Community

Just throwing out some quick replies. I gotta meet up with my airsoft team tonight to go over field design and costumes for our big event coming up so I won't be home until later. I do plan on replying to you though, phuzz! Thanks for the great post.

Nov 30, 2012 -- 4:36PM, phuzz wrote:

This is a response to Yagamifires post that got deleted. I apologize if some of it is confusing since there is no post to reference. I will do my best to give the context for my statements.

In your opening post you state the way to win D&D is by “growing in power, glory, and achievement." No where in the quoted text is it stated that this is the end goal of D&D. I cited the PHB where it stated the conditions for winning the game. “You “win” the Dungeons & Dragons game by participating in an exciting story of bold adventures confronting deadly perils.”, “You might fail to complete the adventure, but if you had a good time and you created a story that everyone remembers for a long time, the whole group wins.” You then responded in your deleted post, that this was wishy washy feel good nonsense that did not clearly state the goals of the game, and later stated that in D&D there was no definitive way to win since the game never truly ends.

This is certainly not the end goal of the game since the game actually possesses no end goal. A clear distinction has to be made between the mechanical goal of the game of Dungeons & Dragons (the moving parts) and the act of sitting down at the table to play. To compare this to something like football, you might play football for any number of reasons...maybe because you want to win a championship, or you are killing time with friends or you are a paid athlete, etc, etc. However, that is a seperate thing from the point of the game itself which is to score points and to keep your opponents from scoring points.

I will give you the benefit of the doubt, and guess what you mean by your contradictory statements about playing to win and how you do so, is a simplification of the concepts you are trying to present. I think you mean to say that D&D can not be won by conventional means, and the way your group realizes accomplishment is through “growing in power, glory, and achievement." in the game world.

All players actively playing D&D will derive enjoyment from "growing in power, glory, and achievement" or they would not be playing the game. That, of course, hinges on the player playing the game for enjoyment. Mind you, I have seen plenty of people sit around the table and actively derive enjoyment from A) derailing the game or B) observing the game. These are discrete activities seperate from playing the game however. You are right in that I am trying to simplify my points though. My "playing to win" remark is in regard to playing the game as well as one can. Most people like to play games as well as they can because they want to do well...many people, however, do not play the game as well as they can because of various mental blocks they themselves have made or just because of ignorance of the game. This is not a qualitative statement regarding the person...it is not a problem until the person attacks the game or others playing it because of their own short-comings. That is when it can be an issue.

I also believe that the designers of D&D are simplifying complex concepts in their definitions of how the game is won. I think they mean to say the point of the game is to have fun, and whatever metric you use to measure the success of D&D is the way your group wins the game, so long as the group has fun in the process.

As fun is not measurable, there would then be no way to measure success in D&D. Could you judge whether or not you enjoyed a session of D&D, yes? Can you measure the amount of fun? No. The game is utterly blind to that. The mechanics are utterly blind to that. The mechanics know only the game itself and those mechanics (like all roads leading to Rome) all reinforce the core conceit of the game...which is the quest to grow a character in power/name/deed.

This view point is supported in the 4e DMG in the Player Motivations section starting on pg 8. Players play D&D for different reasons, the player motivations section gives advice on how to engage several types of players, based on common psychographics found among the types of people that generally play D&D. I put forward that, to some, growing in power, glory and achievement is the end goal (the power gamer in particular), but for many other players it is only the means to an end. The Explorer wants to see the world and growing in power, glory and achievement is only important to him or her in that it allows him or her greater ability to explore the setting and discover new things. The Watcher is of particular importance for my argument. The watcher realizes fun by being part of the group; he or she “wins” D&D by being part of the group and watching others achieve their goals. What all this is saying is D&D is intended to facilitate enjoyment for the player through telling stories in a fantasy setting.

