random modified only by location and PC reputation. In fact in 3.x its based on how dangerous you are.

DougL

Douglas
2009-03-06, 03:55 PM
Any cut-aways or other scenes that do not include the player characters are typically brief, definitely not using any rules that might slow them down.
I would generally not actually roll dice for things like this, but I consider it important that the scene as it plays out is compatible with the rules - that playing through the scene by the rules with die rolls could reasonably result in the outcome described.


I never said the universe of the game circulates around the player characters.
The game itself does, however.
The player characters could be the most unimportant, filthy beggars in the most forgotten backwater town of the kingdom of Nowhere (insert OotS joke here), and nobody could care about them less. However, in the plot about to unfold, they will be the protagonists nonetheless, even if the story might not be of any importance or concern to anyone but themselves.
And as the players see the story from their characters' eyes, all the rules have to do is to convey the world as the characters see it believably.
When a character is "on screen", NPC or not, the rules define his abilities. They are, in a way, the laws of nature as long as that character is being run by the rules and I honestly don't see any way to reasonably interpret them otherwise. Whatever fluff you attach to them, you can't deny that the rules determine the outcome of attempted actions in defined ways. It breaks verisimilitude to me that the laws of nature can change depending entirely on whether a character is a PC or NPC, or is on screen or off, or on who else the character is interacting with.


An example, then.
The BattleTech RPG uses a mechanic for character creation where one rolls dice to determine critical events that happened during the various phases of a character's life. These influence both his backstory and impact his actual abilities, partially quite signficantly. This process, quite different from the usual method of character creation and providing additional interesting details to a character's backstory for free while still leaving the player the freedom to come up with a story of her/his own, can be quite amusing, but also rather lengthy (though from what I hear it's still short by D&D standards; I wouldn't know). Would I go through this entire process for every NPCs I wanted to use? Hell no! The NPC shall have exactly the backstory I have in mind for him, and I can perfectly well wing the abilities s/he shall possess, thank you very much.
So, disconnect - more complicated rules that make sense for PCs on whom the story focuses, but are complete overkill for NPCs.
Rules like that are completely irrelevant to this debate imo. How you create a backstory is entirely different from rules that define what actions and events are possible and how the world works.


Oooh, or another example, from D&D, in fact (please correct me if I misunderstand something here - keep in mind I'm not a D&D player and all my D&D knowledge comes from these fine forums here).
4e minions. Dead after a single hit. What does that mean? Are they really in danger of dying because a falling autumn leaf steers into their general direction? Of course not. In a fight against a commoner, the very same enemy might have plentiful of hitpoints, and be a tough and resilient foe. The point is, the rules do not simulate the minion - what would be the purpose of that? - they simulate what the player characters perceive the minion as. And that is: An opponent of vastly inferior skill, one whom they can defeat at their leisure. This is a rule where, to get rid of pointless book keeping, the rules actively consider an enemy in the relation to the PCs, rather than on his own. Because it doesn't matter how resilient that opponent actually might be if faced by someone else - all that matters is that compared to the PCs, he is weak enough for these simpler rules to be a good enough approximation.
Minion is facing PCs. Minion is pushed off a ledge and takes falling damage. Minion dies.
Minion is facing commoner. Minion is pushed off a ledge and takes falling damage. Minion gets back up and beats up the commoner.

The exact same thing happens to Minion in both cases, but the difference between him dying instantly and being lightly bruised is essentially made by whether a PC is present or not. This breaks verisimilitude for me quite thoroughly and the minion mechanic is, in fact, one of the things I dislike about 4E most.

Telonius
2009-03-06, 04:26 PM
I think it's generally a bad thing for PCs and NPCs to have different rules. Let's say the Evil PC plans to kill the king/despoil the temple/rob Ye Olde Magick Shoppe. Or, the Good PC decides he's going to try to convert the evil town, redeem the captured bad guy lieutenant, or something else like that. How do you resolve it? You could just make the target somehow invulnerable, or ad-hoc the stats. But coming up with something like that on the fly is really hard, and runs a real risk of the players thinking you're just pulling stuff out of your butt and/or trying to railroad them. There has to be some system in place for NPCs, and that system has to be (or at minimum, seem) consistent.

For NPCs to even interact with PCs, the system that governs NPCs - whatever that system is - has to be compatible with PCs' governing system. If the PCs have +2 to bluff versus the opponent's sense motive, it makes no sense at all for an NPC to have 3 levels of Perception versus robots (but not aliens). They have to be using the same universe of rules.

Now, as far as whether or not the PCs and NPCs have precisely the same character building principles, I don't think that's totally necessary. An NPC could be built perfectly well using 4d6 drop 1 (or standard or elite array), and the players built under 32 point buy, and it wouldn't really affect very much. An NPC might not go by the WBL guidelines strictly - in fact if they did, the PCs might not be able to buy anything worthwhile at Ye Olde Magick Shoppe. So yes, there is some wiggle room. But after a point (and that point is fairly subjective), it stops being wiggle room and starts being eye-roll inducing.


"3.x works fine for Simulation, as long as you don't try to actually simulate anything since in a world that actually worked by those rules some version of PunPun rules the universe (there are DOZENS of different builds to achieve infinite power with a level 1 Kobold in the PunPun thread)."

I resolve issues like this by stating that it's already happened. Since Pun-Pun has an arbitrary amount of wisdom, he's aware that he's actually a fictional character in a D&D game. He realizes this, and guards against such power loops and ridiculous rules-based situations. Any attempt to reach power approaching his will automatically fizzle due to direct intervention by the over-god of Cheese and Metagaming, Pun-Pun. :smallbiggrin:

Iethloc
2009-03-06, 04:59 PM
This is not specifically about D&D 3.5, whether it's a Gamist or Simulationist game. This is about whether it's good or bad to use different rules for PCs or NPCs, and it's already been established that 3.5e uses different rules for them, even if a monster and a PC do have some similarities. Dealing with the...quirks of the system is up to individual GMs.

This is also not about making billions of dice rolls to simulate every person in the world. Whether or not they use the same rules as PCs, you can still roll for everything an NPC does, because they have stats and things are determined by dice rolls. It'd take quite a radical system to change that.

I personally believe that making the PCs feel special or to have fun is primarily a function of the GM (and possibly the PCs themselves), not the system. The game system is merely a tool to help tell a story, or map out an epic battle, so choosing one is simply a matter of taste. I prefer Exalted, myself.

With that said, I also prefer that the PCs and NPCs use the same rules, because I believe the primary difference between a PC and an NPC is ambition. Any Commoner could take a few levels in Fighter and go kill owlbears. They just need a damn good reason to go out and risk their life on a daily basis. Any Extra in Exalted could adapt a heroic motivation and become a heroic mortal...they just need to find a heroic motivation in the first place.

And a handy thing about Exalted is that everything is governed by a God. So if, say, a player finds a hole in the rules and munchkins, the God of Sanity or Fairness could backhand them for being a jerk. Most certainly, they could detect such a violation of their domain.

Satyr
2009-03-06, 06:00 PM
This right here I think is the crux of the inability to understand, since I don't get that mindset at all myself.

Honestly? When I'm running a game, first and foremost on my mind is I want to have fun with my friends. Which means my friends, the players, are the stars of the story.

I differentiate between story-driven and character-driven campaigns here, and in a mostly chaaracter-driven campagin where the plot evolves from the intrinsic motivation of the characters as protagonists, the style you describe is the mean of choice. However, in a mostly plot-driven campaign, where extrinsic motivations and circumstances are driving the plot, the characters do not need to be that important, and are not meant to be as relevant as the narrative. I found that this works better in larger groups, where there is just not as much spotlight time per player. And since I can hardly run a game nowadays with fewer than 6 or 7 players without mortally insulting someone or excluding a good friend, intrisically motivated, character-driven plots have become rare for long term campaigns for me.

And in a plot-driven campaign, the events of the narrative should be interessting and capturing enough to overshadow the personal perspective of the character, or the narrative is not going to be very interesting from the beginning. That said, a campaign were the narrative is so dominating that the character perspective and motivation becomes negliable, will probably be not very interesting either, as a minimum of involvement is necessary for many players to get dedicated to the game.

That said, more out of necessit than choice, I run quite authoritive games where players have not the option to take over the narrative completely and run the game instend of me - that wouldn't be fair to the others in that situation.
I don't like the idea to railroad the characters along a clearly prescripted way.But in most campaigns I run, the focus is more on the events of the plot and the way the world works, and not so much on the characters alone. "There is a world, and you play one of the characters within this world" instead of, for example "You are the protagonists and everything that happened, happens and is going to happen does only happen because it affect your agenda, vita and future activities."
That said, the discussion about the role of gamemasters and players is definetly worth an own thread.


Also, 'colportage'? How do people going from door to door to sell books come into this?

In the more abstract sense, colportage is used to describe a low quality narrative, often used in the Sense of "groschenromanhaft", oder "feuillentonistisch", slightly similar to the English pulp and with a similar etymological background.


I would argue (and this is, also, why the players in my group would not accept such an approach, unless we were playing freeform) that by doing that, you took away the importance of the character's skills right at the moment when it would matter the most. I prefer to set up my plots in a way where they will not tear apart that easily, but allow the players to affect the story's outcome more according to whether they succeed or fail at something. Which is not to say we roll that many dice, actually; we have had plenty of sessions where we didn't roll any, in fact, in spite of not playing freeform at that time.

There are two very different categories of situations here - there are on the one hand everyday actions, which just doesn't need to involve chance because they are too banal. Mechanisms like taking 10/20 are extremely helpful in this case. The other category are action where the plot just stops completely if they aren't done, or interesting and colorful elements of the adventure at hand . Getting in such a situation is a form of bad storytelling, but sometimes those situations occur (especially if use an adventure module, and try to keep to the plot). In that case, I think it is not that bad to be generous (I wouldn't make player actions auto-fail, only because that would shorten the plot. That would be betraying the player for their success, which would be unfair).


I never said the universe of the game circulates around the player characters.
The game itself does, however.
The player characters could be the most unimportant, filthy beggars in the most forgotten backwater town of the kingdom of Nowhere (insert OotS joke here), and nobody could care about them less. However, in the plot about to unfold, they will be the protagonists nonetheless, even if the story might not be of any importance or concern to anyone but themselves.

Yes, the characters are usually important characters for the game, but not necessarily the most important ones. For example in Pendragon, the player characters are never going to be as significant as Arthur, Gwenifar and Lancelot, for example. Most narratives include more and less relevant characters, and the more important ones are normally those who are featured stronger and are are presented with more details.


And as the players see the story from their characters' eyes, all the rules have to do is to convey the world as the characters see it believably.

I don't think that the players are limited to perceive or enjoy the plot through their characters alone. Obviously, this is an important influence, perhaps even the most important one, but not the only one. It is absolutely possible to completely enjoy the game on a metalevel without getting more attached to the character than to a pawn in a game of chess, for example in a very strongly tactical /hack'n'slash game, or an extremely plot-focused game, where every player takes more the role of a narrator and the characters are not attached to one single player at all. Immersion is a very common aim of the game, but not the only one.


The BattleTech RPG uses a mechanic for character creation where one rolls dice to determine critical events that happened during the various phases of a character's life. These influence both his backstory and impact his actual abilities, partially quite signficantly.

You wouldn't probably do this with most recruits, but for the big characters - the character's Commander, the big bad system lord or Vlad Ward, this may be different again. The question is not between PCs and NPCs but between main characters and support characters.


Minion is facing PCs. Minion is pushed off a ledge and takes falling damage. Minion dies.
Minion is facing commoner. Minion is pushed off a ledge and takes falling damage. Minion gets back up and beats up the commoner.

The exact same thing happens to Minion in both cases, but the difference between him dying instantly and being lightly bruised is essentially made by whether a PC is present or not. This breaks verisimilitude for me quite thoroughly and the minion mechanic is, in fact, one of the things I dislike about 4E most.

