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Kyeudo
2008-01-04, 01:24 AM
I can't believe that someone hasn't posted this already, but they now have a new article up about how they are revamping traps.

For those with no subscription, here's a copy:

Traps have been a part of the Dungeons & Dragons game since its earliest days, fiendish perils that stood right alongside monsters as primary hazards to adventurer life and limb. Some adventures, like the classic Tomb of Horrors, featured traps as the chief threat to life and appendage. Unfortunately, they've rarely had a positive effect on the game. In the early days, DMs all too often felt compelled to demonstrate their cleverness and punish players for making "wrong" choices -- even a choice as simple and random as which passage to explore. Old-school players in the hands of such a DM responded by changing their characters' approach to dungeon exploration. The "right" way to play the game was to slowly and laboriously search each 10-foot square of dungeon before you set foot on it, or to use magic that made traps completely pointless. Neither option was much fun.

By the time 3rd Edition rolled around, traps had become a much smaller part of the game, something you might run across once or twice in an adventure -- and rarely very satisfying when you did. Who wants to roll an endless series of mostly pointless Search checks? If the players decided to simply explore the dungeon and search for the "fun" and got whacked by a trap instead, they felt like they'd been sandbagged by the DM.

Consequently, we thought about simply "disappearing" traps from the game, but then we decided to take a shot at fixing them first. Making traps work right certainly offered some significant upside. Traps are a good way to showcase skills. They're a good way to introduce puzzle-solving into the occasional encounter. They're an excellent way to complicate an otherwise bland combat encounter and add a highly interesting hazard that players can exploit -- or must avoid. And sometimes it simply makes sense in the context of the story that the builders of a dungeon might have built a trap to guard something.

The first thing we did was spend more time and attention on traps as components of existing combat encounters, or as multi-component encounters in and of themselves. The Encounter Trap system described in the Eberron sourcebook Secrets of Xen'drik offered a great starting point. By treating a trap like a group of monsters with different components operating on different initiative scores, a trap became a real encounter rather than random damage. Most traps work best when they "replace" a monster in a combat encounter, or serve as a hazard equally threatening to both sides. We think that our ideal encounter consists of some of the PCs battling monsters while some PCs deal with a trap or similar hazard. Meanwhile, everyone on both sides of the battle must contend with some sort of interesting terrain element (although the advantage probably lies with the monsters there -- after all, this is their home). In this way, traps become an integral component of an encounter, rather than an afterthought or something a bored DM springs on unsuspecting PCs between fights.

The second significant change to traps in the game is changing the way we look at searching and exploring. Rather than requiring the players to announce when and where they were searching, we decided to assume that all characters are searching everything all the time. In other words, players don't need to say "I'm searching for secret doors," or "I'm searching for traps." Instead, characters have a passive Perception score that represents their Take-10 result for searching. When something hidden is in the area, the DM compares the passive Perception scores of the PCs with the DCs of the various hidden things in the area. In the case of hidden creatures, the DC is the result of their Stealth check. For things like hidden traps, hazards, or secret doors, the DC is usually static.

While Perception is usually the most important skill when it comes to sussing out a trap, it's not the only skill useful in determining the danger of traps. Based on the nature of the trap, skills such as Arcana, Dungeoneering, or even Nature can give a PC the ability to learn of the existence of a trap, figure out its workings, or even find a way to counter it.

Lastly, we wanted to expand the ways in which you could counter a trap. Much like figuring out that sometimes you wanted other skills to allow a character to recognize a trap's threat, we made an effort to design traps that could be countered with an interesting skill uses. Sometimes we're pointing out what should be obvious, such as that an Acrobatics check can be used to jump over a pit; other times we're going to expand the uses of some skills with opportunistic exceptions, like granting a skill check that gives the characters insight on how a trap acts and ascertain something about its attack pattern.

Don't fret, rogue fans. That class and other characters trained in Thievery are still the party's best hope to shut down traps quickly and well. The goal was to make traps something that could be countered when a party lacks a rogue or the rogue is down for the count, not to mention make traps more dynamic and fun. In doing this, we quickly came to the realization that canny players, in a flash of inspiration, can come up with interesting solutions to counter even the most detailed traps. Instead of trying to anticipate these flashes though design, we give you, the DM, the ability to react to player insight with a host of tools and general DCs that allow you to say "Yes, you can do that, and here's how." We think this is a better approach than shutting down good ideas from the players for interesting story and challenge resolution, simply because you lack the tools to interpret their actions. After all, you should have the ability to make the changes on the fly that reward interesting ideas and good play. This is one of the components of every Dungeons & Dragons game that allow each session to be a fun and unique experience. Traps, like all things in the game, should embrace that design philosophy.


I like the new philosophy. No more only including secret doors just for the elves in the party.

horseboy
2008-01-04, 01:41 AM
I can't believe that someone hasn't posted this already, but they now have a new article up about how they are revamping traps.

For those with no subscription, here's a copy:

Traps have been a part of the Dungeons & Dragons game since its earliest days, fiendish perils that stood right alongside monsters as primary hazards to adventurer life and limb. Some adventures, like the classic Tomb of Horrors, featured traps as the chief threat to life and appendage. Unfortunately, they've rarely had a positive effect on the game. In the early days, DMs all too often felt compelled to demonstrate their cleverness and punish players for making "wrong" choices -- even a choice as simple and random as which passage to explore. Old-school players in the hands of such a DM responded by changing their characters' approach to dungeon exploration. The "right" way to play the game was to slowly and laboriously search each 10-foot square of dungeon before you set foot on it, or to use magic that made traps completely pointless. Neither option was much fun.

By the time 3rd Edition rolled around, traps had become a much smaller part of the game, something you might run across once or twice in an adventure -- and rarely very satisfying when you did. Who wants to roll an endless series of mostly pointless Search checks? If the players decided to simply explore the dungeon and search for the "fun" and got whacked by a trap instead, they felt like they'd been sandbagged by the DM.

Consequently, we thought about simply "disappearing" traps from the game, but then we decided to take a shot at fixing them first. Making traps work right certainly offered some significant upside. Traps are a good way to showcase skills. They're a good way to introduce puzzle-solving into the occasional encounter. They're an excellent way to complicate an otherwise bland combat encounter and add a highly interesting hazard that players can exploit -- or must avoid. And sometimes it simply makes sense in the context of the story that the builders of a dungeon might have built a trap to guard something.

The first thing we did was spend more time and attention on traps as components of existing combat encounters, or as multi-component encounters in and of themselves. The Encounter Trap system described in the Eberron sourcebook Secrets of Xen'drik offered a great starting point. By treating a trap like a group of monsters with different components operating on different initiative scores, a trap became a real encounter rather than random damage. Most traps work best when they "replace" a monster in a combat encounter, or serve as a hazard equally threatening to both sides. We think that our ideal encounter consists of some of the PCs battling monsters while some PCs deal with a trap or similar hazard. Meanwhile, everyone on both sides of the battle must contend with some sort of interesting terrain element (although the advantage probably lies with the monsters there -- after all, this is their home). In this way, traps become an integral component of an encounter, rather than an afterthought or something a bored DM springs on unsuspecting PCs between fights.

The second significant change to traps in the game is changing the way we look at searching and exploring. Rather than requiring the players to announce when and where they were searching, we decided to assume that all characters are searching everything all the time. In other words, players don't need to say "I'm searching for secret doors," or "I'm searching for traps." Instead, characters have a passive Perception score that represents their Take-10 result for searching. When something hidden is in the area, the DM compares the passive Perception scores of the PCs with the DCs of the various hidden things in the area. In the case of hidden creatures, the DC is the result of their Stealth check. For things like hidden traps, hazards, or secret doors, the DC is usually static.

While Perception is usually the most important skill when it comes to sussing out a trap, it's not the only skill useful in determining the danger of traps. Based on the nature of the trap, skills such as Arcana, Dungeoneering, or even Nature can give a PC the ability to learn of the existence of a trap, figure out its workings, or even find a way to counter it.

Lastly, we wanted to expand the ways in which you could counter a trap. Much like figuring out that sometimes you wanted other skills to allow a character to recognize a trap's threat, we made an effort to design traps that could be countered with an interesting skill uses. Sometimes we're pointing out what should be obvious, such as that an Acrobatics check can be used to jump over a pit; other times we're going to expand the uses of some skills with opportunistic exceptions, like granting a skill check that gives the characters insight on how a trap acts and ascertain something about its attack pattern.

Don't fret, rogue fans. That class and other characters trained in Thievery are still the party's best hope to shut down traps quickly and well. The goal was to make traps something that could be countered when a party lacks a rogue or the rogue is down for the count, not to mention make traps more dynamic and fun. In doing this, we quickly came to the realization that canny players, in a flash of inspiration, can come up with interesting solutions to counter even the most detailed traps. Instead of trying to anticipate these flashes though design, we give you, the DM, the ability to react to player insight with a host of tools and general DCs that allow you to say "Yes, you can do that, and here's how." We think this is a better approach than shutting down good ideas from the players for interesting story and challenge resolution, simply because you lack the tools to interpret their actions. After all, you should have the ability to make the changes on the fly that reward interesting ideas and good play. This is one of the components of every Dungeons & Dragons game that allow each session to be a fun and unique experience. Traps, like all things in the game, should embrace that design philosophy.


I like the new philosophy. No more only including secret doors just for the elves in the party.
About damned time, there might be hope for these schmoes yet.

Rowanomicon
2008-01-04, 01:55 AM
It seems that they are getting closer to, despite their best efforts, accidentally making 4th ed the D&D we've all been waiting for.

RTGoodman
2008-01-04, 01:58 AM
I usually do the passive Search thing for traps anyway when I DM - it makes things a lot faster.

Also, I don't have Secrets of Xen'drik (I strongly dislike Eberron, though apparently all my gaming groups obsessed with it), so can someone tell me if this trap system from it is any good?

MammonAzrael
2008-01-04, 02:04 AM
Sounds good. Looks like there won't be anymore "Oh, you found a trap. Rouge, Save or die." Or at least, not nearly as much. And it could prove quite fun to nail enemies with their own overly-elaborate traps.

Hallavast
2008-01-04, 02:13 AM
So, they were seriously thinking about removing traps from Dungeons and Dragons? :smallmad:

That's almost akin to a legislator saying: "Yeah, we almost legalized burglary, but we flipped a coin at the last second and decided not to."

Am I the only one who's worried?

Chronicled
2008-01-04, 02:15 AM
So, they were seriously thinking about removing traps from Dungeons and Dragons? :smallmad:

That's almost akin to a legislator saying: "Yeah, we almost legalized burglary, but we flipped a coin at the last second and decided not to."

Am I the only one who's worried?

I wouldn't have minded one bit. This new fix looks good though.

Tequila Sunrise
2008-01-04, 02:36 AM
This looks good, although a "no more rediculous Indiana Jones-type mechanical traps in our PoL medievalesque world" comment would have made it even better.

Wordmiser
2008-01-04, 02:38 AM
I wouldn't have minded one bit.Seconded. D&D's traps aren't interesting. They're just a series of die rolls that leave players upset if failed or apathetic if passed.

Rutee
2008-01-04, 03:23 AM
Am I the only one who's worried?

Yes. I hate handling traps, even as a Rogue. "Hooray, my spotlight time is spent praying to god that I succeed on my search and disable device rolls! ...Wait, that sucks and isn't cool."

VanBuren
2008-01-04, 03:31 AM
So, they were seriously thinking about removing traps from Dungeons and Dragons? :smallmad:

That's almost akin to a legislator saying: "Yeah, we almost legalized burglary, but we flipped a coin at the last second and decided not to."

Am I the only one who's worried?

The exception being that not being robbed isn't a painful experience. The same cannot be said for the trap system of 3.5 and before.

Adumbration
2008-01-04, 03:54 AM
I'm actually fairly excited about the new traps. They actually seem to have put some thought in them.

Wordmiser
2008-01-04, 03:59 AM
I'm not sure I trust WotC to make traps all that interesting (honestly, that's the job of the DM if he wants to put traps into his adventures).

Having detailed and complex traps listed in the DMG seems like it would sort of undermine the very reasons behind making the traps detailed and interesting in the first place--players will be familiar with them and the puzzles will become routine.

This is coming from someone without the Secrets of Xen'drix book, though. I have to admit that I doubt it changes much, but I suppose I can't rule out that possibility.

Rutee
2008-01-04, 04:27 AM
I'm not sure I trust WotC to make traps all that interesting (honestly, that's the job of the DM if he wants to put traps into his adventures).

Having detailed and complex traps listed in the DMG seems like it would sort of undermine the very reasons behind making the traps detailed and interesting in the first place--players will be familiar with them and the puzzles will become routine.

This is coming from someone without the Secrets of Xen'drix book, though. I have to admit that I doubt it changes much, but I suppose I can't rule out that possibility.
By this logic, I take it you don't like it when Wizards has complex or interesting monster ideas in the MM? I figure putting them in the DMG may keep them in the players' minds, but it's important to provide examples and show the mechanics behind it.

Hallavast
2008-01-04, 04:34 AM
The exception being that not being robbed isn't a painful experience. The same cannot be said for the trap system of 3.5 and before.

That's all well and good that they are changing the system. I believe it's the right thing to do. I also agree that the trap system of 3.5 wasn't great. But at least it gave dungeon masters and players a viable way to represent traps in their game. To take out any method of portraying traps would be a travesty. Imagine if a party wanted to plan an ambush for some orcs or something, and they wanted to include some sort of snare but couldn't find any rules for constructing or using one. Imagine if a DM wanted to run the characters through an Indiana Jones style dungeon but didn't have a clue as to how to go about making the dungeon. A flawed system is better than no system at all.

But to just nonchallantly mention that they almost scrapped the idea of traps alltogether sounds really arrogant and stupid.

ShadowSiege
2008-01-04, 04:53 AM
Having detailed and complex traps listed in the DMG seems like it would sort of undermine the very reasons behind making the traps detailed and interesting in the first place--players will be familiar with them and the puzzles will become routine.

This is coming from someone without the Secrets of Xen'drix book, though. I have to admit that I doubt it changes much, but I suppose I can't rule out that possibility.

Secrets of Xen'drik traps are pretty interesting, it's a room wide trap, such as spears stabbing through the floor, gouts of flame, and petrification spells are the given samples. The initial trigger will start initiative, and every round the trap gets an attack on anyone in the room (individually). It's possible to either disarm each individual square, destroy them, or in the case of magical traps, dispel them. The disadvantages and advantages that you can tack on change these effects (only half the squares affected a round, central disarm, +1 CR worth of damage, etc). The damage, attack, etc are based off the CR, the opposite of the DMG's system, and as a result, custom traps are quickly made. I'd just found out about it from the article, and I'll be incorporating this style of traps much more often.

VanBuren
2008-01-04, 04:55 AM
That's all well and good that they are changing the system. I believe it's the right thing to do. I also agree that the trap system of 3.5 wasn't great. But at least it gave dungeon masters and players a viable way to represent traps in their game. To take out any method of portraying traps would be a travesty. Imagine if a party wanted to plan an ambush for some orcs or something, and they wanted to include some sort of snare but couldn't find any rules for constructing or using one. Imagine if a DM wanted to run the characters through an Indiana Jones style dungeon but didn't have a clue as to how to go about making the dungeon. A flawed system is better than no system at all.

But to just nonchallantly mention that they almost scrapped the idea of traps alltogether sounds really arrogant and stupid.

I guess it's all in the ears of the listener. To me it sounded more like, "Well, we knew it was a pain in the ass. So we figured that if it came to it, we were willing to scrap it. But on the other hand, if it could be salvaged and saved, that's what we would prefer to do."

Granted I'm reading into it a bit. But I'd like to give the benefit of the doubt.

Xefas
2008-01-04, 05:02 AM
I'm so very very glad they're doing something about this. I don't think I've ever had a "trap" trap that had a positive effect on my gaming group in any edition. Puzzle-type traps are fun sometimes, though that's obviously not because of the trap mechanics.

Glaivemaster
2008-01-04, 06:09 AM
Sounds pretty cool. Just a couple of problems:


Instead, characters have a passive Perception score that represents their Take-10 result for searching. When something hidden is in the area, the DM compares the passive Perception scores of the PCs with the DCs of the various hidden things in the area. In the case of hidden creatures, the DC is the result of their Stealth check. For things like hidden traps, hazards, or secret doors, the DC is usually static.

If I'm reading that right, that means that you have your passive perception score always running. That means that you are always going to notice traps as long as they have a low DC, which means that there won't ever be any point in using those traps. Meaning that the only traps worth using are the ones they don't immediately see, and thus need to actively search for, just like normal, so nothing's changed :smallsigh:

Of course, there's the fact that you can't take 10 in encounters. Which leads me to the next problem - the article implies that traps' main uses are going to be as parts of combat encounters. Now, I don't mind traps being used in combat encounters, especially if they mesh well (it actually sounds pretty cool, since I've never got it to work for me before). However, this sounds like traps aren't going to be much use outside of combat encounters, and I don't like the sound of that

Emperor Demonking
2008-01-04, 06:17 AM
I like the changes, I always thought it was a bit stupid always needing disabled device.

kamikasei
2008-01-04, 07:06 AM
Interesting new hint: the existence of a "Thievery" skill. What will that subsume: Open Lock and Disable Device, anything else?

hamlet
2008-01-04, 08:58 AM
It continues to astonish me how WOTC can, in such an off-handed way no less, let us know that all these years, we've been playing D&D incorrectly and to make broad statements that are, frankly, more than a little insulting.

According to them, the way traps were used before WOTC benevolence was only as punishment or whimsical "I kill you!" fantasies of the cruel and terrible DM and that there was absolutely no way to find and deal with a trap other than blind luck by a thief or spells that made traps utterly pointless. I've been playing for close to 20 years now and I've never gotten that impression. Anybody who has the thief check every 10ft square in the dungeon for traps before setting foot in the place is a moron. There are many ways to deal with traps that don't involve somebody specialized in their use and detection. Ever heard of a 10 foot pole? Best way to open doors from a safer distance, prod for pit traps, locate trip wires, poke at suspicious objects, etc.

I can't help but feel that WOTC is building a huge straw man to base all their "fixes" on and that a large portion of their customer have swallowed it whole and that's the biggest issue with this new edition. Not that it's new, but all of it's "fixes" are based on problems that didn't actually exist in the first place.

Traps didn't need to be fixed from previous editions (though I will say that 3rd edition traps bit the big one most of the time). What needed to happen is to have DM's and players actually think about it rather than rely on "it's intuitive" to base all their decisions on.

Hallavast
2008-01-04, 09:40 AM
It continues to astonish me how WOTC can, in such an off-handed way no less, let us know that all these years, we've been playing D&D incorrectly and to make broad statements that are, frankly, more than a little insulting.


I've felt the same way since august, but I wasn't sure how to put it into words. They're now mocking what they had previously been marketing to us for the last seven years. That doesn't say "integrity" to me. That's the reason I don't give WoTC the "benefit of the doubt" (that coupled with the fact that they've fired almost all of their good developers, and they published the "Rules Compedium").

Rutee
2008-01-04, 09:47 AM
I've felt the same way since august, but I wasn't sure how to put it into words. They're now mocking what they had previously been marketing to us for the last seven years. That doesn't say "integrity" to me. That's the reason I don't give WoTC the "benefit of the doubt" (that coupled with the fact that they've fired almost all of their good developers, and they published the "Rules Compedium").

It's kinda weird, having been in this exact same situation (That is, a developer who has to look at their old work), I actually feel it comes closer to "We feel we screwed up, here's how we're going to fix it".

If you genuinely despise the new edition and design philosophy that much, I genuinely ask that you not buy it, under any circumstances. The power of the consumer is in their wallet. Speak with it as loudly as you can. That and, well, if you feel this is the bad developers' work... well, suffice it to say, this is significantly better, so far, then their old work, quite frankly.

Kioran
2008-01-04, 10:02 AM
By this logic, I take it you don't like it when Wizards has complex or interesting monster ideas in the MM? I figure putting them in the DMG may keep them in the players' minds, but it's important to provide examples and show the mechanics behind it.

Well, yes, apparently it is. I donīt mind tables and guidelines or the odd formula, but then, among my freinds Iīm the exception. Same as "Eternal Wands", parts of the Item Creation guidelines since the beginning, but most people were still "suprised by the novel concept".

But really, this "disarming creatively" is much the same - a normal DM (at least me and one of the other occasional DMs in my RL group) makes off-the-cuff rulings pretty regularly and easily - maybe it takes some experiecne in pulling things out of ones nether regions, but still, itīs not like it wasnīt part of D&D before.....

The vibe Iīm getting here is that theyīre trying to describe interesting and multi-faceted traps to people who wouldnīt have thought of it on their own, not reinventing the wheel. 3rd Ed, at least as far as I could tell, pretty much expected a DM to find his own feet, perhaps because they thought to little faith in that person would be some sort of intellectual insult (to me it can certainly be).

But maybe people need to have things more clearly spelled out or defined for them, I donīt know.....

