While pondering the darker reaches of a parent’s anxiety and trying to think of something else, I came upon a post by user Blackeagle on EnWorld’s board.
It’s so good and it touches so many things I was thinking about 4e that I decided to repost it here.
Instead of making a Chatty on 4e post on the same subject, let’s make this another debate as it will take my mind off things for a while.
Here’s the post, see my debate starting questions afterwards.
I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and after Lizard’s epiphany thread I decided to post about it.
The “simulationist” label has gotten thrown around a lot in some of the recent arguments about 4e (the recent minion thread for instance). However, I don’t think the simulationist label gets at why some people don’t like what they’ve seen of 4e. I think some simulationists can like elements of 4e that drive other simulationists crazy (see Lizard’s epiphany, for instance). The real distinction here is how willing a person is to accept a the change from a process-response model to a black box model, particularly for character and monster development.
Black box vs. process-response is one way scientists classify different models. In a nutshell, a black box model tells you what happens, while process-response model tells you how something happens. How is generally a lot more difficult to figure out than what, so process-response models are usually a lot more complicated. If you want a more scientific definition (lifted from this article):
Quote:
Process-response models tend to be more complex, but not necessarily more realistic because process-response models depend on accurate depiction of the underlying mechanisms whereas black-box models can be finely tuned to the outcomes that one is trying to model.
In general, 3e leaned towards process-response models, particularly when it comes to modeling characters and monsters. If you wanted to make a more powerful version of the regular monster, you had to advance it to more hit dice, or give it character levels, or give it a template. Each of these is complicated and has all sorts of side effects. In 4e, from what we’ve seen, you slap on a more powerful power or two, add some hit points, compare it to an existing elite or solo monster and say, “looks good”. The monster’s “internals” don’t matter, all that matters is the stuff that interfaces with the players. This is a classic black box model. When the D&D designers talk about exceptions based design, what they’re really talking about (at least when it comes to characters and monsters) is moving from a process-response model to a black box model.
Another area where the 4e rules moved from a process-response model to a black box model is the grappling rules. In 3e, if you try to grapple someone, you provoke an AoO, you make a roll to grab, you make a roll to hold, you move into the target’s space. Then next turn you’re presented with a menu of actions you can choose from with detailed rules for each. It’s definitely a process-response model with a nice little chain of cause and effect. In 4e you make one roll to grab an opponent. If you succeed you can hold on. Much more of a black box model, we don’t care about all the details of the move, just whether you managed to latch on or not.
So, 4e black box models allow us to jettison a lot of the complexity that goes along with process-response models, but at the cost of not being able to see the internal details of the model. I think a big part of whether or not a person (particularly a “simulationist”) is going to like 4e depends on whether they think this is a good thing or not. Do we want to know about the internal workings of a monster or the minutia of a grapple check badly enough to deal with added complexity? Do you want to model characters and monsters, or the interactions between characters and monsters?
Is Wizards of the Coast’s move from a “process-response” to a “Black Box” model a good move for D&D’s future?
If not, and especially if you are bothered by the 4th edition, is this the main reason why?
My take on it:
This is exactly the move that I was waiting for. While I loved seeing the engine behind 3e, with time, my needs as a DM pulled me toward making things simpler, faster. I didn’t need to know the actual workings of the engine. As long as I can tinker with the outward components (monster attacks, powers, hit points) I’m happy.
I really feel that 4e returns to the roots of the game (1e) which was black box, but now I know the mechanics are unified, built logically and relatively exempt of dissimilar subsystems.