Yes. For the short time I tested 4e, the first thing we changed that minions did not die but fled in panic after the first hit. Made more sense and didn't include the feeling that the PCs are manic massmurderers who slaughter more or less helpless opponents who would never stand a chance.

Sebastian
2009-03-07, 10:11 AM
To make an example that always bother me, in 4e NPCs don't have healing surges, so by the RAW they are not able to use healing potions, that need to burn a healing surge to be activated, so I always wonder, who in heck bother to make all those healing potions the PCs find if nobody but an handful of PCs can use them?
There can be other examples but this is the one that sticks out more to me.

magic9mushroom
2009-03-07, 10:29 AM
I think the PCs should be treated as part of the world.

This means, among other things, that the PCs at lower levels will regularly run into stuff which is beyond their means to defeat, and that at higher levels they'll often run into stuff which is ridiculously easy to defeat.

You don't roll for everything every NPC does, because most of it is irrelevant to what's going on with the PCs and doesn't affect them. If a roll has no consequence, don't make it.

You do roll for important things that are nevertheless "offscreen", though.

Just my tired thoughts.

Morty
2009-03-07, 10:34 AM
But they aren't the same as regular people. The higher a PC advances in levels, the more they surpass everyone around them, until they eventually reach a state close to godhood.

So they're more powerful. Cool. But the point is, they might be more powerful, they're still a part of the world. Which means they should obey the same rules as everybody. They have better gear, better stats, better class abilities and so on, but you can still build an NPC that's completely indistinguishible from a PC build by a player, and that's what makes me feel as if my character is a part of a large world. Now, of course, 3rd edition D&D could make a much better job with it, without 20th level commoners and the like, but the idea is good even if the execution in one system is flawed.
And before anyone tries to pull out this strawman again, no, it doesn't mean that you should make rolls for all blacksmiths, bakers and so on. But they should be people just like the PCs, even if many times less powerful. And of course, it's even easier in systems in which PCs aren't as high-powered as in D&D. And rules being the same for everyone don't prevent you from focusing the game on the PCs.
For those who keep repeating that "having fun is the priority" - belive it or not, but for some people part of the fun is that their characters are a part of the world.
I realize perfectly that my arguments will fly right over the heads of everyone, but really, opening your mind a bit doesn't hurt. Honest. Maybe then you'll start to understand others' points of view instead of regarding them as "alien". Because to note, I understand why others don't give much of a damn for what I find important.

Eldariel
2009-03-07, 10:38 AM
I think the PCs should be treated as part of the world.

This means, among other things, that the PCs at lower levels will regularly run into stuff which is beyond their means to defeat, and that at higher levels they'll often run into stuff which is ridiculously easy to defeat.

You don't roll for everything every NPC does, because most of it is irrelevant to what's going on with the PCs and doesn't affect them. If a roll has no consequence, don't make it.

You do roll for important things that are nevertheless "offscreen", though.

Just my tired thoughts.

This. All of this. PCs are a part of the world and they better play by the same rules. Each to thine own, but I can't bear playing with rules where PCs are treated as somehow different with different abilities. They may be really good at what they do, but they should follow the same rules as other equally good people; they're special, but not unique.

FoE
2009-03-07, 10:52 AM
So they're more powerful. Cool. But the point is, they might be more powerful, they're still a part of the world. Which means they should obey the same rules as everybody. They have better gear, better stats, better class abilities and so on, but you can still build an NPC that's completely indistinguishible from a PC build by a player, and that's what makes me feel as if my character is a part of a large world. Now, of course, 3rd edition D&D could make a much better job with it, without 20th level commoners and the like, but the idea is good even if the execution in one system is flawed.

No. For me, it breaks verisimilitude to assume that anyone can do what the PCs can do. If this is a dangerous world, why isn't everyone picking up a few levels of fighter or cleric to defend themselves? Getting XP is as easy as killing a few kobolds, after all.

I want to think my PC is facing threats that are beyond the capability of most mortals to defeat, especially once you get into the high levels. I don't want to face down creatures that are "beyond the capability of most mortals in the world because they aren't a sufficient level, but if they just picked up a little more XP they could totally be taking this thing on".

Then what the hell separates a PC from the local pig farmer?

And I understand your points, Mort, but I don't agree with them. Don't assume that I can't.

Morty
2009-03-07, 11:06 AM
No. For me, it breaks verisimilitude to assume that anyone can do what the PCs can do. If this is a dangerous world, why isn't everyone picking up a few levels of fighter or cleric to defend themselves? Getting XP is as easy as killing a few kobolds, after all.

Because not everyone has the talent for such things, just like not everyone can be a wealthy politician or a famous actor. Many people who have the necessary talent or calling don't manage to get the training required. And even more people prefer to spend their lives quietly and peacefully, letting others risk their necks by fighting monsters.


I want to think my PC is facing threats that are beyond the capability of most mortals to defeat, especially once you get into the high levels. I don't want to face down creatures that are "beyond the capability of most mortals in the world because they aren't a sufficient level, but if they just picked up a little more XP they could totally be taking this thing on".

If PCs are facing "threats that are beyond the capability of most mortals to defeat" it means they're of rather high level. And even if PCs and NPCs work by the same rules, getting on such a high level isn't trivial. Even among adventurers there will be many who will say "Alright, screw this, I have a lot of money, I'll settle down because something finally eats me". And many are in fact eaten before they make such a decision.


Then what the hell separates a PC from the local pig farmer?

Desire to have adventures. Natural talent. Luck. Generally, all the things that make PCs adventurers rather than pig farmers.


And I understand your points, Mort, but I don't agree with them. Don't assume that I can't.

Well, my post was rather mean, that's true. But it's just that I'm quite sick of having to excuse myself for liking what I like.

Douglas
2009-03-07, 11:25 AM
To make an example that always bother me, in 4e NPCs don't have healing surges, so by the RAW they are not able to use healing potions, that need to burn a healing surge to be activated, so I always wonder, who in heck bother to make all those healing potions the PCs find if nobody but an handful of PCs can use them?
There can be other examples but this is the one that sticks out more to me.
Yes they do. Heroic tier monsters/NPCs have one healing surge, paragon have two, and epic have three (Monster Manual page 7).


No. For me, it breaks verisimilitude to assume that anyone can do what the PCs can do. If this is a dangerous world, why isn't everyone picking up a few levels of fighter or cleric to defend themselves? Getting XP is as easy as killing a few kobolds, after all.
So you go out and look for a few kobolds to kill. You're 1st level. You find, say, a group of 8 kobolds. They swarm you and kill you. How's that "getting XP" gig going for you?

Ok, so you get some buddies and go do it in a group, like all smart adventurers do. There's still a very high chance that you will die before you level up. Much higher than if you just stayed at your farm and grew crops.

Going out and levelling up is a very dangerous process. It may make you harder to kill eventually, but only at the cost of drastically increasing the chance that you will die very soon.


I want to think my PC is facing threats that are beyond the capability of most mortals to defeat, especially once you get into the high levels. I don't want to face down creatures that are "beyond the capability of most mortals in the world because they aren't a sufficient level, but if they just picked up a little more XP they could totally be taking this thing on".
There is nothing "just" about "just picked up a little more XP". Gaining significant amounts of XP at any level is either very slow or very very dangerous. Most people in the world just don't want to take the risk. Many of those who do, die. At high levels, the PCs happen to be in the very select group of those who both accepted the high degree of risk involved in adventuring and survived doing so.


Then what the hell separates a PC from the local pig farmer?
Willingness to risk death daily, and the luck to survive doing so. Neither factor is trivial.

Oh, and training if you accept what I think is the most common explanation for the difference between PC and NPC classes.

FoE
2009-03-07, 11:27 AM
If PCs are facing "threats that are beyond the capability of most mortals to defeat" it means they're of rather high level. And even if PCs and NPCs work by the same rules, getting on such a high level isn't trivial

Hell, MOST monsters in the D&D world are beyond mortal ability to defeat. Have you ever fought a bear? Could you? How about an owlbear? And that's a relatively low-level monstrosity.

And I'm not talking about going Epic. I just don't see why your local peasant doesn't level up a bit so he can actually protect his hovel from orcs.


Desire to have adventures. Natural talent. Luck. Generally, all the things that make PCs adventurers rather than pig farmers.

That I'll give you. But still, there must be something separating all those adventurers who get eaten and those who don't.


Well, my post was rather mean, that's true. But it's just that I'm quite sick of having to excuse myself for liking what I like.

Then what the hell are you doing on the Internet, then? We're all mad down here. :smalltongue:

magic9mushroom
2009-03-07, 11:30 AM
Hell, MOST monsters in the D&D world are beyond mortal ability to defeat. Have you ever fought a bear? Could you? How about an owlbear? And that's a relatively low-level monstrosity.

And I'm not talking about going Epic. I just don't see why your local peasant doesn't level up a bit so he can actually protect his hovel from orcs.

Because doing so takes years to decades of training, as the Starting Ages imply.


That I'll give you. But still, there must be something separating all those adventurers who get eaten and those who

In a world with consistent rules, luck, skill and training.

Knaight
2009-03-07, 11:31 AM
There is plenty separating successful adventures from unsuccessful ones, without having to have an edge in stats. First there is the matter of tactics, then there is stuff like reconnaissance, and of course luck plays its part.

Douglas
2009-03-07, 11:34 AM
And I'm not talking about going Epic. I just don't see why your local peasant doesn't level up a bit so he can actually protect his hovel from orcs.
See my post ending the previous page, just in case the page boundary made you miss it.


That I'll give you. But still, there must be something separating all those adventurers who get eaten and those who
Mostly luck. Adventuring is a very risky profession. Most 3.5 campaigns I have played in long enough to go through a significant rise in levels also had a significant character turnover rate due to character death.

Morty
2009-03-07, 11:35 AM
Hell, MOST monsters in the D&D world are beyond mortal ability to defeat. Have you ever fought a bear? Could you? How about an owlbear? And that's a relatively low-level monstrosity.

And I'm not talking about going Epic. I just don't see why your local peasant doesn't level up a bit so he can actually protect his hovel from orcs.

Who said he doesn't? Peasant hovels still have guardsmen. But I fell we're getting off-topic.


That I'll give you. But still, there must be something separating all those adventurers who get eaten and those who

Well, the metagame reason some are played by players and some aren't, but the in-game reason is being better at it. After all, PCs can get eaten too if they don't fight smart.


Then what the hell are you doing on the Internet, then? We're all mad down here. :smalltongue:

Most of the time, I talk to people who don't go all offended when they see someone thinking differently.

Drascin
2009-03-07, 11:39 AM
Personally, I tend to envision the NPC in question first, and then make a mechanical approximation of him. Simple as that. If there is a class combination that allows me to? He'll be a perfectly legal character. If not? Screw it, I'm statting him as a monster or whatever you want to call him, but certainly not a standard legal PC.

It's not like the players will know where those abilities come from anyway - there is little difference for a player between a spell or ability I just made up out of thin air and which his character doesn't know, and a spell or ability from an obscure sourcebook that he never read and his character doesn't know. He's not going to get access to either, and they're there just to flavor up the NPC and make him unique.

magic9mushroom
2009-03-07, 11:50 AM
Personally, I tend to envision the NPC in question first, and then make a mechanical approximation of him. Simple as that. If there is a class combination that allows me to? He'll be a perfectly legal character. If not? Screw it, I'm statting him as a monster or whatever you want to call him, but certainly not a standard legal PC.

It's not like the players will know where those abilities come from anyway - there is little difference for a player between a spell or ability I just made up out of thin air and which his character doesn't know, and a spell or ability from an obscure sourcebook that he never read and his character doesn't know. He's not going to get access to either, and they're there just to flavor up the NPC and make him unique.

See, I'd find that deplorable, because you're structuring the world around the PCs and plot rather than the other way around.

FoE
2009-03-07, 11:53 AM
Willingness to risk death daily, and the luck to survive doing so. Neither factor is trivial.