The failing in that is that using the "Watcher" as a player archetype is failing to really address that personality. It is the equivalent of designing Magic cards for those that like to observe games of MTG but do not actively play. When you simply design a good game that flows well and allows good gameplay, the Watcher will be pleased to observe what is going on. They are not actively engaging in the game so much as they are becoming engaged in the game environment. These are very seperate things. It is the difference between a football player and a football fan. One can enjoy a game without actively playing in it but that "feel good nonsense" I referenced before keeps the designers and gamers from outright saying that person is not really playing. But they aren't. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Remember, however, that your Explorer IS growing in deed/achievement as a character because he is experiencing wondrous things. If those things were commonplace, they would not be interesting and that person would not be exploring. Hence that player is very much fulfilling the design goal of the game and, as you stated, it is often necessary for them to DIRECTLY achieve that goal by also growing in Power so that they can live to experience the Exploration.

Your D&D is very broad, perhaps the broadest application of D&D. You seem to run a “sandbox” version of D&D;your players tell the story and anything can happen. However, I think that you sell D&D short. D&D is not just a sandbox game; it’s a sandbox of games.

I prefer to think I run the least restrictive form of D&D as a game in that the players are free to grow and achieve in any way they so desire.

That is to say some players really enjoy a wide open setting where they can do anything, others (like the Storyteller psychographic) want to have a story that they can interact with presented to them. Varying degrees of narrative and storytelling are required depending on the desires of the players in the game. The relevance of this is that some players have no personal goals for their characters, and the Watcher psychographic in particular does not care about immersion or story imperatives. The Thinker psychographic is engaged by puzzles and tactics, the narrative is only important to him or her in that it gives a context for the challenges and complications they seek to overcome and power, glory and achievement is only important to him or her in that it grants him or her a greater ability to accomplish this goal.

But achieving in one way or another is important to all. The Storyteller psychographic wants to grow through achievement or deed, adding a long history of important events and actions to their character. The Thinker psychographic wants to overcome increasingly difficult challenges and, like the Explorer, on some level doing this requires growing in direct, tangible power. In other ways, it means becoming further and further engrossed in increasingly dangerous situations to overcome them. Those lead to deeds.

On top of this, if in pursuit of their personal goals the players are not having fun, they are missing the point of the game. If tracking time in game is not fun, or inhibits fun, there is no reason to play the game if tracking time is required for it.

Yes but this is potentially throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Additionally, "tracking time" is a nebulous phrase. I strongly suspect having no reference for time in the game would quickly make it unenjoyable and even nonsensical. Imagine going for a walk and it's twenty years later for your character...or going through several combats, walking through several areas, engaging several NPCs and then being told that only a minute or so had passed.

Not tracking time is equivalent to invoking a BAN in another game. There are very important things about bans. I strongly suggest reading "Playing To Win" by David Sirlin. It is free to read in PDF format and is rather short. As "not tracking time" is not a discrete or enforceable statement, it is pretty much impossible to actually put into practice. Again, does it sound reasonable? Yes, but it is not actually attainable. After all, if anyone in the game at any point asks for or the DM references time passing, that means that time has been tracked in one fashion or another and hence the "not tracking time" sentiment has been violated. In general, it merely becomes a gentlemen's agreement to "track time imprecisely" or, in laymen's terms, "poorly". Really what "lets not track time" means is the DM can't be bothered to do it because, well, the players don't need to track time...they are incapable of making the decision of when/how time passes. So the DM abdicates the responsibility in the name of "fun"...which leads me to a major point...

You will notice the interesting thing is that MANY people that have issues with the 5MWD do things like throw out tracking time or tracking supplies (torches, food, etc) or throw out worrying about what is going on in the world besides the area "spotlit" by the PCs. This problem is that many DM's are either being lazy, or making design decisions because many DMs tend to fancy themselves game designers as well so they make changes...but do so without fully understanding or caring about the full ramifications of those changes.

Think about eliminating the movement of the world beyond the spotlight, the elimination of tracking supplies and the elimination of tracking time. Now frame this all under the auspices of "if you're having fun, you're doing well!" or even the false-end-goal of "Overcoming the next encounter". You now have a group that has, effectively, infinite food, infinite supplies and infinite time. They freeze the game whenever they want simply by stopping combat, since combat is the only time when things are actively being tracked.

Now, if you know at any point you want you can wait before the next encounter...and have no repercussions because you have infinite time on your side and infinite supplies to maintain survivability AND you believe your only pressing goal is overcoming the next battle...well then WHY WOULDN'T you engage in the 5-minute work day? The DM is all-but gift-wrapping it for the players and then getting upset when the players tear off the paper, pull it out of the box and start playing with it. The DM has, in every way, crafted the situation to occur exactly as it is occuring.

"We don't track food because it's not fun" - "Well if your players ran out of food they would have to head back to town" - "Exactly. That's not fun. Since they rest constantly and burn through days to sleep, they'd run out of food every few encounters" - "So they'd basically have to be heading back to town constantly if they did that huh?" - "Yeah and that's not fun to do so we skip it" - "Y'know if they worried about running out of that food, they'd probably not keep resting...because they'd not want to have to head back to town" - "But why bother? Heading back to down isn't fun. So there's no need to do that" - "And you wonder why your players let their characters do what they do...?"

It is the Street Fighter equivalent of banning fireballs (because fighting up close is "more fun") then complaining to Capcom that E Honda needs to be nerfed because he's dominating everyone else in your game. Well, of course he is, because fireballs are a part of the games design and they've been removed. Your meta is fundamentally damaged by that because you changed part of the game (without understanding what that would) and are now complaining about an outcome of that change.

(not "you" YOU, naturally)

For me train board games are not fun, I don’t often play them, and this is precisely because of tracking minutia from turn to turn. Quite frankly I find it tedious, boring, and unchallenging. I often win when I play train games, but I get no enjoyment from playing them. Thankfully D&D is a more evolved game, and does not require tracking time or other bits of minutia if the group does not wish to. So my question is, if a rules module can be introduced that allows a group that can not realize fun while tracking time, to have fun without it, why resist it? You do not have to use the optional rule, and it allows them to more fully enjoy the game.

The reason is because you are fundamentally changing the game. By introducing more and more and more options you dilute the design intent of the game. You also dilute portability of the game between people that play it. You reduce the ability for people in the game to share a common language because you have so many rules variants and the like. If you do not like something in D&D, realize you are fully able to remove it among your friends...but realize that it MAY have broad-reaching consequences (see the fireball example, which a group of friends could also easily do among themselves). The designers know such things. There are fundamental impacts things like "not tracking time" would have. It is a massive ripple effect.

There are rules and those rules have to be rules for the game. You cannot continually make exception-based design. Again: ripple effect. If time not being tracked is an option, do the designers then have to consider this for EVERY SINGLE SPELL (for example) that has a time based duration? After all, if you are not tracking time, the spell duration can no longer be used to balance spells. Etc. Etc. ETC. Basically to infinity within the constraints of the game. Every time you say "Or not" to a rule, you have to consider how the impacts everything that IS predicated upon that rule.

You have indeed accomplished what you set out to do in part, you have shown how to eliminate the 5MWD without a mechanical fix. It does require a style of play however. To those of us that find little or no enjoyment from this style of play, it is not an adequit solution because it limits the type of game we can play, and the design objectives for 5e is to facilitate the type of D&D any group wishes to play.

How much can you subtract or bolt-onto D&D before it is no longer D&D? The fundamental problem is that phrases like "facilitate the type of D&D any group wishes to play" functionally means NOTHING. It is a non-statement. It is "feel good nonsense". For instance, my groups play style of D&D involves throwing darts, ballroom dancing, balancing the dice instead of rolling them and tracking time only in hour increments. Can I reasonably expect the game to readily support that game style with rules to make it balanced, engaging and relevant to what my players want? If you say that is not reasonable, then the "facilitate" statement doesn't really mean anything. To say anything to the contrary is limiting me in the style of game I want to play. Is it argued to an absurd extent? Yes absolutely, but without a discrete way to categorize these things they are, as said, "feel good nonsense". They are non-statements. They are marketing blurbs and slogans no different from "pro-active" or "paradigm" (hooray Poochy episode).

My players playstyle is to not engage any monsters in combat and to turn away and withdraw from every puzzle or obstacle presented...but this does not work well in the game as designed because they do not gain XP or level up. They also don't get much use out of about 90% of their class abilities. Should that be addressed and should an adequate solution be put into 5E to make it viable to have a playstyle that does not involve things like dangerous dungeons or deadly dragons at all?

In response to your comment about real time advancement being illusory, I would argue that both real time advancement and game time advancement are illusory. In both cases the player is not gaining the power. The player is experiencing the illusion quicker in relation to his or her time spent in real time advancement, so only in cases where the player experiences faster growth and advancement in game time and the player cares about the faster advancement in game time, is the 5MWD sub-optimal. I will concede this point. But then again I never argued against it.

You've nothing to concede because, indeed, I do not believe you argued that point. I merely included it to address parts of the argument from the other side I'd seen.

In other threads and posts I have stated the 5MWD is the optimal strategy when ignoring all story elements. Again this isn’t necessarily the proper way to play, it just removes the variables. Many psychographics only care about advancement and growth in so much as it allows them greater ability to accomplish the goals they set for themselves. Case in point, the Thinker psychographic wants to figure out puzzles and overcome challenges. In these cases the ability achieve their goals more effectively, faster in relation to their own time spent is preferable, and thus, for them the 5MWD is an optimal choice. I think at this point I will quote the section on the Thinker from the 4e DMG since it is very relevant to this point in particular.
“A thinker likes to make careful choices, reflecting on challenges and the best way to overcome them. She also enjoys herself most when her planning results in success with minimal risk and the use of resources. Solving a challenge in a creative way is more important to the thinker than the character power or roleplaying issues. In fact, the thinker might prefer sound tactics to acting in character or straightforward, brute force battle.”
It should come as no surprise at this point that there is a lot of Thinker in my personal psychology.

Here in lies the problem and it goes back to my earlier point...I will re-quote for emphasis...

"success with minimal risk and the use of resources"

Time is the most important resource any person has. If time has become infinite in-game it is no longer a resource. Hence, 5MWD. If time IS a resource in the game it will, by default, become one of the most important resources by it's very nature and the Thinker will begin factoring in at the very top of their priorities.

Again, as DM, remove components at your own peril and suffer the consequences. Do not bemoan those consequences, however, for they are created by ones own actions.

Finally in response to players in a co-operative game getting upset about others doing well I will say I don’t think they get upset about players doing well. I think it has more to do with their inability to contribute in a meaningful way, though some may experience jealousy as well. I will use an example from my play experience at this point (since you like to use examples Yagami ). At the end of 3e's run we decided to play a sending off campaign, where each player could play whatever character they wished, using any game option published by wizards of the coast. The idea was many options had been denied for balance issues, and this was the final chance for us to use the options presented and build the strongest character we could think of. We started our characters at 8th level since we didn’t think we could achieve higher levels before 4e came out. I was a player in this campaign. Suffice it to say some characters were absolutely ridiculous. I made an Illumian Artificer, and a friend of mine made a Psion Metabolist. After 2 sessions 2 of our 6 players quit, and for the duration of the campaign another player spent hours of time reading every rule and actively tried to find interpretations that proved we were cheating! Literally the rest of the party contributed nothing to the group that the Psion or I couldn’t do better. As an Artificer I had a scroll or other magic item for every situation, and could put out more single target damage than any other class could hope to do because of the ability to combine spells from all classes and make them into magic items. The psion could polymorph into any creature from 6 monster manuals, and other setting supplements, and due to feats double the effectiveness with his psycrystal. He could customize his character for any situation (in effect he was playing thousands of characters all wrapped into one and doubled in effectiveness by having 2 of them at a time.) Players are only playing a co-operative game if they can contribute in a meaningful way, otherwise they are just spectating. My guess is the other 2 players were Watchers, and so they "won" the game from watching my friend and my characters achieve our goals. At this point you may bring up the point that we were being jerks and not allowing others to participate, but the premise was to make bonkers characters, and as Yagami pointed out in his first post “I am a "play-to-win" gamer in my life. It is how I play games, it is how I expect others to play games with me (or to not complain when I do at the very least)” The result was disastrous, some players could not enjoy the game (they quit, or sought to tear down the unbalanced characters), and so half of our group was not enjoying the game, as a group we “lost” the game because several players were not having fun. I put forward that we were “jerks” but in an unintentional way. Since that campaign I have been vary cognizant of balance, and how the lack of it can ruin the game for many players.

