It's not the static 'realism or no realism,' it's the sliding scale I'm commenting about. Too much realism, and the game would bog down in pointless rules and everything being deadly. Too little realism, however, and there's no attachment to the game. Stuff just happens because the rulebook says it happens, without any concern to how it plays out.
Which is what I suspect some people mean when they say 4th edition feels more like a videogame than previous editions. Not so much that it does things that earlier systems didn't, but it does them in such a blatantly obvious way.
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I'm also not a Gameplay and Story Segregation guy, myself. The best campaign I ever played in was fundamentally based around a mechanical quirk of a high-level 3E cleric spell; the best campaign I ever ran was fundamentally based on "what would a city be like if the implications of the core rules were pretty much played straight?" I know it's ironic, but having the system tell me, as a DM, "hey, you can do whatever you want! Do anything that works for the story you want to tell!" just doesn't get me going in the same way that finding those mechanical twists do.
The comment about the "cookie-cutterness" of 4E character didn't really occur to me until just now, but that may also be part of why I don't like the system as much. 4E seemed to have taken great pains to "idiot-proof"* character construction: it's hard to make a "bad" character in 4E. But the price for that is the relative inflexibility of classes: you've got a handful of pre-determined "builds" per class (more if you buy more sourcebooks!) and that's pretty much it. In 3E, you're much freer to do whatever you want with your character, but the cost of that is the possibility of making a character that just sucks. More freedom means more freedom to make mistakes, but I kinda like that.
...dear lord, I sound like I should be stumping for Ron Paul.
But anyway, that's all PERSONAL TASTE. I don't begrudge anyone their choice of system; different strokes and all. I really don't know why people get so vitriolic about it; at the end of the day, it's just a game about dudes and ladies fighting monsters.
edited 14th Sep '11 2:05:08 PM by Aldheim
If we look at Dn D in terms of the outdated GNS model, both 3.5 and 4E are very gamist. But 4E is far more narrativist, whereas 3.5 is far more simulative. 4E uses "encounters" for most of its variables, because that's how narratives are structured. It still keeps to certain stimulative elements-such as falling damage, extended rest time periods, and so forth, but its rules are far more centered around making the narrative work than 3.5.
That's why Order Of The Stick wouldn't work as a 4E comic-part of the narrative IS the simulationist game elements. So it's kind of like dividing by zero.
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Welcome To TV Tropes | How To Write An Example | Text Formatting Rules | List Of Shows That Need Summary | TV Tropes Forum | Know The Staffre: "How does 4e pare back roleplay?"
3e rules cover a much wider variety of non-combat situations than 4e, and does so in a way that provides more verisimilitude. Basically, if you approach tabletop gaming from the standpoint of "this person in this world wants to do this action — how well do the rules accommodate that?" then 3e usually comes out ahead. There are comparatively few situations in 3e that the rules flat-out don't cover, where as 4e is more prone to running into character actions that have no mechanics.
A simple example: skill challenges. In 4e, skill challenges are supposed to cover complicated situations by having multi-step skill checks. Say you're trying to break into a fortress. In 3e, you would (for example) roll Hide and Move Silently to sneak past the guards, roll Climb to climb over the wall, roll Jump and/or Tumble to land softly after jumping off the wall into the fortress, then roll Open Lock to unlock the door and get inside.
In 4e, that would be a skill challenge, which basically boils down to "succeed X skill checks before failing Y skill checks". The problem here is that skill checks don't actually make a lot of sense. Say that you decide that a "break into the fortress" skill challenge requires 3 successes before 2 failures. You succeed on a Stealth check to get past the guards, but say your Climb check sucks, so instead of doing that, you decide to cast a Fly spell and fly to the top of the wall. Well, what the hell does that count as in a skill challenge? A success? ("I use Fly to auto-succeed my Climb check to get to the top of the wall.") Nothing? ("You didn't roll a skill check, so you didn't succeed on a skill check.") I don't know. The rules simply don't cover it.
The way I view tabletop games is very "simulationist". If a player can say "I want to do X" and the DM has to say "Uh, the rules don't cover that, so [you can't do it/give me a minute to think of a house rule]", then that's a problem with the system. Obviously, no system can cover everything, but 3e is much better than 4e at covering most things.
There's a flip side to this, too. If the player should be able to handle everything the character could do, then the character should be able to make sense of everything the player can do. In other words, mechanics should not break the fourth wall. 4e has a lot more fourth-wall-breaking mechanics than 3e.
Let's look at the "breaking into the fortress" example again. In 3e, if you fail your Hide/Move Silently checks, then the guards notice you. If you fail your Climb check, then you don't make it up the wall. Each roll has a consequence in the game world that makes sense. In 4e, though, skill challenges do wonky things. If we go back to the 3 successes before 2 failures skill challenge, then we could end up breaking the fourth wall in two different ways. Say we succeed on a Diplomacy check to chat up the guards, a Bluff check to distract the guards, and a Stealth check to sneak past the distracted guards. Congratulations, you've done nothing about getting over the wall or into the locked door, but you succeeded in the skill challenge, so now you're in the fortress! On the other hand, let's say that you fail a Perception check to try to spot a weakness in the fortress's defenses, then fail an Arcana check to inspect any magical protection that the fortress may have. Sorry, you just failed your skill challenge, despite the fact that nothing you did actually prevents you from successfully breaking into the fortress.
Another example: marking. Lots of 4e skills involve "marking" targets, which grants you bonuses against them or gives them penalties against you. These are explained in a variety of ways, from a fighter issuing a challenge to an enemy to a paladin magically calling an opponent into single combat with him. However, any given creature can only be subject to one mark at a time. If a paladin uses his marking ability followed by a fighter using his marking ability on the same target, then the paladin's is negated by the fighter's. How does that make any sense in the game world? If you were a DM, how would you explain a paladin's holy power fizzling because the fighter goes "Bring It!" to the same guy? Worse than that, some marking abilities don't even have a description, they just say "ability marks target for this effect". What does that look like in the game world? This can have a mechanical effect, to. If the ability is a character taunting the target, then does it fail if the target can't perceive the character? If it gives bonuses to the character's allies, then does it fail if the allies can't perceive the character?
tl;dr version:
3e does a much better job than 4e of creating a world to interact with, which encourages roleplaying by providing it with a mechanical backing and allowing for nonstandard usage of abilities (especially outside of combat).
edited 14th Sep '11 8:03:54 PM by NativeJovian
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.@Jovian: well put. 4th ed is a good tactical combat system and great that's great for a dungeon craw, but that's all it is. If your looking for immersive storytelling mechanics tough titty.
I suppose one could run a 4th ed. game and whip out the 3.5 rules when needed on the fly, but it's hardly a elegant solution.
edited 14th Sep '11 9:03:50 PM by joeyjojo
hashtagsarestupidTrue, 3e provides more rules for fringe cases while 4e provides a stringent framework of rules for the stuff where you absolutely need rules and asks you to extrapolate from them for said fringe cases, like for example acrobatic stunts where they'll basically tell you "use the DC table and wing it". I don't agree with you here because I'm not a simulationist but I see where you are coming from. But how does that in any way restrict roleplaying? I can only one see one scenario here and if you indeed have a "no you can't do that cause it's not in the rules" DM then you have bigger problems.
In 4e, you would (for example) roll Stealth to sneak past the guards, roll Athletics to climb over the wall, roll Acrobatics to land softly after jumping off the wall into the fortress, then roll Thievery to unlock the door and get inside.
First of all, you SC is badly designed and you have no one but yourself to blame if this inevitably fails. But that's not the point. You don't need to use skill challenges, in fact if you run a game focused on roleplaying you really shouldn't except in very specialized cases and simply use the sc rules to keep track of the party's progress for yourself. It's the same difference between saying "the Orc is using his Savage Demise encounter power" and describing it instead, both have their place in some games and unless your DM is a complete tosser this shouldn't be a problem. Because yes, running a skill challenge is breaking the fourth wall. That's what it supposed to do if you play it openly.
And again I fail to see how this is a problem for roleplaying if you don't have a "no rule, no die roll, no success" kind of DM, something the rules openly discourage, especially for skill challenges. This isn't about better or worse for roleplaying, it's about the size of a DM's toolbox. A valid point as I said but this elitist fallacy of "we have rules for herding goats, clearly we are true roleplayers and not wargamers" frankly can go fuck itself.
...what? Show me a DM who would let you into the fortress even though you didn't actually get in just because you got enough successes, and I'll show you someone whose D Ming license should be revoked. Personally, I wouldn't even count bluffing the guards as a success, but rather as an assist (i.e., give the next person to make a Stealth check a considerable bonus to their roll, or negate the next failure).
Re: Marks
I would play it as "This holy power makes the target feel threatened and want to attack the threat, but oh wait! Now this guy over here is threatening me, so I'd better deal with him first!" In other words, the person who's threatened most recently is the biggest threat. The -2 in that way could be played as a psychological disadvantage because you're not attacking the guy who just smacked you upside the head with a broadsword. And while martial power being able to overcome magic (divine magic, even) may seem odd at first glance, there's no real reason it shouldn't. Marks are a compulsion, they do things to their targets' heads. Someone might be really good at it through magical means, and someone might be really good at it through martial means. All other things being equal, the most recent threat seems the biggest.
edited 15th Sep '11 11:45:31 AM by Ishntknew
@Ana: Mechanics are a method for interacting with the game world. When you have more robust mechanics, then that makes it easier to interact with the game world in a consistent and organized fashion. Yes, you can make rulings on the fly for situations that aren't covered by the rules as written, but that's a stumbling block. You have to make up a rule to cover the situation (which may be nontrivial, depending on the situation and the rule). If you want the gameplay to be consistent (I hope we can all agree that consistency is a good thing?) then you have to remember that rule and how it's applied in which situations. Ignoring rules you don't like (like skill challenges) is the opposite side of the coin. Sure, you can certainly do that if you want — but the fact that the system has rules that you decide aren't worth bothering with isn't a point in its favor.
@Tomu: True, but the formerly certainly helps the latter. Nothing breaks immersion quite like a lack of verisimilitude.
@Ishntknew: I agree entirely that you'd have to be insane to call something a success if you haven't actually succeeded on it yet, but that's exactly what the rules say you should do. On the subject of marks: your suggestion works for basic "-2 for not attacking character who marked you" marks, but what about ones that give allies a bonus to hitting the marked target, or causes the target to provoke more opportunity attacks from you, or any number of other things that marks can do? "The most recent threat is always the biggest" is a pretty thin justification for game mechanics like that...
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.I'm a DM who'd let you into the fortress just because you got enough successes :P However, what I'd do is turn the channel to +m and then give a brief narrative about how the party totally kicks serious ass, before moving to the next plot point and/or battle.
Infiltration missions tend to be really detailzy and bog down gameplay. Fortunately, I tend to play with people much more interested in dialogue and combat. Self-selection!
3.5 has verisimilitude? Really? The nature of skill points makes it so that after a few levels your base stats become completely meaningless to ability at any given activity and class/non-class skills make it so that characters are shoe-horned into being good at only specific things (should they cross class they will never be able to accomplish level appropriate D Cs. Ever.) Furthermore, level appropriate D Cs increase at such a rate that splitting your points between multiple skills is to gimp yourself in both. The game thusly encourages you to put maximum points in as many skills as possible and forget about the rest. Thus you have level 20 fighters who can't identify a potion, level 20 wizards who can't jump across a hole, and so on and so forth. You are either insanely specialized in one skill or you are utterly useless.
Verisimilitude!
Your mirth, sadness, attention to detail, apathy, and sense of victimization or self importance are highly unwarranted.I never said that 3.5 is flawless (it's a huge mess in its own way), I just said that it's better than 4e at that particular thing — a thing that happens to be important to me, so I prefer 3e to 4e. Whether or not 3e's superior out-of-combat mechanics make up for it's terrible Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards problem or it's multitude of other sins is purely a matter of opinion. But I don't think you can legitimately argue that 3e's out-of-combat mechanics aren't superior to 4e's.
That said, the way you phrased your comment shows that we approach things from a completely different direction. The very fact that you mention "level-appropriate DCs" marks your thought process as very different than mine. I tend to approach things from the direction of "what make sense in the game world" rather than "what is mechanically appropriate". I present my players with situations and then use the mechanics to gauge whether their reactions to it succeed or fail, rather than designing situations mechanically appropriate to their level. If that means that they can't climb the fortress walls at level 1, then oh well — they'll have to find a different way into the fortress. (This doesn't mean that I throw impossible situations at my players, it just means that I think of a situation and then say "is this something they can handle?" rather than saying "this is what they can handle, so I'll create something involving it".)
edited 15th Sep '11 5:45:43 PM by NativeJovian
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Partly why I used the term verisimilitude instead of realism. Neither systems are particularly realistic, but 4th edition handles it in such a way that it broke immersion for my group.
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