And that's the argument I use when people say "why doesn't everyone become an adventurer if the financial rewards are so great?" Because it is very risky, for sure.

kamuishirou
2009-03-07, 11:59 AM
My $.02.

I don't think it's a bad thing or a good thing. I think it's up to the DM. If I want to make some characters as a DM then I'll just grab some races that I want to use and make an NPC. I can do this in 4ed no problem. In fact, doesn't the MM give you details on various monster races so you can do such a thing? As a DM can't I just make a 5th level Goblin Shaman that is ruling over his 'regular' goblin buddies?

My problem with most of these arguments, is why do we limit ourselves to the system? The system is there as a tool, and as a DM, it's your tool to use and abuse as you see fit. I love 4ed, don't get me wrong, I don't dislike 3.5 suddenly. I just love the balance and team work that 4ed brings out.

Oh, and my $.02 about minions. They're exactly what they're called, minions. They're just little guys that are the true fodder. Do you expect every goblin to have 20hp and stand toe to toe with your Fighter or Ranger?

Just my $.02.

Morty
2009-03-07, 12:14 PM
Oh, and my $.02 about minions. They're exactly what they're called, minions. They're just little guys that are the true fodder. Do you expect every goblin to have 20hp and stand toe to toe with your Fighter or Ranger?


Not that there's anything wrong with feeling this way, but... do you really think noone who dislikes minions realize that and they just don't know what are they supposed to represent? And that as soon as you tell them, they'll understand everything and start liking them? Honestly?

Douglas
2009-03-07, 12:17 PM
Oh, and my $.02 about minions. They're exactly what they're called, minions. They're just little guys that are the true fodder. Do you expect every goblin to have 20hp and stand toe to toe with your Fighter or Ranger?
No, I don't expect every little goblin to stand toe to toe with a high level fighter and survive very long. I expect them to die in one hit, maybe two. I expect this (in my preferred paradigm, anyway) to be because the fighter is just doing that much damage with each hit, though, not because the rules have decreed that minions die in one hit.

Artanis
2009-03-07, 12:26 PM
Geez, I stop posting for the night to play some TF2, and look at how much this thing grows :smalleek:

On the other hand, most of the thread is largely reiterating my post.

Sebastian
2009-03-07, 01:02 PM
Yes they do. Heroic tier monsters/NPCs have one healing surge, paragon have two, and epic have three (Monster Manual page 7).

what? (check) oh, you are right. :smallredface:
Sorry.

Tengu_temp
2009-03-07, 02:18 PM
See, I'd find that deplorable, because you're structuring the world around the PCs and plot rather than the other way around.

I, on the other hand, find structuring the world around the PCs and plot crucial to have a good story - who cares if there is a large world with set rules that are never broken and everything written down, if the players have no impact on it and the story you say is uninteresting, because the DM concentrates on worldbuilding more than storytelling?

Winterwind
2009-03-07, 02:52 PM
Okay, let's go...


My view on this:
A) The rules define what is and is not possible in the game world for characters. If something is legal by the PC rules and your players decide to do it, then it works. If you as a DM rule that it does not, this still does not change the fundamental truth of the first sentence, as your new house rule is now part of the rules.
B) Any character's status as a PC or NPC should not by itself affect what is or is not possible for that character to do.
C) A and B in combination imply that the rules should make no distinction between PCs and NPCs and that (theoretically, in an ideal rule set) all typical PC and NPC activities should be accounted for in the rules somehow. Practically, many things are almost exclusively "off screen" NPC activities due to typical narrative structure rather than any actual rules concerns and can be glossed over. Anything that is actually addressed, however, should be the same regardless of PC status.C does not follow from A and B. All that follows is that the rules, no matter whether they distinguish between PCs and NPCs, should yield similar results for both, results that are indistinguishable for the characters themselves. That does not mean the rules have to be identical yet.


There is no need to actually simulate all NPC activities and roll dice for every blacksmith's daily craft - that would be an absurd amount of work to no practical benefit - but how an NPC functions "on screen" should be no different from how a PC functions and the theoretical possibilities should be no different whether an NPC is "on screen" or "off screen".If by "functions" you mean the results the rules yield, agreed. If you mean the rules themselves, I'll have to ask "Why?".


First, I don't think there's a definite "yes" or "no" answer. It depends on the system and the tone it tries to set, on what the players expect out of the game and their individual playing styles. Some people like to play big damned heroes, and for them there's systems like Savage Worlds and D&D 4E, where from the outset you're told "you're a big damned hero!". Some like to feel constantly threatened and hounded - for them the challenge lies in seeing how long they can have their shmuck of an avatar survive. For them, there's systems like Paranoia and Call of Cthulu.

That said, I myself fall on the "rule consistency" side of the fence, and here's why:

- Immersion. Yes, we all metagame on some level. In any given group, there's going to be people who lean more towards rollplay than roleplay, or the kind of player that memorized the bestiary and NPC creation rules by heart. So when I'm going to have them held up by a crazed junkie looking for a fix, who's waving around a sawed-off, I want everyone at the table do go "oh crap, this is trouble". Make the PC's significantly stronger than NPC's and I end up with the rollplayer going "bah, he only has a 15% chance to hit any one of us, and can't possibly do enough damage to kill someone, even on a critical". Make them significantly weaker, and I end up with the roleplayer asking "so why exactly is some street punk still standing after my gunslinger gentleman put half a revolver clip in his head?"I did not mean to suggest the power level between PCs and NPCs necessarily had to be different though. Power parity between PCs and NPCs is, indeed, only a matter of setting, premise and playstyle, but not inherently linked to parity in rules.


- Interaction. From my experience, player interaction with the world I create is, by and large, based on expectation. Unless I explicitly state otherwise, they assume that things such as gravity, air composition, day length, or taste of mutton are "earth-like". Almost all of their decisions will be based on such assumptions.
The rules governing the system, simply add another level of expectation. They expect consistency in how the system behaves, and consequently they expect that even unknown factors will behave in a way that is in some way governed by the system.
Say, that I have the BBEG scrying on the group to find out their plans to thwart him, and thwart them in turn. Once the players twig in to what is happening, they will assume that the ability to scry is supported by the system, and will seek methods to study it, disrupt it, block it, perhaps even subvert it. Which segues neatly into the third reason, that is:How would different rules for PCs and NPCs prohibit this though? The BBEG's doing would still be supported by the system - only, that the system would have a different rule set for PCs and NPCs. But still encompassing everything.


- Fairness. As a GM, it's my job to make sure the players have fun. Sure, I may fudge every so often in the interest of making a given fight more interesting, but by and large, I have an obligation to challenge the group without pulling stuff out of my Auxiliary Solution Storage. And if I have access to the same toolkit when it comes to designing NPC's, as the one that the PC's are using, I have to admit that it's far easier for me to "eyeball" the difficulty of the challenge, especially given that I almost always fiddle with things such as monster stats in order to make them more interesting and/or deter metagaming.This, I understand.


I would generally not actually roll dice for things like this, but I consider it important that the scene as it plays out is compatible with the rules - that playing through the scene by the rules with die rolls could reasonably result in the outcome described.Yes, I agree with that, at least sort of. I would reason the scene actually has to play out compatibly with the laws of nature of the given world - see my next point for further elaboration.


When a character is "on screen", NPC or not, the rules define his abilities. They are, in a way, the laws of nature as long as that character is being run by the rules and I honestly don't see any way to reasonably interpret them otherwise. Whatever fluff you attach to them, you can't deny that the rules determine the outcome of attempted actions in defined ways. It breaks verisimilitude to me that the laws of nature can change depending entirely on whether a character is a PC or NPC, or is on screen or off, or on who else the character is interacting with.I do not think the rules of an RPG are the laws of nature in this world, they are merely trying to generate an approximation thereof for the benefit of the players. And as such, it is perfectly fine to have different rules for PCs and NPCs, as long as both sets of rules attempt to approximate the same laws of nature.

The first goal of a good rule set is to approximate the game world's real laws of nature as best as possible. The second goal, however, is to be simple enough to not get unwieldy and uncomfortable to use and thus slow down gameplay and break immersion when players are forced to switch from roleplaying and wandering through the worlds created by their imagination to number crunching. Both goals need to be balanced against each other; the most accurate simulation of the world's laws of nature becomes worthless if it requires overly many dice rolls, table look-ups and complicated math at every step. The trade-off is, of course, that there may be situations where the rules fail to describe the game world accurately, and this is where loop-holes, weird aberrations of the system or simple inconsistencies come up and where the gamemaster has to intervene.

This means also, however, that, as the rules are a mere approximation to the laws of nature, the laws of nature do not change if one chooses to use a different approximation. The rules are only a convenience for the players, an attempt to relay the laws of nature as efficiently as possible. And this is why I believe different rule sets are fine for PCs and NPCs and do not affect the believability of the world in the slightest.


Rules like that are completely irrelevant to this debate imo. How you create a backstory is entirely different from rules that define what actions and events are possible and how the world works.Fair enough; I brought this up mainly because some previous posts were concerned with character creation as well.
I should note, however, that these are not mere backstory-creation rules. They have very severe mechanical effects - the entries in these random events read basically as "3 - you got into an ambush and barely escaped alive. You lose an arm, penalty to ability score X, Y and Z" or "11 - you commited some heroic deed, go up [ridiculous amount of ranks], [high number] bonus to ability A, B and C".


Minion is facing PCs. Minion is pushed off a ledge and takes falling damage. Minion dies.
Minion is facing commoner. Minion is pushed off a ledge and takes falling damage. Minion gets back up and beats up the commoner.

The exact same thing happens to Minion in both cases, but the difference between him dying instantly and being lightly bruised is essentially made by whether a PC is present or not. This breaks verisimilitude for me quite thoroughly and the minion mechanic is, in fact, one of the things I dislike about 4E most.This I would consider an example of the system breaking down, where gamemaster intervention would be necessary, such as I outlined above.


[...]
That said, the discussion about the role of gamemasters and players is definetly worth an own thread.Fully agreed, and I would gladly participate in such a debate. Anyway, thank you for outlining your stance towards it; I understand that better now, and I'm actually not sure if our position really is that different.


In the more abstract sense, colportage is used to describe a low quality narrative, often used in the Sense of "groschenromanhaft", oder "feuillentonistisch", slightly similar to the English [I]pulp and with a similar etymological background.Oh, okay. I had looked around for alternate meanings, in an attempt to figure out what you meant, but didn't stumble upon this particular one. Thanks.


There are two very different categories of situations here - there are on the one hand everyday actions, which just doesn't need to involve chance because they are too banal. Mechanisms like taking 10/20 are extremely helpful in this case. The other category are action where the plot just stops completely if they aren't done, or interesting and colorful elements of the adventure at hand . Getting in such a situation is a form of bad storytelling, but sometimes those situations occur (especially if use an adventure module, and try to keep to the plot). In that case, I think it is not that bad to be generous (I wouldn't make player actions auto-fail, only because that would shorten the plot. That would be betraying the player for their success, which would be unfair). Personally, I would rather see if I could find a way to improvise something that would take the failure into account, but keep the plot as intact as possible. Like, say, to use the example with jumping over the shark in the pool you brought up before, if they fail to accomplish that - who knows, maybe there is a pipe that leads out of the pool somewhere below the murky water? Not a safe way out for sure, but hey, after all they failed the check, and a furious escape attempt might be amusing to them.

Or maybe not. Teaching them that failure is without consequence kills all tension and fear in the long run, and without the proper mood, the story dies.

Depends on the exact circumstances really. :smallcool:


Yes, the characters are usually important characters for the game, but not necessarily the most important ones. For example in Pendragon, the player characters are never going to be as significant as Arthur, Gwenifar and Lancelot, for example. Most narratives include more and less relevant characters, and the more important ones are normally those who are featured stronger and are are presented with more details.Hmmm... what exactly do you mean with "important" here? If it is importance for the world the game takes place in, I fully agree, and pretty much said the same in my previous post. If it is importance to the narrative, then I will have to disagree with the example you gave, at the very least. A story featuring Arthur, Gwenifar and Lancelot could, but wouldn't have to focus on them. Even if they were accompanying the player character group at all times (or, more accurately, the player character group accompanying them), that still doesn't mean they would automatically be the story's main protagonists. A driving force, sure. The people who go through the most character development, from whose perspective the story is told, whose emotions and reactions are being explored? Maybe, but not necessarily. For example, in our group, very likely not.