Definitely concurring on this one…I’m definitely looking forward to being able to tweak monsters to fit my liking without poring through too many books…the black-box format will make the game a lot smoother and allow groups to move through combat and the like a lot quicker…although, I suspect in my ingrainedness in 3.5, I may tweak a few rules to more accurately depict the mechanics of grappling and such…tends to be a lot less of a problem once you commit such things to memory…
Also, I’ll bet that a missed attack never damages a minion…unless it does…in which case, he’ll die…
Here’s to always being right!…
😀
Seeing the engine behind 3.x made the system easier for me to customize and to adjust on the fly with a minimum of overhead. The process you describe above,
“In 4e, from what we’ve seen, you slap on a more powerful power or two, add some hit points, compare it to an existing elite or solo monster and say, “looks good”. The monster’s “internals” don’t matter, all that matters is the stuff that interfaces with the players.”
is precisely the process I’ve been following since my Blue Book days of the Dungeons and Dragons Basic Set when I got the inspiration one day to add 3 hit dice to my orcs from Southern Pomarj region of Greyhawk. Boost the hit points, advance them on the monster To Hit table and roll ’em out. Done and done. I don’t care about the internals because I have a great monster ready to go with a minimum of adjustment. AD&D and 2nd Ed were no different for me in this regard. 3.x was the first time that I had some formal, technical methods to advance and alter monsters and it really opened up the possibilities for my games. Vampire Orc? No problem. Elemental Wolf? Done. Working with the templates a few times gave me the freedom to change monsters how I wanted and still retain some semblance of the CR/EL system so that I could judge how deadly they’d be and how much reward I should give the characters for defeating them.
I don’t see how this is going to be made simpler in 4.x aside from removing the mechnanics of leveling up monsters and adding templates and replacing that with a paragraph along the lines of, “If your monsters aren’t tough enough, give them a feat or two! Boost their To Hit bonus and add a point or two to their Armor Class and/or give them a 1/day spell.” And if that is how they make it simpler then the whole delicate balancing act centered on CR and EL goes right out the window.
I’ll grant that CR/EL never worked very well, but it was a guideline and it did help in figuring out if your party was going to face an easy, medium, or difficult encounter. If they eliminate it, that’s fine with me. But I don’t see how masking off the greasy guts of the system is going to help me as a DM tweak monsters faster than I can already in 3.x. If anything, it’s going to make the process more haphazard because I don’t have the knowledge of the underlying system of how the monster was built and balanced in the first place.
This is not turning me off to 4.x, but it is making me think that some of the stuff WotC is pushing as innovative and better is just marketing hype designed to sell books rather than an honest approach to selling a better system.
I think this is tangentially related to my dislike of 4e. While I never really cared for the complexity of trying to build monsters like characters in 3e, I do like to maintain a certain level of verisimilitude. It’s the corners they cut in PC powers, especially daily and per-encounter powers, that threaten this for me. Why can’t my character do that cool maneuver again? Sure I can come up with all sorts of rationalizations, but at the end of the day it’s another level of separation between the decisions I am making and the decisions my character is making. At that point, “black box” abstraction can be more than annoying.
– Brian
Brians last blog post..Old School Beyond D&D: The Case for GURPS
Because I am too tired to rant on my own site…I am going to throw this out on yours.
This repost from ENworld is exactly what keeps me from reading these forums. I have to rely on one of my friends to email me the crazier rants… For months these guys have been ranting and raving about 3e vs 4e, without actually having any of the official 4e books. All this conjecture about black box vs. process-response is great…except that because none of us has a 4e PHB, the whole thing looks like a black box, because we have not seen any of the rules, or any sidebars about why something works, etc.
As Arthur C. Clarke once said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. ” It is the same thing as saying something is a black box, because you do not understand how it works. It does not mean it is a black box, but with the data you have you can only infer cause and effect and not process.
The only reason why 3e is not a black box, is because we have had the rules for the past 8 years. And it is clear that some people out there (EN Ranters) have spent a lot of time with the cover off of the black box….
So why not wait until you a 4e PHB in hand, and then you can decide if you have a black box or not.
DNAphils last blog post..Weekend Update — 19May2008
Chatty’s debates are here expressly for ranting…
Oy, DNAPhil, I too am dead tired of circular arguments, blind and/or bad faith and so on. However, from what I’ve seen of the game so far it does sound ‘true’ to my ears.