Matthew
2008-01-04, 10:03 AM
I can't help but feel that WOTC is building a huge straw man to base all their "fixes" on and that a large portion of their customer have swallowed it whole and that's the biggest issue with this new edition. Not that it's new, but all of it's "fixes" are based on problems that didn't actually exist in the first place.

The thing is, Hamlet, this actually appears to be a problem for the majority of consumers of 3e. It's not really a Straw Man, because they are addressing problems that their audience perceives to exist. Personally, I am in the same boat as you, having never or rarely experienced the sorts of things above reported.


Traps didn't need to be fixed from previous editions (though I will say that 3rd edition traps bit the big one most of the time). What needed to happen is to have DM's and players actually think about it rather than rely on "it's intuitive" to base all their decisions on.

True, though 'mechanical' detection has always been part of the game.


It's kinda weird, having been in this exact same situation (That is, a developer who has to look at their old work), I actually feel it comes closer to "We feel we screwed up, here's how we're going to fix it".

It isn't the same authors working on the different editions. Most of the designers of 4e were only periphally involved in the design of 3e and virtually none in the design of 2e or 1e.

I'm not bothered at all by 'passive perception'. It actually sounds like a step backwards to me, as that's how the Elves detected Secret Doors in previous editions. Personally, I just call for 'perception' checks when required and allow 'taking 10', this 'passive perception' just sounds to me like a restatement of what already goes on.


But maybe people need to have things more clearly spelled out or defined for them, I donīt know.....

If D20 has taught us anything it is that this is exactly what the majority of Wizards' consumer base want. Of course, it's not surprising, Players have always coveted the Silver Spoon... "I don't wanna think, just tell me or let me roll the dice..." :smallwink:

Koji
2008-01-04, 10:16 AM
I find 4e's new "flavor" severely disappointing, but all the mechanical stuff has me chomping at the bit.

hamlet
2008-01-04, 10:16 AM
It's kinda weird, having been in this exact same situation (That is, a developer who has to look at their old work), I actually feel it comes closer to "We feel we screwed up, here's how we're going to fix it".

If you genuinely despise the new edition and design philosophy that much, I genuinely ask that you not buy it, under any circumstances. The power of the consumer is in their wallet. Speak with it as loudly as you can. That and, well, if you feel this is the bad developers' work... well, suffice it to say, this is significantly better, so far, then their old work, quite frankly.

I don't despise the new edition, or even third edition. This might actually be an interesting and unique view of traps.

What I'm reacting to is the way it's being presented to us, and the way it's becoming more and more aparrent to me that the designers at WOTC don't know what they're talking about half the time when they talk about previous editions and aren't interested in the least in retaining the old customer base, or even making any attempt to communicate without condecension.

It almost seems as if they are ashamed of the history of D&D, especially when they gleefully discuss "killing sacred cows."

The tone they use when they talk about previous editions (especially anything pre-3e) isn't just dismissive, it's flat out insulting. It's not just that I and those I game with aren't in the demographic, it's that WOTC has absolutely no interest in my demographic at all and would rather let me know and everybody else who will listen that my demographic is stupid anyway since we play an obviously inferior game.

This has been their attitude since about 2001, but it's been getting especially bad of late.

Thinker
2008-01-04, 10:19 AM
Sounds pretty cool. Just a couple of problems:



If I'm reading that right, that means that you have your passive perception score always running. That means that you are always going to notice traps as long as they have a low DC, which means that there won't ever be any point in using those traps. Meaning that the only traps worth using are the ones they don't immediately see, and thus need to actively search for, just like normal, so nothing's changed :smallsigh:

Of course, there's the fact that you can't take 10 in encounters. Which leads me to the next problem - the article implies that traps' main uses are going to be as parts of combat encounters. Now, I don't mind traps being used in combat encounters, especially if they mesh well (it actually sounds pretty cool, since I've never got it to work for me before). However, this sounds like traps aren't going to be much use outside of combat encounters, and I don't like the sound of that

In 3.5e there is a penalty for distance to spot things. If its the same way for 4e the group could be well within the radius of the trap before anyone notices it, but had they entered from another direction they could have seen it right away. Also, there are several instances where the primary noticer might not be able to (disabled, blinded, etc)

Person_Man
2008-01-04, 10:23 AM
A BBEG lives in dungeon, and is sending out minion to raid the area for supplies and slaves. The locals have sent out people to try and stop them, but can't get past the heavily trapped entrance (and presumably heavily trapped passages beyond them). The PCs can:

Disarm the traps, work their way through the dungeon, and kill the BBEG.
Buy a herd of cattle (or summon monsters), drive them through the dungeon, setting off all the traps. Fight the (now fully alerted and organized) minions and BBEG.
Gather information about who built the dungeon in the first place, and then track down the initial architect. If they're nice to him, the architect will give them the plans, which includes the location of a secret back door that they otherwise would have never found, bypassing all of the traps.
Capture a minion, interrogate him, Charm/Dominate him, or otherwise turn him to their side, use his knowledge to bypass the traps.
Talk to a minion, tell him you want to work for the BBEG, and go on a few side quests to prove their worth, and then just walk in and talk to the BBEG as a new boss (which they can then work for or betray).
Continue adventuring doing other things, ignoring the growing crisis.
Leave town and adventure somewhere less dangerous.
Do anything else they can think of, predicated on my ability to come up with new material off the top of my head.


Traps are just like any other encounter in D&D, and they always have been. There are almost always multiple solutions, as long as the DM is experienced enough to allow them, and the PCs are creative enough to look for them. Even the vast majority of combat encounters can be solved with Skills, magic, and/or roleplaying.

It's good to see that 4th ed is embracing this as a design concept. But really, its nothing new, despite their rhetoric to the contrary.

hamlet
2008-01-04, 10:49 AM
In 3.5e there is a penalty for distance to spot things. If its the same way for 4e the group could be well within the radius of the trap before anyone notices it, but had they entered from another direction they could have seen it right away. Also, there are several instances where the primary noticer might not be able to (disabled, blinded, etc)

Then how is that different from WOTC's mission statement with traps the avoid "punishing players for wrong choices" or arbitrarily throwing traps out that the PC's can't really hope to notice unless they pass in the right direction at the right time or actively search each and every square foot before stepping on it?

If they happen to go in entrance A, they get slammed with a trap they couldn't notice with passive perception. If they go in through entrance B, they automatically notice it and it's not an issue any more.

Valairn
2008-01-04, 11:08 AM
I think their is a misunderstanding of why WoTC is making these changes. They are not trying to steal your ability to make a campaign setting to your liking. What they are trying to do, is create a standalone product, which 3.5, 3.0,2.0, and 1.0 were not. I've been gaming a long ass time, never played first edition, but I remember how much extra work there was in 2nd edition, and that wasn't snazzy campaign work, we are talking simply making the rules work.

Wizards is doing something right here. They are attempting to remove the overhead of the system and let us focus on the parts of the design that we should be working on, which is mainly campaign settings and storytelling. The rules SHOULD stand on their own, without the need to fix them, except for fluff related reasons.

hamlet
2008-01-04, 11:17 AM
I think their is a misunderstanding of why WoTC is making these changes. They are not trying to steal your ability to make a campaign setting to your liking. What they are trying to do, is create a standalone product, which 3.5, 3.0,2.0, and 1.0 were not. I've been gaming a long ass time, never played first edition, but I remember how much extra work there was in 2nd edition, and that wasn't snazzy campaign work, we are talking simply making the rules work.

Wizards is doing something right here. They are attempting to remove the overhead of the system and let us focus on the parts of the design that we should be working on, which is mainly campaign settings and storytelling. The rules SHOULD stand on their own, without the need to fix them, except for fluff related reasons.

So, you're rebutting a point I never made?

Thinker
2008-01-04, 11:17 AM
Then how is that different from WOTC's mission statement with traps the avoid "punishing players for wrong choices" or arbitrarily throwing traps out that the PC's can't really hope to notice unless they pass in the right direction at the right time or actively search each and every square foot before stepping on it?

If they happen to go in entrance A, they get slammed with a trap they couldn't notice with passive perception. If they go in through entrance B, they automatically notice it and it's not an issue any more.

Its not a simple "you didn't notice it, you're boned." It is "you didn't notice it, roll initiative." There is still an encounter, not simply a single roll and conclusion. The traps will be more in depth. I'm sure there will still be room for simpler traps like a pit, but that should not be the norm.

MorkaisChosen
2008-01-04, 11:23 AM
So if you notice it, you have to creatively disable it, and if you don't notice it, you have to avoid dying and then creatively disable it.

Actually, that could work pretty well- imagine a trap that's a big room, and spikes shoot down from the ceiling in a set pattern. You have to work out the pattern before you can get to the other side and disable it...

Valairn
2008-01-04, 11:25 AM
So, you're rebutting a point I never made?

If I was rebutting anything in particular I would have quoted it. I was simply adding my thoughts on the subject.

wormwood
2008-01-04, 11:32 AM
I think the main gist of the update is exactly what MorkaisChosen said. You change it from a Save or Die for the rogue to an encounter for the party with the rogue having a chance to help out by noticing it ahead of time. It's a great change.

I've played every edition since D&D Basic. The ONLY traps that were ever memorable were the ones that completely ignored the rules about traps. The DM had to homebrew it to make it worth the time involved. WotC seems to be trying to set up a framework to allow the DM to make noteworthy traps without homebrewing. Kudos!

Just to put my comments into the correct light, I'm not overly excited about most things I've seen for 4e. This one, however, sounds good.

FlyMolo
2008-01-04, 11:33 AM
So if you notice it, you have to creatively disable it, and if you don't notice it, you have to avoid dying and then creatively disable it.

Actually, that could work pretty well- imagine a trap that's a big room, and spikes shoot down from the ceiling in a set pattern. You have to work out the pattern before you can get to the other side and disable it...

That's what it seemed like they were saying to me. And that sounds cool. It also makes sense fluff-wise. It guards an entrance, and the goblins who live there have the sequence memorized, so they can skip between the falling arrows and shut off the trap. That sounds cool.

An encounter there could be interesting. Trip attempts and grappling and such.

Matthew
2008-01-04, 11:35 AM
I think their is a misunderstanding of why WoTC is making these changes. They are not trying to steal your ability to make a campaign setting to your liking. What they are trying to do, is create a standalone product, which 3.5, 3.0,2.0, and 1.0 were not. I've been gaming a long ass time, never played first edition, but I remember how much extra work there was in 2nd edition, and that wasn't snazzy campaign work, we are talking simply making the rules work.

Wizards is doing something right here. They are attempting to remove the overhead of the system and let us focus on the parts of the design that we should be working on, which is mainly campaign settings and storytelling. The rules SHOULD stand on their own, without the need to fix them, except for fluff related reasons.

I don't agree. I think creating such a complex rule system is counter productive to focusing on those things. Of course, I suppose that it really does depend how familiar you are with the rules and how much additional content you use. I much prefer a lighter rules system and I actually enjoy tinkering with the rules themselves, tailoring them for a given campaign setting.

Hallavast
2008-01-04, 11:51 AM
It's kinda weird, having been in this exact same situation (That is, a developer who has to look at their old work), I actually feel it comes closer to "We feel we screwed up, here's how we're going to fix it".

If you genuinely despise the new edition and design philosophy that much, I genuinely ask that you not buy it, under any circumstances. The power of the consumer is in their wallet. Speak with it as loudly as you can. That and, well, if you feel this is the bad developers' work... well, suffice it to say, this is significantly better, so far, then their old work, quite frankly.

Meh... My beef has less to do with the actual game and more to do with WoTC's attitude. I can understand the whole "we're trying to fix what we've screwed up" thing. But the way they go about saying so is just so arrogant that I want to slap somebody. Plus the fact that I have to re-buy everything again is unnerving. I probably won't be buying the new edition any time soon, but I don't think WoTC will notice.

Citizen Joe
2008-01-04, 12:04 PM
I'm so very very glad they're doing something about this. I don't think I've ever had a "trap" trap that had a positive effect on my gaming group in any edition. Puzzle-type traps are fun sometimes, though that's obviously not because of the trap mechanics.

I would very much like to see puzzle traps. Could be as simple as 'Don't pull on the trip wire' or as complex as 'several people in different rooms pulling a lever at the same time.' I like the notion that a trap is 'expensive' and the cost needs to be justified. I like the notion that to justify the cost of a trap, it has to protect something valuable. I like the notion that you will at some point want to get at the valuable thing and don't want to be killed by your own trap to do so. Thus, traps should be there for a reason and there should be a way to disable it.

Valairn
2008-01-04, 12:39 PM
I don't agree. I think creating such a complex rule system is counter productive to focusing on those things. Of course, I suppose that it really does depend how familiar you are with the rules and how much additional content you use. I much prefer a lighter rules system and I actually enjoy tinkering with the rules themselves, tailoring them for a given campaign setting.

I wasn't implying that the rules needed to be complex or all-encompassing. I was simply saying that whatever rules they do put forward should work and stand on their own. And I also mentioned that you shouldn't have to edit the rules UNLESS you had a particular fluff reason. The key emphasis being on not needing to change the rules, not that you can't change them or shouldn't.

The trap system in 3.5 sucks, you kind of have to mod it a little to get it working successfully, you shouldn't have to modify it just to get it to work. That is literally all I'm saying. Mess with the rules all you want, that's your prerogative. As far as what wizards should be doing I think they are on the right track in creating a rule system that covers the bases it chooses to cover properly and without extra work being required on the DM's part.

Matthew
2008-01-04, 01:05 PM
I wasn't implying that the rules needed to be complex or all-encompassing. I was simply saying that whatever rules they do put forward should work and stand on their own. And I also mentioned that you shouldn't have to edit the rules UNLESS you had a particular fluff reason. The key emphasis being on not needing to change the rules, not that you can't change them or shouldn't.

Sure, and I am saying that I don't want Wizards to supply me with a 'complete' game (and complete RPGs do tend to be complex, though not necessarily complicated; D20 is certainly an example of this). I like being presented with Optional Rules or, rather, tool kit type games. Now maybe you don't think previous editions worked by themselves, I can't really comment on your experiences, but I know that I have found all previous editions to be perfectly playable and sufficiently complete. To be clear, I prefer to have to edit the rules to some degree.


The trap system in 3.5 sucks, you kind of have to mod it a little to get it working successfully, you shouldn't have to modify it just to get it to work. That is literally all I'm saying. Mess with the rules all you want, that's your prerogative. As far as what wizards should be doing I think they are on the right track in creating a rule system that covers the bases it chooses to cover properly and without extra work being required on the DM's part.
The Trap system is hardly the only thing in 3e that sucks and 'doesn't work', though (and I must say that I think the rules actually 'work' perfectly fine, they just do not meet your criteria of what is 'good'). The game is full of problems and the last thirty odd years of game design pretty much tell me that these problems aren't going to go away. All Wizards are doing is creating another variant on the same game. It's going to please some people and annoy others, no matter what they do and, I strongly suspect, it's going to have it's own set of problems.

SurlySeraph
2008-01-04, 01:47 PM
I like this way more than anything else I've heard about 4E so far. This is one fix that we actually do need, not something strange like getting elfier as you increase in level or irritating like turning the Forgotten Realms into a post-apocalyptic world. My faith in WotC has been temporarily restored.

horseboy
2008-01-04, 02:15 PM
But maybe people need to have things more clearly spelled out or defined for them, I donīt know.....

Hmm, was it Barnum or Ripley that said: "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the public."

fendrin
2008-01-04, 02:29 PM
I like this way more than anything else I've heard about 4E so far. This is one fix that we actually do need, not something strange like getting elfier as you increase in level

You don't get 'elfier', you get better at the things that elves are already good at. It's no more realistic than being able to survive getting stabbed better because you went up a level.


or irritating like turning the Forgotten Realms into a post-apocalyptic world. My faith in WotC has been temporarily restored.

I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure they haven't made any changes to any settings other than the default setting, which is no longer going to be Greyhawk, but rather something new that just happens to incorporate a lot of elements of Greyhawk. I have seen some people take comments out of context though, about the PCs being the focus of the game instead of NPCs, and that that PC classes are going to be much better than NPC classes right from level 1 (unlike 3.x where a warrior was only slightly weaker than a fighter).

Back to the OP...

Yay better trap handling! I've also read that they are making trapfinding a feat so anyone can take it. Death to the class-based iconic party! Long live the role-based iconic party!

Hopefully trapfinding as a feat will be better than weapon proficiency as a feat, which was a popular discussion topic in the lead up to 3.0...

SurlySeraph
2008-01-04, 03:28 PM
Not to rant about off-topic stuff that isn't fixed in stone and might not be official, but I'm just going to rant about off-topic that isn't fixed in stone and might not be official.


I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure they haven't made any changes to any settings other than the default setting, which is no longer going to be Greyhawk, but rather something new that just happens to incorporate a lot of elements of Greyhawk.

Oh, no. They most certainly have made changes. Start here (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=937404) for a bunch of them. Details are scattered, a lot of them aren't fixed in stone yet and a lot of them are hearsay, but among the highlights:

- Mystra dies. For real this time. Bane and Shar killed her and took over magic.
- And she's not the only one, not by a long shot. They plan to whittle down the number of FR deities (currently about 150-200) to about 20-30. Granted, most of them are going to be turned into demigods/ celestials/ demipowers and suchlike, but there are going to be quite a few gods removed. Oh, and as for a really annoying one? Tyr murdered Helm in some kind of dispute over a marriage. The main god of paladins killed one of the other main paladin-gods, and he apparently hadn't done anything particularly evil.
- Mystra's death was linked to something called the Spellplague. It's not clear exactly what happened, but it's what they're using to explain the change to the 4E magic system.
- The Spellplague had predictably terrible consequences, ravaging and mostly destroying several nations. Exactly which ones is unclear, but they apparently include Thay, Luskan, and Mulhorand.
- It takes place about 100 years after current Realms chronology. Which isn't a problem, except that it means that...
- Most of the major iconic figures are dead by this point. Old age took some, the Spellplague killed a lot of arcane casters, assorted wars and chaos killed others. Some of the villains have survived for players to fight, and Drizzt and Elminster have been confirmed to survive. But a lot of the major figures are gone.

Illiterate Scribe
2008-01-04, 03:42 PM
Not to rant about off-topic stuff that isn't fixed in stone and might not be official, but I'm just going to rant about off-topic that isn't fixed in stone and might not be official.



Oh, no. They most certainly have made changes. Start here (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=937404) for a bunch of them. Details are scattered, a lot of them aren't fixed in stone yet and a lot of them are hearsay, but among the highlights:

- Mystra dies. For real this time. Bane and Shar killed her and took over magic.
- And she's not the only one, not by a long shot. They plan to whittle down the number of FR deities (currently about 150-200) to about 20-30. Granted, most of them are going to be turned into demigods/ celestials/ demipowers and suchlike, but there are going to be quite a few gods removed. Oh, and as for a really annoying one? Tyr murdered Helm in some kind of dispute over a marriage. The main god of paladins killed one of the other main paladin-gods, and he apparently hadn't done anything particularly evil.
- Mystra's death was linked to something called the Spellplague. It's not clear exactly what happened, but it's what they're using to explain the change to the 4E magic system.
- The Spellplague had predictably terrible consequences, ravaging and mostly destroying several nations. Exactly which ones is unclear, but they apparently include Thay, Luskan, and Mulhorand.
- It takes place about 100 years after current Realms chronology. Which isn't a problem, except that it means that...
- Most of the major iconic figures are dead by this point. Old age took some, the Spellplague killed a lot of arcane casters, assorted wars and chaos killed others. Some of the villains have survived for players to fight, and Drizzt and Elminster have been confirmed to survive. But a lot of the major figures are gone.

Lolwut? What about the shadovar? Weren't they big bad du jour hovering in some huge mountain directly above Faerun? I'm taking a look at that thread ... :smalleek:

Kyeudo
2008-01-04, 03:47 PM
- Most of the major iconic figures are dead by this point. Old age took some, the Spellplague killed a lot of arcane casters, assorted wars and chaos killed others. Some of the villains have survived for players to fight, and Drizzt and Elminster have been confirmed to survive. But a lot of the major figures are gone.

Dang it. They almost completely fixed the Forgotten Realms, but they left Eliminster and Drizzt still alive.

Anyway, I think that the "Passive Perception" they talk about is basicly a Perception check by someone with Trapfinding that is either make it or trigger the trap (and start whatever that may entail).

BTW, for those that hate Eberron (blashpemers though you may be), you can find all the Encounter Trap rules in Dungeonscape, which is a very nice book for dealing with 3.5 traps.

fendrin
2008-01-04, 04:03 PM
Oh, no. They most certainly have made changes.
<snip for space>
Huh. First I've had that info pointed out to me. Other than that I've only heard rumblings based on, as I said, awkward interpretations of sentences taken out of context from other general 4e articles.

Honestly, I like the changes. I've liked faerun for a long time but always felt that I didn't know it well enough to run a game there (some people I used to play with were Realms purists and would get on DMs cases if they did something that went against 'canon', which was pretty much everything ever published on the realms, including the fiction).