I don't think that the players are limited to perceive or enjoy the plot through their characters alone. Obviously, this is an important influence, perhaps even the most important one, but not the only one. It is absolutely possible to completely enjoy the game on a metalevel without getting more attached to the character than to a pawn in a game of chess, for example in a very strongly tactical /hack'n'slash game, or an extremely plot-focused game, where every player takes more the role of a narrator and the characters are not attached to one single player at all. Immersion is a very common aim of the game, but not the only one. You shame me. And I used to take such pride in being aware of other playstyles. :smallredface:
Agreed, either of the playstyles you described here is perfectly possible and valid.
But, I believe I expressed what I really meant poorly in that previous post anyway. See above in this post where my response to douglas' second post is for an, I believe, much better formulation.


You wouldn't probably do this with most recruits, but for the big characters - the character's Commander, the big bad system lord or Vlad Ward, this may be different again. The question is not between PCs and NPCs but between main characters and support characters. That's true, but whether we debate "different rules for PCs and NPCs" and "different rules for different kinds of characters" doesn't make much difference, now, does it? :smallwink:


So they're more powerful. Cool. But the point is, they might be more powerful, they're still a part of the world. Which means they should obey the same rules as everybody. Whether this truly means that is what this discussion is about. I contest that claim. Obeying different rules does not make them be a part of the world any less. For a formulation of why I believe so that I am, for a change, reasonably satisfied with, see my response to douglas further up in this post.


They have better gear, better stats, better class abilities and so on, but you can still build an NPC that's completely indistinguishible from a PC build by a player, and that's what makes me feel as if my character is a part of a large world.You can do just the same when the NPC has different mechanics though. Oh, sure, the rules he obeys might be different, but how is that relevant when the results


Now, of course, 3rd edition D&D could make a much better job with it, without 20th level commoners and the like, but the idea is good even if the execution in one system is flawed.
And before anyone tries to pull out this strawman again, no, it doesn't mean that you should make rolls for all blacksmiths, bakers and so on. But they should be people just like the PCs, even if many times less powerful. And of course, it's even easier in systems in which PCs aren't as high-powered as in D&D. And rules being the same for everyone don't prevent you from focusing the game on the PCs.
For those who keep repeating that "having fun is the priority" - belive it or not, but for some people part of the fun is that their characters are a part of the world. Indeed - the part I don't understand, however, is why running under different rules would make them people who are not just like the PCs, or why the PCs would not be a part of the world anymore, as long as the different rules succeed at relaying the same in-game reality.


I realize perfectly that my arguments will fly right over the heads of everyone, but really, opening your mind a bit doesn't hurt. Honest. Maybe then you'll start to understand others' points of view instead of regarding them as "alien". Because to note, I understand why others don't give much of a damn for what I find important.Not only was this absolutely uncalled for, but such condescension is way below you, Mort. :smallfrown:

If my mind was not open, I would not have started this thread in the first place. I am not interested in convincing you to assume my position - contrariwise, all I want is to understand your point of view. Me saying that this point of view was utterly alien to me was not a form of derision towards your position - it was a description of how non-existent my current understanding thereof is, and accordingly how big my curiousity and wish to comprehend it are.

Of course, if you prefer to consider me dumb for not understanding you yet and just assume that whatever you say will go over my head and be incomprehensible to me anyway, be my guest.


This. All of this. PCs are a part of the world and they better play by the same rules. Each to thine own, but I can't bear playing with rules where PCs are treated as somehow different with different abilities. They may be really good at what they do, but they should follow the same rules as other equally good people; they're special, but not unique.Again, I don't see how different rules disconnect them from the world, automatically give them different abilities or make them somehow unique from an in-play perspective.


Most of the time, I talk to people who don't go all offended when they see someone thinking differently.I do not see anybody doing that here.

I do , however, see somebody who goes all offended when he sees somebody who does not understand his thinking yet, but desires greatly to understand it. :smallannoyed:


Personally, I tend to envision the NPC in question first, and then make a mechanical approximation of him. Simple as that. If there is a class combination that allows me to? He'll be a perfectly legal character. If not? Screw it, I'm statting him as a monster or whatever you want to call him, but certainly not a standard legal PC.

It's not like the players will know where those abilities come from anyway - there is little difference for a player between a spell or ability I just made up out of thin air and which his character doesn't know, and a spell or ability from an obscure sourcebook that he never read and his character doesn't know. He's not going to get access to either, and they're there just to flavor up the NPC and make him unique.Yes, this is pretty much what I mean.
What difference does it make when the character runs with different rules when it happens to be more convenient, and the players are not even going to notice?


See, I'd find that deplorable, because you're structuring the world around the PCs and plot rather than the other way around.I... really don't see how he is doing that with what he described in that post... :smallconfused:


No, I don't expect every little goblin to stand toe to toe with a high level fighter and survive very long. I expect them to die in one hit, maybe two. I expect this (in my preferred paradigm, anyway) to be because the fighter is just doing that much damage with each hit, though, not because the rules have decreed that minions die in one hit.But if you kill them in one hit anyway, what is bad about the rules simplifying the matter and just giving them one hit point each? The result, the thing that the player ultimately sees, the reality of the gameworld relayed by the rules, is exactly the same. Except the rules are simpler, saving time that can be used for other things.


Phew. I wasn't sure if I'd make it through all of that. :smallbiggrin:

Sebastian
2009-03-07, 02:56 PM
I, on the other hand, find structuring the world around the PCs and plot crucial to have a good story - who cares if there is a large world with set rules that are never broken and everything written down, if the players have no impact on it and the story you say is uninteresting, because the DM concentrates on worldbuilding more than storytelling?

The problem come when the players want, for any reason, to go outside the plot you thought up for them. then you either must make stuff up on the fly or try by drive them back into the plot either by strength or by guile. The world building approach works better in this situation because no matter where the PCs goes, there will always be some adventure waiting for them, and if there is not probably they will create one. :smallsmile:

Tengu_temp
2009-03-07, 03:07 PM
The problem come when the players want, for any reason, to go outside the plot you thought up for them. then you either must make stuff up on the fly or try by drive them back into the plot either by strength or by guile. The world building approach works better in this situation because no matter where the PCs goes, there will always be some adventure waiting for them, and if there is not probably they will create one. :smallsmile:

I've yet to encounter that problem, which leads me to believe that, if you craft a good enough story, the only players who won't want to follow them are those who only want to cause trouble - and who'd want to play with such people?

Saintjebus
2009-03-07, 03:12 PM
Why does it have to be either/or? When I DM, I tend to use a little bit of Schrodingers plot-the plot doesn't really exist until it happens. I have some NPCs that I haven't even statted out, or even considered what class they are. If I needed to, I could probably do it on the spot. I might use the monster creation rules, and my NPC would be a "monster." Or, I could eyeball a player class, and my NPC would be a legal "character." My NPC has the same capabilities, and interacts with the world the same way- the only thing that I have changed is how I get to that point. I've done both in one session. From my point of view? It was about the same. From the players point of view? Identical.

hewhosaysfish
2009-03-07, 03:34 PM
I do not think the rules of an RPG are the laws of nature in this world, they are merely trying to generate an approximation thereof for the benefit of the players. And as such, it is perfectly fine to have different rules for PCs and NPCs, as long as both sets of rules attempt to approximate the same laws of nature.

.....

This means also, however, that, as the rules are a mere approximation to the laws of nature, the laws of nature do not change if one chooses to use a different approximation. The rules are only a convenience for the players, an attempt to relay the laws of nature as efficiently as possible. And this is why I believe different rule sets are fine for PCs and NPCs and do not affect the believability of the world in the slightest.

This. Precisely this.

Whenever I see someone claims that the rules of the a game system are the "physics" of the game setting then I can't help but wonder about games set in what is supposed to be (or at least resemble) the real world.

Suppose I was invited to play in a one-off of NWoD mortals game where the PCs were all students at the local university and I created a character who was studying physics. What would this student see when he looked in his textbooks under "Gravity"?
Would he be told that "Newton discovered that humans take blah bashing damage for every blah metres fallen"? (I don't know the ST system too well. I doesn't matter.)
Or would he be told "Newton discovered that two bodies will be drawn together by a force proportional the the product of their masses and inversely proportional to this square of the distance between them"?

Can I have misunderstood what people mean so badly? Surely I must have because people cannot be espousing this as a way of making a believable and coherent game. If I were playing in that NWoD game and my character was learning game mechanics in his lectures then I wouldn't feel like we were playing in a reasonable facsimile of the real world; I would feel like I had taken an accidental left turn in Bizarro world.

Where have I gone wrong?

Douglas
2009-03-07, 09:42 PM
C does not follow from A and B. All that follows is that the rules, no matter whether they distinguish between PCs and NPCs, should yield similar results for both, results that are indistinguishable for the characters themselves. That does not mean the rules have to be identical yet.

If by "functions" you mean the results the rules yield, agreed. If you mean the rules themselves, I'll have to ask "Why?".
So you want indistinguishable results. The easiest way to get that is identical means, correct? Anything else would either not be truly indistinguishable or would be needlessly complex.


How would different rules for PCs and NPCs prohibit this though? The BBEG's doing would still be supported by the system - only, that the system would have a different rule set for PCs and NPCs. But still encompassing everything.
Either you get into why bother having two separate sets of rules with exactly the same results or how scrying works is materially different for PCs and NPCs.


I do not think the rules of an RPG are the laws of nature in this world, they are merely trying to generate an approximation thereof for the benefit of the players. And as such, it is perfectly fine to have different rules for PCs and NPCs, as long as both sets of rules attempt to approximate the same laws of nature.

The first goal of a good rule set is to approximate the game world's real laws of nature as best as possible. The second goal, however, is to be simple enough to not get unwieldy and uncomfortable to use and thus slow down gameplay and break immersion when players are forced to switch from roleplaying and wandering through the worlds created by their imagination to number crunching. Both goals need to be balanced against each other; the most accurate simulation of the world's laws of nature becomes worthless if it requires overly many dice rolls, table look-ups and complicated math at every step. The trade-off is, of course, that there may be situations where the rules fail to describe the game world accurately, and this is where loop-holes, weird aberrations of the system or simple inconsistencies come up and where the gamemaster has to intervene.

This means also, however, that, as the rules are a mere approximation to the laws of nature, the laws of nature do not change if one chooses to use a different approximation. The rules are only a convenience for the players, an attempt to relay the laws of nature as efficiently as possible. And this is why I believe different rule sets are fine for PCs and NPCs and do not affect the believability of the world in the slightest.
The rules are usually meant as an approximation of the actual laws of nature, yes, but they have the peculiar distinction of being able to override the supposed "actual laws" they approximate.


This I would consider an example of the system breaking down, where gamemaster intervention would be necessary, such as I outlined above.
In my view any time such blatant GM intervention is required it is a failure of the rules. It's fine if the rules say "this is freeform, just wing it". It's fine if the rules say "anything X levels below you dies in one hit", though I'd prefer that to be a natural consequence of other rules. It's not fine if the rules say "this guy dies in one hit from anything based specifically on his expected importance relative to the PCs".


You can do just the same when the NPC has different mechanics though. Oh, sure, the rules he obeys might be different, but how is that relevant when the results
But if the rules are different, then the results must necessarily also be different.


Indeed - the part I don't understand, however, is why running under different rules would make them people who are not just like the PCs, or why the PCs would not be a part of the world anymore, as long as the different rules succeed at relaying the same in-game reality.
If the rules are different then the result cannot be truly indistinguishable.