If I can design the same monster in 4e that I could in 3e faster by trading exact skill calculations and numerous re-crunching of numbers because of size increase and bonus ability and such, I’ll be happy…
Peace brother, let it all out and come practice some Yoga breathing on my Wii Fit
I don’t really see a reason why you can’t have both – that’s actually what a few allies and I are doing on a game we’re currently designing and writing. Its possible to have quick-and-dirty rules in the Monster Manual, say, for adapting Monsters to your needs and game, and then in the back you can talk about how the Monsters are made at a conceptual level so that, if a group is interested, they can build their own the ‘long’ 3.x way.
Whether WotC will do this sort of thing…I have no idea. I’ll be curious to see what the MM has to say about it when mine arrives.
Dougs last blog post..Endgame III: Back to the GM
Simple is good. There are so many things that can be tweaked but only a few of them make an impact that is easy to calculate – number of attacks, damage per attack, hit dice.
If I trust that the system has pre-balanced guidelines to quickly modify a whole stat block, well, that’s great.
Let’s not bother with too much crunch!
Yaxs last blog post..GenConMyMind
I don’t quite agree with the black box and process-response analogy.
Instead, I’m going to use a programming analogy.
3e is like a powerful programming language, with all the insides exposed. It gives you the power available from low-level programming. (Low-level programming = language closer to that of the computer, not abstracted.) 3e isn’t quite equivalent to machine code, of course, but let’s call it COBOL.
4e is a more high-level, abstracted programming language. If you want to use a randomizer function, 4e doesn’t make you define it. It’s defined by default. If, however, you want to change what randomizer function does, it lets you. Let’s call 4e Python.
So is COBOL better or is Python better?
The answer, of course, is neither.
Python streamlines the process. More is pre-defined, if you want to use it. You can change these pre-definitions with little effort.
COBOL, on the other hand, lets you build from the ground up. It comes with its own baggage, and will make you define some common things that it didn’t choose to include for you.
In other words, 4e/Python is good for quick, efficient programming. It lets you focus on the problem at hand, and deal with only it.
3e/COBOL is good for comprehensive programming. To use it, you define exactly how you want it to behave, within certain restrictions. It takes quite a bit longer to do it in, however.
To use an example, let’s make that Elemental Wolf that Carl mentioned.
3e –
Okay, take the Wolf. Let’s make is cold-elemental. Let’s also make it CR 8, because that’s where the party is at.
So, first, let’s see if there’s a template. There is, the half-elemental. Go through, add all the changes in, okay. But we aren’t at CR 8 yet.
So, let’s advance the creature. How many hit dice do we need to add to get to CR 8? How many raises it a CR point? Hmm… let’s go with 2 hit dice per CR boost.
Okay, hit dice are added, go through, and make sure the attack bonus, saves, skills, ability scores, and feats are all sufficiently advanced.
Let’s give him a breath weapon as well, just for kicks. What damage would be appropriate? How will this affect his CR? What if his claws do bonus cold damage on attacks as well?
Wait… did those extra hit dice increase his size category? We should check…
Check his AC. Is it difficult enough for a level 8 party? Too high? Too low? How about attack bonuses? Should we give it Power Attack to bring those into the right range? Will that make its damage too high?
Doodedoo… tinker for a couple hours, and we have a creature that we think is around CR 8.
4e –
Okay, ice wolf, level 8.
Step one, grab the range of values for a level 8 skirmisher. The ice wolf should be tougher than a standard skirmisher, but maybe not as hard to hit. So let’s use the top of the hit point range, and the bottom of the AC range.
there we go, we have all its base stats. Label it a Medium Elemental Beast (Skirmisher). Make its attacks all do cold damage.
It needs a special ability or two. Let’s give it a breath weapon, as above. Go to the charts, grab the stats for a level 8 appropriate breath weapon. Extra effect on a hit = slowed, save ends.
Done.
@Carl –
This won’t be the case. For one, monsters won’t get feats. They shouldn’t actually ever need to.
But what they’re going to do is include extensive guidelines on what a level X skirmisher monster, or a level N brute, should look like, mathematically.
One other part to remember is that CR (or level in 4e) is much less of a delicate balancing act now. Get one number out of whack, and you won’t screw the entire encounter.
I’m amazed that anyone would seriously propose COBOL as an example of a powerful “low level” language – even without getting into a language war here, C is (clearly?) a better example.