Back to the OP again... :smalltongue:

I've been thinking about this, and the idea of having initiative based trap components is a really good idea. It makes things like collapsing bridges, crushing walls (a la the Star Wars trash compacter), giant stones (a la Indiana Jones), rising flood waters, and many other things much easier to create. Not that you couldn;t before, it's just easier now.

Oh, and I suspect/hope that there will be a severe limit to the range of the passive search. That way the oblivious wizard or fighter (or, most often, barbarian) that decides to take the lead instead of the party rogue (or now in 4e, any perceptive character) will still stumble into traps.

It shocks me how many experienced gamers fail to let the perceptive characters go first...

Valairn
2008-01-04, 04:12 PM
Sure, and I am saying that I don't want Wizards to supply me with a 'complete' game (and complete RPGs do tend to be complex, though not necessarily complicated; D20 is certainly an example of this). I like being presented with Optional Rules or, rather, tool kit type games. Now maybe you don't think previous editions worked by themselves, I can't really comment on your experiences, but I know that I have found all previous editions to be perfectly playable and sufficiently complete. To be clear, I prefer to have to edit the rules to some degree.

The Trap system is hardly the only thing in 3e that sucks and 'doesn't work', though (and I must say that I think the rules actually 'work' perfectly fine, they just do not meet your criteria of what is 'good'). The game is full of problems and the last thirty odd years of game design pretty much tell me that these problems aren't going to go away. All Wizards are doing is creating another variant on the same game. It's going to please some people and annoy others, no matter what they do and, I strongly suspect, it's going to have it's own set of problems.

That's fine that you prefer to work a little. I generally do a lot of work on my campaign settings often editing core classes to skew them to whatever I think is appropriate. And I didn't mean to imply that the only thing wrong with 3.5 is traps. There are a lot of things that are "wrong" and I put wrong in quotes for a reason, abstract dice rolling to represent real world actions is never going to be perfect and there will always be artifacts lurking within any game design that just plain don't make sense.

Of course my opinion on what is broken often relate to issues related to gaming rather than issues related to versimilitude/realism. The monk class is a good off hand example of a poorly designed class, every level is full of things that don't really help the monk accomplish a role in a party of characters. Monks are broken out of the door with core, and I know people out there disagree, and that's fine I'm not hear to argue about that. What I am trying to say is though, wizards is attempting to improve mechanics, yes its just another "variant" of DnD and no its not gonna fix everything.

I'm really not a 4.0 fanboy, far from it, I'm one of those people working on redoing 3.5. What I feel about 4.0 is that, Wizards is a company with a product, they are doing what they think is best to improve that product. This is a good thing, it should be encouraged, I want to see the best they have to offer, to see them make good decisions about their product and make it an outstanding game, this particular choice about traps is an improvement in game design, I appreciate that.

Amphimir Míriel
2008-01-04, 05:07 PM
It's kinda weird, having been in this exact same situation (That is, a developer who has to look at their old work), I actually feel it comes closer to "We feel we screwed up, here's how we're going to fix it".

If you genuinely despise the new edition and design philosophy that much, I genuinely ask that you not buy it, under any circumstances. The power of the consumer is in their wallet. Speak with it as loudly as you can. That and, well, if you feel this is the bad developers' work... well, suffice it to say, this is significantly better, so far, then their old work, quite frankly.

Finally! the voice of reason in GitP!

Guys: no one is taking 3.5 away from you! Even if your 3.5 books crumble to dust from excessive use, the 3.5 SRD is free forever for you to use/modify/print out to your hearts content.

Also, if you are not happy with 3.5 and the changes in 4th ed dont suit you, you can use the rules published in TrueD20, Conan, BESM, etc...
And no one is stopping you from making a fork of D20 and publishing it, if you feel your design abilities are superior to the current WotC designers.

If a game is good, people will play it.

Matthew
2008-01-04, 05:13 PM
That's fine that you prefer to work a little. I generally do a lot of work on my campaign settings often editing core classes to skew them to whatever I think is appropriate. And I didn't mean to imply that the only thing wrong with 3.5 is traps. There are a lot of things that are "wrong" and I put wrong in quotes for a reason, abstract dice rolling to represent real world actions is never going to be perfect and there will always be artifacts lurking within any game design that just plain don't make sense.

Well, I wouldn't call it work, it's a pleasurable hobby after all. Still, yes, I prefer to build my own toys, rather than play with finished items. "Wrong" is a powerful word and should be handled carefully when discussing something as preferential as gaming. I don't really think the dice are the problem in terms of simulationism (or representationism, realism, verisilimitude, immersion, suspension of disbelief, etc...) so much as the prevalent willingness to restort to them to resolve every action.


Of course my opinion on what is broken often relate to issues related to gaming rather than issues related to versimilitude/realism. The monk class is a good off hand example of a poorly designed class, every level is full of things that don't really help the monk accomplish a role in a party of characters. Monks are broken out of the door with core, and I know people out there disagree, and that's fine I'm not hear to argue about that. What I am trying to say is though, wizards is attempting to improve mechanics, yes its just another "variant" of DnD and no its not gonna fix everything.

But are Wizards truly trying to improve the game or are they looking to shift more product? Improvement is as relative as wrong or right for this sort of subject. Wizards are, presumably, responding to the market and producing a game that will meet many criteria, not least of which is accessibility. They may improve accessibility, speed of combat, class balance or any number of things and yet fail to improve the game experience.


I'm really not a 4.0 fanboy, far from it, I'm one of those people working on redoing 3.5. What I feel about 4.0 is that, Wizards is a company with a product, they are doing what they think is best to improve that product. This is a good thing, it should be encouraged, I want to see the best they have to offer, to see them make good decisions about their product and make it an outstanding game, this particular choice about traps is an improvement in game design, I appreciate that.

I feel no hostility towards Wizards of the Coast or 4e and regard its creation as a sound business decision. I don't think the direction they are moving is generally a good one in terms of meeting my preferences, but that's hardly important to them and I can already see 4e is going to be a mixed bag. Some of it I will like and some of it I won't, which is why I have no desire for an integrated complete system.
To be clear, there is a distinction to be made between D&D as a hobby and D&D as a business. The latter is the bottom line for Wizards of the Coast, whilst the former is the bottom line for me. So... to go back to the original point of disagreement, my opinion is that a 'closed' or 'complete' rules system is not necessarily a good thing, mainly because it creates the perception of boundaries for new players.
Perhaps, though, I am just misunderstanding you here. I don't expect 4e will be a light system with optional add ons. I do expect that it will initially appear to be less complex and complicated than 3e, but I also think that this is largely a perception. I imagine that they are simply slimming things down in order to build them back up over the next few years. Most of the changes so far revealed have been cosmetic or minor. I don't think they are improving the game, but I do think they are improving the product.


Finally! the voice of reason in GitP!

Guys: no one is taking 3.5 away from you! Even if your 3.5 books crumble to dust from excessive use, the 3.5 SRD is free forever for you to use/modify/print out to your hearts content.

Also, if you are not happy with 3.5 and the changes in 4th ed dont suit you, you can use the rules published in TrueD20, Conan, BESM, etc...
And no one is stopping you from making a fork of D20 and publishing it, if you feel your design abilities are superior to the current WotC designers.

If a game is good, people will play it.

I dunno which Threads you have been reading, but this gets said all the time on these Forums. Point is, we're not discussing the merits of previous systems, we're discussing the merits of 4e (and speculating wildly as to what they might be based on very limited amounts of information).

hamlet
2008-01-04, 05:45 PM
If I was rebutting anything in particular I would have quoted it. I was simply adding my thoughts on the subject.

I sit corrected.

Valairn
2008-01-04, 05:59 PM
Well, I wouldn't call it work, it's a pleasurable hobby after all. Still, yes, I prefer to build my own toys, rather than play with finished items. "Wrong" is a powerful word and should be handled carefully when discussing something as preferential as gaming. I don't really think the dice are the problem in terms of simulationism (or representationism, realism, verisilimitude, immersion, suspension of disbelief, etc...) so much as the prevalent willingness to restort to them to resolve every action.

But are Wizards truly trying to improve the game or are they looking to shift more product? Improvement is as relative as wrong or right for this sort of subject. Wizards are, presumably, responding to the market and producing a game that will meet many criteria, not least of which is accessibility. They may improve accessibility, speed of combat, class balance or any number of things and yet fail to improve the game experience.

I feel no hostility towards Wizards of the Coast or 4e and regard its creation as a sound business decision. I don't think the direction they are moving is generally a good one in terms of meeting my preferences, but that's hardly important to them and I can already see 4e is going to be a mixed bag. Some of it I will like and some of it I won't, which is why I have no desire for an integrated complete system.
To be clear, there is a distinction to be made between D&D as a hobby and D&D as a business. The latter is the bottom line for Wizards of the Coast, whilst the former is the bottom line for me. So... to go back to the original point of disagreement, my opinion is that a 'closed' or 'complete' rules system is not necessarily a good thing, mainly because it creates the perception of boundaries for new players.
Perhaps, though, I am just misunderstanding you here. I don't expect 4e will be a light system with optional add ons. I do expect that it will initially appear to be less complex and complicated than 3e, but I also think that this is largely a perception. I imagine that they are simply slimming things down in order to build them back up over the next few years. Most of the changes so far revealed have been cosmetic or minor. I don't think they are improving the game, but I do think they are improving the product.

I dunno which Threads you have been reading, but this gets said all the time on these Forums. Point is, we're not discussing the merits of previous systems, we're discussing the merits of 4e (and speculating wildly as to what they might be based on very limited amounts of information).

In all respects I can pretty much say I agree with you, I'm leaning a bit on the optimistic side that wizards is trying to improve their product rather than just sell more, but I guess time will tell that in the end.

In reference to a comment above:

The DnD SRD is an "open" license that is actually quite closed. Wizards reserves the rights to withdraw or edit that license at any time and without notice and has every right to sue anyone they feel like for copyright infringement upon the editing or withdrawal of that license. If any substantial work is put out that makes 3.5 better and it starts competing with their current product, don't be surprised if they end their so called open license on the current SRD, and sue. That's the way these things work unfortunately.

Behold_the_Void
2008-01-04, 06:04 PM
I honestly cannot understand why so many people rail against interesting, workable and defined mechanics. It looks like the traps will be a lot easier to make interesting and make work, and I for one appreciate it since I don't have time to homebrew my own system and make the campaign for the week. They're selling D&D as a roleplay system, so having all the rules needed to run without having to go in and change anything is a GOOD THING. It doesn't mean you can't change things, but it certainly is nice to have it run fine off the box.

osyluth
2008-01-04, 06:40 PM
The sad thing about this article is that Tomb of Horrors was recently updated to 3.5. :furious:

Matthew
2008-01-04, 06:43 PM
In all respects I can pretty much say I agree with you, I'm leaning a bit on the optimistic side that wizards is trying to improve their product rather than just sell more, but I guess time will tell that in the end.

Fair enough.


In reference to a comment above:

The DnD SRD is an "open" license that is actually quite closed. Wizards reserves the rights to withdraw or edit that license at any time and without notice and has every right to sue anyone they feel like for copyright infringement upon the editing or withdrawal of that license. If any substantial work is put out that makes 3.5 better and it starts competing with their current product, don't be surprised if they end their so called open license on the current SRD, and sue. That's the way these things work unfortunately.
I think you may find yourself quite wrong about that. My understanding is that the Open Gaming License cannot be revoked, as written. It's permanent, which is why so many companies, after consulting with various lawyers, have built games off it. That said, if Wizards wanted to 'try it on', they certainly have the fiscal power to make building games off of the license none profitable. The rumour mill suggests that this will not be the case with the new license; from what I hear, it will be tight enough to preclude using it to build variant games. It cannot, however, replace the previous license.


I honestly cannot understand why so many people rail against interesting, workable and defined mechanics. It looks like the traps will be a lot easier to make interesting and make work, and I for one appreciate it since I don't have time to homebrew my own system and make the campaign for the week. They're selling D&D as a roleplay system, so having all the rules needed to run without having to go in and change anything is a GOOD THING. It doesn't mean you can't change things, but it certainly is nice to have it run fine off the box.

Huh, I could have sworn that I just got through describing why 'good' and 'bad' with regard to RPGs are subjective. Yes, what you describe is no doubt something you consider 'good', but that doesn't mean it is absolutely good (and to be clear, I am not saying it's absolutely bad either).

Tren
2008-01-04, 06:45 PM
The sad thing about this article is that Tomb of Horrors was recently updated to 3.5. :furious:

Hopefully they'll have a 4E version available sooner than they had a 3E :smallamused:

Behold_the_Void
2008-01-04, 08:31 PM
Huh, I could have sworn that I just got through describing why 'good' and 'bad' with regard to RPGs are subjective. Yes, what you describe is no doubt something you consider 'good', but that doesn't mean it is absolutely good (and to be clear, I am not saying it's absolutely bad either).

Then please, explain to me how having a defined enough system to be playable off the box without required tinkering (but not forbidding tinkering) is in any way bad. I can't seem to fathom any way in this could be anything less than positive.

Matthew
2008-01-04, 10:36 PM
Then please, explain to me how having a defined enough system to be playable off the box without required tinkering (but not forbidding tinkering) is in any way bad. I can't seem to fathom any way in this could be anything less than positive.

Simply put, I think that a 'complete' or 'integrated' system discourages modification by its very completeness, whilst an 'incomplete' system that expects and even requires alteration is created with that in mind. The term 'incomplete' is perhaps misleading, as I don't mean 'unplayable', I mean built with the expectation that it will be (perhaps significantly) modified [i.e. AD&D 2e or C&C].

Tren
2008-01-05, 12:01 AM
By that some token Matthew, I don't think anyone who says they want a "complete" or "comprehensive" system is implying that they want a system that is prohibitive of additions and player/DM innovation.

Behold_the_Void
2008-01-05, 12:14 AM
Simply put, I think that a 'complete' or 'integrated' system discourages modification by its very completeness, whilst an 'incomplete' system that expects and even requires alteration is created with that in mind. The term 'incomplete' is perhaps misleading, as I don't mean 'unplayable', I mean built with the expectation that it will be (perhaps significantly) modified [i.e. AD&D 2e or C&C].

What about a system that is easily modified on a play level (i.e. makes it easy to make more traps and calculate how the traps should challenge a player) while retaining a complete and easily resolved mechanic for how that works? Because that's what it seems like they're going for, and I can't think of how having a set rules for how traps, for example, resolve will detrimentally affect play, unless you routinely gut and replace the rules which, if good enough, really shouldn't be necessary.

Matthew
2008-01-05, 12:53 AM
By that some token Matthew, I don't think anyone who says they want a "complete" or "comprehensive" system is implying that they want a system that is prohibitive of additions and player/DM innovation.

Sure, and I'm not saying they do. What I am saying is that what I have noticed about complete or comprehensive systems is that they do seem to discourage innovation. A kind of "you can't do that" attitude. With D20, it may be something as simple as moving, attacking and moving again without the relevant feat.


What about a system that is easily modified on a play level (i.e. makes it easy to make more traps and calculate how the traps should challenge a player) while retaining a complete and easily resolved mechanic for how that works? Because that's what it seems like they're going for, and I can't think of how having a set rules for how traps, for example, resolve will detrimentally affect play, unless you routinely gut and replace the rules which, if good enough, really shouldn't be necessary.

If people are happy with the rules, then they're happy with the rules, there's no point bickering about it. In this particular case [i.e. Traps] the designers are seeking to codify what is already possible. The article suggests on the one hand that in D20 'once the Rogue is down, so are your chances of overcoming traps' and on the other hand 4e is going to provide us with the 'tools' for interpreting innovative play when the situation comes up. That all sounds well and good until we realise that they are just codifying what already goes on (or should go on, if the DM is any good). Same applies to the 'take 10' perception roll 'always being on'. That's just a codification of reactive perception checks, which again should be in play already. My observation of D&D over the years is that codification breeds stagnation, encouraging desire for even more codified rules to deal with every situation.

Here's a basic scenario, which I hope will do something to illustrate what I am driving at.


4 Player Characters (Fighter, Rogue, Cleric and Wizard) enter a dungeon room; it's 15' by 15', decorated with tapestries and rugs. There is an open door on the far side of the room. Unknown to the adventurers, there is a trapped and locked door beneath the rug.



Players: "Okay, we search the room."
DM: "How are you doing that?"



Players: "Talus the Rogue does a visual search for traps."
DM: *Rolls Die* "Doesn't seem to be any."
Players: "Talus enters the room and makes sure it's safe."
DM: "Seems to be."
Players: "We enter the room and visually examine the tapestries and rugs. Do we notice anything unusual about them?"
DM: "The tapestries appear to depict familiar religious scenes and images of the Deity, Pelor.
Players: "Hmmn, let's have a look behind these tapestries and then under the rugs. We'll start with the west wall."

* Of course, if one of the Player Characters happens to be an Elf, he has a chance of noticing the concealed Trap Door just by passing near to it.



Players: "Talus the Rogue searches every 5 by 5 square foot, taking 20. Do we find anything?"
DM: "You find a Trap Door under the rug."



Players: "We walk in"
DM: "Okay, you perceive a Trap Door under the rug. It appears to be trapped. Oh yeah, the scenes on the tapestries depict the Deity Pelor."

Now obviously, I am biased to some degree and I admit to even being a bit tongue in cheek about the 4e scenario, but I would say that the above is a reasonable characterisation of what the difference between editions looks like to me.

Mr._Blinky
2008-01-05, 01:24 AM
@Matthew: Well, I can somewhat understand your problem with the change from 2e to 3e, but not so much on 4e. At the point your presenting, the only difference is that the PC had to ask first before the DM told him, and honestly, what rogue doesn't search every room? This eliminates a good deal of the "Well, there was a fairly obvious trapdoor underneath the massive lump in the rug, but since you didn't bother to ask, you didn't notice it despite your +20 to search." It streamlines it, which isn't a bad thing. Now, if you want to go back to specifically detailing how you search like in your 2e example, that's fine, but 4e isn't going to prevent you from houseruling that in the slightest.

Also, as to the "discouragement of modification", anyone like yourself who wants to mod the system will do it anyways, and nothing is actually stopping you. This is for those of us who don't have the time or want to change it ourselves, and would prefer a system that works well with a minimal of tinkering. If you want to change stuff, that's fine, but that doesn't mean everyone else should have to in order to have some casual fun.

Matthew
2008-01-05, 01:52 AM
@Matthew: Well, I can somewhat understand your problem with the change from 2e to 3e, but not so much on 4e. At the point your presenting, the only difference is that the PC had to ask first before the DM told him, and honestly, what rogue doesn't search every room? This eliminates a good deal of the "Well, there was a fairly obvious trapdoor underneath the massive lump in the rug, but since you didn't bother to ask, you didn't notice it despite your +20 to search." It streamlines it, which isn't a bad thing. Now, if you want to go back to specifically detailing how you search like in your 2e example, that's fine, but 4e isn't going to prevent you from houseruling that in the slightest.

Sure, and I'm not arguing that 4e is worse than D20, I'm just trying to explain how additional mechanics can alter a play situation. There's certainly nothing stopping AD&D being mechanised almost the exact same way (By means of Attribute Checks or assigning Percentage Chances), it's just that by having no 'default' method it leaves things open.


Also, as to the "discouragement of modification", anyone like yourself who wants to mod the system will do it anyways, and nothing is actually stopping you. This is for those of us who don't have the time or want to change it ourselves, and would prefer a system that works well with a minimal of tinkering. If you want to change stuff, that's fine, but that doesn't mean everyone else should have to in order to have some casual fun.

Oh yeah, don't get me wrong, this is just my preference we're talking about here. From a business stand point and for the majority of players, the D20 method appears to work fine and the 4e method looks like it is going to improve on that for them. To be clear, I have no problem with people going with their preference, I am just expressing (and hopefully explaining) mine.

Valairn
2008-01-05, 02:26 AM
I think you may find yourself quite wrong about that. My understanding is that the Open Gaming License cannot be revoked, as written. It's permanent, which is why so many companies, after consulting with various lawyers, have built games off it. That said, if Wizards wanted to 'try it on', they certainly have the fiscal power to make building games off of the license none profitable. The rumour mill suggests that this will not be the case with the new license; from what I hear, it will be tight enough to preclude using it to build variant games. It cannot, however, replace the previous license.

This is from the d20 SRD Trademark License.



4. Quality Standards
The nature of all material You use or distribute that incorporates the Licensed Articles must comply with all applicable laws and regulations, as well as community standards of decency, as further described in the d20 System Guide. You must use Your best efforts to preserve the high standard and goodwill of the Licensed Trademarks. In order to assure the foregoing standard and quality requirements, Wizards of the Coast shall have the right, upon notice to You, to review and inspect all material released by You that uses the Licensed Articles. You shall fully cooperate with Wizards of the Coast to facilitate such review and inspection, including timely provision of copies of all such materials to Wizards of the Coast. Wizards of the Coast may terminate this License immediately upon attempted notice to you if it deems, in its sole discretion, that your use of the Licensed Articles does not meet the above standards.


Its not the OGL, in that respect you are completely correct, but since all the OGL is part of the WoTC D20 Trademark, your right to create derivative works can be removed if it doesn't meet "quality standards." Whatever that means.

Kurald Galain
2008-01-05, 03:49 AM
While a static perception score is certainly better than making a search check for every five foot step, the way some DMs did in third, it does mean that the most perceptive person is always going to be the one that spots everything.

Especially if he is hugging an elf.

Citizen Joe
2008-01-05, 09:07 AM
You know, I was hearing that 4E was going to require that the attacker simply beats the defender's defense with spells rather than the saving throw business. If that is so, then traps may simply 'attack' the victim's perception to see if it goes unnoticed.

fendrin
2008-01-05, 10:19 AM
You know, I was hearing that 4E was going to require that the attacker simply beats the defender's defense with spells rather than the saving throw business. If that is so, then traps may simply 'attack' the victim's perception to see if it goes unnoticed.

They are streamlining combat by reducing the # of rolls that need to be made. Easy enough to flip it around so the players still get a 'saving throw'. It's an optional rule in 3.X, too. srd link (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/playersRollAllTheDice.htm)

Matthew
2008-01-05, 10:29 AM
This is from the d20 SRD Trademark License.

Its not the OGL, in that respect you are completely correct, but since all the OGL is part of the WoTC D20 Trademark, your right to create derivative works can be removed if it doesn't meet "quality standards." Whatever that means.

Hey Valairn. My understanding is that because derivative games, such as True20, Castles & Crusades, Labyrinth Lord and OSRIC, do not make use of the D20 Trademark and have their own derivative licenses this clause would not apply. However, if Wizards were to lose a significant market share and wanted to take legal action, this would be the sort of thing that I would expect to see brought up. The legal distinctions are actually somewhat unclear and until somebody actually takes action and precedents are set, nothing is absolutely certain. On the other hand, a lot of what is in the OGL is not Wizards exclusive property anyway (I'm thinking, Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Elf, Dwarf, Orc, Ogre, Dragon, Long Sword, Wizard, Cleric, etc...). If they wanted to make a legal case, though, they have easily enough money to drive the competition off.

There was a good Thread on the subject of leaglity in which one of the main creators of OSRIC participated here: OSRIC Mentioned in New Dragon Magazine (http://www.kenzerco.com/forums/showthread.php?t=30834). I might be able to dig up a Thread or two from elsewhere if I have the time.

To be clear, though, I am not a lawyer, have not taken legal advice and the above should not be construed as such. It is just what I understand to be the case.

Valairn
2008-01-05, 01:10 PM
I am also not a lawyer :-D, any opinion I have is just that, an opinion. Its murky territory to be sure though, and I agree there is some protection provided by the OGL, its just not really bulletproof.

Draz74
2008-01-05, 02:36 PM
Matthew: Your 2e scenario reminds me of an experience from playing 2e. We'd been trying to find a way out of a chamber that we'd been trapped in, describing our search process to the DM for over half an hour. (There had to be a secret door to let us out, or else the campaign was simply over, TPK.)

Me: "I check out the ceiling."
DM: "... you see a vertical tunnel covered by a metal grate. Dang. I'm not actually ready with the next step of the campaign, and I was counting on it taking you a couple more sessions to think of looking at the ceiling."

Not that I'm claiming he was an amazing DM (obviously), but this is what I call a lame gaming experience. The DM was upset because we'd thought of what he hadn't thought of, while I was upset because I thought, "Duh! Any kind of adventurers with any sort of experience in dungeons would obviously look at the ceiling! It should go without saying, darn it! I would have looked at the ceiling, it's a natural part of checking out a confined space!" Not to mention I was upset at the prospect that we could have potentially spent two more gaming sessions just on the boring process of describing our search of the chamber.

Point is, it took a skilled DM to not turn the non-structured system of 2e into a hassle and a pain (and an arbitrary result, where the DM makes up his own guidelines for setting the chance that you actually spot the trapdoor in your search, based on whether he wants you to find it).

And if you need a skilled DM anyway, you might as well play a more structured rules set. Your skilled DM will still make up rules and rulings and Circumstance Bonuses/Penalties plenty to keep things dynamic, but at least if he wants to have a default guideline (because making things up on-the-go is hard work and he's trying to concentrate on a different aspect of the campaign), he's got one ready and waiting for him.

You claim that a "complete" ruleset actually seems to discourage a dynamic game. True, with less-skilled DMs. But as far as skilled DMs go, I think you're getting a skewed perspective on the issue by discussing the issue on the Internet. People are much bigger advocates of "The Mighty RAW" and "You can't do that, it's not in the rules," etc., online, than they are in their own groups. Something about needing a common non-local basis for discussion.

Back to the Searching topic, I'd just like to point out that, in 4e, the DM is totally able to still require the players to describe their searching process, just like in your 2e example. And if the players are actually well-immersed in their RPing, they will enjoy that process, until one of two things happen: (1) they've done it enough times that it's become boring, or (2) the characters are so much more experienced at the searching process than the players are, that it's silly for the players to try to describe it (like a player describing exactly what calligraphy techniques his Wizard uses to write in his spellbook).

But in 4e, as opposed to 2e, both when the players are describing their search process in detail (early in the campaign), and when they aren't (later in the campaign), there's an easy guideline mechanic available to the DM to find out, in the end, whether they actually succeed in finding the trapdoor!

Jerthanis
2008-01-05, 02:37 PM
Details are scattered, a lot of them aren't fixed in stone yet and a lot of them are hearsay, but among the highlights:

- And she's not the only one, not by a long shot. They plan to whittle down the number of FR deities (currently about 150-200) to about 20-30. Granted, most of them are going to be turned into demigods/ celestials/ demipowers and suchlike, but there are going to be quite a few gods removed. Oh, and as for a really annoying one? Tyr murdered Helm in some kind of dispute over a marriage. The main god of paladins killed one of the other main paladin-gods, and he apparently hadn't done anything particularly evil.

- The Spellplague had predictably terrible consequences, ravaging and mostly destroying several nations. Exactly which ones is unclear, but they apparently include Thay, Luskan, and Mulhorand.


Haha, I don't even particularly like Forgotten Realms, but even I think these changes will ruin that setting. The dynamics of the deific profile politics and rising/falling of each small and large god was a large part of what was interesting about the setting. With 20-30 gods to choose from, you've got another Ebberron with it's "Yeah, there are gods, sure, if you want to play a cleric I guess..." type of pantheon. Other than that, you've got the conflicts of the interesting nations, but if the most interesting few are obliterated by arbitrary earthshaking energies, what's there even left in the setting worth doing?

On topic of the traps and so forth, I really like the ideas they're talking about, and they seem a lot like ideas I've had to keep traps interesting, and their disarming capabilities being a chief role. An electrified floor in a battle with a vampire would be an example of what I'm thinking of here, where it's a significant factor to an ongoing battle, but one which creative solutions can be thought of to counter which don't involve a simple disabling of a device roll, or alternatively, the Rogue can be a huge help in the battle by dedicating himself to the disarming process. I like how their thoughts on this subject seem to mirror mine in this instance.

On the topic of WotC's attitude toward earlier editions of the game, they're probably not talking about the games you played, but are thinking of the problems with their own games of the past. I've noticed, both in play and while designing encounters that it's very difficult to use traps at all in a way that will give the rogue something fun and interesting to do with his skills while not being seen as an arbitrary extra source of damage. Because of its difficulty in design, and difficulty of arbitration in play, a DM who isn't interested in traps will either eliminate them completely from his games, or have them only show up when the Rogue is around to stop them. Basically, as far as I can tell, WotC is simply saying, "Something we've noticed is that traps need an overhaul, they aren't and have never been as dynamic and interesting as they need to be." And just because you've had well implemented traps by skilled DMs doesn't mean the base mentality and mechanics of Traps are awesome as written. Basically, they're probably not talking about your games, don't take too much offense.

Matthew
2008-01-05, 05:08 PM
Matthew: Your 2e scenario reminds me of an experience from playing 2e. We'd been trying to find a way out of a chamber that we'd been trapped in, describing our search process to the DM for over half an hour. (There had to be a secret door to let us out, or else the campaign was simply over, TPK.)

Me: "I check out the ceiling."
DM: "... you see a vertical tunnel covered by a metal grate. Dang. I'm not actually ready with the next step of the campaign, and I was counting on it taking you a couple more sessions to think of looking at the ceiling."

Not that I'm claiming he was an amazing DM (obviously), but this is what I call a lame gaming experience. The DM was upset because we'd thought of what he hadn't thought of, while I was upset because I thought, "Duh! Any kind of adventurers with any sort of experience in dungeons would obviously look at the ceiling! It should go without saying, darn it! I would have looked at the ceiling, it's a natural part of checking out a confined space!" Not to mention I was upset at the prospect that we could have potentially spent two more gaming sessions just on the boring process of describing our search of the chamber.

Heh, sure, that sounds like a poorly designed adventure as well as a poorly implemented experience. I could imagine much the same scenario in 3e, mind you.


Point is, it took a skilled DM to [I]not turn the non-structured system of 2e into a hassle and a pain (and an arbitrary result, where the DM makes up his own guidelines for setting the chance that you actually spot the trapdoor in your search, based on whether he wants you to find it).

Well, there's skilled and there's skilled. I would certainly say D20 is easier for new DMs to learn.


And if you need a skilled DM anyway, you might as well play a more structured rules set. Your skilled DM will still make up rules and rulings and Circumstance Bonuses/Penalties plenty to keep things dynamic, but at least if he wants to have a default guideline (because making things up on-the-go is hard work and he's trying to concentrate on a different aspect of the campaign), he's got one ready and waiting for him.

Well... that depends on whether the rules help or hinder that DM. I think that the very structuredness of D20 hinders the development of skills that might result in a 'good' DM.


You claim that a "complete" ruleset actually seems to discourage a dynamic game. True, with less-skilled DMs. But as far as skilled DMs go, I think you're getting a skewed perspective on the issue by discussing the issue on the Internet. People are much bigger advocates of "The Mighty RAW" and "You can't do that, it's not in the rules," etc., online, than they are in their own groups. Something about needing a common non-local basis for discussion.

Until quite recently, I was willing to believe that. However, I post on a few different forums and I have come to realise that this one is the only one that seems to have a vocal and negative view of thinking outside the box. It may be the case that such posters are a minority or unrepresentative of the D20 gaming population at large, I don't really know and it seems impossible to tell. What I have noticed about posters who change over to 'lighter' systems is that their stories often seem to revolve around how confining or restrictive all of the defined choices in D20 are.
I don't doubt that D20 is played in many different ways, but I do doubt that the system itself encourages innovation on the part of the participants. I was quite disturbed by a Thread a few weeks ago where there was heartfelt opposition to the idea that giving a Monster +1 to Hit could be done independently of any other mechanics (save perhaps raising it's CR slightly). That was preceded by a Thread where a couple of other posters (surprisingly from my perspective, as I didn't expect it of them) opposed another similar idea. In both discussions, the RAW was not under debate, but simply the virtues of lighter systems.


Back to the Searching topic, I'd just like to point out that, in 4e, the DM is totally able to still require the players to describe their searching process, just like in your 2e example. And if the players are actually well-immersed in their RPing, they will enjoy that process, until one of two things happen: (1) they've done it enough times that it's become boring, or (2) the characters are so much more experienced at the searching process than the players are, that it's silly for the players to try to describe it (like a player describing exactly what calligraphy techniques his Wizard uses to write in his spellbook).

Sure, and there are limits to what should be 'roleplayed out' or described in detail and how often. I am certainly not saying that every activity need be handled in the way described above, what I am saying is that the 'default' method has a lot of influence over what actually occurs. If you have a 'Search Skill' that Player Characters invest Building Resources into, then that creates the expectation that it will be used. Groups, both new and old, will be inclined to 'default' to it and perhaps never even consider other methods.


But in 4e, as opposed to 2e, both when the players are describing their search process in detail (early in the campaign), and when they aren't (later in the campaign), there's an easy guideline mechanic available to the DM to find out, in the end, whether they actually succeed in finding the trapdoor!

Well... this is shaky ground because the 2e core books are sketchy on this (unlike the 1e core books and 2e supplement books, which aren't), but there are four basic ways to handle the above scene if you want to speed it along or mechanise the results of declaring a search:


1) Attribute Scores: Characters with X+ in Y or Z automatically detect the door following a search.

2) Attribute Checks: Characters make an Attribute Check to discover the door following a search.

3) Automatic: A search of the room reveals the trapdoor.

4) Probability: A search of the room has X probability of revealing the trapdoor.

None of the above were default rules for play in 2e, though the last two were fundamental rules in 1e and all were regularly discussed elsewhere. In each case the purpose is the same as a Skill Check, establishing a percentage chance for success. The deciding factor is always the DM, since he sets the probability in all systems (whether by virtue of Difficulty Classes, Circumstance Modifiers, Attribute Modifiers or Assigned Probability). The point in all versions is to either challenge the abilities of the Player Characters, randomise the outcome of an action or move them through a particular stage.

I like having options as to how to handle a particular circumstance; I don't like being presented with a 'one true way to play the game' (beyond a basic system), which is to say a default method for numerous actions. Again, though, this is just my preference. My observations about how people in practice play the game are confined to those I have participated in and the discussions in forums I have read or contributed to.* I don't have an absolute view of what the gaming community at large is like, but I don't think that 'complete' or 'rules heavy' systems encourage innovation. That's not to say that they aren't 'good', just that there is room for other approaches.

* Indeed, one of the earliest posts I made here was with regard to Sneak Attack and limiting it to one attack per turn. The response caught me off guard, being a general condemnation of my 'nerfing' the Rogue (and to be fair, my response to that was not very well thought out).

VanBuren
2008-01-05, 06:28 PM
I doubt anyone here is against thinking outside the box. But what people are saying, is that thinking outside the box should be something you do when you want to, not something you have to do just to make an aspect of the game interesting.

Matthew
2008-01-05, 06:37 PM
And what I'm saying is that I prefer the game to be designed to both encourage and accomodate innovation. In this case, 'should' and 'should not' are relative to preference; I don't begrudge anyone their preference for a 'complete' system, but it doesn't therefore follow that I am in accordance with them. Behold_the_Void asked why someone might prefer an 'incomplete' system and I am seeking to explain it to his satisfaction.

VanBuren
2008-01-05, 06:47 PM
And what I'm saying is that I prefer the game to be designed to both encourage and accomodate innovation. In this case, 'should' and 'should not' are relative to preference; I don't begrudge anyone their preference for a 'complete' system, but it doesn't therefore follow that I am in accordance with them. Behold_the_Void asked why someone might prefer an 'incomplete' system and I am seeking to explain it to his satisfaction.

And I still am not convinced that it's a satisfactory reason. Nothing is preventing you from houseruling and creating your own traps. The sky is still, and always will be the limit. The only thing being changed is the safety net, which has been raised to a higher level of quality.

You are free to ignore it.

Draz74
2008-01-05, 07:13 PM
Heh, sure, that sounds like a poorly designed adventure as well as a poorly implemented experience. I could imagine much the same scenario in 3e, mind you. [i.e. "You search a 5' Cube and the Ceiling is 10' up"]

True. Well, it will certainly be a dark day when you catch me defending the 3.5 method of Searching for traps and secret doors. Out of the scenarios that you presented, "I take 20 on my Search check of every 5-foot square" is definitely my least favorite. And among all the other problems it offers, it could still lead to this negative 2e experience I had, just like you're saying.

Point of the story was, if there had been a straightforward way in the rules to determine whether we saw that tunnel, then even this DM couldn't have used that situation as a crutch. He would have had to admit right away, "I haven't developed the rest of the adventure yet. We're going to have to cancel this session." Which would be an improvement.


Well, there's skilled and there's skilled. I would certainly say D20 is easier for new DMs to learn.

Well... that depends on whether the rules help or hinder that DM. I think that the very structuredness of D20 hinders the development of skills that might result in a 'good' DM.

Hmmm. This pair of statements together is interesting. So the best DM will be someone who learns the "hard" way without d20, but once he has developed good skills he gets to adopt the d20 to speed things along? :smallamused:

Hmmm. That's kind of how *I* did it. Maybe that's why I sometimes get told I'm a good DM even though I'm honestly not very experienced at it. :smallredface:


What I have noticed about posters who change over to 'lighter' systems is that their stories often seem to revolve around how confining or restrictive all of the defined choices in D20 are.

That's what my Statistics teacher called a "self-selected sample." People who like the less-structured rules are more likely to post about their experiences with those rules. You yourself are a large quantity of indisputable evidence. :smallwink:


I don't doubt that D20 is played in many different ways, but I do doubt that the system itself encourages innovation on the part of the participants. I was quite disturbed by a Thread a few weeks ago where there was heartfelt opposition to the idea that giving a Monster +1 to Hit could be done independently of any other mechanics (save perhaps raising it's CR slightly). That was preceded by a Thread where a couple of other posters (surprisingly from my perspective, as I didn't expect it of them) opposed another similar idea. In both discussions, the RAW was not under debate, but simply the virtues of lighter systems.

Interesting. Well, I can't comment much without knowing the details of the threads in question. Changing a statistic of a monster like its to-hit value, though, does get messy in certain ways -- mainly the fact that it's hard to remember such bonuses if they're not documented in some part of the rules. Or even if you just "document" them by marking a change on the monster stat block, you'll be confused if you look at that stat block again years later, and go, "Why did he get another +1 to hit? Was it a houserule? A circumstance bonus? Is his BAB calculated wrong?" And it gets confusing.

But as a more temporary houserule, it would disturb me if people objected to the idea of a DM saying, "I'm giving all the Xorn in this encounter a +1 on all their attacks. Circumstance bonus, because .... they've been too weak in other encounters. So there."


Sure, and there are limits to what should be 'roleplayed out' or described in detail and how often. I am certainly not saying that every activity need be handled in the way described above, what I am saying is that the 'default' method has a lot of influence over what actually occurs. If you have a 'Search Skill' that Player Characters invest Building Resources into, then that creates the expectation that it will be used.

True. And I like it that way, because if I design an Indiana Jones-style character, I want him to not get fooled by lame traps!


Groups, both new and old, will be inclined to 'default' to it and perhaps never even consider other methods.

Also true, and that's a shame. Although if the rule works well, they probably wouldn't change it even if they considered the alternatives. :smallsmile: Overall, though, I'm not too worried about DMs forgetting that Rule 0 exists and that they're allowed to change stuff.


Well... this is shaky ground because the 2e core books are sketchy on this (unlike the 1e core books and 2e supplement books, which aren't), but there are four basic ways to handle the above scene if you want to speed it along or mechanise the results of declaring a search:

The first one isn't too bad. The second bugged me (about the NWP rules) even before 3e came out: "You mean the same Ability Check determines all kinds of tasks, even though some of them seem like they'd be way harder than others?" Likewise the fourth bugged me: "You mean this 15th-level party is no more likely to think of checking for a trapdoor under the rug than they were at Level 2?" The third method bugs me in a different way, where it can lead to a tendency of the party to say, "I search it!" every 2 seconds no matter what is going on, just in case they might miss an "automatic" success. (Just like I'm really glad that 3e rules give you a "disbelief save" anytime you interact with an illusion, so that players don't have to say "I attempt to disbelieve the illusion" every 2 seconds. Heh, another poor 2e experience was when I went through a near-TPK where we couldn't figure out how to hurt these dang bird-monsters ... and the lone character who ran away later got told that they had been an illusion all along, and the only way we would have been able to win the encounter was to Disbelieve it.) Whereas, under the other 3 methods, the players are more likely to assume that the DM will give them some leeway to find the trapdoor even if they don't explicitly "Search" everything, just because there's a guideline for when their searching ability is "good enough."


In each case the purpose is the same as a Skill Check, establishing a percentage chance for success. The deciding factor is always the DM, since he sets the probability in all systems (whether by virtue of Difficulty Classes, Circumstance Modifiers, Attribute Modifiers or Assigned Probability). The point in all versions is to either challenge the abilities of the Player Characters, randomise the outcome of an action or move them through a particular stage.

Agreed. But the d20 system, IMHO, makes it easier for the DM to figure out how he should set the probability, without the only deciding factor being "Do I want these characters to succeed at this or not?" (Which was the main deciding factor for both of the poor DMs I use as examples above. Coincidence? I think not!) There are at least minimal guidelines in the rulebooks for how to set the DC of a task (at least if you can put a "label" on the task: "Very Difficult," "Almost Impossible," "Fairly Easy," etc.). And I'd be in favor of more guidelines of this sort, which let the DM temporarily "forget" how good the Rogue's Search check is and set the DC of the trap independently of that, and only after that figure out what probability of success he has thrown to the players.

Of course, when he actually does (and, unlike my DMs, should) want the PCs to succeed or fail, he still has the power to look at the Rogue's Search check and set the DC accordingly.


... but I don't think that 'complete' or 'rules heavy' systems encourage innovation. That's not to say that they aren't 'good', just that there is room for other approaches.

OK, I can see that. I've had good experiences with very free-form RPGs, less structured than 2e D&D; but at the same time, I prefer having more structure.

Sorry if this comment is inappropriate, but it seems like in many of your posts -- for example, threads reacting to announcements about 4e rules -- you don't stick to what you're saying here. You act, more often, like "more freeform is always better." You admit, here, that "rules heavy" can be "good," so why can't you judge "rules heavy" 4e announcements as to whether they are "good"? Who knows, you may even find a "rules heavy" system someday that you like better than any of the "rules light" systems you've tried.


* Indeed, one of the earliest posts I made here was with regard to Sneak Attack and limiting it to one attack per turn. The response caught me off guard, being a general condemnation of my 'nerfing' the Rogue (and to be fair, my response to that was not very well thought out).

Well, I don't think people were so much offended by the idea of changing the Sneak Attack rule; they were more just being overenthusiastic about warning you, "Based on our experience with class balance, that will make the Rogue be underpowered in many situations (though there could be exceptions depending on the type of monsters, the party composition, other houserules, etc.), and we are vehement about how much it has been a bad experience for us to play ineffectual characters, so we think it would be very risky for you to (probably) send one of your players into a similar situation."

Matthew
2008-01-05, 08:46 PM
And I still am not convinced that it's a satisfactory reason. Nothing is preventing you from houseruling and creating your own traps. The sky is still, and always will be the limit. The only thing being changed is the safety net, which has been raised to a higher level of quality.

That's fine, I'm not looking to convince you, just present my opinion. I don't like the term much, but isn't 'you can house rule it', usually referred to as the Oberon (sp?) fallacy or somesuch thing these days.


You are free to ignore it.

I know, no need to bold it.


Point of the story was, if there had been a straightforward way in the rules to determine whether we saw that tunnel, then even this DM couldn't have used that situation as a crutch. He would have had to admit right away, "I haven't developed the rest of the adventure yet. We're going to have to cancel this session." Which would be an improvement.

Sure, but that's not the fault of the rules, that was a failing on the part of the DM. The game rules aren't there to govern the social interaction between the DM and players (or at least, they aren't to the best of my knowledge). I suspect that he might have thought up some other way to occupy your time if he couldn't leave you scratching your heads about secret passages in the ceiling (an odd sort of gamble in any case).


Hmmm. This pair of statements together is interesting. So the best DM will be someone who learns the "hard" way without d20, but once he has developed good skills he gets to adopt the d20 to speed things along? :smallamused:
Hmmm. That's kind of how *I* did it. Maybe that's why I sometimes get told I'm a good DM even though I'm honestly not very experienced at it. :smallredface:

That's one possibility. Of course, if he's skilled, there's no need for him to use D20 either.


That's what my Statistics teacher called a "self-selected sample." People who like the less-structured rules are more likely to post about their experiences with those rules. You yourself are a large quantity of indisputable evidence. :smallwink:

Sure, I freely admit this sort of thing is anecdotal. There are some Threads on Enworld about folk who adopted and didn't adopt Castles & Crusades after experiences with D20; the poll reported about a 50/50 split between those who did not like it and those who did, I think. I would have to go back and check. Of course, these samples are almost useless beyond the context within which they are reported. Unfortunately, we have little more to go on as to why people might change systems or prefer one to another.


Interesting. Well, I can't comment much without knowing the details of the threads in question. Changing a statistic of a monster like its to-hit value, though, does get messy in certain ways -- mainly the fact that it's hard to remember such bonuses if they're not documented in some part of the rules. Or even if you just "document" them by marking a change on the monster stat block, you'll be confused if you look at that stat block again years later, and go, "Why did he get another +1 to hit? Was it a houserule? A circumstance bonus? Is his BAB calculated wrong?" And it gets confusing.

Heh, well it certainly pays to note the whys and wherefores.


But as a more temporary houserule, it would disturb me if people objected to the idea of a DM saying, "I'm giving all the Xorn in this encounter a +1 on all their attacks. Circumstance bonus, because .... they've been too weak in other encounters. So there."

As I say, it disturbed me too.


True. And I like it that way, because if I design an Indiana Jones-style character, I want him to not get fooled by lame traps!

Sure. I can appreciate that, even if I don't prefer it.


Also true, and that's a shame. Although if the rule works well, they probably wouldn't change it even if they considered the alternatives. :smallsmile: Overall, though, I'm not too worried about DMs forgetting that Rule 0 exists and that they're allowed to change stuff.

Well, it's interesting that 3e determined it even needed a Rule 0, but yeah, it's not something I worry about unless I encounter it.


The first one isn't too bad. The second bugged me (about the NWP rules) even before 3e came out: "You mean the same Ability Check determines all kinds of tasks, even though some of them seem like they'd be way harder than others?"

Maybe I should have said a 'Modified Attribute Check', but to be fair, all Attribute Checks are supposed to be modified.


Likewise the fourth bugged me: "You mean this 15th-level party is no more likely to think of checking for a trapdoor under the rug than they were at Level 2?"

That might happen or it might not. Unless they've encountered a lot of trapdoors under carpets I don't really see the problem, but on the other hand there's nothing stopping the DM adjusting for level.


The third method bugs me in a different way, where it can lead to a tendency of the party to say, "I search it!" every 2 seconds no matter what is going on, just in case they might miss an "automatic" success...

...Whereas, under the other 3 methods, the players are more likely to assume that the DM will give them some leeway to find the trapdoor even if they don't explicitly "Search" everything, just because there's a guideline for when their searching ability is "good enough."

Same deal with the 3e 'Take 20' thing, though, isn't it? Obviously (or perhaps not), this wouldn't apply to everything the party ever searches (Indeed, it's really just method 4 with 100% or infinite probability)


(Just like I'm really glad that 3e rules give you a "disbelief save" anytime you interact with an illusion, so that players don't have to say "I attempt to disbelieve the illusion" every 2 seconds. Heh, another poor 2e experience was when I went through a near-TPK where we couldn't figure out how to hurt these dang bird-monsters ... and the lone character who ran away later got told that they had been an illusion all along, and the only way we would have been able to win the encounter was to Disbelieve it.)

Heh, the 2e illusion rules are certainly problematic.


Agreed. But the d20 system, IMHO, makes it easier for the DM to figure out how he should set the probability, without the only deciding factor being "Do I want these characters to succeed at this or not?" (Which was the main deciding factor for both of the poor DMs I use as examples above. Coincidence? I think not!) There are at least minimal guidelines in the rulebooks for how to set the DC of a task (at least if you can put a "label" on the task: "Very Difficult," "Almost Impossible," "Fairly Easy," etc.). And I'd be in favor of more guidelines of this sort, which let the DM temporarily "forget" how good the Rogue's Search check is and set the DC of the trap independently of that, and only after that figure out what probability of success he has thrown to the players.

That's definitely a matter of perception. Is labelling a task so necessary to perceiving its difficulty? It just doesn't strike me as a problem; the DM might decide 40-60% is the Average or might decide 50-75% or whatever. The only deciding factor is how often he wants PCs to fail or succeed at 'Average' tasks.
It's something of a trade off for me. The open ended nature of D20 means that we no longer have 'automatic fail' and 'automatic success' as independent of 0% and 100% difficulty levels . The odd Thread that crops up asking what the Spot Check of seeing someone right infront of you is or the Listen Check of hearing someone speaking into your ear strike me as good examples of the problems it has brought. However, the main problem I have with the methodology is the sheer number of modifiers for virtually the same outcome. On the upside, the guidelines are there if you want them.


Of course, when he actually [I]does (and, unlike my DMs, should) want the PCs to succeed or fail, he still has the power to look at the Rogue's Search check and set the DC accordingly.

Of course.


OK, I can see that. I've had good experiences with very free-form RPGs, less structured than 2e D&D; but at the same time, I prefer having more structure.

Sorry if this comment is inappropriate, but it seems like in many of your posts -- for example, threads reacting to announcements about 4e rules -- you don't stick to what you're saying here. You act, more often, like "more freeform is always better." You admit, here, that "rules heavy" can be "good," so why can't you judge "rules heavy" 4e announcements as to whether they are "good"? Who knows, you may even find a "rules heavy" system someday that you like better than any of the "rules light" systems you've tried.

I think you may perhaps have the wrong idea about why I post in 4e Threads. I like Role Master and many other heavy rule systems, but I don't have the time to invest in preparing them or running them. My preference for D&D (the biggest system on the market and most capable of producing quality products) is towards a rules light game because it's easier for me to run. Honestly, I would be surprised if you could find any posts of mine, bearing in mind their context, that slam 4e for being 'rules heavy.' Since 4e is yet to be released and we're debating what we would like to see from 4e in light of very small pieces of information, then this is the right occasion to say "I want it to be rules light." Once it's released, there's little reason to say that, as it has already come to pass.


Well, I don't think people were so much offended by the idea of changing the Sneak Attack rule; they were more just being overenthusiastic about warning you, "Based on our experience with class balance, that will make the Rogue be underpowered in many situations (though there could be exceptions depending on the type of monsters, the party composition, other houserules, etc.), and we are vehement about how much it has been a bad experience for us to play ineffectual characters, so we think it would be very risky for you to (probably) send one of your players into a similar situation."

As I recall, it was more of an outcry than a warning, but time tends to distort the memory. I don't think anybody was talking from experience of having only one Sneak Attack per round (except maybe me, as we had been playing it that way up until then).

VanBuren
2008-01-05, 08:56 PM
The Oberoni principle: "Though rule 0 is the rules as written any specific application of rule 0 is not the rules as written. This is because if it was the rules as written you would not have needed to change it with rule 0 to make it so."

Essentially, "Using rule 0 is RAW, but the creations of rule 0 are not."

I'm not sure how this ties into the discussion. I'm not arguing that your houseruled traps are RAW, but that Rule 0 should not need to be invoked to make RAW work and/or be fun.

Matthew
2008-01-05, 09:16 PM
The Oberoni principle: "Though rule 0 is the rules as written any specific application of rule 0 is not the rules as written. This is because if it was the rules as written you would not have needed to change it with rule 0 to make it so."

Essentially, "Using rule 0 is RAW, but the creations of rule 0 are not."

I'm not sure how this ties into the discussion. I'm not arguing that your houseruled traps are RAW, but that Rule 0 should not need to be invoked to make RAW work and/or be fun.

I think I was reading 'House Ruling' as an action (as in House Ruling the game to be simpler and less governed by specific rules), not an adjective tied to Traps. Not sure if that's what you meant now.

In any case, I think House Ruling a game is both part of the fun and probably a necessary part of running any RPG, to some extent. I don't think increasing the level of 'safety' within the rules by legislating for more events creates a better quality RPG. I think it results in a RPG with more rules. There's nothing absolutely good or bad about that relative to an RPG with a lighter rule set, there's just subjective preference.

VanBuren
2008-01-05, 09:28 PM
I think I was reading 'House Ruling' as an action (as in House Ruling the game to be simpler and less governed by specific rules), not an adjective tied to Traps. Not sure if that's what you meant now.

I think we're both thoroughly confused on this point now. :/


In any case, I think House Ruling a game is both part of the fun and probably a necessary part of running any RPG, to some extent. I don't think increasing the level of 'safety' within the rules by legislating for more events creates a better quality RPG. I think it results in a RPG with more rules. There's nothing absolutely good or bad about that relative to an RPG with a lighter rule set.

And I can appreciate that. My point is that house-ruling should be because you want to add your own little flair and flavor to the game, not because there's anything wrong with the default mechanics.

Matthew
2008-01-05, 09:44 PM
I think we're both thoroughly confused on this point now. :/

It would seem so.


And I can appreciate that. My point is that house-ruling should be because you want to add your own little flair and flavor to the game, not because there's anything wrong with the default mechanics.

Heh, but 'wrong' is itself subjective in this context. There's nothing absolutely 'wrong' in having a lighter rule set or 'wrong' in having a heavier rule set. I find it a lot easier to add onto a light rule set than take away from a heavy one, but I know other people with exactly the opposite opinion. I think that lighter rule sets encourage people to think more abstractly than heavier rule sets, which I think encourage people to think within the rules. Opinions no doubt vary, but that's currently mine.

I think that definitions have become somewhat confused here, though. So, I'll try and clear up what I can from my perspective.


Rules Heavy RPGs: Tending towards completeness, integration and interdependence with plenty of specific rules to legislate actions. I see them as less friendly towards innovation and house rules, but potentially more friendly towards new players.

Rules Light RPGs: Tending towards incompleteness, none integration and independence with mainly general rules intended to be adpated for specific instances. I see them as more friendly towards innovation and house rules, but less friendly towards new players.

Completeness/Incompleteness: The degree to which an RPG legislates for particular actions.

Integration/None Integration: The extent to which the rules of an RPG complement one another.

Independence/Interdependence: The extent to which the rules of an RPG are integrated and rely on one another.

House Rules: How you customise a game. They can be minimal or they can be wide ranging. A game can become lighter or heavier as a result of house rules. They are generally established prior to play.

Innovation: Actions that are not specifically legislated for by the rule set and their resolution. They generally occur during play.

Draz74
2008-01-06, 01:19 AM
That's fine, I'm not looking to convince you, just present my opinion. I don't like the term much, but isn't 'you can house rule it', usually referred to as the Oberon (sp?) fallacy or somesuch thing these days.

To use the hypothetical Xorn example from elsewhere in this conversation: Saying "You can houserule the Xorn to get a +1 attack if they're not working in your campaign" isn't the Oberoni fallacy. Saying "even though Xorn would always work better in the game if they had a +1 better attack, but the RAW are still good, because the DM can just make a houserule to give the Xorn +1 attack" is the Oberoni Fallacy. It deals specifically with arguing that there's no problem in the houseruled or DM-adjusted rules, and therefore there's also no problem with the Rules As Written.


Sure, but that's not the fault of the rules, that was a failing on the part of the DM. The game rules aren't there to govern the social interaction between the DM and players (or at least, they aren't to the best of my knowledge).

No, it wasn't the fault of the rules. But it's likewise not the fault of the rules when the DM should make up a ruling to deal with the situation, and he instead uses the default rule presented in the d20 system.


Sure. I can appreciate that, even if I don't prefer it.

See, that strikes me as an odd opinion, to the point of astonishment. If part of your character concept is that this character is the 3rd-best cheese maker in all the land, and he loses an ordinary Annual Village Cheese-Making Contest in an unremarkable village, that doesn't bother you?


Well, it's interesting that 3e determined it even needed a Rule 0, but yeah, it's not something I worry about unless I encounter it.

People who had already played D&D should have understood Rule 0 to exist anyway, I think; but for people who were playing for the first time in 3e, Rule 0 was really just a compact way of repeating what had been written in a much longer way in previous PHB's.


Maybe I should have said a 'Modified Attribute Check', but to be fair, all Attribute Checks are supposed to be modified.

... which means they were really the same as the d20 system, except with a "roll low" instead of a "roll high" structure. And to most people, the "roll high" structure is just more intuitive. So all the d20 system really does is make Modified Attribute Checks more common, at the expense of the other three methods you mentioned. (And the automatic one still gets used a lot too. Like buying ale from a normal tavern with a normal amount of money ... nobody bothers to roll for that, and if they did, it would still work, because the DC of the task would be so low. And the "automatic if you have X score in Y ability" method can still be used via the Taking 10 rule too. So all you really lose is the Fixed Percentage method.)


That might happen or it might not. Unless they've encountered a lot of trapdoors under carpets I don't really see the problem, but on the other hand there's nothing stopping the DM adjusting for level.

I admit that the "high-level characters being better than low-level characters at everything, even if they haven't experienced it specifically" philosophy is a tricky one, which I sometimes like and sometimes hate. Tough call on whether experience at Searching in general means they should be better, specifically, at Searching for Trapdoors Under Carpets. (Should high-level characters automatically know how to Swim, just because they've had a lot of practice being athletic in general? SAGA seems to think so. :smallconfused:)


Same deal with the 3e 'Take 20' thing, though, isn't it? Obviously (or perhaps not), this wouldn't apply to everything the party ever searches (Indeed, it's really just method 4 with 100% or infinite probability)

Like I said, I totally agree with you about the Search system of 3e (involving constant "take 20") being problematic. I can't defend 3e on this specific issue.


Heh, the 2e illusion rules are certainly problematic.

I'm glad to see you likewise won't defend 2e on this specific issue. :smallamused: Debates are so much more fun when people are willing to find bits of common ground that they agree on.


The odd Thread that crops up asking what the Spot Check of seeing someone right infront of you is or the Listen Check of hearing someone speaking into your ear strike me as good examples of the problems it has brought. However, the main problem I have with the methodology is the sheer number of modifiers for virtually the same outcome. On the upside, the guidelines are there if you want them.

I see no problem (in theory) with those threads. Really, there's no problem with the existence of DC -15 tasks. (And there's rare times when they might actually matter. "Can you hear someone yelling in your ear ... while you're asleep and wearing earplugs?" is a tough question. If there's rules for all those circumstances, it becomes an easy question.

Totally agree, though, that the piles and varieties of modifiers to a single check becomes cumbersome. I'm glad 4e will be reducing that by a lot; my homebrew system will too.


I think you may perhaps have the wrong idea about why I post in 4e Threads. I like Role Master and many other heavy rule systems, but I don't have the time to invest in preparing them or running them. My preference for D&D (the biggest system on the market and most capable of producing quality products) is towards a rules light game because it's easier for me to run. Honestly, I would be surprised if you could find any posts of mine, bearing in mind their context, that slam 4e for being 'rules heavy.' Since 4e is yet to be released and we're debating what we would like to see from 4e in light of very small pieces of information, then this is the right occasion to say "I want it to be rules light." Once it's released, there's little reason to say that, as it has already come to pass.

Ah, I see. Well, sorry, I think you're fighting a lost cause, and that 4e is close enough to released that it's long-since been cemented as a rules-heavy system. So if you want to have another system, separate from your rules-heavy Role Master, that fulfills the "rules light" role, I think you'll have to find one besides D&D. D&D isn't trying to fill the "light" role, it's trying to replace Role Master as your favorite "heavy."

I can understand that you are disappointed by that, but your desire for specific aspects of D&D to be more rules-light seems like complaining about the placement of individual trees, when really the whole forest is in an inconvenient location.


As I recall, it was more of an outcry than a warning, but time tends to distort the memory.

Like I said, overenthusiastic. Overenthusiastic warnings sound like outcries. :smallamused:


I don't think anybody was talking from experience of having only one Sneak Attack per round (except maybe me, as we had been playing it that way up until then).

Probably. But does it seem that hard for them to take their memories of multiple-Sneak-Attack rogue experiences, and mentally subtract half or more of the Sneak Attack dice they rolled from their effectiveness?

Matthew
2008-01-06, 09:28 AM
To use the hypothetical Xorn example from elsewhere in this conversation: Saying "You can houserule the Xorn to get a +1 attack if they're not working in your campaign" isn't the Oberoni fallacy. Saying "even though Xorn would always work better in the game if they had a +1 better attack, but the RAW are still good, because the DM can just make a houserule to give the Xorn +1 attack" is the Oberoni Fallacy. It deals specifically with arguing that there's no problem in the houseruled or DM-adjusted rules, and therefore there's also no problem with the Rules As Written.

Yeah, I was reading 'House Rule' as "4e is going to be what it's going to be, you can just house rule away any problems you might have with the system."


No, it wasn't the fault of the rules. But it's likewise not the fault of the rules when the DM should make up a ruling to deal with the situation, and he instead uses the default rule presented in the d20 system.

I would say that is the fault of the rules, but I suppose it's a fine line. On reflection, the books do encourage you to behave a certain way towards the players, so I suppose there are some ways in which they affect how DMs and players interact. I would seek to distinguish such guidelines from actual game rules, but perhaps it is not an entirely clear distinction.


See, that strikes me as an odd opinion, to the point of astonishment. If part of your character concept is that this character is the 3rd-best cheese maker in all the land, and he loses an ordinary Annual Village Cheese-Making Contest in an unremarkable village, that doesn't bother you?

Okay. Here's where I think 4e is actually doing something good. Getting rid of profession (and craft?) skills is a good idea. If you want your character to be the third best cheese maker in the land, just note it on your character sheet and submit it to the DM. If he does lose the Annual Village Cheese Making contest, I would expect there to be a good reason.

Seriously, though, to go back to the skilled trap finder archetype, I would handle it almost exactly the same way.


Player: "I want to play an Indiana Jones type character, but I suck at figuring out your lame ass traps and I know nothing about archaeology."
DM: "Okay, Fighter or Thief?"
Player: "Um, Fighter, I think."
DM: "Okay, make sure to put above average scores in Intelligence and Wisdom. I'm also going to give you the Thief Ability to Find/Remove Traps; it will start at 10% and go up at 5% per Level, but it's going to cost you 5% more experience to go up a level."

That's basically how 'Kits' worked in 2e. I was never a really big fan of them, but I have no real problem with them. If the player wanted his Character to start off with a higher percentage chance, that would also be possible. For the most part, though, I would just bear in mind his character background when assigning probabilities.


People who had already played D&D should have understood Rule 0 to exist anyway, I think; but for people who were playing for the first time in 3e, Rule 0 was really just a compact way of repeating what had been written in a much longer way in previous PHB's.

Maybe. Honestly, I think it could have done with a much longer exposition.


... which means they were really the same as the d20 system, except with a "roll low" instead of a "roll high" structure. And to most people, the "roll high" structure is just more intuitive. So all the d20 system really does is make Modified Attribute Checks more common, at the expense of the other three methods you mentioned. (And the automatic one still gets used a lot too. Like buying ale from a normal tavern with a normal amount of money ... nobody bothers to roll for that, and if they did, it would still work, because the DC of the task would be so low. And the "automatic if you have X score in Y ability" method can still be used via the Taking 10 rule too. So all you really lose is the Fixed Percentage method.)

Indeed, and you'll find that I say exactly the same thing elsewhere. The only thing I am saying different here is that the Attribute Check has become the default method in D20, which encourages people to default to it. Roleplayed exploration and assigned percentages (both of which I like) are now secondary methods, if they are discussed at all (and I think they are not).


I admit that the "high-level characters being better than low-level characters at everything, even if they haven't experienced it specifically" philosophy is a tricky one, which I sometimes like and sometimes hate. Tough call on whether experience at Searching in general means they should be better, specifically, at Searching for Trapdoors Under Carpets. (Should high-level characters automatically know how to Swim, just because they've had a lot of practice being athletic in general? SAGA seems to think so. :smallconfused:)

Yeah, this is something that the SIEGE system from Castles & Crusades has a crack at as well. Basically, you add your level if the task is something that is reasonably in the purview of the Class. I'm not a big fan of that approach either. As you say, it's a tough call. Personally, I am inclined to add 'up to character level' to any probability that seems reasonable. I prefer the freedom to do that over discrete numerically expressed skills.


I'm glad to see you likewise won't defend 2e on this specific issue. :smallamused: Debates are so much more fun when people are willing to find bits of common ground that they agree on.

Sure. I'm actually not that happy with the D20 rules either, but they're a heck of a lot clearer than the 2e exposition.


I see no problem (in theory) with those threads. Really, there's no problem with the existence of DC -15 tasks. (And there's rare times when they might actually matter. "Can you hear someone yelling in your ear ... while you're asleep and wearing earplugs?" is a tough question. If there's rules for all those circumstances, it becomes an easy question.

Really? I am not sure if you have taken my meaning. Spotting someone standing directly in front of you and hearing somebody standing next to you shouldn't require Spot or Listen Checks at all. People just think they should, but spot and Listen only need to be checked when there is a chance a character will not see or hear someone.


Totally agree, though, that the piles and varieties of modifiers to a single check becomes cumbersome. I'm glad 4e will be reducing that by a lot; my homebrew system will too.

Yep, that's another thing I am happy about with regar to 4e.


Ah, I see. Well, sorry, I think you're fighting a lost cause, and that 4e is close enough to released that it's long-since been cemented as a rules-heavy system. So if you want to have another system, separate from your rules-heavy Role Master, that fulfills the "rules light" role, I think you'll have to find one besides D&D. D&D isn't trying to fill the "light" role, it's trying to replace Role Master as your favorite "heavy."

Heh, well I don't mind losing, so long as the battle was worth fighting. Fortuately, there are now plenty of light 'D&D' systems in print. Indeed, Expeditious Retreat Press have announced four new OSRIC adventure modules this year and Castles & Crusades shows no sign of slowing down.


I can understand that you are disappointed by that, but your desire for specific aspects of D&D to be more rules-light seems like complaining about the placement of individual trees, when really the whole forest is in an inconvenient location.

Maybe. The information that has so far appeared seems to send mixed messages. A lot of what is being done appears to be making the game more Rules Light, but then the other boot drops. I'm not particularly disappointed, I'm actually rather looking forward to the emergence of 4e.


Probably. But does it seem that hard for them to take their memories of multiple-Sneak-Attack rogue experiences, and mentally subtract half or more of the Sneak Attack dice they rolled from their effectiveness?

Well... it seemed extreme to me to multiply them up, so I imagine it seemed extreme to them to multiply them down. After crunching the numbers, I found that in general it didn't make a lot of difference either way, but that's a long discussion and tied to other caveats about melee damage.

fendrin
2008-01-06, 12:43 PM
Really? I am not sure if you have taken my meaning. Spotting someone standing directly in front of you and hearing somebody standing next to you shouldn't require Spot or Listen Checks at all. People just think they should, but spot and Listen only need to be checked when there is a chance a character will not see or hear someone.

Technically, the rules do not differentiate between when you 'do' and 'don't' need to make a check. That is the purview of the DM. However, between the 'Take 10' mechanic and the minimum spot skill a character can have (not taking into account optional rules or in-game circumstances, -4), any character can spot a person right in front of them. The minimum check a non-distracted character can have is 6. Any Spot DC of 6 or less can be considered an automatic success and the DM should not ask for a spot check, but a bad DM might. On the other hand, if character is distracted, there should be a chance that they don't see someone right in font of them. It happens all the time in real life...

I've played in a lot of systems, from ridiculously rules heavy (Hero system) to ridiculously light (rock/sissors/paper determines all outcomes, no other mecanics). I think 3.X is on the heavy end of the spectrum, but still closer to the middle than the extreme end.

A complete system (as you defined it) reduces the effect of a bad DM by providing a set of (presumable fair and logical) rules that the players can rely upon. On the other hand, it does cause DMs to think less about why a particular mechanic is good or bad, so it does make it harder for bad DMs to improve their ability to arbitrate situations not covered by the rules (because no system is truly complete).

Of course, given that DMing is (at least in part) a learned skill, I hypothesize that the majority of D&D players have bad DMs. Thus it is in WotC's best interest to reduce the effect of bad DMs, even at the cost of slowing down the progression from bad DM to good DM, because a truly bad DM does not just run bad games, they give the impression hat D&D isn't fun. That's bad for business.

Draz74
2008-01-06, 03:47 PM
Player: "I want to play an Indiana Jones type character, but I suck at figuring out your lame ass traps and I know nothing about archaeology."
DM: "Okay, Fighter or Thief?"
Player: "Um, Fighter, I think."
DM: "Okay, make sure to put above average scores in Intelligence and Wisdom. I'm also going to give you the Thief Ability to Find/Remove Traps; it will start at 10% and go up at 5% per Level, but it's going to cost you 5% more experience to go up a level."

That's basically how 'Kits' worked in 2e. I was never a really big fan of them, but I have no real problem with them. If the player wanted his Character to start off with a higher percentage chance, that would also be possible. For the most part, though, I would just bear in mind his character background when assigning probabilities.

See, I don't understand why this is better than a situation where the player can just give his character a lot of Search/Disable Device ranks, and a higher Intelligence than would normally be expected for his class. Instead of a 5% experience penalty, the cost is the opportunity cost of losing what he could have had instead of those Intelligence points and Search/Disable Device ranks.

There are nitpicky little problems, like the way a Fighter in 3e can't get Trapfinding without dipping a Rogue level. (Trapfinding, if it exists at all, should be a Feat that anyone can take.) Or the way the Fighter still won't be all that good at these skills if he puts full points into them, because 3e's implementation of cross-class skills is too harsh.

But if the problems in 3e were fixed, I like the way that the class/feats/skills system kind of lets players build their own Kits for their characters. And guarantees balance (in theory) in the process, too.


Indeed, and you'll find that I say exactly the same thing elsewhere. The only thing I am saying different here is that the Attribute Check has become the default method in D20, which encourages people to default to it. Roleplayed exploration and assigned percentages (both of which I like) are now secondary methods, if they are discussed at all (and I think they are not).

What do you like about assigned percentages? I don't see what's appealing about them.

Roleplayed exploration gets old in large quantities, but I agree it adds a lot to the experience if used sparingly. But still, even if the DM roleplays the characters' Search of the room, there will be situations where he isn't sure whether the players have gotten "close enough" to find the Trap on the treasure chest. Isn't it good for there to be a system he can use to figure that out? And low DCs can always be used to make the task "automatic" if such is necessary.


Really? I am not sure if you have taken my meaning. Spotting someone standing directly in front of you and hearing somebody standing next to you shouldn't require Spot or Listen Checks at all. People just think they should, but spot and Listen only need to be checked when there is a chance a character will not see or hear someone.

As Fendrin started to address ... the question is really academic. If the DM decides that you can automatically see someone standing next to you, then your chance of seeing him is 100%. If the DM decides that the task isn't "automatic," but is "DC -5," then ... your chance of seeing him is still 100%. I just don't see what the practical difference between the two is, or why it matters. (I'm assuming any DM with minimal competence won't actually make you waste time rolling a die and adding up numbers when he knows you will definitely roll high enough.)


Maybe. The information that has so far appeared seems to send mixed messages. A lot of what is being done appears to be making the game more Rules Light, but then the other boot drops. I'm not particularly disappointed, I'm actually rather looking forward to the emergence of 4e.

Good. I wish I was looking forward to it with the same enthusiasm, actually. :smallwink:

But, see, I don't feel like anything they've said about 4e implies that it will be more "Rules Light." The rules will be simpler, more compact, more intuitive, more streamlined. But the goal is still to have a rule in place for as many situations as possible, to give the DM a guideline about when success or failure should happen. And to me, that is the question that determines "rules light" vs. "rules heavy". Complicated, ornate mechanics vs. elegant, intuitive mechanics seems like an entirely different axis of quality to me (and on that one, I definitely prefer the "elegant, intuitive" end, as long as it doesn't make the game simple to the point of breaking verisimilitude). Perhaps you were seeing these two axes of quality as somewhat the same thing?

It does seem like they are going out of their way more, in 4e, to make sure roleplaying doesn't get replaced by rolling a die for results, in situations like Disarming a Trap or Social Encounters. And I can see why that could make the game feel more rules-light, in a way that you (and I) would approve of. But there will still be a way for the DM to use the d20 system to figure out success or failure in the end.

Sebastian
2008-01-06, 05:03 PM
Sure, and I'm not saying they do. What I am saying is that what I have noticed about complete or comprehensive systems is that they do seem to discourage innovation. A kind of "you can't do that" attitude. With D20, it may be something as simple as moving, attacking and moving again without the relevant feat.


A good example is IMHO, the guidelines for magic item creation in 3.X. I always found not so easy to create a magic item, expecially if didn't fit exactly with the categories of that guidelines. And maybe is just me, but I found official magic items always qute dull, I don't know if the two things are related.

Kurald Galain
2008-01-06, 05:16 PM
See, I don't understand why this is better than a situation where the player can just give his character a lot of Search/Disable Device ranks, and a higher Intelligence than would normally be expected for his class. Instead of a 5% experience penalty, the cost is the opportunity cost of losing what he could have had instead of those Intelligence points and Search/Disable Device ranks.
I'm not sure who made up that particular argument, but kits in 2E never gave any character any kind of experience penalty.

The problem that "you can't learn X unless you also learn Y" is inherent in using a class-based system.



But, see, I don't feel like anything they've said about 4e implies that it will be more "Rules Light." The rules will be simpler, more compact, more intuitive, more streamlined. But the goal is still to have a rule in place for as many situations as possible, to give the DM a guideline about when success or failure should happen. And to me, that is the question that determines "rules light" vs. "rules heavy".
You are absolutely correct, and it is quite clear that 4E will be a rules-heavy RPG, because that's WOTC's design decision.

Matthew
2008-01-06, 05:23 PM
Technically, the rules do not differentiate between when you 'do' and 'don't' need to make a check. That is the purview of the DM. However, between the 'Take 10' mechanic and the minimum spot skill a character can have (not taking into account optional rules or in-game circumstances, -4), any character can spot a person right in front of them. The minimum check a non-distracted character can have is 6. Any Spot DC of 6 or less can be considered an automatic success and the DM should not ask for a spot check, but a bad DM might. On the other hand, if character is distracted, there should be a chance that they don't see someone right in font of them. It happens all the time in real life...

Okay, the examples are perhaps not suitable, then. I am lumping it together with the same Threads that ask, what's the DC of seeing the Sun, etc... When a Spot or Listen Check needs to be made is indeed mainly in the purview of the DM, but that's rather the point. The DMG (p. 30) provides an example of when a Skill Check is not needed:


Soveliss rides his horse along rocky terrain, making no roll to perform this mundane task. He guides it down into a steep gully, and you call for a DC 10 Ride Check to do so.

Now maybe you could interpret that first sentence as meaning he 'takes 10', but I think, given the difficulty of the task that follows, that this is not what has occured. Riding through rocky terrain isn't DC 0 or DC -10 or DC -100, it doesn't have a DC at all, it's automatic. A concept that seems to have become rather foreign to D&D. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's how it appears to me.


I've played in a lot of systems, from ridiculously rules heavy (Hero system) to ridiculously light (rock/sissors/paper determines all outcomes, no other mecanics). I think 3.X is on the heavy end of the spectrum, but still closer to the middle than the extreme end.

A complete system (as you defined it) reduces the effect of a bad DM by providing a set of (presumable fair and logical) rules that the players can rely upon. On the other hand, it does cause DMs to think less about why a particular mechanic is good or bad, so it does make it harder for bad DMs to improve their ability to arbitrate situations not covered by the rules (because no system is truly complete).

Of course, given that DMing is (at least in part) a learned skill, I hypothesize that the majority of D&D players have bad DMs. Thus it is in WotC's best interest to reduce the effect of bad DMs, even at the cost of slowing down the progression from bad DM to good DM, because a truly bad DM does not just run bad games, they give the impression hat D&D isn't fun. That's bad for business.

Absolutely, and I recognise D20 as a 'good' product. I just do not consider it a 'good' rule set for me, though, nor a good system for improving the skill of a DM.


See, I don't understand why this is better than a situation where the player can just give his character a lot of Search/Disable Device ranks, and a higher Intelligence than would normally be expected for his class. Instead of a 5% experience penalty, the cost is the opportunity cost of losing what he could have had instead of those Intelligence points and Search/Disable Device ranks.

It's not absolutely better, it's just subjectively better for me. I prefer to do it the above way because I find it simpler than calculating skill points and messing around with builds. Be aware that Find/Disable Traps is not the same thing as the D20 Skill. It parallels the normal method like the Elf's ability to detect Secret Doors. I have perhaps muddied the waters by mentioning that option at all.


There are nitpicky little problems, like the way a Fighter in 3e can't get Trapfinding without dipping a Rogue level. (Trapfinding, if it exists at all, should be a Feat that anyone can take.) Or the way the Fighter still won't be all that good at these skills if he puts full points into them, because 3e's implementation of cross-class skills is too harsh.

But if the problems in 3e were fixed, I like the way that the class/feats/skills system kind of lets players build their own Kits for their characters. And guarantees balance (in theory) in the process, too.

Yes, indeed, these are 'nit picky', but they are also serious short comings from my point of view as well. Skills and Feats make characters customisable, but they also create the perception of limitation. In D20, a Fighter has 2 Skill Points per level, before Intelligence Bonuses. He has four basic Skills: Swim, Climb, Jump and Ride; in order to be fully 'trained' in them all, he needs an Intelligence of 14. If he wants to be trained in something else, such as Religion, Spot, Listen, Search, Sneak, Hide, etc.. then these basic skills suffer.

I like that this is not a concern in previous editions. A Character does not need the Ride Skill to be able to ride well, nor the Ride Feats to be able to effectively use one in battle. I like that all Characters are able to jump, climb, swim, spot, listen, search, sneak and hide equally, only differentiated by attribute scores and level/class/background (if deemed necessary). The special abilities of Classes remain 'special', paralleling basic task resolution.


What do you like about assigned percentages? I don't see what's appealing about them.

The sheer simplicity and versatility. The DM decides what is simple, average, tough, hard, etc.. before hand and the impact of a character's attributes, level and class. Take, for instance, the example of a Fighter and a Thief attempting to sneak quietly past a guard. The Thief checks his Move Silently Ability, but fails (had he succeeded then sneaking past the guard would have been automatic for him, as he was literally silent); now it's down to normal task resolution. The DM doesn't like the variance created by checking Attribute Scores , preferring assigned percentages. He decides that sneaking past the guard is an 'Average Task', with a basic 50% chance of success. He adds to this the Dexterity Scores of the individual characters and their level. For the Fighter, he adds [Dexterity (12) + (Level x 1)], but for the Thief [Dexterity (15) + (Level x 2)]. The players get the feeling that the numbers mean something and the DM achieves the level of risk he wants (60-70%).

Now, maybe the next time they attempt to sneak past a guard he will use the same system, being comfortable with the methodology, but he doesn't have to. The variability is completely in the control of the DM. it is much smaller in the above example than in D20, but it can potentially be almost exactly the same, if preferred, or even greater (I personally prefer smaller degrees of variability).


Roleplayed exploration gets old in large quantities, but I agree it adds a lot to the experience if used sparingly. But still, even if the DM roleplays the characters' Search of the room, there will be situations where he isn't sure whether the players have gotten "close enough" to find the Trap on the treasure chest. Isn't it good for there to be a system he can use to figure that out? And low DCs can always be used to make the task "automatic" if such is necessary.

Not necessarily. When it comes down to it, if the DM is uncertain whether the characters find something that way and wants to randomise the outcome he likely already has an idea of what the probability he wants is. Going through the motions of working it out according to a formula, I regard as a waste of time. That said, if I were playing Role Master, I would consider it par for the course and the same is true of D20. I couldn't run a lengthy campaign that way, mind, and it's not my preferred method.


As Fendrin started to address ... the question is really academic. If the DM decides that you can automatically see someone standing next to you, then your chance of seeing him is 100%. If the DM decides that the task isn't "automatic," but is "DC -5," then ... your chance of seeing him is [I]still 100%. I just don't see what the practical difference between the two is, or why it matters. (I'm assuming any DM with minimal competence won't actually make you waste time rolling a die and adding up numbers when he knows you will definitely roll high enough.)

Nay, 100% and automatic are different. 100% implies room for alteration, automatic does not.


Good. I wish I was looking forward to it with the same enthusiasm, actually. :smallwink:

But, see, I don't feel like anything they've said about 4e implies that it will be more "Rules Light." The rules will be simpler, more compact, more intuitive, more streamlined. But the goal is still to have a rule in place for as many situations as possible, to give the DM a guideline about when success or failure should happen. And to me, that is the question that determines "rules light" vs. "rules heavy". Complicated, ornate mechanics vs. elegant, intuitive mechanics seems like an entirely different axis of quality to me (and on that one, I definitely prefer the "elegant, intuitive" end, as long as it doesn't make the game simple to the point of breaking verisimilitude). Perhaps you were seeing these two axes of quality as somewhat the same thing?

Perhaps. You'll have to elaborate on this one. I regard a rules light game as having a few general rules for task resolution relative to a rules heavy game, which has many detailed rules for the resolution of various specific tasks. A Rules Heavy game can be complex without being complicated (as with D20), but a rules light Game tends towards being niether complex nor complicated, though it can still be dynamic. However, the main difference is that a rules light game will use explicit rules for task resolution less frequently. Check out Robert Fisher's Site On Rules Light (http://web.fisher.cx/robert/infogami/On_rules_light).


It does seem like they are going out of their way more, in 4e, to make sure roleplaying doesn't get replaced by rolling a die for results, in situations like Disarming a Trap or Social Encounters. And I can see why that could make the game feel more rules-light, in a way that you (and I) would approve of. But there will still be a way for the DM to use the d20 system to figure out success or failure in the end.

Sure, it's the defaulting to the D20 system that gets on my nerves, though. The 3.5 DMG provides an example of this on p. 32 when it describes the search for a Kobold, reducing the 'roleplayed out' aspect to an abstract +2 Modifier and implying that the former is simply a device to improve the roll.


I'm not sure who made up that particular argument, but kits in 2E never gave any character any kind of experience penalty.

Actually, they occasionally did. Check the Complete Book of Dwarves and the Pariah Kit. The point, though, was that they generally traded one thing for another, customising the Class.

Roog
2008-01-07, 12:01 AM
Nay, 100% and automatic are different. 100% implies room for alteration, automatic does not.

What kind of situations occur in the game, where the character would automatically succeed, and changing the situation could not alter that?

Matthew
2008-01-07, 07:20 AM
What kind of situations occur in the game, where the character would automatically succeed, and changing the situation could not alter that?

The situation is actually what makes it automatic; the skill level of the character is what does not affect the outcome. Basically, it's a task that the DM decides requires no skill check to perform, such as walking along a path [i.e. no Balance Check is required].

fendrin
2008-01-07, 09:38 AM
The situation is actually what makes it automatic; the skill level of the character is what does not affect the outcome. Basically, it's a task that the DM decides requires no skill check to perform, such as walking along a path [i.e. no Balance Check is required].

But what differentiates that from the DM assigning a DC of -15, realizing that the PC is not distracted, and thus takes 10 for a minimum of -10 or so, and just doesn't ask for a balance check?

Honestly, most DMs just aren't going to think about it anyway, so what does it matter?

Matthew
2008-01-07, 11:06 AM
But what differentiates that from the DM assigning a DC of -15, realizing that the PC is not distracted, and thus takes 10 for a minimum of -10 or so, and just doesn't ask for a balance check?

The process. Assigning something a negative DC in order to make it automatic is following the system for the sake of it; it's a pointless step that encourages people to treat the rules as the physics of the game world, instead of as an imperfect model.


Honestly, most DMs just aren't going to think about it anyway, so what does it matter?

Well, lack of thought is probably why it matters. Understanding the nature of task resolution systems and when and why it is okay to ignore them is part of developing 'good' DM skills.

Indon
2008-01-07, 11:07 AM
I like the trap change. It allows more easily for things like a hallway filled with regularly jutting spears (such as in many video games) with an acid-filled spike pit below it (yes, the acid is neccessary, no, it did not eat away at the spikes).

But what mostly drew my attention was this bit:


Lastly, we wanted to expand the ways in which you could counter a trap. Much like figuring out that sometimes you wanted other skills to allow a character to recognize a trap's threat, we made an effort to design traps that could be countered with an interesting skill uses. Sometimes we're pointing out what should be obvious, such as that an Acrobatics check can be used to jump over a pit; other times we're going to expand the uses of some skills with opportunistic exceptions, like granting a skill check that gives the characters insight on how a trap acts and ascertain something about its attack pattern.

Which, to me, reads more like:


Lastly, we realized gamers are wacky, so we finally put in rules for something resembling stunts in at least one part of the game. Please come back to us, White Wolf gamers. We love you?

I suspect much of if I like 4.x or not will depend on how well this specific aspect of the game is fleshed out. If it's implemented all over the game, great. If it's only for traps but still well-done, well, I'll just try to houserule it outside of just trap usage. If it's poorly done, then meh.

But the move of traps to being a kind of encounter implies that there will be a kind of encounter stunt system (possibly drawing from the skill tricks of Complete Scoundrel as well), and that prospect actually seems interesting.

fendrin
2008-01-07, 11:48 AM
The process. Assigning something a negative DC in order to make it automatic is following the system for the sake of it; it's a pointless step that encourages people to treat the rules as the physics of the game world, instead of as an imperfect model.

Ah, but the rules, as implemented by the DM are effectively the physics of the game world. That's the entire premise of the comic Erfworld (hosted here, if you haven't read it, recommend it. It's really good). the better the rules, the better the game world functions logically. Note by 'better' i am not implying any particular level of completeness.


Well, lack of thought is probably why it matters. Understanding the nature of task resolution systems and when and why it is okay to ignore them is part of developing 'good' DM skills.

And how does a rules-light DM learn that lesson any better than a rules-heavy one? If anything, I think the fact that there is a predefined set of numbers to work from helps to establish where the point of needing a roll is. Without it, the DM can easily call for rolls when they shouldn't be necessary, use poor judgment in setting a difficulty, and never realize they are utilizing an inconsistent physics in their game world. How do they learn from that?

With the rules of D&D 3.X, a DM can say, "Huh, a character in fullplate and a towershield with a 6 dex might actually fail a balance check and trip over their own feet while in combat. Maybe I should make the player make balance checks not to fall prone while fighting. The other characters though, would pass the check even if they roll a one, so I won't waste game time making them roll."

It might seem to be silly at first to make a character try to balance on level ground, but in the scenario I just described, it makes sense given consistent physics in the game world. A rules light system will never cause a DM to reach that conclusion without it seeming like the DM is being arbitrarily unfair to one player.

Matthew
2008-01-07, 11:53 AM
Ah, but the rules, as implemented by the DM are effectively the physics of the game world. That's the entire premise of the comic Erfworld (hosted here, if you haven't read it, recommend it. It's really good). the better the rules, the better the game world functions logically. Note by 'better' i am not implying any particular level of completeness.

Then I think we are at a point of fundamental disagreement. Game Rules are not the physics of a game world, as far as I am concerned. In my opinion, whenever the game rules contradict the expectations of verisimilitude, the game rules are wrong and should be overuled. That's the advantage of having a living breathing DM capable of doing so, rather than having a computer implement the world according to a static script (which is the impression that Erfworld gives to me)


And how does a rules-light DM learn that lesson any better than a rules-heavy one? If anything, I think the fact that there is a predefined set of numbers to work from helps to establish where the point of needing a roll is. Without it, the DM can easily call for rolls when they shouldn't be necessary, use poor judgment in setting a difficulty, and never realize they are utilizing an inconsistent physics in their game world. How do they learn from that?

With the rules of D&D 3.X, a DM can say, "Huh, a character in fullplate and a towershield with a 6 dex might actually fail a balance check and trip over their own feet while in combat. Maybe I should make the player make balance checks not to fall prone while fighting."

It might seem to be silly at first to make a character try to balance on level ground, but in the scenario I just described, it makes sense given consistent physics in the game world.

I don't believe I said that this particular point was a 'rules light' versus 'rules heavy' issue. Sorry if I gave that impression. Lack of thought and slavishly following the system is what retards the development of such skills. However, if 'rules heavy' games do promote the above behaviour, then they do indeed help to retard such development.

Rutee
2008-01-07, 12:36 PM
Lastly, we realized gamers are wacky, so we finally put in rules for something resembling stunts in at least one part of the game. Please come back to us, White Wolf gamers. We love you?
At it's heart, that's how I read it too. I'd like to see some fun tricks allowed and encouraged, yeah. I've had multiple moments before where I would say "Well this sucks; I have Jump on me and could do /fantastic/ stunts.. if Damage Reduction meant "You do no damage"..."

Roog
2008-01-07, 12:56 PM
The situation is actually what makes it automatic; the skill level of the character is what does not affect the outcome. Basically, it's a task that the DM decides requires no skill check to perform, such as walking along a path [i.e. no Balance Check is required].

I've been drunk enough to fail at that task.

It seems to me that skill level (in that case skill level less penalties) does affect the outcome.




Then I think we are at a point of fundamental disagreement. Game Rules are not the physics of a game world, as far as I am concerned. In my opinion, whenever the game rules contradict the expectations of verisimilitude, the game rules are wrong and should be overuled.

But the GM's vision of verisimilitude does not exactly match any players vision of verisimilitude. So the GM who overrules the game rules is specifically creating game world physics with his ad hoc ruling; as is the GM who ,when a player suggests that the game rules break verisimilitude, decides that the game rules should still be followed.

Overruling the rules in favor of verisimilitude only strengthens the connection between the rules and the physics of a game world.

Roog
2008-01-07, 01:04 PM
double post

Mike_G
2008-01-07, 01:08 PM
The process. Assigning something a negative DC in order to make it automatic is following the system for the sake of it; it's a pointless step that encourages people to treat the rules as the physics of the game world, instead of as an imperfect model.

Well, lack of thought is probably why it matters. Understanding the nature of task resolution systems and when and why it is okay to ignore them is part of developing 'good' DM skills.

As usual on this topic, we have very different experiences. I think having a comprehensive set of rules helps the novice or busy DM, and is easily ignored by a good DM. I myself pretty much ignore most of the roleplaying skills, like Diplomacy, and really silly broke-ish stuff like leadership that should just be roleplayed and not a feat you buy, but I use the system for most stuff which saves arguing over ad-hoc rulings.

I've played with poor DM's who were brought to a crashing halt by player attempts at improvisation that wasn't well spelled out in the rules, and I've had fairly competent DMs who ran NPCs and monsters well, designed good campaigns, but stuck strictly to the book, so we often had the "Fighters can't sneak" thing. Ad hoc rulings in AD&D tended to be wildly inconsistent. With a fairly universal mechanic in 3e, those few rulings you need to make are easy to extrapolate.

Plus, nowadays, I really don't have time between sessions to modify a system. I homebrewed a whole system in college and we played if for years instead of 2e, but now I'm happy yo just game for four hours a week. I find it's much easier to take a comprehensive system and ignore the stuff I don't need than take an incomplete system and invent the stuff I do.

Matthew
2008-01-07, 01:38 PM
I've been drunk enough to fail at that task.

It seems to me that skill level (in that case skill level less penalties) does affect the outcome.

That's not actually the skill level of the Character, that's circumstances. The point of difference between automatic without rolling and automatic with rolling is that the numbers aren't even considered in the former case. The DM just decides the task is simple enough to not be concerned with. The advantage is entirely subjective.


But the GM's vision of verisimilitude does not exactly match any players vision of verisimilitude. So the GM who overrules the game rules is specifically creating game world physics with his ad hoc ruling; as is the GM who ,when a player suggests that the game rules break verisimilitude, decides that the game rules should still be followed.

Yes, but the game rules themselves are not the physics of the world, which is the point. They always describe the world imperfectly. If the DM and players don't agree on what is 'believeable', then there are going to be problems regardless. The only difference is that reality is defaulting to the DM, rather than the system.


As usual on this topic, we have very different experiences. I think having a comprehensive set of rules helps the novice or busy DM, and is easily ignored by a good DM. I myself pretty much ignore most of the roleplaying skills, like Diplomacy, and really silly broke-ish stuff like leadership that should just be roleplayed and not a feat you buy, but I use the system for most stuff which saves arguing over ad-hoc rulings.

Sure, and as long as everybody is happy with those game rules being ignored, there's no problem. I once saw a guy storm out of a D&D session because he built his new character around AoO's and the DM had decided not to use them; it was at a university games club and nothing had been arranged in advance. The other players just sat around looking a bit bewildered. For people who prefer comprehensive rules and are willing and able to discard the ones that they don't like, there's not much of a problem. I would end up discarding so much of D20 I might as well start with a different base line. :smallwink:


I've played with poor DM's who were brought to a crashing halt by player attempts at improvisation that wasn't well spelled out in the rules, and I've had fairly competent DMs who ran NPCs and monsters well, designed good campaigns, but stuck strictly to the book, so we often had the "Fighters can't sneak" thing. Ad hoc rulings in AD&D tended to be wildly inconsistent. With a fairly universal mechanic in 3e, those few rulings you need to make are easy to extrapolate.

I certainly wouldn't argue that the universal mechanic and the general presentation of D20 doesn't make things easier to work out systematically and potentially more consistant.


Plus, nowadays, I really don't have time between sessions to modify a system. I homebrewed a whole system in college and we played if for years instead of 2e, but now I'm happy yo just game for four hours a week. I find it's much easier to take a comprehensive system and ignore the stuff I don't need than take an incomplete system and invent the stuff I do.

For sure. That's pretty much the only reason I run D20, when time is limited and I want a 'pick up and play' game that just about runs itself (using prewritten modules). I don't find the result as satisfactory on the whole, but it does for the occasion. If things start to get complicated and I have to start to invest a lot of time into it, that's when I pretty much drop D20 in favour of something else.

Roog
2008-01-07, 11:23 PM
Yes, but the game rules themselves are not the physics of the world, which is the point. They always describe the world imperfectly. If the DM and players don't agree on what is 'believeable', then there are going to be problems regardless. The only difference is that reality is defaulting to the DM, rather than the system.

So what happens when the rules don't match the game world physics...

The GM makes a ruling that better matches the game world physics. Then if a similar situation happens again, everyone expects the GM to similarly over-rule the game rules, because if he does not it will break with both verisimilitude and consistency. Effectively, the GM's ruling becomes a new (and possibly fuzzily defined) rule, and the game rules (together with game precedent) move one step closer to being the physics of the world.

For example, take something from D&D that I have known several DMs to over-rule - falling. They decide that falling large distances is insufficiently deadly or realistic for higher level characters. Whether they have a specific replacement for the rule, or simply make it known that significant falls will remain deadly even to high level characters, the players then have an expectation of what will happen. If a PC or NPC takes a large fall and the result does not match the expectation, then everyone will wonder what just happened to the game world physics.

The rules as written may not be the physics of the game world, but the rules as played are. If the rules as played include "you can expect the GM to over-rule the rules as written if their result does not give appropriate levels of verisimilitude" clause, then the GM's rulings will effectively be rules, and the rules will be the game world physics; because if those ruling are not consistent enough to be considered rules, they wont be consistent enough for the game world to have physics.


If you play by the rules they are physics of the world, and if you don't play by them then they are not rules.

fendrin
2008-01-08, 12:01 AM
If you play be the rules they are physics of the world, and if you don't play by them then they are not rules.
Exactly.
I would summarize this as "The rules, including any houserules, DM interpretations, and DM arbitrations, are the physics of the game world."

Matthew
2008-01-08, 07:23 AM
So what happens when the rules don't match the game world physics...

The GM makes a ruling that better matches the game world physics. Then if a similar situation happens again, everyone expects the GM to similarly over-rule the game rules, because if he does not it will break with both verisimilitude and consistency. Effectively, the GM's ruling becomes a new (and possibly fuzzily defined) rule, and the game rules (together with game precedent) move one step closer to being the physics of the world.

For example, take something from D&D that I have known several DMs to over-rule - falling. They decide that falling large distances is insufficiently deadly or realistic for higher level characters. Whether they have a specific replacement for the rule, or simply make it known that significant falls will remain deadly even to high level characters, the players then have an expectation of what will happen. If a PC or NPC takes a large fall and the result does not match the expectation, then everyone will wonder what just happened to the game world physics.

The rules as written may not be the physics of the game world, but the rules as played are. If the rules as played include "you can expect the GM to over-rule the rules as written if their result does not give appropriate levels of verisimilitude" clause, then the GM's rulings will effectively be rules, and the rules will be the game world physics; because if those ruling are not consistent enough to be considered rules, they wont be consistent enough for the game world to have physics.

If you play by the rules they are physics of the world, and if you don't play by them then they are not rules.

No, because you are then creating a static 'rule', which is not what I am talking about. So, for instance: A Fighter falls 100' in one session and takes 10D6 Damage (say 30 Hit Points), but has 50 Hit Points, so technically survives. The DM decides that this is not sufficient to kill him


Exactly.
I would summarize this as "The rules, including any houserules, DM interpretations, and DM arbitrations, are the physics of the game world."

No, this is to completely misunderstand the purpose of 'not having a rule' or 'being able to discard the rules'. The idea is not to have a consistant precedent on which to base the resolution of future actions. A rule may be suitable for one occasion and not suitable for another. In effect, what this means is that the game rules are maleable. The DM, for instance, might ask for a Ride check to ride through rough terrain or he might not; he might ask for it one day and not another - this can already happen in D&D. The DM might ask for one Ride check for every ten minutes you travel over rocky terrain or he might ask for it once an hour, all depending on his whim. The conditions are identical, only the requirements of play have changed ("I don't want to roll the die fifty times").

If all you are doing is creating a set of precedential house rules to govern specific instances in future play, you might as well be playing a rules heavy game.

To put it another way, physics in the real world are a set of rules created from our observations of how the universe works. They are subject to change as we learn more about the universe and refine our ideas about how it works. They are an imperfect description of the physics of the universe (which in their perfect entirety remain unknown to us). They are not abstract, they are precise.

Game rules are an abstract task resolution system. They do not describe the physics of a campaign world, they merely approximate the results of actions within that game world. They imitate the physics of that universe.

fendrin
2008-01-08, 09:15 AM
In effect, what this means is that the game rules are malleable. Malleable or not, the rules are still the rules, and my statement stands. I made my statement generic enough to cover both heavy and light systems. Whether the rules are written in a book, houseruled at the beginning of a campaign, or created on the fly once and never used again, they are still the rules, and they are still the physics of the game world.


To put it another way, physics in the real world are a set of rules created from our observations of how the universe works. They are subject to change as we learn more about the universe and refine our ideas about how it works. They are an imperfect description of the physics of the universe (which in their perfect entirety remain unknown to us). They are not abstract, they are precise.
Uh, no. As a former physics major, I feel confident in saying that physics are the precise 'rules' by which the universe operates. In the study of physics, physicists create models that approximate the physical laws of our universe, based on observations.


Game rules are an abstract task resolution system. They do not describe the physics of a campaign world, they merely approximate the results of actions within that game world. They imitate the physics of that universe. I disagree. While here in the real world we make our models off of observations, game worlds exist only in our imaginations, and thus we have no observations outside of the rules we create for the game world. The game world functions only on the basis of the game rules. There is no observable game world by which to form a model. The model is all there is. If the DM says that every third Thursday the sun rises in the north and sets in the south, that is a rule, and a physical property of the game world.

Matthew
2008-01-08, 09:33 AM
Malleable or not, the rules are still the rules, and my statement stands. I made my statement generic enough to cover both heavy and light systems. Whether the rules are written in a book, houseruled at the beginning of a campaign, or created on the fly once and never used again, they are still the rules, and they are still the physics of the game world.

No, they are only the physics of the game world insofar as they are observed events. They are not actually the physics, but see below for whether we should distinguish between 'truth' and 'models' or whether you describe both as physics.


Uh, no. As a former physics major, I feel confident in saying that physics are the precise 'rules' by which the universe operates. In the study of physics, physicists create models that approximate the physical laws of our universe, based on observations.

Yes, I thought someone might pick me up on my use of language here, as I am not versed in the correct useage. I'm just a layman, but is there not a difference between the models that physicists create and the actual physics of the universe or are the actual physics of the universe designated 'truth' and models physics, or do you consider both to be aspects of physics? I would seek to distinguish between the models people create to describe the universe (which may be in error) and the 'true language'.


I disagree. While here in the real world we make our models off of observations, game worlds exist only in our imaginations, and thus we have no observations outside of the rules we create for the game world. The game world functions only on the basis of the game rules. There is no observable game world by which to form a model. The model is all there is. If the DM says that every third Thursday the sun rises in the north and sets in the south, that is a rule, and a physical property of the game world.

Here we need to distinguish between 'game rules' and the observable events of the game world as described by the DM. The Game functions on probability and all the game rules are based around building probablity and randomised outcomes. The actual events, once they have come to pass, were not random at all in the universe in which they exist [i.e. the imaginary one]; indeed, they are often changed to accord with the Die rolls. So, for instance, if a Character hits an opponent and causes 3 points of damage, which are subtracted from his overall Hit points, that abstraction is described however the DM feels like describing it after the event. The game rules do not correspond to the reality except by means of the DM. To put it more simply, Characters do not have Hit Points, Attack Bonuses or Classes, those are game abstractions that we use to interact with a fictional universe, not the rules by which that fictional universe functions (which is more akin to a computer game, where the world is the sum of the rules).

hewhosaysfish
2008-01-08, 11:09 AM
I disagree. While here in the real world we make our models off of observations, game worlds exist only in our imaginations, and thus we have no observations outside of the rules we create for the game world. The game world functions only on the basis of the game rules. There is no observable game world by which to form a model. The model is all there is. If the DM says that every third Thursday the sun rises in the north and sets in the south, that is a rule, and a physical property of the game world.

The world in my imagination has physics that function like those of the real world (except where magic explicitly overrides it). Gravity, momentum, all that.
The muscles in my warriors arm apply a force proportional to their cross-sectional area to the mass of his sword (via the level of the arm) which is accelerate by this, slowed by wind resistance and then by the armour of th orc. The impulse of the collision of sword and orc causes shockwaves through the tissues of the orc which... etc... etc....
But I can't be ****ed to work that out especially not in the name of a game. Call me lazy if you like. So I use the simplified abstraction peddled by WotC. I just roll a d8 and add my Strength bonus. But that is not the way the world in my imagination works.

I repeat: the world in my imagination has physics that function like those of the real world (except where magic explicitly overrides it). Gravity, momentum, all that.

And if the abstraction provided by WotC does not match the concept I have in my head, I want to edit the abstraction, not the concept.

Perhaps, in your fantasy a "hit point" is a real measurable thing. Perhaps if you play physics major in D20 Modern, you might expect your character to know "Newton theorised that a falling body takes d6 damage for every 10 feet fallen, up to a maximum of 20d6".
Perhaps my point of view seems as perverse to you as yours one does to me. Perhaps I'm misinterpreting you entirely...
But just because the concept of a world exists only in our minds and the model of a world exists only in a our minds, does not mean that the concept and the model of the concept are the same.

Matthew
2008-01-08, 11:48 AM
The world in my imagination has physics that function like those of the real world (except where magic explicitly overrides it). Gravity, momentum, all that.

Indeed. That is also explicitly said to be the case on page 136 of the DMG in the section entitled "How Real is your Fantasy?"

Roog
2008-01-08, 01:33 PM
Here we need to distinguish between 'game rules' and the observable events of the game world as described by the DM. The Game functions on probability and all the game rules are based around building probablity and randomised outcomes.
I think we have a different view of what rules are. Rules focused "around building probability and randomized outcomes" are only one part of the rules. A sizable chunk of the rules are prescriptive and non-random (for example, the rules for who has spell-casting, what spells they can learn, how they cast spells, how many spells they can cast, and what the function of each spell is, is entirely non-random, only certain specific details of the spell is random).


The actual events, once they have come to pass, were not random at all in the universe in which they exist [i.e. the imaginary one]; indeed, they are often changed to accord with the Die rolls. So, for instance, if a Character hits an opponent and causes 3 points of damage, which are subtracted from his overall Hit points, that abstraction is described however the DM feels like describing it after the event.
Isn't it strange how somehow all the little unspecified factors always produce the same result as the random result of game mechanics?

That is because they are the same event. Unknowns factors in a situation are effectively equivalent to randomness, both in this world and the game world.

If the GM decides that in this case the rule does not apply and the opponent takes an sword to the face and dies whatever the player rolls, then obviously the rule for rolling attacks did not apply in that specific situation.

However, once something that cannot easily fit within the rules as known by the player happens, the player and the character are both likely to start wondering what the game world "physics" of this situation is. "If the GM ruled that the NPC took a sword to the face and dies, will that happen to me?" If there is reason in the game world physics that the event happened, then I should be able to repeat the situation; if the reason the event happened is simply GM whim, the GM is both the rules and the game world physics.


The game rules do not correspond to the reality except by means of the DM. To put it more simply, Characters do not have Hit Points, Attack Bonuses or Classes, those are game abstractions that we use to interact with a fictional universe, not the rules by which that fictional universe functions (which is more akin to a computer game, where the world is the sum of the rules).

If those things are abstractions what are they abstraction of?

If they are approximation of the fictional universe that is in the GM's head, then that is unfortuanate, because I play in the fictional universe in my head (and all the other players play in the fictional universes in their heads) and use the rules to keep all these universes in sync. Because in reality there is no fictional universe, in reality all there is is a number of descriptions of events in a non-singular fictional universe. If the rules as played don't exactly match the fictional universe in the GM's head, then thats not a problem, the players only interact with the game as played.

And the rules (as played) are the physics of the game world the group (as a whole) pretends that they are playing in.

fendrin
2008-01-08, 02:47 PM
I repeat: the world in my imagination has physics that function like those of the real world (except where magic explicitly overrides it). Gravity, momentum, all that. Does it? or is that just a model of what really happens? If a first level barbarian falls 100' and the DM rolls all ones for damage, does the barbarian get up and walk away, as per the rules, or does he lie there bleeding to death as would happen in the world of 9.8m/s^2? In the game world (or at least the RAW D&D game world) he gets up and walks away. So tell me, which model is closer? The game rules are a perfect model of the laws of physics of the game world. The laws of physics of our world do not.


And if the abstraction provided by WotC does not match the concept I have in my head, I want to edit the abstraction, not the concept.
Altering the game rules alters the physics of the game world. To use my example above, if you houseruled that any fall of 100' or more automatically dropped the falling character to -9 hp, then the barbarian lies on the ground bleeding to death instead of getting up and walking away. The rules are an abstraction of our world, but in the game world, they are the ultimate and final arbiter of what happens (and note that I included houserules and DM arbitrations in my initial statement on the matter. They are rules, no matter the source).


Perhaps if you play physics major in D20 Modern, you might expect your character to know "Newton theorised that a falling body takes d6 damage for every 10 feet fallen, up to a maximum of 20d6".No. I would say that the physicists of the game world have aflawed model of game world physics. Their model much closer approximates real world physics than game world physics.


Perhaps I'm misinterpreting you entirely...
But just because the concept of a world exists only in our minds and the model of a world exists only in a our minds, does not mean that the concept and the model of the concept are the same.Hmm, perhaps I should add a little precision to my statement, though it makes it much harder to grasp.
The game world does not exist in your imagination, or in my imagination, but rather it exists in the gestalt imagination of the players and the DM together. In each individual's imagination there exists an abstraction of the game world. In your abstraction of the game world, you perceive the warrior's sword as having mass, velocity, etc. and dealing damage as a function of those and other properties. In the game world, however, you exceed the orc's AC and deal 1d8+3 hp damage.

Matthew
2008-01-08, 08:11 PM
We certainly seem to be at an impasse here, since we cannot seem to agree whether or not there is a difference between the physics of the fictional world that the player characters interact with and the game rules that we use to facilitate that interaction. One side feels there is no difference, the other that there is. I also strongly disagree that the fictional universe exists primarily as a shared experience. In my opinion, the fictional universe exists primarily in the DM's imagination and only occurs in the Players imagination as a result of his describing it to them. Player's may contribute ideas and they may imagine things differently to the DM, having their own preconceptions and expectations informed by more than the DM, but their version of the world is secondary to his, being the final arbitrator of events.

D20 Classes, Races, Feats, Skills and all prescriptive non random rules exist to give context to randomised outcomes. They are built to support a probability system, though they are not generally acquired by random chance. Most (if not all) of their characteristics are modifiers to randomised events determined by the roll of dice (or its approximation, as with 'taking 10' or 'taking 20').

We also seem to be failing to agree on the meaning of 'game world'. When I use that term, I mean the imaginary world in which the game occurs, not the world that is the result of the game. The world can exist entirely without game rules, and in the absence of Player Characters it may well do. Time may move on, events may occur and they may or may not happen in accordance with a set of game rules (depending on the preferences of the DM). A campaign world that is primarily a work of literature, such as Middle Earth, may be a good example of what I am meaning. The game rules that are used to play in that world generally try hard to allow the sorts of events that occur there to happen in the game, but they are not the physics of Middle Earth, they are abstract approximations that attempt to imitate them (with varying degrees of success) and facilitate a game within that world.

The game rules are an abstraction that allow you to play a game. The game world (or fictional world) will remain entirely consistant to the characters within it (unless the DM wishes it to not for some reason), even if it does not seem consistant to the players as a result of visibly inconsistantly applied rules. Characters cannot 'see' the dice, all they witness are actions/events and their results.

Still, it's not very surprising that we are in disagreement about specifics, since we are clearly at fundamental preferential variance. To be clear, I'm not saying that game rules cannot be the physics of the world (they clearly can, as witnessed by many a CRPG, though I do not believe that they are intended that way in D20), but I am saying that as far as I am concerned, they are not.

Roog
2008-01-09, 12:18 AM
We certainly seem to be at an impasse here, since we cannot seem to agree whether or not there is a difference between the physics of the fictional world that the player characters interact with and the game rules that we use to facilitate that interaction. One side feels there is no difference, the other that there is.
I agree that there is a difference between the game rules and the physics of the world in your head, I just don't think the the world in your head is the game world.
I especially do not believe that "the fictional world that the player characters interact with" is the one in your head.



I also strongly disagree that the fictional universe exists primarily as a shared experience. In my opinion, the fictional universe exists primarily in the DM's imagination and only occurs in the Players imagination as a result of his describing it to them. Player's may contribute ideas and they may imagine things differently to the DM, having their own preconceptions and expectations informed by more than the DM, but their version of the world is secondary to his, being the final arbitrator of events.

There are three primary types of world involved with the game, the imaginary world in the GM's head, the imaginary worlds in the player's heads, and the even more imaginary shared world.

Firstly I will quickly describe what I mean by the shared world. When we play a role playing game we all pretend that the world and events that we are each imagining individually and talking about together, we all make the assumption that that world and events are substantially similar and that any dissimilarities can be resolved as needed. Whether the GM's word is law, or all decisions are collective, any role playing game has methods to make those worlds match when matches are needed. The shared world is the world that we all pretend that we are modeling with our individual imaginary worlds.

We all know that if the worlds in our heads need to be adjusted to better match the shared world, then we have methods to do this. Most of these methods are pretty simple. Players know more about their own characters than other peoples, so if you want to know about another character you can ask that character's player. Groups often start the game with a recap of what was going on at the end of the last session, with group members filling in details as they remember them. GMs and players make notes about events in the game.

We can use those methods to access the black box that is the shared world. The shared world has no real existence, not even in our heads, but we can have methods to access any piece of information about the shared world that could be used for the game.



I feel that of the three that third shared world best fits the description "the world of the game". Obviously the worlds in the player's heads are a bad fit for that description. But I also feel the the World in the GM's head does not fit either.

The world in the GM's head does not have many of the properties that we would expect of the "the world of the game".
For example,
- If the GM forgets my character's name, my character should still have his name.
- If I have not told the GM my characters mother's name she still has a name.
- If my character is angry with someone, and the GM does not notice, the character is still angry.
- A PC's mind may be a biochemical event acting under the rules of game world physics.
- The GM may leave (temporarily or permanently) and leave someone else to GM.
- Events may be decided by another player, or by group decision.
- The group may not be around, leaving the GM by himself.

All of these things make sense if the "world of the game" is the shared world.


Player's may contribute ideas and they may imagine things differently to the DM, having their own preconceptions and expectations informed by more than the DM, but their version of the world is secondary to his, being the final arbitrator of events.

Sorry, the DM is not the final arbitrator of events. He is only the final arbitrator of events in his head, just like the players are final arbitrator of events in theirs. If you want to have a game you need to have the acquiescence of those involved in the game to the events in the game.

That may sound confrontational, so I'll give an example from a game I played in.

The GM had introduced an NPC opponent of the PCs that session. Due to an unfortunate run-in with a mutant the NPC had had his jaw destroyed. Later on the NPC fought a duel against one of the PCs, and after loosing started to make a speech. For a while, the players sat around with surprised looks on their faces, before someone spoke up, and asked the GM "How is it that {NPC Name} is making this speech?" After a bit of explanation, it turned out that the GM had completely forgotten about the injury, and so the speech was amended to a muffled muttering, that most of the bystanders could not make out.

In summary, the GM narrated the event, which was not accepted by the group as a whole, so he changed the narration to one which could be accepted. Without the events being accepted there is no way for the game to go on, whether that acceptance is gained through change of the events, the GM giving an explanation, the GM saying "Trust me", or through simply claiming GM fiat.



D20 Classes, Races, Feats, Skills and all prescriptive non random rules exist to give context to randomised outcomes. They are built to support a probability system, though they are not generally acquired by random chance. Most (if not all) of their characteristics are modifiers to randomised events determined by the roll of dice (or its approximation, as with 'taking 10' or 'taking 20').

A PC casts "Expeditious Retreat" from his non-random class choice, with his non-random class features, based on his non-random level, with one of his non-random spell slots, chosen non-randomly, learned non-randomly, adding non-random effects to his non-random movement rate.

The fact that he has magic, moves a given rate without magic, is able to use magic the way he does, and that the magic does what it does, are all specific descriptions of the world that come from the rules.


We also seem to be failing to agree on the meaning of 'game world'. When I use that term, I mean the imaginary world in which the game occurs, not the world that is the result of the game.
I also mean "the imaginary world in which the game occurs", I just don't think the game occurs in the GM's head.


The world can exist entirely without game rules, and in the absence of Player Characters it may well do.
The world in your head can exist without game rules, the world of the game, needs (at very minimum) the rule that lets someone introduce events or description into it.

And in the absence of Player Characters (or some other kind of player interaction) you have no game, so the game world most definitely cannot exist.


Time may move on, events may occur and they may or may not happen in accordance with a set of game rules (depending on the preferences of the DM). A campaign world that is primarily a work of literature, such as Middle Earth, may be a good example of what I am meaning. The game rules that are used to play in that world generally try hard to allow the sorts of events that occur there to happen in the game, but they are not the physics of Middle Earth, they are abstract approximations that attempt to imitate them (with varying degrees of success) and facilitate a game within that world.

A game based on a work of literature will most likely have rules designed to allow events of a similar nature to those of the source be played out, and will often have the work of literature "read into" the game world, as a valid means of determining facts about the game world. But you need to consider the example more closely.

When you read the book the world you created in your head was not the same one as in JRRT's head or in the head of any other reader, and the physics of those worlds are guaranteed to have difference from the physics of yours.

The played rules of the game will not match the physics of the world in JRRT's head either, but the will match the physics of the worlds in every players head for every significant event which actually happened in the game.


The game rules are an abstraction that allow you to play a game. The game world (or fictional world) will remain entirely consistant to the characters within it (unless the DM wishes it to not for some reason), even if it does not seem consistant to the players as a result of visibly inconsistantly applied rules. Characters cannot 'see' the dice, all they witness are actions/events and their results.

From a certain point of view "game rules are an abstraction that allow you to play a game", but from the viewpoint outside the GM's head, they are not an abstraction of anything measurable, anytime I try to measure something in game terms within the world inside the GM's head, it becomes part of the game as played.

What you are talking about as the game is stuff that only the GM has access to, and I don't believe that is part of the game until it become part of the game that is played.

Matthew
2008-01-09, 04:00 AM
I agree that there is a difference between the game rules and the physics of the world in your head, I just don't think the the world in your head is the game world.
I especially do not believe that "the fictional world that the player characters interact with" is the one in your head.

As I said, it's doubtful we're going to make any progress in terms of agreement, since we cannot agree on this basic premise. No big deal.


There are three primary types of world involved with the game, the imaginary world in the GM's head, the imaginary worlds in the player's heads, and the even more imaginary shared world.

Firstly I will quickly describe what I mean by the shared world. When we play a role playing game we all pretend that the world and events that we are each imagining individually and talking about together, we all make the assumption that that world and events are substantially similar and that any dissimilarities can be resolved as needed. Whether the GM's word is law, or all decisions are collective, any role playing game has methods to make those worlds match when matches are needed. The shared world is the world that we all pretend that we are modeling with our individual imaginary worlds.

We all know that if the worlds in our heads need to be adjusted to better match the shared world, then we have methods to do this. Most of these methods are pretty simple. Players know more about their own characters than other peoples, so if you want to know about another character you can ask that character's player. Groups often start the game with a recap of what was going on at the end of the last session, with group members filling in details as they remember them. GMs and players make notes about events in the game.

We can use those methods to access the black box that is the shared world. The shared world has no real existence, not even in our heads, but we can have methods to access any piece of information about the shared world that could be used for the game.

I feel that of the three that third shared world best fits the description "the world of the game". Obviously the worlds in the player's heads are a bad fit for that description. But I also feel the the World in the GM's head does not fit either.

Sure, and this is a game construct for playing the game, not the actual campaign world itself (depending on your definition of terms).


The world in the GM's head does not have many of the properties that we would expect of the "the world of the game".
For example,
- If the GM forgets my character's name, my character should still have his name.

And he does. The DM no doubt imagines that he does. However, if the DM changes the name of that character or forgets it completely it is actually changed or forgotten completely for the campaign world.


- If I have not told the GM my characters mother's name she still has a name.

She does, and up until the point the DM agrees what that is with the Player, she has the name the DM creates for her (if he should need it), whether that is X, Y or Z. The world will never be perfectly complete, and I don't think that is a reasonable expectation of a fictional world for a game any more than a fictional world for a book.


- If my character is angry with someone, and the GM does not notice, the character is still angry.

Unless the Player provides that information, the Character is effectively not angry and will not be treated as angry by the rest of the game world, including his own senses.


- A PC's mind may be a biochemical event acting under the rules of game world physics.

Not sure what you mean.


- The GM may leave (temporarily or permanently) and leave someone else to GM.

At that point, the game world changes. It becomes the imaginary construct of the new DM. For an example of this, we need only look as far as Greyhawk. When Gygax lost control of that intellectual property it no longer corresponded to his idea of what it should be. It is no longer the previous game world, but a game world very similar. The same applies to the thousands of DM's of official settings. Each has his own variant and each version of that world is unique to that DM.


- Events may be decided by another player, or by group decision.

They may, but they are only permitted by the DM. If, on the other hand, you mean through 'the actions of the Player Character', again that character can only do what the DM permits.


- The group may not be around, leaving the GM by himself.

Indeed, which does not cause the world to disappear. It's still there, in his head. It might move on in their absence or it might be on permanent pause, but that is up to the DM.


All of these things make sense if the "world of the game" is the shared world.

They also all make sense if the world is primarily the construct of the DM.


Sorry, the DM is not the final arbitrator of events. He is only the final arbitrator of events in his head, just like the players are final arbitrator of events in theirs. If you want to have a game you need to have the acquiescence of those involved in the game to the events in the game.

He certainly needs their agreement to defer to his judgement in order to play the game, but that doesn't prevent the game world from existing prior to that or after that. He is, however, the final arbitrator of events, as far as I can see, I suppose this is simply something we shall have to disagree on.


That may sound confrontational, so I'll give an example from a game I played in.

The GM had introduced an NPC opponent of the PCs that session. Due to an unfortunate run-in with a mutant the NPC had had his jaw destroyed. Later on the NPC fought a duel against one of the PCs, and after loosing started to make a speech. For a while, the players sat around with surprised looks on their faces, before someone spoke up, and asked the GM "How is it that {NPC Name} is making this speech?" After a bit of explanation, it turned out that the GM had completely forgotten about the injury, and so the speech was amended to a muffled muttering, that most of the bystanders could not make out.

In summary, the GM narrated the event, which was not accepted by the group as a whole, so he changed the narration to one which could be accepted. Without the events being accepted there is no way for the game to go on, whether that acceptance is gained through change of the events, the GM giving an explanation, the GM saying "Trust me", or through simply claiming GM fiat.

Yes, the DM can make mistakes. In the above case, though, the final decision was made by the DM. He could have simply said, "Oops, actually his jaw wasn't destroyed, my mistake." The players didn't say "No he doesn't", they said "How is that happening?" Whether the players accept it or not, the DM had the final say whether consistancy would be maintained. They are free to argue or leave or whatever, but they cannot force the DM to decide either way (though they may influence his decision).


A PC casts "Expeditious Retreat" from his non-random class choice, with his non-random class features, based on his non-random level, with one of his non-random spell slots, chosen non-randomly, learned non-randomly, adding non-random effects to his non-random movement rate.

Sure, and it takes effect on a randomised Inititative and affects your randomised jump distance. That there are non random aspects to the rules doesn't prevent them being built around a probability system. Base Attack Bonus is none random, but it's also a modifier for a probability roll.


The fact that he has magic, moves a given rate without magic, is able to use magic the way he does, and that the magic does what it does, are all specific descriptions of the world that come from the rules.

Yes, all of which provides context for probability. The Spell has 100% chance of being cast, unless somebody or something (such as armour) interferes with the casting, the character has 100% chance of moving distance X, unless he needs to make a balance check. I'm not disputing the fact that some things can be automatic or 100% successful, but they only are if the conditions are right.


I also mean "the imaginary world in which the game occurs", I just don't think the game occurs in the GM's head.

Who said it does? The imaginary world is the important part. It can exist in the DM's head independent of the game.


The world in your head can exist without game rules, the world of the game, needs (at very minimum) the rule that lets someone introduce events or description into it.

This is no doubt part of the disagreement. I don't see why you need a rule to introduce an event or description into an imaginary world. You are perhaps making a distinction here between "the world of the game" and "the fictional world in which the game occurs", but I do not see that distinction.


And in the absence of Player Characters (or some other kind of player interaction) you have no game, so the game world most definitely cannot exist.

There's certainly nothing stopping a DM 'playing' with himself (forgive the connotations) and that could be regarded as a game. Again, though, you appear to be making a distinction between 'game world' and 'fictional world'. I can see the difference between 'game' and 'fictional world', but not between 'fictional world' and 'game world.'


A game based on a work of literature will most likely have rules designed to allow events of a similar nature to those of the source be played out, and will often have the work of literature "read into" the game world, as a valid means of determining facts about the game world. But you need to consider the example more closely.

When you read the book the world you created in your head was not the same one as in JRRT's head or in the head of any other reader, and the physics of those worlds are guaranteed to have difference from the physics of yours.

Absolutely, and we are non interactive 'players' in that regard, in that we have a world imagined by Tolkien described to us by him. We may take control of that world at some point by becoming the DM of a game set in Middle Earth, but at that point we are playing and interacting with a variant (it has the potential to be a perfect copy of what Tolkien imagined, but such is highly unlikely, even though he imagined Middle Earth in various ways, each a variant in his own mind).


The played rules of the game will not match the physics of the world in JRRT's head either, but the will match the physics of the worlds in every players head for every significant event which actually happened in the game.

None of which changes the fact that the physics of that 'fictional world(s)' exist (as fiction) independently of the game nor that the variant world created by the DM may vary from what the player's imagine.


From a certain point of view "game rules are an abstraction that allow you to play a game", but from the viewpoint outside the GM's head, they are not an abstraction of anything measurable, anytime I try to measure something in game terms within the world inside the GM's head, it becomes part of the game as played.

Yes, but it can still also exist in the DM's head independently of the game that is played and its existence in the DM's head is the primary version of that fictional world.


What you are talking about as the game is stuff that only the GM has access to, and I don't believe that is part of the game until it become part of the game that is played.

It rather looks as the heart of this disagreement, as is often the case, is different understanding of terminology. What you call the 'game world', I call the 'game'. What I call the 'game world' you appear to regard as something separate from the game, a fictional narrative that exists in the mind of the DM, but is secondary to the reality of the game being played.

To be sure, there are other areas of disagreement related to this one, but unless we can come to an agreement about how we use terms such as 'game', 'physics', 'game physics', 'game world', 'campaign world' and 'fictional world' in relation to RPGs and one another, then there's not much hope of making progress with regard to those.

It might be worth checking out this article: http://merin.hitherby.com/archives/000814.html