But if you kill them in one hit anyway, what is bad about the rules simplifying the matter and just giving them one hit point each? The result, the thing that the player ultimately sees, the reality of the gameworld relayed by the rules, is exactly the same. Except the rules are simpler, saving time that can be used for other things.
The result when a PC attacks them is the same, yes, but either the result when one of their buddies gets dominated and attacks (for example) is very different or you suddenly have to go back on your declaration of one-hit-kill. It's the difference between declaring "he dies in one hit because I say so" and declaring "he dies in one hit because you're that much more awesome than him, as measured by X".

You seem to agree with my statement that the laws of nature should not differ for PCs and NPCs, and that the results of the rules representing those laws should be similarly identical. I contend that said results cannot be dependably indistinguishable unless the rules that produce them are also identical. If the rules are different, then it is technically possible to conduct an experiment in game that will conclusively determine whether any given character is a PC or NPC. Any attempt by the GM to prevent such an experiment from working must necessarily involve altering the rules, and until and unless the alteration results in identical rules it will ultimately fail.


This. Precisely this.

Whenever I see someone claims that the rules of the a game system are the "physics" of the game setting then I can't help but wonder about games set in what is supposed to be (or at least resemble) the real world.

Suppose I was invited to play in a one-off of NWoD mortals game where the PCs were all students at the local university and I created a character who was studying physics. What would this student see when he looked in his textbooks under "Gravity"?
Would he be told that "Newton discovered that humans take blah bashing damage for every blah metres fallen"? (I don't know the ST system too well. I doesn't matter.)
Or would he be told "Newton discovered that two bodies will be drawn together by a force proportional the the product of their masses and inversely proportional to this square of the distance between them"?

Can I have misunderstood what people mean so badly? Surely I must have because people cannot be espousing this as a way of making a believable and coherent game. If I were playing in that NWoD game and my character was learning game mechanics in his lectures then I wouldn't feel like we were playing in a reasonable facsimile of the real world; I would feel like I had taken an accidental left turn in Bizarro world.

Where have I gone wrong?
In character awareness of the nature of the rules of the game as opposed to the laws of nature they represent is generally handwaved away.

The rules of the game are not the "physics" of the setting in the sense of them being what people learn about and discuss when studying. They are the "physics" of the setting in the sense of whenever you do something in game you look up the rules, not Newton's Laws, to determine what happens. The result should without exception be the same independent of PC/NPC status, and that requires identical rules.

Satyr
2009-03-08, 06:49 AM
Oh, and my $.02 about minions. They're exactly what they're called, minions. They're just little guys that are the true fodder. Do you expect every goblin to have 20hp and stand toe to toe with your Fighter or Ranger?

In a game of heroic fantasy like supposedly D&D, I expect the player characters to be heroic. Heroism is about overcoming obstacles and mastering challenges that are actually a challenge. So, when there is a conflict, I want the opposition to be significant enough to qualify as a challenge or an obstacle, and not a mere speedbumb. Slaughtering chanceles and more or less helpless goblins is as heroic as using mustard gas and has therefore no place in a heroic game.

Kaiyanwang
2009-03-08, 09:54 AM
PCs nad NPCs sould follow the same rules. This helps:

- Players in immersion. In each player there is a little bit of a metagamer, and the coherency helps, with other things, to keep the metagamer at bay.

- me as a DM, I want to play my NPCs as true creatures to roleplay, not as cannon fodder or similar crap.

Kaiyanwang
2009-03-08, 09:56 AM
It's not fine if the rules say "this guy dies in one hit from anything based specifically on his expected importance relative to the PCs".



This is the core of the issue IMHO.

Winterwind
2009-03-08, 12:15 PM
So you want indistinguishable results. The easiest way to get that is identical means, correct? Anything else would either not be truly indistinguishable or would be needlessly complex.

Either you get into why bother having two separate sets of rules with exactly the same results or how scrying works is materially different for PCs and NPCs.It doesn't need to be truly indistinguishable though - indistinguishable for all practical purposes suffices completely. It being possible to construct some weird special case where the rules will diverge that will never realistically come up within the game doesn't - or shouldn't, anyway - matter. The rules being easier to use, on the other hand, does.

It's all a trade-off. Every system needs to be balanced between accuracy of simulation and simplicity of use, and when in a situation it becomes prudent to lower one in favour of the other, then it is a good thing to do so.

I think Drascin gave a fairly good example of when an alternative rule set might be more handy and preferable to use, as long as it gave sufficiently similar results.


The rules are usually meant as an approximation of the actual laws of nature, yes, but they have the peculiar distinction of being able to override the supposed "actual laws" they approximate.Not necessarily, this depends on play style. If you prefer to stick to rules 100% of the time, that's your choice, and a perfectly valid one, but alternatives would be, for example, to swap them for a different rule set the moment they diverge too much from the "actual laws", or to drop the rules entirely and have the gamemaster take over.


In my view any time such blatant GM intervention is required it is a failure of the rules. It's fine if the rules say "this is freeform, just wing it". It's fine if the rules say "anything X levels below you dies in one hit", though I'd prefer that to be a natural consequence of other rules. It's not fine if the rules say "this guy dies in one hit from anything based specifically on his expected importance relative to the PCs".I'm of the mind-set that even in an excellent set of rules the gamemaster is to be expected to interfere all the time - I see rules as guidelines that shall help the group with playing, but they are no untouchable holy cows, and the fact there is a gamemaster, with all the flexibility that s/he allows for, is something that one should take advantage of.

But yes, I will grant you that this particular example can be considered as an example of these particular rules failing in this particular situation.


But if the rules are different, then the results must necessarily also be different.

If the rules are different then the result cannot be truly indistinguishable.Yes, but in my humble opinion, the actual question should be: Are the results so much different that it is not worth the increased simplicity and speed of use anymore? Are they sufficiently indistinguishable from an in-character point of view in a big enough majority of situations that the situations where they are indeed distinguishable can be put into the "And this, we let the GM solve"-box (which is always going to be there, no matter what the rules are and what they are concerned with).


The result when a PC attacks them is the same, yes, but either the result when one of their buddies gets dominated and attacks (for example) is very different or you suddenly have to go back on your declaration of one-hit-kill. It's the difference between declaring "he dies in one hit because I say so" and declaring "he dies in one hit because you're that much more awesome than him, as measured by X".Mhh, you're right. I guess the minion example may have been a poor one, then.

Though - regarding minions, there is, of course, also the point that these rules represent a narrative trope - the enemy goon who is there to provide tension in the story by sheer number, while at the same time emphasizing how awesome the protagonists are, like Star Wars stormtroopers, Indiana Jones Nazis or Lord of the Rings Orcs. In a story-telling, as opposed to simulationist approach, this may make sense - these creatures have the same function in the story as aforementioned examples, and the rules give one the tools to have them work like that. Of course, whether one wants a game in which this particular trope comes to use, or whether one finds the usage of tropes or this particular trope to be immersion breaking, is absolutely personal taste, and I can easily see why people would not want to use it - in fact, I probably wouldn't want to either in most stories.
This, however, I would still consider an example for when alternative rules for NPCs as opposed to PCs make sense. If one wants to use this particular trope, the rules are there and help one recreate it. If one does not, one does not have to use them.


You seem to agree with my statement that the laws of nature should not differ for PCs and NPCs, and that the results of the rules representing those laws should be similarly identical. I contend that said results cannot be dependably indistinguishable unless the rules that produce them are also identical. If the rules are different, then it is technically possible to conduct an experiment in game that will conclusively determine whether any given character is a PC or NPC. Any attempt by the GM to prevent such an experiment from working must necessarily involve altering the rules, and until and unless the alteration results in identical rules it will ultimately fail.Yes, I agree that the laws of nature should not differ for PCs and NPCs (unless, of course, the premise of the whole setting is that they do, but we are not discussing that special case here). As for the rest, see above.


- Players in immersion. In each player there is a little bit of a metagamer, and the coherency helps, with other things, to keep the metagamer at bay.Hmmmm... no. I still don't get it.
How can immersion suffer when the results that the players see are exactly the same? Chances are they won't even be able to tell under what kind of rules the particular character they are dealing with at the moment is run. And if they are indeed immersed, shouldn't they be thinking "Oh hell, there is a huge freaking fireball heading my way, scorching everything it passes!", rather than "Hmm, did he use a wizard's spell slot or a [Su] or [Ex] ability for that?"?


- me as a DM, I want to play my NPCs as true creatures to roleplay, not as cannon fodder or similar crap.Umm... and how do different rules for PCs and NPCs in any way turn into NPCs into not true creatures to roleplay, or shift them in any way to the role of cannon fodder or whatever you might consider similar crap? :smallconfused:

Artanis
2009-03-08, 12:28 PM
Hmmmm... no. I still don't get it.
How can immersion suffer when the results that the players see are exactly the same? Chances are they won't even be able to tell under what kind of rules the particular character they are dealing with at the moment is run. And if they are indeed immersed, shouldn't they be thinking "Oh hell, there is a huge freaking fireball heading my way, scorching everything it passes!", rather than "Hmm, did he use a wizard's spell slot or a [Su] or [Ex] ability for that?"?
It's like I said early in the thread: the rules, and thus the inconsistancies thereof, are in the back of a player's mind, whether they like it or not. For some, such as you and I, it doesn't matter one bit. For others, it does matter, sometimes to the point of breaking verisimilitude. There's no particular reason why some people can shunt that aside and others can't, it's just one of those things.

Winterwind
2009-03-08, 12:48 PM
It's like I said early in the thread: the rules, and thus the inconsistancies thereof, are in the back of a player's mind, whether they like it or not. For some, such as you and I, it doesn't matter one bit. For others, it does matter, sometimes to the point of breaking verisimilitude. There's no particular reason why some people can shunt that aside and others can't, it's just one of those things.Intellectually, I understand that concept. The problem is, I can't quite empathise with it. Usually, when somebody has a different perception or preference of something than me, I can at least comprehend how they arrived at it - I may not share their perception, but I can at least understand their reasons for choosing it.
In this case, I understand that somebody cannot forget the rules, but the part where my understanding fails is why they choose to not consider the rules as simply something meant to help them play the game as easily and comfortably as possible, rather than the laws of the world that have to be identical for everyone lest the world becomes inconsistent. I do see that they do that, I fully respect their choice to view the rules this way, but I cannot comprehend why they choose to do so. And hence, I feel there is something that escapes me yet - some element in their logic, their trail of thought, that I keep missing, and that I would require to truly empathise with their perception of the rules. My hope is that someone will be able to explain it to me in such a manner that it clicks and I finally see the merits in their perception of the meaning of the rules.

I really, really want to truly, fully understand why other people think the way they think - it is immensly helpful in other discussions, and it widens one's own horizons and gives one new points of view, allowing one to reevaluate one's own position and understand oneself better as well.



And secondly, there is also the matter that the existence of multiple different rule sets does not necessitate that the players are aware which one of them is being used by the gamemaster at any given point.

Artanis
2009-03-08, 01:24 PM
I really, really want to truly, fully understand why other people think the way they think - it is immensly helpful in other discussions, and it widens one's own horizons and gives one new points of view, allowing one to reevaluate one's own position and understand oneself better as well.
That's just it though: there is no real, objective "why". And I think that that is actually the cause of so much debate. Some people can shunt aside the rules, some people can't, but lots of people on both sides don't realize that they are not objectively correct.

And of course, with this being the internet, that leads to lots of accusations of people being deluded idiotic deviants :smallwink:



And secondly, there is also the matter that the existence of multiple different rule sets does not necessitate that the players are aware which one of them is being used by the gamemaster at any given point.
This I disagree with. You have to know what ruleset you're using in order to do pretty much anything. You can't play Exalted very well if you try to use a BESM character sheet, for instance, and god help you if you try to use Heavy Gear dice mechanics in a DnD session.

Winterwind
2009-03-08, 01:39 PM
That's just it though: there is no real, objective "why". And I think that that is actually the cause of so much debate. Some people can shunt aside the rules, some people can't, but lots of people on both sides don't realize that they are not objectively correct.