But anyway, back to the core of the debate: it may be “politically incorrect” to mention this, but the process model in 3e … wasn’t really very good. I don’t expect anyone to accept that at face value, so instead I’ll mention a few relatively non-controversial examples:
– Class balance. Because of multiclassing, there is an implicit assumption that a level in any class is equal to a level in any other class. Not only is this demonstrably untrue (a 10th level fighter/10th level wizard is not even in the same league as a 20th level wizard, and who’s even mentioned druids or clerics yet?), but WotC themselves pretty much admit it in their “monster advancement” rules: when you add “non-associated” class levels to a monster, they only count for 1/2 a CR, which is a tacit admission that adding 2 levels of wizard to an ogre doesn’t make it as much tougher as adding 2 levels of fighter would.
– ECLs vs CR. An ogre is the equivalent of a 3rd level human fighter as far as XP goes if you kill it. Yet the same ogre, if a PC, is the equivalent of a 6th level fighter (admittedly this is muddied by the recognition that as a PC he has 13000gp worth of equipment, but it would be difficult to justify that this made him 3 levels tougher).
I could come up with many more, but the above two are the ones that probably most people could concede were objective, and they are also both 3rd edition artefacts as opposed to something that D&D has always had.
So basically, you’re looking at a BROKEN process model. If you like process model driven stuff more than black box stuff, you have to consider that having a process model that is broken is, in some ways, worse than not having one. Here’s an example. If you have a process model that you are unaware is broken, you might naively end up throwing an adult black dragon against a party of 4 11th level bards. The process says that this is an encounter that the PCs should win whilst expending only 20% of their resources – and if you believe the process model works, you would end up with a TPK. On the other hand, if it’s a black box, then you’re going to eyeball it and see that this isn’t going to work out, and end up picking something more appropriate.
I would argue that D&D has never really been “coherent” enough to work as a process model system – without some solid simulation behind it, you can’t ever really ensure that a spell is balanced, or that a monster is “right”, or anything else. There’s too many variables in D&D to ever really capture that (indeed, I suspect that the wild variety of monsters, spells, and so on is one of the charms), so trying to create the equivalent of a balanced “physics engine” is doomed to failure.
I started out with C, but I didn’t want to get into a debate over how low-level C is, so I changed it. I also considered FORTRAN.
Fair enough. 🙂 I would have stuck with C just because it’s quicker to type. 🙂
Re: ECL vs CR.
I don’t this is as broken as you’re making out, as ECL and CR are measuring two different things: CR measures the “value” of a “thing” as a monster to be fought, while ECL measures its value as something on your side. As an extreme (and made up) example, consider something with a power which takes 10 minutes of concentration, but completely heals 3 allies. This is completely useless for something to be fought in a fight as there’s no time to use it (and hence shouldn’t contribute to CR at all), but would be incredibly useful for something on your side (and hence should contribute to ECL). There’s a piece in (I think) Savage Species which I’m paraphrasing here.
I’m in no way arguing the CR system isn’t broken, but I’m not sure this is really one of the worst ways.
Philip Kendalls last blog post..D&D 4e yet again
Simple argument: 4th Edition is simply more fun to play.
Bartoneuss last blog post..Review: Penny Arcade Adventures (On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness)
I think one of the results of having 3.0 as a process response type (and public in the OGL/SRD) was that it led to the creation of thousands of amatuer DM/developers. Guys who love the mechanics, and really wanted to get into it. By having it open, people played with it, and some got good enough to create their own material and start their own companies.
In my opinion, anything adding to the pool of future developers can only be good for the hobby. New kids who get hooked on amateur home game developing by fiddling with mechanics today are the Mike Mearls and Monte Cooks of the future.
The Black Box approach makes it harder for the average DM to become an amatuer developer. Without seeing the internal mechanics, they can’t really delve into the system. The black box style makes the DM’s job of running a game easier, but at the sacrifice of the ability to develop their own mechanics.