Then we find much common ground in that endlessly adding more options inevitably leads to the game cracking in half as those options are not thoroughly balanced nor are the ramifications of their inclusion fully appreciated until far FAR too late. Endless options are the hobgoblin of game design. They seem so very attractive, but elegant game design with fewer but better options is almost ALWAYS superior because the interaction of those better options lead to infinite choices.

I am reminded of a competitive round of D&D my friends desired to take part in when we were in our late teens. Having explored much of the system, they felt like they had mastered it. They were, in a word, arrogant regarding their system mastery. They set up a versus situation involving roughly 10 players and 2 DM's...essentialy crafting a mini-campaign with two competing evil groups of PCs. It was quite hilarious actually. We had a good time. They also demanded that I play...later some would tell me they wanted a shot at "doing battle" with me without a shield between us. They wanted to see if, allowed the same resources, they would come out on top against me since I'd always been the primary DM for years. We were given a budget of gold and XP to build our characters and had a smattering of books to create from. For most of the game I used various means to avoid combat, drawing things out and exploring...letting people muck about in the mega-dungeon and whatnot. At some point, however, the other groups players started to push the matter again and again. They wanted a throw-down with the group I was in...and I had a bounty on my head. They'd even made bets among each other regarding killing me.

Both teams rested...then, having continually heard the well-meaning taunts and boisterous bravado from the other room (we were seperated only by a door), I told the rest of my part they could come along or stay behind...and that it didn't matter which they did. They opted to accompany me. The door was opened between the rooms and the battle was begun.

It lasted, effectively, one round. As you might imagine, it was an absolute slaughter...an alpha-strike that murdered every single one of them.

The lesson we all learned? Well there was two...one was that, as a player v player adversarial game, the game was hilariously broken and the second lesson was that the guy that has to figure out how to combat every single player for years probably knows how they think and how to murder them in a heartbeat if given the chance.

At this point, I don't even remember what I was playing...some broken spell-casting class with prestige classes and such (naturally)...nor the exact events of the round-of-murder...mostly because there's SO MANY ways to achieve it...but I do remember the stunned looks and questions like "Is that legal?"...my only real reply was "There's a reason I always win at Magic" and holy crap did I get well-meaning hate for THAT little fiasco. All in good fun, of course. Only one person really got upset and they got upset at EVERYTHING in EVERY game they've ever played...guess who we, 10 years later, don't play games with? Hah.

Wow tangent aside...

I hope this better explains my point of view, and if I missed any points let me know Yagami. I am more than happy to continue this discussion. 

It does. I am more than happy to continue as well. Thanks for engaging thus far and for putting up with the mystery deletion and my own delays.

Honestly I need to know where everybody's getting this "4E is designed with number of encounters in mind" bit, because I have not actually seen this happen in any of my 4E games.

@yagami, no problem on delays, it seems we're both very busy persons. Can't reply today, infact prolly not for a couple days.

 As an aside, I find this whole discussion on 4-5 encounters in 4e as a design goal kinda amussing. Ammusing in that for the first time my group found no significant advantage to rest often in 4e, it was liberating, but had an odd effect on the game in and of itself. We were so overjoyed that we could continue on if the story called for it without a signifficant increase in the risk to our characters, that eventually we started ignoring the story to see how many encounters we could go without an extended rest. Around 13th level we managed a 12 milestone stretch (or 23 encounters 2 of them were milestone encounters by themselves) we would do things like sleep but not take an extended rest or run to the next dungeon instead of resting. Fun stuff, but kinda telling in a way. Being freed of the oppression of a bad rule in previous editions caused us to revel in the new rule to the point of perverting it.