And of course, with this being the internet, that leads to lots of accusations of people being deluded idiotic deviants :smallwink:It may indeed turn out that the "Why?" cannot be found, but that doesn't mean we cannot try to search for it anyway. The search could prove quite insightful in its own right; I have, at least, already learnt a few things about my own position that I was not consciously aware of before. :smallwink:


This I disagree with. You have to know what ruleset you're using in order to do pretty much anything. You can't play Exalted very well if you try to use a BESM character sheet, for instance, and god help you if you try to use Heavy Gear dice mechanics in a DnD session.Ah, I guess I expressed myself unclearly there, then - actually, what I meant is, if there is, say, a complex rule set for PCs, a less complex one for NPCs, and a totally simplistic one for monsters, and each of them allows for some specific effect X, then when the players are confronted with an NPC who causes effect X to happen, they will have no way to know under which of these three rule sets the NPC is running. Thus, even if they were the kind of player who felt verisimilitude was disturbed by NPCs using a different rule set than PCs, they - by my understanding - should still not be bothered, as they couldn't know whether the NPC was not, actually, using the PC rule set.

My point amounts to - if the players don't know that the NPC is run under a different rule set than themselves, they shouldn't mind, as long as what arrives at their end looks the same as if he was run under the same rule set as themselves. And in this case, why shouldn't the gamemaster use a simpler rule set, if s/he was so inclined?

Yahzi
2009-03-08, 01:56 PM
I am curious, for supporters of the same-rules ideas who actually run campaigns instead of just playing, how far do you take this idea? If you plan a story around an assassin destabilizing a neighboring kingdom, do you make all the stealth checks, attack rolls, rolls for public reaction, et cetera?
No, of course not. You don't make the actual rolls.

But you do make the rolls possible, so that when your players ask, "How could this have happened?" you have an answer.

Some people might suggest that ""cause the DM said so" is a sufficient answer. But that does not leave the players any decisions to make. If assassins succeed whenever the DM says they do, then why bother to make any kind of preparations at all? All you can do is passively wait until the DM tells you if you've been assassinated.

On the other hand, if you know NPCs operate by fixed rules, you can build your own fortress so you're safe from at least low-level assassins. And many players enjoy building fortresses and all that goes with it. They like feeling as if they had some control over what happens in the world they live in. They like making an impact.

But you can't make an impact on a world that operates solely off of DM fiat. That's no longer collaborative story-telling; it's just story-telling.


That explains why the NPCs have to follow the rules. As for why NPCs have to follow the same rules as PCs, the answer is simple: the more different the PCs are than the NPCs, the more power they have. If your PC is the only person who can cast Remove Disease, then your PC's ability to affect the world he lives in is magnified drastically.

If you want to play Exalted, where your PCs are god-kings slumming it in the mortal realm, then fine: the PCs and NPCs live by different rules. But if you want your PCs to struggle against real difficulties and still triumph, then they have to live by the same rules. (Even then, though, there will be other Exalted beings who are NPCs, and you're right back to square one...)

Heck, I go so far as this: sometimes I let the players make re-rolls, for dramatic/heroic purposes (we call it the heroic re-roll). But when I do, I warn them that means that someday a BBEG they are fighting will get to make a re-roll too, for the same reason. In fact, the BBEG's get as many heroic rolls as they take. :smallsmile:

People like to play D&D, but they also like to win. And they prefer that their win at least appear to mean something. They don't want to win by DM fiat and they don't want to lose by DM fiat. And that means the rules have to be fixed, and the same for everyone; otherwise, it's just not as much fun.

Artanis
2009-03-08, 01:59 PM
True, if they don't know, it won't matter.

The problem is if they do know. It's not like it's something that the DM can hide away or something...if there's a monster, the players almost certainly know that it's built with whatever the monster rules are. Hell, a lot of players have been DMs. And all of that goes double if a player is interested enough in the rules to care in the first place.

Take yourself, for instance. You said you aren't "a DnD player", but you are (at least now) quite aware that many systems, including 4e, use different rules for PCs and NPCs.


Edit: Bah, ninjas :smallfrown:

Eldariel
2009-03-08, 02:05 PM
That's just it though: there is no real, objective "why". And I think that that is actually the cause of so much debate. Some people can shunt aside the rules, some people can't, but lots of people on both sides don't realize that they are not objectively correct.

To muddle the mixture a bit more, I personally don't fall into either of those camps. I really, really want everyone to play by the same rules, but I have nothing against DM handwaving some things for a good reason. Basically, I'm fine with DM handwaves as long as they're the exception, not the rule and fundamentally the same rules apply to everyone; to me it's logical and fair.

Sometimes screwing the rules makes for a better games, as long as they're usually followed and thus the idea of actually writing different rules for characters of different focus in the game just repulses me. The very idea of "how much screentime X gets" mattering for rules makes me vomit; when playing an RPG, the most important part for me is that there's a real illusion of a functional world that doesn't give a damn about the PCs until PCs make the world care - players watching a world through their characters' eyes really, really enhances the experience for me and I'm much more for the "playing to experience a fantasy world" than "playing to adventure"-school.

Winterwind
2009-03-08, 02:27 PM
But you can't make an impact on a world that operates solely off of DM fiat. That's no longer collaborative story-telling; it's just story-telling.Now this I have to adamantly disagree with. This would mean one could not make any impact on a world when playing freeform, and having played freeform quite frequently, I know with certainty that this is not true. :smallwink:


That explains why the NPCs have to follow the rules. As for why NPCs have to follow the same rules as PCs, the answer is simple: the more different the PCs are than the NPCs, the more power they have. If your PC is the only person who can cast Remove Disease, then your PC's ability to affect the world he lives in is magnified drastically.

If you want to play Exalted, where your PCs are god-kings slumming it in the mortal realm, then fine: the PCs and NPCs live by different rules. But if you want your PCs to struggle against real difficulties and still triumph, then they have to live by the same rules. (Even then, though, there will be other Exalted beings who are NPCs, and you're right back to square one...)

Heck, I go so far as this: sometimes I let the players make re-rolls, for dramatic/heroic purposes (we call it the heroic re-roll). But when I do, I warn them that means that someday a BBEG they are fighting will get to make a re-roll too, for the same reason. In fact, the BBEG's get as many heroic rolls as they take. :smallsmile:

People like to play D&D, but they also like to win. And they prefer that their win at least appear to mean something. They don't want to win by DM fiat and they don't want to lose by DM fiat. And that means the rules have to be fixed, and the same for everyone; otherwise, it's just not as much fun.All of this, however, merely means there should be rules for the NPCs (and this holds true only if the group wants it to be this way, as mentioned above, freeform is an option just as well) - it does not necessarily mean these have to be the same rules as for the PCs.

Note that different rules does not necessarily mean they have to be weaker, that they cannot be roleplayed, that they are pure cannon fodder, or any such thing. Nor does it mean there is, necessarily, anything the PCs can perform that the NPCs cannot.


True, if they don't know, it won't matter.

The problem is if they do know. It's not like it's something that the DM can hide away or something...if there's a monster, the players almost certainly know that it's built with whatever the monster rules are. Hell, a lot of players have been DMs. And all of that goes double if a player is interested enough in the rules to care in the first place.

Take yourself, for instance. You said you aren't "a DnD player", but you are (at least now) quite aware that many systems, including 4e, use different rules for PCs and NPCs.I guess this might be a difference in gamemaster-style. In the groups I played in, the gamemaster doesn't say what rules s/he is applying at any given time; s/he merely describes their results. S/he doesn't even put any effort into hiding what s/he is rolling dice for, it's just that nobody cares or pays attention - everyone just waits for her/him to continue with her/his decription of what is happening. If there was a selection of different mechanics available, there would be no way to tell which of them was applied in any given case. Knowing all the different options doesn't matter when one doesn't know which one of them is being applied.


Sometimes screwing the rules makes for a better games, as long as they're usually followed and thus the idea of actually writing different rules for characters of different focus in the game just repulses me. The very idea of "how much screentime X gets" mattering for rules makes me vomit; when playing an RPG, the most important part for me is that there's a real illusion of a functional world that doesn't give a damn about the PCs until PCs make the world care - players watching a world through their characters' eyes really, really enhances the experience for me and I'm much more for the "playing to experience a fantasy world" than "playing to adventure"-school.So... how do different rules for PC/NPCs, or different types of characters, break the illusion of a functional world for you specifically? Because I don't see how being of the "playing to experience a fantasy world"-school would be at odds with different rule sets. Rules (to me) do not make up a world, after all, they are just a handy tool to help the players figure out how lucky or unlucky their interactions with it turn out to be. The world itself runs just fine on its own, with no rules or dice involved.

Douglas
2009-03-08, 03:26 PM
It doesn't need to be truly indistinguishable though - indistinguishable for all practical purposes suffices completely.
Fair enough. However, what I perceive as the full extent of "all practical purposes" is large enough that achieving that without identical rules strikes me as rather difficult.

Using 3.5e for examples here:
An enemy just threw a big ball of fire at us. Someone made a spellcraft check and identified it as Fireball. It did about 20 damage. All of this information would be available in some form (perceived intensity of heat for the damage) in character. From this, following the PC rules leads to the out of character conclusions that a) the caster has access to spells of level 1-3 and is most likely an arcane caster, b) that was about his most powerful spell and he won't be able to cast it again very many times, c) assuming spellcasting is his main focus, he's about level 5 or 6 with hp commensurate with that number of d4 (maybe d6 for some builds) hit dice, a bad fort save, and good will. A knowledgeable and smart character would be able to make all of these conclusions in character as well, though c would be expressed differently - about X powerful, and not likely to withstand much physical punishment but strong of mind. He would then plan further battle tactics accordingly.

The party has detected an enemy scrying on them for hours at a time with far too great a success rate to be from a Crystal Ball, and they have determined that his power does not come from an innate (i.e. racial) ability. They conclude that the enemy can cast 7th level spells, either arcane or divine, and have an instant lower bound on his approximate power along with the fact that he's a primary caster.

Now, can you make a set of rules significantly different and simpler than the PC rules that would support all of these conclusions without being different just for the sake of difference?

Unless the game system maintains a high degree of separation between the vast majority of abilities in the game, the simple observation that a character has X ability at Y power level generally carries with it quite an array of implications about what else that character can do under any given set of rules. Making a distinct ruleset that both maintains that set of implications and is usefully simpler strikes me as a monumental task unlikely to be worth the effort, if it's even possible.

levi
2009-03-08, 04:08 PM
I think that using the same rules for PCs and NPCs is a good thing, because it simplifies things. Many game systems are very complex (DnD especially so) and seem to grow in complexity as time passes. In my opinion, anything that adds more complexity for no gain is not desirable.

For instance, I like d20, but it's a pretty complex system. One of the nice improvements in 3.5 over 3.0 was that some of the needly complexity was reduced (while some was added, nothing's perfect).

As an example, in 3.0, monsters got feats and skills in an unsystematic way. They simply had the ones they had and you had no way of figuring it. In 3.5, they changed this to use the same system as leveled characters (PC or NPC). I belive this was a great improvement.

If you build a monster in 3.0, you have to guess what level of skills and feats is proper, with very little guidance. In 3.5, it's simple. You do it based on hit dice, just like PCs do it based on level.

While both systems work, the 3.5 version of this is easier to use than the 3.0 version, which means the DM has less wasted time. DnD (in d20 based versions) actually have a very consistant ruleset with regards to PCs, NPCs, and Monsters.

The two main differences between monsters/NPCs and PCs are in the build rules rather than the play rules. These are, abilitties and weath/gear. NPCs generally don't get as good starting abilites and usually have signifigantly lower wealth. There are meta-game reasons for both of these.

The reason NPCs have lower stats is kinda artifical and not really needed. It's to give the PCs an edge, even when otherwise equally matched. I always found this to be pointless, so I build any NPC that matters using the elite rules, which negates this. (For NPCs that don't matter, I don't really build, I assemble them out of the (relatively) quick and handy charts in the DMG.)