By making it a black box system, WOTC encourages the purchase of their MM, adventures, etc, because it is difficult for the average joe to make their own and be confident that it will work, or that they are doing it right. That’s good fot WOTC in the short-term. But as we lose the amateur designers, it changes (and maybe hurts) the hobby as a whole.
shadow145s last blog post..3.5 House Rules Rule! Backgrounds
Actually I disagree on this Shadow145. I believe that WotC will give all the necessary tools to build new monsters. But My gut feeling is that said tools wont be based on clearly defined mechanics but on clever guesstimates (i.e. chose expected results and base your design on existing model and spice to taste).
As the Forum thread mentions later, not everyone will feel like designing monsters all the time (even as easy as it might get) so MM will always sell (plus it will feature new design ideas and “pushing the envelope” concepts we might not have thought to explore).
My 2 cents here
Correct!
Source: http://wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4ex/20080519a
Correct!
Source: http://www.aintitcool.com/node/36838
Dave T. Games last blog post..Wizards Lets Loose The Cool
In fact, from Mike Mearls:
http://forums.gleemax.com/showpost.php?p=15909615&postcount=17
It’s the “clever guesstimate” that I see as the barrier for the fledgling amateur designer. There is a hesitation involved in designing something that doesn’t have concrete rules.
Loose example of my concern:
If 1000 GM’s try to design, say 10 of them actual become successful and become proffessionals.
If only 100 GM’s try to design because the other 900 decided they didn’t understand the mechanics enough to try, only 1 of them may be successful if we assume the same percentages. Okay, maybe 2 because the ones that tried are more likely better designers anyway.
That’s were the future of the hobby takes a hit. It’s the same reason I was worried about the OGL/GSL changes when originally announced.
But if all the concrete rules are there, as you say with the monster design, then we’re not looking at a black box, but a process response. I’m beginning to think that the 4E mechanics are less opaque than we were initially led to believe.
@Chatty: [Derail] How do you like the Wii Fit? Any chance of a review of it here or at Critical Hits? [/Derail]
shadow145s last blog post..3.5 House Rules Rule! Backgrounds
@Shadow145: First thing I write after my son’s surgery is a Wii Fit review for Critical Hits (if they can pay my now exhorbitant fee… ha ha j/k)
Bottom line: I love it but it called me fat!
I think the process-response label gives 3E too much credit and the black-box model doesn’t give 4E enough. Yes, 3E uses templetes, hit dice, etc to advance creatures/characters; but if you ask the designers at WotC, they’ll flat out tell you that balancing most of that stuff was guesswork. Contrary to what many people think, there is no grand formula to 3E. On the other hand, 4E does have an consistent and balanced formula underpinning all the rules: 1d20 + 1/2 level + stuff vs. 10 + 1/2 level + stuff. It’s not so much that you can’t look “under the hood” and know what’s going on in 4E, it just that the engine is dramatically simplified.
“First thing I write after my son’s surgery is a Wii Fit review for Critical Hits (if they can pay my now exhorbitant fee… ha ha j/k)”
The check is in the mail! (it might actually be a ninja)
My take on topic, aside from the fact that 4th Edition ramps up the fun, is that a lot of people’s comments here are assuming the mechanics won’t be explained in the core books. Phil already mentioned this, but I think it stands repeating that they will most likely NOT hide all of those important design things from us.
All else aside, how can you not trust Mike Mearls?
Bartoneuss last blog post..Maybe they can get Michael Bay to direct
I’m probably reading into some stuff a bit too much. Like the referencing SRD, limiting the preview to certain companies, and statements about monster design that had been made long ago.
If anything I should be looking at the design notes and Preview Books like World and Monsters, Races and Classes, and design blogs. They have been very open with a lot of the design philosphy.
I think a lot will depend on the DMG, and how much it talks about the “why” of design.
You can’t trust Mearls, he is a “caffiene powered robot”. If you turn your back on him for a second, he’ll end up designing a game system on you.
shadow145s last blog post..3.5 House Rules Rule! Backgrounds
All I can say about Mearls is that whenever he talked about what he did for 4e, I had the feeling that he was sitting in my games and taking notes at what we liked and disliked.
You do need to remember one thing.
Nobody, not even WotC, understood how to design for 3.Xe.
As Bruce said, above, every 3.Xe product was primarily guesswork and limited playtesting. Especially monster design, and even more so when it came time to determine CR.
Thus, it is a given that more people (not less) will understand 4e design than 3e design.
I was contemplating a Wii Fit – so I look forward to a review on it. Personally, math is not my strongest subject so if I can get someone else to do the math and present the results as building blocks, huzzah! It doesn’t mean I couldn’t tinker with it at a later date. I haven’t followed all the debates super close because I’ve barely played 3.5 and never played anything older and I haven’t put my hands on 4e yet, so I don’t feel qualified to understand or join the argument. However, I have formed some opinions, albeit less technical about some of the issues. My understanding is that this is a role playing game. It seems to me that if you are spending less time on rules and numbers and mathematical equations you might have more time for the storyline, the flavor, the role playing.
Heathers last blog post..My Rebuttal
Way back up there, Philip Kendall says
“Re: ECL vs CR.
I don’t this is as broken as you’re making out, as ECL and CR are measuring two different things: CR measures the “value” of a “thing” as a monster to be fought, while ECL measures its value as something on your side. ”
Which is the argument that is always given for the existence of ECL. As far as it goes, and in isolation, it’s fine.
Unfortunately, though, there’s a previously established precedent that ECL DOES equal CR… it works precisely that way for any creature with a level adjustment of +0 and who normally has 1 hit die (or to put it more plainly: humans, elves, dwarfs, goblins, and so on). That leads to the very reasonable question of why it works OK for them and not elsewhere.
Of course the answer to this question is more complex than just “ECL is broken” or “CR is broken” – monsters are designed by different rules than PCs, and something that is handy to have for a PC may not be that useful for a monster – but that is equally true of many class abilities, and it’s ignored for them. An NPC ranger used purely as a combat encounter is probably not going to get a lot of use from his free Track feat; an NPC druid used as a combat opposition is probably not going to get a lot of use from his Pass Without Trace ability; and any spellcaster as an NPC of moderate level is not going to be able to cast their full complement of spells within the encounter. But none of this entails a CR reduction.
Please note that the issue is not that ECL should equal CR – the point is rather that opening the black box and giving explicit rules entails the implication that adhering to these rules will be sufficient to create balanced results whereas leaving the black box shut makes it clearer that you need to exercise judgement.
Heather: “My understanding is that this is a role playing game. It seems to me that if you are spending less time on rules and numbers and mathematical equations you might have more time for the storyline, the flavor, the role playing.”
That is precisely what the Wizards folk have been saying. Andy Collins (okay he is a kind of special case) told us that he could plan an entire adventure in about 15 minutes, speaking of the mechanical and technical aspects, and that left him all the time he needed to work on the roleplaying, storytelling, and more interesting aspects of the game.
Bartoneuss last blog post..Maybe they can get Michael Bay to direct
So last night I’m running my high-level campaign, and it’s the party vs a very old Red Dragon. Oh look, a multitude of feats I need to keep track of. Fortunately I had the foresight to rewrite the character sheet in the newer format and include text for some of the more complicated actions, as well as calculate some sample Power attack numbers. (I like to have a 0, a default, one vs high AC creatures, and a max). And he can’t use half the feats because he can’t fly in the room (I should have chnaged those, but too late now). Crap, I didn’t predict the spell buffs he’s going to have on…Lets work those in while the combat is going on and give some hp back to account for retconning. So many options. 75% he isn’t going to use.
I actually said out loud during the combat “I wish I was using a 4E dragon”.
I’m was going to throw a Balor at them soon, but I may actually use the 4E Pit fiend they posted at WOTC instead.
How does this fit into this debate? When you roll initiative, you just don’t give a darn about the mechanics, you just want it to work and provide a fun encounter for the players.
shadow145s last blog post..3.5 House Rules Rule! Backgrounds
In all fairness, though, shadow145s, that’s a problem more to do with poor tools than a poor ruleset. If you could click a couple of buttons on your laptop and generate a sample dragon in seconds, taking into account spell buffs, power attacks, or whatever else you deemed useful… well, it wouldn’t be any hassle – and if you really wanted to completely create the dragon manually from scratch, you still could. Best of both worlds.
Obviously you don’t have such a tool, but it’s not a difficult tool to write – I’ve written lots of things like that myself, and there are lots more online. Now, sure, you could reasonably argue that you shouldn’t need a laptop to play, but that’s just the simplest example: there’s really no reason that the Monster Manual 3.5 couldn’t include sample dragons for each age category (and indeed for monsters OTHER than dragons they pretty much do).
I think one of the biggest concerns I have about 4th edition is the apparent need for a battle mat. Those sorts of things really cramp my style – I hate stopping a game to draw on a map every time there’s an encounter, it’s annoying to have to push around lots of monsters, and there’s always a pause while you have to count spell ranges and so on. I’d rather have a less tactical system, personally. But I’d freely admit that this isn’t really new; 3rd edition pretty much assumed you were using a battle mat of some sort as well.
Just one side point: Bartoneus says:
“… that left him all the time he needed to work on the roleplaying, storytelling, and more interesting aspects of the game…”
Personally, if I’m playing D&D, it’s the mechanical stuff that I’m playing for. D&D is unlikely to “work” very well as a rules light system – it’s only marginally less crunchy than Traveller is. In all its incarnations, it’s primarily been about going into people’s houses, kicking in their doors, killing them, and then taking their stuff – great fun, but hardly adhering well to the White Wolf “popularised but poorly implemented” idea of “Storytelling”.
YMMV, of course.
“Personally, if I’m playing D&D, it’s the mechanical stuff that I’m playing for. D&D is unlikely to “work” very well as a rules light system – it’s only marginally less crunchy than Traveller is. In all its incarnations, it’s primarily been about going into people’s houses, kicking in their doors, killing them, and then taking their stuff – great fun, but hardly adhering well to the White Wolf “popularised but poorly implemented” idea of “Storytelling”.”
I agree with you Gazza that a lot of what we play for is the mechanical aspect of it, but if the rest weren’t important then you’d be just as happy to sit in your room alone rolling dice, and playing with a calculator. Your whole talk about using a laptop and numerous tools that are “easy to write” hurts my head, and to think that you’re using it as an argument -for- a system is even worse! The system is so broken that you need all of that just to run a single Dragon and for it not to be painful, these things a good design does not make.
Bartoneuss last blog post..Maybe they can get Michael Bay to direct
First things first: Wii Fit is freakin’ awesome. I’ve been using a few days now, and I love it. I even did my Yoga exercises after fencing last night, and it was light enough that I could do it without killing myself, but it felt really good to get a little extra stretching in before bed.
Now that that’s out of the way… I think that 3.5 isn’t really that much of an open process… There’s a lot of things that don’t make sense, and don’t add up, and really depend on the party… ECL vs CR is one of them. How do they come up with those numbers? There’s no logical source (and LA is a terrible mechanic and I hope it’s gone in 4e…). As another example: My party had a Dragonborn (from Races of the Dragon) in it, so they had a good source of various elemental damages. I designed an encounter with a Half-Red Dragon Troll, just to mix things up. They’re going against it this weekend… I just don’t know how they’re going to get it down and have it stay down because the Dragonborn’s player won’t be there (his father is in the hospital…). There aren’t enough acid damage spells in the game to have it balance out. Especially without me saying “You should take some acid spells for this encounter.” *I* know they can’t handle this encounter as it is, but the only way around it is to completely redesign the encounter. Not every DM (especially amateur DMs) are going to realize just how out of balance this creature is, despite the CR rating (without PC levels: CR 7… for something which only takes lethal damage from one relatively rare source of damage…).
Will it still be possible to create impossible encounters in 4e? Probably. But the system, from what I’ve see, should be streamlined enough that you’ll realize a little sooner… “hmmm… this creature is really a level X, when I expected a level Y… better tweak back a little, or put it on the back burner until they’re ready for it.”
I think 4e will make the process more clear. There’s a process in both of them, but I think it won’t be quite so mysterious. Why is immunity a single element, a breath weapon once per day, all HD upped a die, and a +8 to Strength (plus the possibility of flight) only worth +2 CR? In 4e, at least they say “Breath Weapon once per day is worth +1 Level” (or however it works out). If you ask me, 3.5 is more a black box, it just gives you a lot of boxes and you have to guess which boxes go together.
Anyway… Chatty, I hope the surgery goes well. Good luck to you and yours.
Gazza: I’m going to have to agree with my compatriot Bartoneus here. I don’t understand your position at all. I could easily make the same argument that the battlemap could also be taken care of by writing/using software, but I don’t think it’s a good argument either way. Eliminating tedious math does not mean the same thing as being a “rules light system” nor does it imply that the focus won’t still be killing monsters and taking their stuff. (This is even aside from talking about 4e at all, this is general game design.)
The more minutiae I need to track as a DM or a player, the more it would make sense to just be a computer game where a computer can handle all that.
Dave T. Games last blog post..Maybe they can get Michael Bay to direct
I don’t mean to pick on you, GAZZA, but
Let’s say I’m using an example dragon from the Draconomicon. (They have a dragon of each type of each age category in there, for you to pick and choose.)
I don’t need to create the dragon, choose feats, choose spells, or do anything like that.
But running a dragon is still a hassle. While I don’t need to create it, I still need to adjudicate all of those feats and spells every round, pick and choose what spells to use (if any), decide what spells he already has active (if any), adjust for all of these if/when they get dispelled, etc.
It’s not that dragons are a pain to create, since I can get premade ones. It’s that they’re a pain to run and track.
Man, that’s what I get for playing Devil’s Advocate. 🙂
If you find the amount of mechanical work to run a D&D3e dragon tedious, you’re certainly not alone. But I’m not sure that’s actually a FLAW in the system. The crunch factor of a game is a selling point – some people like low crunch, some people like high, and some people like both but play different games depending on what their current mood is (I fall into the latter category). For some people, the intricate tactics of a D&D3e battle with a dragon, with all of its “half an hour real time for 6 seconds game time” glory, is part of the fun. For people who don’t particularly like that – and I’d have to say I’m probably one of them – then there’s thousands of other monsters in the Monster Manual that aren’t nearly as tedious to run, and aren’t necessarily less interesting because of that.
Having said that, even for “high crunch” games I’d prefer the crunch to be confined to solo activities. Black Box Traveller is an old favourite of mine – one of the crunchiest games ever written, in my experience, but in actual play sessions it’s highly abstracted and simplified. So there’s a clear balance here that D&D3e missed.
I have to say though that if D&D4e really does manage to eliminate the tedium of a DM running a high level spellcaster or other “highly flexible opposition”, I’ll be intrigued as to how it is managed. Typically 50% or more of the Player’s Handbook throughout most editions of D&D has been spells, and lots of different spells mean lots of different options, which means lots of different choices, which leads inevitably to slowing down resolution as the players and the DM have to make those choices. Does 4e limit the scope of these choices in some way?
I think that 4e is indeed moving much closer to your Traveller example. The crunch will still be there, and if anything it will be better defined than in 3e, but in play things are abstracted and simplified much more.
50% of the PHB will most definitely NOT be spells in 4e. Each class is completely self-contained, and each takes approximately the same number of pages. I imagine that a single class (including all spells/powers for that class) will take around 15 pages or less. (They have to include 8 classes, the combat rules, skills, feats, equipment, magic items, epic destinies, and more in the PHB, after all, so it can’t be much more.)
At any given level, a character made with PC rules will have no more than 2 at-will powers, 4 encounter powers, 4 daily powers, and a few utility powers (plus options from magic items). Most NPCs will not be made with PC rules, however, and as such will have fewer options, as well as few to no magic items.
I’m back! Surgery went well. Let me write my Wii Fit review and we can move on from this! 🙂
Thanks for keeping things alive here while I was being a worried nervous wreck.
Nico is better, we’ve already played a ton of Boom Blox (Caspule Review: Remember when your sister spent 15 minutes building a Blocks Tower… and you kicked it for shits and giggles? Boom Blox is that game, except for the crying sister)