The NPC wealth thing is more complex. While a large part of it is again to slant the power level, another part is to keep the PCs from gaining all that wealth when they kill said NPCs (which, often enough, is what PCs do with NPCs). As equipment is much of the powerlevel in DnD, and unlike the other powers is easily transferable, some means of keeping this in check is needed.

The major point about both of these differnces is that they're not really rules differences, they're power-level diffences within the same ruleset. Whether differing power-levels between NPCs and PCs are used is more a matter of game genera and style than actual rules, so I think can be safely ignored for this debate.

In DnD 3.x RAW, those are the only diffences I'm aware of. (If there are others, I'd really like to know about them.) However, in practice and in other game systems, there are some. The most common seems to be a means of dealing with minor enemies quickly.

In 4e, there's minions and other games such a d20 Star Wars have similar systems. In 3.x, most DMs don't bother with negative HP for minor adversaries. Both of these systems serve a single function, to simply combat handling for the DM. While that's a laudable goal, I think the effort is misplaced. If simplfication is really needed that badly, perhaps the entire system is too complex and needs to be simplified more broadly.

This brings me to another point. In systems with a large degree of rules differences between PCs and NPCs, the main reason for said differnces is to simplify the NPC rules to ease the DM's workload. As above, I think this is wrong. If complexity has become an issue, the system as a whole should be simplified. If you only symplify the NPC rules, the system has become even more complex and you're moving backwards, not forwards.

In my favorite system, BESM 3, everything runs on the same rules. Not only do PCs and NPCs use the same rules, but almost everything is very consistant. Everything (even gear) is bought with points and these points are the same for NPCs and PCs. This level of consistancy is very nice and provides much of the appeal of the system for me.

To summarize, PCs and NPCs should use the same rules, because it's simpler and consistant, which are, IMHO, positive gains.

trehek
2009-03-08, 04:16 PM
For me the problem isn't the fact that a PC and NPC can be handled under different rulesets at a given moment to keep the game going smoothly. Instead, the problem arises from the details that cannot be transferred from PC to NPC or vice versa. Example:

D&D 4.0 NPC rogues are not limited to one sneak attack per round. PC rogues are. Considering 2 brothers who became thieves with one of them a hero in the story, if they ever meet each other the NPC brother can sneak attack more effectively than the PC one. Then, if we rethink the story and say that we want the better sneak attacker to be the hero and roll him up as a PC, then suddenly the other brother becomes better at sneak attacking. The only difference is "who the camera is pointing at".

So, what I'm saying is that I am bothered about there being abilities that I can never learn, like they were something difficult beyond my characters comprehension, but then if I stopped playing my character could pick them up instantly (while probably losing some other abilities in the process).

Kaiyanwang
2009-03-09, 06:22 AM
Hmmmm... no. I still don't get it.
How can immersion suffer when the results that the players see are exactly the same? Chances are they won't even be able to tell under what kind of rules the particular character they are dealing with at the moment is run. And if they are indeed immersed, shouldn't they be thinking "Oh hell, there is a huge freaking fireball heading my way, scorching everything it passes!", rather than "Hmm, did he use a wizard's spell slot or a [Su] or [Ex] ability for that?"?


Is a matter of taste, maybe, but helps them to feel part of a world they interact with, and not thing around wich the world is built.

They are the main characters of teir story, but not the main characters of their world, we can say. Have character class make them more suitable for certain actions, but that's all.

More, mechanics matters. You cannot counterspell a fireball if is a (Su), following your example.



Umm... and how do different rules for PCs and NPCs in any way turn into NPCs into not true creatures to roleplay, or shift them in any way to the role of cannon fodder or whatever you might consider similar crap? :smallconfused:

- Help in roleplay because of the power source, as an example. See divine spellcasters. A cleric ask gods for miracles, a shugenja orders spirits to follow his commands. It helps me as a DM in what these NPCs say when cast spells, as an example. And there are mechanics about their power source increasing thei interaction with the world. They bot are likely to gain Taint casting spells in the shadowlands.

- A fighter with elusive target will negate the power attack of his fellow barbarian during training, as well as the power attack strikes of frost giants. You can roleplay this training. The passage from training to fighting make pefectly sense. You can see it, feel it.

Eldariel
2009-03-09, 08:21 AM
So... how do different rules for PC/NPCs, or different types of characters, break the illusion of a functional world for you specifically? Because I don't see how being of the "playing to experience a fantasy world"-school would be at odds with different rule sets. Rules (to me) do not make up a world, after all, they are just a handy tool to help the players figure out how lucky or unlucky their interactions with it turn out to be. The world itself runs just fine on its own, with no rules or dice involved.

Rules define the likely outcome of events and what sort of events might happen in the first place. As long as everything follows the same rule set, the results are logical and thus deductable for the PCs. This does not require any dice, but a simple approximation for most events. Different rules creates a disconnection here.

Winterwind
2009-03-09, 01:14 PM
Now, can you make a set of rules significantly different and simpler than the PC rules that would support all of these conclusions without being different just for the sake of difference?If I was sufficiently familiar with D&D and all the rules involved from determining this NPC can cast a fireball to finding out the damage inflicted, I would gladly try. Alas... :smallfrown:
Maybe somebody else involved in this debate can come up with such a set of rules (or judge whether this particular example is something where alternate rules would be sensible at all; if the original rules already were the pinnacle of simplicity, there wouldn't be much to improve, of course)?

I will try to come up with a good example to illustrate my point of view though.
Hmmm... actually, I think I have one now, look below.


This brings me to another point. In systems with a large degree of rules differences between PCs and NPCs, the main reason for said differnces is to simplify the NPC rules to ease the DM's workload. As above, I think this is wrong. If complexity has become an issue, the system as a whole should be simplified. If you only symplify the NPC rules, the system has become even more complex and you're moving backwards, not forwards.

In my favorite system, BESM 3, everything runs on the same rules. Not only do PCs and NPCs use the same rules, but almost everything is very consistant. Everything (even gear) is bought with points and these points are the same for NPCs and PCs. This level of consistancy is very nice and provides much of the appeal of the system for me.

To summarize, PCs and NPCs should use the same rules, because it's simpler and consistant, which are, IMHO, positive gains.I generally prefer simple systems as well, and would rather take one with short and simple rules for both PCs and NPCs than one with simple rules for the latter and complex rules for the former, but I know people who feel that a complex system for PCs gives them more tactical options (and I'm sure there are other reasons, too, why one might prefer a complex system). And yes, if the system in question already is simple enough, there is no reason to simplify it any further by creating a split.

On the other hand, one could devise a system built around PC and NPC seperation right off the bat, where it wouldn't be a mere simplification of overly complex rules, but a core tenet of the system itself. Would such a system be deplorable? Allow me to demonstrate an example:

In principle, there is no reason why one couldn't design a system where the PCs would be the only ones rolling dice at all - . The main purposes of dice and rules, after all, are protection of the players from gamemaster arbitrariness, mechanical distinction of the different abilities various PCs can have, and an element of randomness to make the game more interesting for the players.
NPCs need no protection from the GM, the element of randomness is mostly for the sake of interaction with players and unneeded for the GM as well, and I'll get to the mechanical distinction in a second.
How could this work? Well, let's say a PC thief was trying to sneak past an NPC guard - so the player rolls some test on his Sneaking skill, modified by a value depending on the NPC's Listen skill. If an NPC thief tries to sneak past a PC guard, the player rolls a test on his Listen skill, modified by a value depending on the NPC's Sneaking skill. The same for any other imaginable situation.
This would be an example of a simple system where PCs and NPCs function under different rules, yet obey the same laws of nature. Whether it is a skilled PC or NPC thief who tries to sneak past a nigh deaf PC or NPC guard, s/he will likely get past undetected, an inept thief will be likely detected by a vigilant guard.
Are the NPCs in any manner more cannon fodder or non-roleplayable, or any such thing because of this? Not at all, I'd say - the rules support them cheating, lying, fighting, scheming, creating astonishingly beautiful art, flirting or whatever else you desire. Could you conduct an in-game experiment to determine who is a PC and who is not? No - if the skills of the PCs and the modifiers the NPCs give to the skill checks the PCs have to roll scale evenly, the relative probabilities of anything happening scale the same. I don't see any way how these rules would distinguish the PCs or make them subject to different laws of nature, how they would be disconnected from the rest of the world. So - what is wrong with these rules, according to you (directed at all arguing in disfavour of different rules for PCs and NPCs, not levi specifically)?


For me the problem isn't the fact that a PC and NPC can be handled under different rulesets at a given moment to keep the game going smoothly. Instead, the problem arises from the details that cannot be transferred from PC to NPC or vice versa. Example:

D&D 4.0 NPC rogues are not limited to one sneak attack per round. PC rogues are. Considering 2 brothers who became thieves with one of them a hero in the story, if they ever meet each other the NPC brother can sneak attack more effectively than the PC one. Then, if we rethink the story and say that we want the better sneak attacker to be the hero and roll him up as a PC, then suddenly the other brother becomes better at sneak attacking. The only difference is "who the camera is pointing at".

So, what I'm saying is that I am bothered about there being abilities that I can never learn, like they were something difficult beyond my characters comprehension, but then if I stopped playing my character could pick them up instantly (while probably losing some other abilities in the process).Fair point. It would appear PC and NPC rule difference seems to cause problems of this sort more often than I thought, and I see why people would dislike that - still, it seems to me more like a case of these particular difference between PCs and NPCs being a poorly designed one, rather than a problem that is inherent and inevitable for all PC/NPC differences in general.


Is a matter of taste, maybe, but helps them to feel part of a world they interact with, and not thing around wich the world is built.

They are the main characters of teir story, but not the main characters of their world, we can say. Have character class make them more suitable for certain actions, but that's all.Yes, that's what you said in the previous post as well, but how does a difference between PC and NPC rules impact upon this? It's not like having a different rule sets makes them in any way the main characters of their world, or any such thing.


More, mechanics matters. You cannot counterspell a fireball if is a (Su), following your example. Alright; that would be an example of me not being familiar with the exact rules of D&D.


- Help in roleplay because of the power source, as an example. See divine spellcasters. A cleric ask gods for miracles, a shugenja orders spirits to follow his commands. It helps me as a DM in what these NPCs say when cast spells, as an example. And there are mechanics about their power source increasing thei interaction with the world. They bot are likely to gain Taint casting spells in the shadowlands.

- A fighter with elusive target will negate the power attack of his fellow barbarian during training, as well as the power attack strikes of frost giants. You can roleplay this training. The passage from training to fighting make pefectly sense. You can see it, feel it.Uh? :smallconfused:
Pardon me, but I really do not understand what you are trying to say here. What does any of this have to do with PCs and NPCs following the same rules?


Rules define the likely outcome of events and what sort of events might happen in the first place. As long as everything follows the same rule set, the results are logical and thus deductable for the PCs. This does not require any dice, but a simple approximation for most events. Different rules creates a disconnection here.This can happen, and if it does, it is unfortunate, but I don't see why it couldn't be avoided.

THAC0
2009-03-09, 01:50 PM
While both systems work, the 3.5 version of this is easier to use than the 3.0 version, which means the DM has less wasted time. DnD (in d20 based versions) actually have a very consistant ruleset with regards to PCs, NPCs, and Monsters.

Emphasis mine. I'll come back to this shortly.



In 4e, there's minions and other games such a d20 Star Wars have similar systems. In 3.x, most DMs don't bother with negative HP for minor adversaries. Both of these systems serve a single function, to simply combat handling for the DM. While that's a laudable goal, I think the effort is misplaced. If simplfication is really needed that badly, perhaps the entire system is too complex and needs to be simplified more broadly.

This brings me to another point. In systems with a large degree of rules differences between PCs and NPCs, the main reason for said differnces is to simplify the NPC rules to ease the DM's workload. As above, I think this is wrong. If complexity has become an issue, the system as a whole should be simplified. If you only symplify the NPC rules, the system has become even more complex and you're moving backwards, not forwards.

Alright, now I'm confused. Which is it?

I have to disagree with your assessment on 4e complexity. I think most of us would agree that 4e is a significantly less complex system than 3e, whether or not we agree that this is a good thing or a bad thing.

Simplifying NPC creation is a huge benefit, especially to us old folks who are working jobs and have families and don't have the endless hours we had in college to make NPCs that are going to be killed two rounds into the fight.

Additionally, I do not believe that minions are there to simplify combat. They're there to provide a more cinematic style of combat. Whether or not you like that is up to you, of course, but it's certainly not related to the complexity of the system. IMO.

Morty
2009-03-09, 01:54 PM
First I'd like to apologize for my earlier being an a**hole. I'd say it won't happen again, but I'd be lying. Anyway, I'd bow out of the discussion, but I want to adress some points.



Fair point. It would appear PC and NPC rule difference seems to cause problems of this sort more often than I thought, and I see why people would dislike that - still, it seems to me more like a case of these particular difference between PCs and NPCs being a poorly designed one, rather than a problem that is inherent and inevitable for all PC/NPC differences in general.


See, the thing is: if NPCs and PCs obey the same rules, you don't have to care whether the difference is well-designed or not. As long as the rules for PCs work as they're supposed to, you can apply them to NPCs safely. And nothing stops a GM from ignoring some rules if they're unnecessary at the moment. I firmly believe that it's better to have an option you can ignore than not have an option at all.

Douglas
2009-03-09, 02:00 PM
In principle, there is no reason why one couldn't design a system where the PCs would be the only ones rolling dice at all
This is, actually, an official variant (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/playersRollAllTheDice.htm) for D&D 3.5, and it's one I have no problem with. All it changes is the method of evaluating a random outcome, however, not any of the possibilities for the outcome or the probability of each one happening. In a way, I regard the "real" rule to be that, given the numbers involved, the chance of success is X. The means of generating the random outcome is irrelevant as long as it has the correct probability distribution.

The abilities available to characters, the implications between abilities like those I mentioned in my previous post, and the effects and limitations of those abilities need to be independent of PC/NPC status. In a system as complex and interrelated as D&D 3.5, maintaining that completely with two distinct rulesets is virtually impossible. D&D 4E has two distinct rulesets for PCs and NPCs, and it utterly fails all three criteria. I still play it and enjoy it, but the discrepancy is always in the back of my mind annoying me. There may be systems out there that achieve that independence despite NPC rules that differ in more than how to generate a random outcome with the same probability, but I am not aware of any and I would be surprised if any such system were complex enough to interest me without being mostly freeform.

Sir Homeslice
2009-03-09, 02:24 PM
PCs nad NPCs sould follow the same rules. This helps:

- Players in immersion. In each player there is a little bit of a metagamer, and the coherency helps, with other things, to keep the metagamer at bay.

Forgive me if I am jumping in blindly, but this post irritates me so much I feel the need to reply.

"Immersion" and the breaking thereof when a person "finds something that breaks their preconception of reality" is (I apologize) a crock of the finest fecal matter possible, strained through the pubic hairs of a well used hooker.

"Immersion" is only "broken" when a person "meets something that seems to defy all reality" actually means that their "immersion" is "broken" because they simply to refuse that what broke their reality is possible. Instead of rationally justifying it, they hide behind their own curtain of utter lies. In a fantasy realm where mortal men can become gods, men who have done nothing but study and apply theory can shatter reality via "magic" and gods are a very tangible force, channeled through lesser, but pious men, and lizards that biologically simply cannot exist except by "magic,: the idea of having PC stats and NPC stats differing and breaking "immersion" is utterly ridiculous.

What is to say that every creature studies the same sword as the player's fighter, or learns the same magics? Do races and people not have their own culture to learn from? I find that NPCs and PCs sharing the same stats in of itself "immersion" breaking in the sense that everything is uniform, there are no real racial differences.

"Immersion" being "broken" is simply someone who refuses to imagine things how they can be, or to sit down and think about the in-game ramifications of how and why. A cheap copout, if you will.


- me as a DM, I want to play my NPCs as true creatures to roleplay, not as cannon fodder or similar crap.

This I do not understand either. PC and NPC stats being used in differing mechanics do not mean you are suddenly stripped of your chances to roleplay, or to have a truly fearsome opponent. As I have said before, the differing mechanics I find help to roleplay, or to create a mountain of a man.

I believe that you simply think minions are the same as all NPCs, or somesuch? Because a minion to a PC is an enemy weak enough, or simply not powerful enough to last in a large skirmish. One man's minion is another man's elite.

I am simply going off of what I have read, perhaps if you could elaborate your position?

Winterwind
2009-03-09, 02:59 PM
First I'd like to apologize for my earlier being an a**hole. I'd say it won't happen again, but I'd be lying. Anyway, I'd bow out of the discussion, but I want to adress some points.That's fine, nevermind. And if what I said was unclear and contributed to the misunderstanding, I would like to apologize as well. :smallsmile:


See, the thing is: if NPCs and PCs obey the same rules, you don't have to care whether the difference is well-designed or not. As long as the rules for PCs work as they're supposed to, you can apply them to NPCs safely. And nothing stops a GM from ignoring some rules if they're unnecessary at the moment. I firmly believe that it's better to have an option you can ignore than not have an option at all.With that, I agree. I do not claim different rules for PCs and NPCs cannot cause problems, nor do I claim having different rules is always advantageous or desirable - in many systems, it might well be utterly pointless or outright harmful. All I want to investigate is whether it cannot be a useful and desirable thing in other circumstances, and what general objections, non specific to any particular system or instance of rules, people have to such a system.


This is, actually, an official variant (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/playersRollAllTheDice.htm) for D&D 3.5, and it's one I have no problem with. All it changes is the method of evaluating a random outcome, however, not any of the possibilities for the outcome or the probability of each one happening. In a way, I regard the "real" rule to be that, given the numbers involved, the chance of success is X. The means of generating the random outcome is irrelevant as long as it has the correct probability distribution.Yeah, this seems to be quite exactly what I meant.
I would consider this an example of different rules for PCs and NPCs though - if PCs roll dice, and NPCs only supply modifiers, then the mechanics are quite clearly different for the two, even though the results are exactly the same.


The abilities available to characters, the implications between abilities like those I mentioned in my previous post, and the effects and limitations of those abilities need to be independent of PC/NPC status. In a system as complex and interrelated as D&D 3.5, maintaining that completely with two distinct rulesets is virtually impossible. D&D 4E has two distinct rulesets for PCs and NPCs, and it utterly fails all three criteria. I still play it and enjoy it, but the discrepancy is always in the back of my mind annoying me. There may be systems out there that achieve that independence despite NPC rules that differ in more than how to generate a random outcome with the same probability, but I am not aware of any and I would be surprised if any such system were complex enough to interest me without being mostly freeform.Alright - this seems to be a matter of personal preference and practical implementation of the rules in question. Note I never argued 4e was doing it right (nor wrong - I simply wouldn't know, not being familiar with the system), just that a system doing it right would be, at least in theory, perfectly possible.

Doug Lampert
2009-03-09, 05:31 PM
D&D 4.0 NPC rogues are not limited to one sneak attack per round. PC rogues are.

Wrong. The NPC rogue gets the same exact sneak attack class feature as the PC. The DMG references the PHB for how it works.

Many Lurker Monsters WHO ARE NOT ROGUES get +nd6 to all attacks with combat advantage. But their training is quite different from a PC rogue's.

DougL

FatR
2009-03-10, 03:47 AM
Hell, MOST monsters in the D&D world are beyond mortal ability to defeat. Have you ever fought a bear? Could you? How about an owlbear? And that's a relatively low-level monstrosity.

And I'm not talking about going Epic. I just don't see why your local peasant doesn't level up a bit so he can actually protect his hovel from orcs.
Maybe that's because he earns 1sp per day, spends 1sp per day to feed himself and even low-budget adventurer's equipment easily costs 100 gp or more? Initial investment in a 1st level adventurer is massive, if we stop measuring things by standards of the people that practically are the armed forces of their countries and have appropriate sums of money to spend.


That I'll give you. But still, there must be something separating all those adventurers who get eaten and those who don't.
Wits and luck. Wits to pick a fights they can win, luck to avoid situations where they cannot do so (or deaths from random crits).
Then what the hell are you doing on the Internet, then? We're all mad down

horseboy
2009-03-10, 05:20 AM
There is nothing "just" about "just picked up a little more XP". Gaining significant amounts of XP at any level is either very slow or very very dangerous. Most people in the world just don't want to take the risk. Many of those who do, die. At high levels, the PCs happen to be in the very select group of those who both accepted the high degree of risk involved in adventuring and survived doing so.
Of course, what with surviving all the goblinoid raids on small villages, it's not that much more dangerous. Heck, given 3.x's rule set how are they even able to hide under the bed successfully? If they have to actually follow the rules, they can't successfully hide from the greenskins. Not having a frankly stupid rule in the way means they can actually survive.

My problem with most of these arguments, is why do we limit ourselves to the system? Because 3.x system gets in the way so much that you've either got to completely rewrite the system or abide by it's goofy arbitrariness.

Oh, and my $.02 about minions. They're exactly what they're called, minions. They're just little guys that are the true fodder. Do you expect every goblin to have 20hp and stand toe to toe with your Fighter or Ranger?
Well, given that I still think of goblins to have d8-1hp's. :smallamused: But seriously, I consider minions workarounds for a legacy of crappy damage mechanics.

Generally Players can have more detailed systems because they're done by one person the Player. NPC's get a glossed over system because the GM is one person playing dozens of characters. When this started being "teh issue" I actually stated up a bar wench for the first time. Took me about 45 minutes to make a bar wench, and I'm good at making Rolemaster characters. Nope, it's just way easier to grab a # since it may not even matter if the players don't decide to do something that I'd need to know her stats for.

Thurbane
2009-03-10, 08:56 PM
Speaking for myself, I like to have NPCs follow the same game rules as PCs, but their motivation can vary wildly. As a DM, however, I am guilty of occasionally handwaving things for NPCs, if I think it will make for a more interesting encounter...

Not that I've played much, but one of my big problems with 4E was the "mook" rules (or whatever it's called) that means PCs can face hoards of opponents with a handful of hit points. There's nothing fundamentally "wrong" with these rules, they just don't fit the type of game I enjoy running or playing in. While a large group of villains falling over after one blow might work in a Chuck Norris movie, it doesn't generate the type of atmosphere I want in my D&D games.

To sum it up, I prefer NPCs to follow the same rules as PCs, allowing for the occasional DM fiat.

The New Bruceski
2009-03-11, 01:29 AM
Not that I've played much, but one of my big problems with 4E was the "mook" rules (or whatever it's called) that means PCs can face hoards of opponents with a handful of hit points. There's nothing fundamentally "wrong" with these rules, they just don't fit the type of game I enjoy running or playing in. While a large group of villains falling over after one blow might work in a Chuck Norris movie, it doesn't generate the type of atmosphere I want in my D&D games.


Good thing they're not mandatory, huh? They're a tool to have large numbers of enemies that can threaten the players but get cut through easily per creature. If you don't have that your choices are enemies weak enough to die quickly but too low level to hit, or strong enough to hit, but so slow to kill they overwhelm the players.

...but if you don't like them, don't use them. Not every Photoshop project needs every single button. What I don't get is how is seems that their very potential existence makes a system flawed. (Fake edit: directed at the thread in general, not your post.)

Thurbane
2009-03-12, 04:01 AM
To be honest, I haven't played enough 4E to really know the rules - I had no idea that was optional. I just know what I like, and what I don't: the (limited) sessions of 4E I've played haven't been as enjoyable for me as my 3.5, 2E or 1E sessions.

4E isn't better or worse than any other edition IMHO, just different. But it's also not to my taste. :smallwink: