What is the Tyranny of Fun?
In short, Tyranny of fun is the idea that all things that players do not like should be removed from the game. Things like getting removed from a combat by ghoul paralysis or knockout, or persistent injuries like energy drain or stat drain. Magic items are great, lets hand out a ton of those! PCs hate when their abilities get nullified, so lets have everything be vulnerable to sneak attack even if there's actually no weak spots to hit.
The Tyranny of fun is about trying to make the game nonstop fun, all the time.
Tyranny of Fun Elements in Next
-Word of Power healing
-Heal from zero
-Energy drain nerfed into the ground
-Hardly any means to remove a character from a combat
-No ability nullification (You can assassinate a genaltinous cube?)
-Super Clerics
What's wrong with Tyranny of Fun?
You may think: Well it's trying to be more fun? What's wrong with that?
Just because you're winning doesn't mean it's fun
This principle that comes from an episode of the Twilight Zone. In this particular episode, a compulsive gambler dies and wakes up in a casino. At first he wins and thinks: "I'm winning this must be heaven!" However, by the end of the episode he realizes that not only does he win, but he always wins, and concludes that he is in fact in hell, not heaven. I feel like D&D has started to resemble this more and more with each edition. It becomes increasingly less likely that the players lose. Even minor defeats, like having your magic sword sundered, getting energy drained or getting knocked out for a combat are largely a thing of the past.
But it's a game, it should be fun, right? Well not really. Games have their high points and low points. Anyone who has played anything remotely competitive knows that you can lose. And you can lose bad. Whether it was a game of basketball, Chess or Call of Duty Team deathmatch, you can get your ass kicked. And you know what, that probably wasn't very fun. That probably sucked, and sucked bad. But you wouldn't want to remove the possibility of losing entirely, because it would ruin those games. The victory becomes meaningless if the game is too easy and eventually people would just give up the game.
You need to challenge people and that means having memories of glorious victories and crushing defeats.
Monsters need identity
Monsters live and die on thier special abilities. If you want them to be memorable, they have to have bad things happen. I still remember the first time I ever fought a ghoul as a PC in 2nd edition, where you saw their ability to paralyze a PC for the combat. That was scary, that was really scary. I can't remember the first orc or goblin I fought. In fact I can't remember *any* orc or goblins I fought, because they were bland damage dealers.
Now lets think of the memorable iconic D&D monsters: Mind Flayers, Beholders, Rust monsters, ghouls, wights, gelatinous cubes, Medusas. All those things had abilities that were going to screw you over, possibly even kill you. And these are monsters we remember in D&D. Think about that for a minute. We remember the energy drainers and the things with petrifying gazes, so much so that many of them become iconic parts of the game. Lets not lose that.
And this gets back to the first point. You were fighting fearsome opposition. PCs need to feel like brave heroes fighting against fearsome opposition, not high-powered bullies kicking puppies.
Fight till I'm dead!
A big Tyranny of fun trend is constantly being able to be restored to combat, even when you get knocked out or paralyzed or whatever. Whether it's a healer healing you from 0 with a minor action or just getting a new save every round to shrug off that hold person, you're never out of any fight. And you may think: Well what's wrong with that?
First, it's just stupid in many cases. Constant healing leads to a whack-a-mole sort of combat, where PCs are constantly popping up only to get dropped by the next hit.
Well think about it for a minute. When you're a threat even when you're lying face down bleeding, yet you're helpless, then the monster tactic to solve that problem is to straight up kill you before you can heal. Thus instead of a PC sitting out one battle, he now has a dead character. And that's exactly what happened with hold person when it had an inconsistent duration. When you know that the guy is only helpless for a short bit, there's a rush to go Coup De Grace him and remove him from combat entirely. You will go after him over attacking other enemies even because he's helpless. In other words, the effect is much similar to being able to fight while at negative HP. Yeah, it makes PCs more powerful, but it's all or nothing. The only way for a monster to stop you from getting back up is to kill you. Which means every battle you're going all-in. There's not much room for a capture scenario or anything close to it, because a character who is knocked out is one word of power from being resotred to a fully functional combatant.
The only other option is of course to play the monsters off as dumb AIs who can't react to what's going on and only attack standing PCs, because we all know chaotic evil gnolls have a sense of fair play, right? But you know, I mean we're playing with whack-a-mole style combat, so why not have the monsters act dumb too? Why are we straining verisimilitude?
Is it really that bad to have a PC sit out of a battle? No, of course not. It sucks, but it's not the end of the world.
How do I kill it? I stab it of course!
It's largely becoming a trend in making monster resistances/immunities less and less powerful, or in many cases nonexistent. Creatures like oozes used to be immune to sneak attack and similar vital strikes, but now they are not. Why? Because we don't want the rogue feeling bad because you tell him his sneak attack doesn't work.
Some oozes were immune to certain weapon types. Slashing weapons would cause them to split in half (to two functional oozes) instead of actually doing real damage. Incorporeal undead required a magic weapon to hurt them.
Why the change? Well presumably because people got upset when their main schtick didn't work. So the Fun Police come along and say "Well that can't happen, you can sneak attack anything, screw common sense!"
Why is this a bad thing: Well for one because it stifles creativity. If your basic tactic always works, then why bother ever coming up another. Necessity is the mother of invention. You have no need to ever invent anything if you don't need it. It was one of the main reasons 4E had such little improvisation, because your powers were just so good that you didn't need to improvise. They always worked, so really why bother trying to think of some innovative strategy when you can just Twin Strike until the thing goes away. The answer is you rarely do.
Having people's main abilities get shut down leads them to be more multi-dimensional characters and makes them more interesting. It also leads PCs to think more heavily. When your primary tactic gets nullified, now you need to think up some kind of back-up plan. Now you're doing cool stuff you never would have thought to try before and you end up with cool stories like, "Remember that time we lured that black pudding down to that unstable dungeon corridor and I used my horn of blasting to trap it? That was awesome!"
Nobody ever remembers the time they spammed twin strike for 5 straight rounds, because they're doing that all the time.
Playing the Healer is boring, so lets make him uber
Yet another trend is to buff up the healer class, typically the cleric to insane levels so people will want to play him. This is because it's felt that being a support character is boring, and instead of just rebalancing the game around not requiring cleric, we try to make the guy playing one not feel like a mobile first aid tent while still dispensing the heals, so he gets to kick ass while dropping heal spells in the same turn. This makes healer types ridiculously overpowered naturally, but it's the only way someone can possibly have fun playing a cleric apparently.
But he's the cornerstone of your group, and why, becasue you need that guy who heals unconscious PCs and gets them back in the fight. So because of Tyranny of fun, you're married to the cleric.
If we didn't need unconscious people to come back mid-combat, we could pretty easily just make combat healing optional, allow people to use healing surges/potions/whatever between combat and then not have to worry about forcing people that really don't want to play a support class into playing support. Now we don't need the Tyranny of fun appeasment for clerics.
Conclusion
In closing, let me say that there's not anything wrong with trying to make the game more fun, however all things must be done in moderation. Just because candy is delicious doesn't mean you should eat only candy.
In short, Tyranny of fun is the idea that all things that players do not like should be removed from the game. Things like getting removed from a combat by ghoul paralysis or knockout, or persistent injuries like energy drain or stat drain. Magic items are great, lets hand out a ton of those! PCs hate when their abilities get nullified, so lets have everything be vulnerable to sneak attack even if there's actually no weak spots to hit.
The Tyranny of fun is about trying to make the game nonstop fun, all the time.
If this is going to be your definition and these are going to be your examples, then I must say I love the "tyranny of fun".
The purpose of this thread is to address a problematic gaming trend that seems to be taking over in modern D&D. I've named this the Tyranny of Fun, as I'm not sure if it has any other name that I've seen.
i believe the term commonly used to describe the playing style you don't like is "badwrongfun"
That word would also adequately serve as the "tl;dr" version of your post.
In short, Tyranny of fun is the idea that all things that players do not like should be removed from the game. Things like getting removed from a combat by ghoul paralysis or knockout, or persistent injuries like energy drain or stat drain. Magic items are great, lets hand out a ton of those! PCs hate when their abilities get nullified, so lets have everything be vulnerable to sneak attack even if there's actually no weak spots to hit.
The Tyranny of fun is about trying to make the game nonstop fun, all the time.
If this is going to be your definition and these are going to be your examples, then I must say I love the "tyranny of fun".
i can't say i've been too chaffed by this dictatorship of good times either.
And the problem with that complaint is that, take it as a matter of empirical observation by someone who actually PLAYS Pathfinder, 4E and (briefly) Next - it is just flat-out false. Ask the characters in my 4E game if it's possible to fail, if you can find one that lives long enough. This "newer editions are too easy!" meme old-schoolers like to run with is Just. Not. True, and I say that as someone who is a lot more interested in OSR games than current-edition ones at the moment.
Tyranny of Fun Elements in Next
-Word of Power healing
-Heal from zero
-Energy drain nerfed into the ground
-Hardly any means to remove a character from a combat
-No ability nullification (You can assassinate a genaltinous cube?)
-Super Clerics
So, other than the fact that I don't know what "super clerics" are, I LOVE all those elements. If that is what the tyrant of fun imposes, then sign me up as a willing member of his fun police!
This "newer editions are too easy!" meme old-schoolers like to run with is Just. Not. True, and I say that as someone who is a lot more interested in OSR games than current-edition ones at the moment.
*high five!*
I would also like to point out that some of the things that you claim are being removed for the sake of the ToF (energy drain and ability drain) are actually huge PITAs to deal with at the table because of the mechanical cascade they cause, not because people ahve a problem with there being consequences for things that happen in the game. Ciome up with a version of energy drain or ability drain that isn't a huge PITA to deal with as a mechanic during play, and we'll talk about it. But, to say that people who don't want to deal with energy drain or ability drain just don't want bad things to happen to their characters is just you attributing a motivation to them without actually knowing or asking them.
So many people seem to fight so often against anything getting too complicated. I have seen it with CRPGs and TTRPGs alike.
Problems (like a ghoul's paralysis) are not obstacles..... they are just problems... problems have solutions, and solveing those problems is what a game is all about.
What is a PITA?
@MechaPilot
What is a PITA?
Pain in the ***
@MechaPilot
What is a PITA?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pita
it also means pain in the ass.
(please don't clip my post)
If I understand well, I fully agree with you.
If you give your players everything they want, then the game has no meaning
if everyhting is handed, there is no feeling of accomplishment.
Things have more value if you sacrificed to get them in the first place.
That is more of a DM's problem than it is with the system though (unless "wealth by level" stays in the game)
That is more of a DM's problem than it is with the system though (unless "wealth by level" stays in the game)
By wealth do you mean "assumed gear?" I've never actually had an issue with the wealth by level table as it's useful for creating PCs above 1st level. Although, in a system like DDN where magic goodies aren't built into the math, the numbers on a wealth by level table should certainly be lower.
@OP: You're not making much sense Dwarf slayer. One one hand you say that the ToF aims to remove bad things that happen to PCs from the game. On the other, you state that winning all the time isn't fun. Since the ToF's aim is to make the game more fun, and since the fun of winning lies in overcoming actual obstacles, the ToF cannot be doing what you say that it's doing. It is a logical impossibility.
Well the point is that the Tyranny of Fun philosophy is short sighted. It's simply removing stuff that players find bad, without actually considering if maybe they're good for the game. But Tyranny of Fun is simply "If a player complains about it, throw it out". That's not necessarily a good design philosophy because sometimes things that PCs dislike can still be good for the game.
I would also like to point out that some of the things that you claim are being removed for the sake of the ToF (energy drain and ability drain) are actually huge PITAs to deal with at the table because of the mechanical cascade they cause, not because people ahve a problem with there being consequences for things that happen in the game.
Yeah, see that's a valid reason for changing something. Though I felt like 3Es negative levels were a fine compromise mechanically. It's not a case of "Well it's old so it's automatically better". There are plenty of flawed mechanics, and removing a level in the middle of a play session was certainly a bad idea, because it grinds the game to a halt.
It's not that I'm in love with the concept of level drain. The point was about lingering conditions in general. You can come up with lingering conditions using 4E status effects too. There's no reason you couldn't mechancially have something like Weakened or Slowed until a certain condition happens. It's not so much the actual mechanic that is being used as a linger effect, more so the concept of long-term effects in general.
That is more of a DM's problem than it is with the system though (unless "wealth by level" stays in the game)
By wealth do you mean "assumed gear?" I've never actually had an issue with the wealth by level table as it's useful for creating PCs above 1st level. Although, in a system like DDN where magic goodies aren't built into the math, the numbers on a wealth by level table should certainly be lower.
Yeah, the assumed gear part :P
sorry if I was unclear
The purpose of this thread is to address a problematic gaming trend that seems to be taking over in modern D&D. I've named this the Tyranny of Fun, as I'm not sure if it has any other name that I've seen.
I believe "Monty Haul" is (at least part of) what you're looking for
@OP: You're not making much sense Dwarf slayer. One one hand you say that the ToF aims to remove bad things that happen to PCs from the game. On the other, you state that winning all the time isn't fun. Since the ToF's aim is to make the game more fun, and since the fun of winning lies in overcoming actual obstacles, the ToF cannot be doing what you say that it's doing. It is a logical impossibility.
Well the point is that the Tyranny of Fun philosophy is short sighted. It's simply removing stuff that players find bad, without actually considering if maybe they're good for the game. But Tyranny of Fun is simply "If a player complains about it, throw it out". That's not necessarily a good design philosophy because sometimes things that PCs dislike can still be good for the game.
You're right that it's not a good design philosophy, but I'd like to point out that I've never actually seen this philosophy being used for across the boad design. The only prominent systemic instance i can remember of it is the limited use of stuns in 4e because being stunned really isn't fun. That being said, I do think there are other ways to have flavorful consequences besides stunning, so I really rather agree with limitng its use.
I would also like to point out that some of the things that you claim are being removed for the sake of the ToF (energy drain and ability drain) are actually huge PITAs to deal with at the table because of the mechanical cascade they cause, not because people ahve a problem with there being consequences for things that happen in the game.
Yeah, see that's a valid reason for changing something. Though I felt like 3Es negative levels were a fine compromise mechanically. It's not a case of "Well it's old so it's automatically better". There are plenty of flawed mechanics, and removing a level in the middle of a play session was certainly a bad idea, because it grinds the game to a halt.
It's not that I'm in love with the concept of level drain. The point was about lingering conditions in general. You can come up with lingering conditions using 4E status effects too. There's no reason you couldn't mechancially have something like Weakened or Slowed until a certain condition happens. It's not so much the actual mechanic that is being used as a linger effect, more so the concept of long-term effects in general.
But 4e did have those kinds of effects. Most specifically, through the disease tracks. If you like to have nasty things happen to characters more often in 4e, disease tracks are definitely the way to go. You can even have long periods of time (like months, or years if you want to get really nasty) between checks to advance or slip down the track. Now, 4e didn't take as much advantage of disease tracks as they should have, but I can say that about skill challenges too. That's just part of the "every edition has its flaws" thing.
Your actual complaint, to the extent it's coherent, seems to be that the newer editions take away the possibility of losing meaningfully, and to have nothing whatsoever to do with "fun" however defined.
And the problem with that complaint is that, take it as a matter of empirical observation by someone who actually PLAYS Pathfinder, 4E and (briefly) Next - it is just flat-out false. Ask the characters in my 4E game if it's possible to fail, if you can find one that lives long enough. This "newer editions are too easy!" meme old-schoolers like to run with is Just. Not. True, and I say that as someone who is a lot more interested in OSR games than current-edition ones at the moment.
The problem isn't so much one with difficulty, it's that every battle has to be the same. It's a hit point attrition war between PCs and monsters, and yeah, the monsters can just be numerically stacked to win that fight if the DM wants, but the fights still feel very similar.
And the reason for this is simply that beating PCs by any method short of beating the hit points out of them was considered "unfun" and had to be sanitizied of anything PCs might have found to be cheap tactics or unfun.
And lets remember that most of those "unfun" monsters are the iconic ones.
It just feels that we've lost so much in the pursuit of perpetual fun, and what we're left with is hardly no fun at all, because everything has to conform to this very similar mold, because not much is left after all the "unfun" bits have been chopped off.
Just because you're winning doesn't mean it's fun
"Winning" - that is, I assume, to successfully accomplish goals - is not tied to the mechanics of the game, and instead tied to how the DM implements those goals, how difficult they are to achieve, and what happens when a goal is not met, or only partially met. This is entirely about how the DM makes the campaign, and to say it another way, how the players want the campaign to go. It has been/is possible in any RPG that I have ever seen to fail.
In the meantime, you may be talking about the modern theory of "failing foward", but I don't think you are so I won't address why this is such a high point in game theory.
Monsters need identity
"This monster can easily kill your character due to a single bad d20 roll" is not an identity. A flavor, a good representation, a mechanic that just screams out "this monster" however is - no matter if that flavor is bad, really bad, or oh no I may have to re-roll.
If you feel as though you are fighting puppies, that is more likely a failure of the DM.
Fight till I'm dead!
If you think "John just died, one-shotted by the arch-lich; now he gets to watch us all play or go do something else" is more exciting than "John was blasted to the ground, he is dying! We have to do something quick, or we lose our friend/comrade/bag-of-hit-points!" then I don't know what to tell you. I guess you have your preferred flavor, but I would hope that you can at least see how more people would find that excitement more desirable than "Oh, you rolled lower on initative than the arch-lich that one-shot your character, want to run and fetch me some more mountain dew"?
How do I kill it? I stab it of course!
I will partially agree with you here - you should not be able to knock a snake prone. I think there should be more ephasis on the DM saying "yes" or "no" to certain things either making sense or not making sense. If this invalidates some of the basic things a player can do for a single encounter, that's generally okay, provided that this is the exeption and not the rule. For a rogue to not be able to sneak-attack undead, and walk into an undead crypt, means that rogue knows that a large mechanic of his chosen class will be useless. It actually can restrict the sort of games the DM will be able to run.
No reward for creativity? This has more to do with the DM then it does the system. A good DM will reward players for creativity more than they will reward a player for just using their daily power again. How well any certain game system rewards this is up for argument; I honestly think this is more in the DM's field than the game mechanics as a whole.
Killing things and taking their stuff is sort of the bread-and-butter of D&D though. If every player is expected to come up with an epic oh-my-goodness moment every round, then soon even those epic moments feel like just another drop in the bucket. Having something reliable to contribute to the game is not a bad mechanic in the slighest.
Playing the Healer is boring, so lets make him uber
This is bad game design; however I just don't see it in modern iterations of D&D (4e/D&DN). It should be noted that having a "healer" that can do something other than just cast heal spells every round, however, is not making them "uber".
i believe the term commonly used to describe the playing style you don't like is "badwrongfun"
That word would also adequately serve as the "tl;dr" version of your post.
Once again, Wrecan wininnates the thread.
"This monster can easily kill your character due to a single bad d20 roll" is not an identity. A flavor, a good representation, a mechanic that just screams out "this monster" however is - no matter if that flavor is bad, really bad, or oh no I may have to re-roll.
It's a monster that's memorable. It doesn't necessarily have to be lethal. Plenty of peopel survived mind flayers and ghouls and all the other "Too overpowered for modern gaming" monsters. But there were stories of the guys who weren't so lucky, and thus those monsters lived in infamy as part of D&D.
I can't really name many iconic monsters that weren't in some way lethal. Orcs are iconic from LotR, and not so much D&D, and the only time they're really iconic in D&D is used to describe the low level cookie-cutter "Orc camp" quest that DMs make low level guys run through that nobody really wants to do.
If you feel as though you are fighting puppies, that is more likely a failure of the DM.
That's a bit of a hyperbole, but I feel as though the monsters have lost a lot. They're all just damage dealers.
If you think "John just died, one-shotted by the arch-lich; now he gets to watch us all play or go do something else" is more exciting than "John was blasted to the ground, he is dying! We have to do something quick, or we lose our friend/comrade/bag-of-hit-points!" then I don't know what to tell you. I guess you have your preferred flavor, but I would hope that you can at least see how more people would find that excitement more desirable than "Oh, you rolled lower on initative than the arch-lich that one-shot your character, want to run and fetch me some more mountain dew"?
Well it doesn't have to be character death. It can simply be removal from the combat. Dominated, paralyzed, whatever. You don't have to literally kill the PC, in fact I later go on to explain that killing them is a bad idea. But removing them is good.
As far as exciting, yeah it is. Knowing you have to finish the battle two team members down is very exciting. You feel like the thing is going to come down to the wire. If another PC is bleeding to death, does someone want to run over and stabilize him, or do you want to keep trying to win the fight. There's notable pressure there. One one hand your friend might die if you don't treat him, on the other everyone might die if you give up your action just to stabilize him. That's a tense choice that gets people into the game.
Super healers takes away all that, because you can just drop a minor action, stabilize him, get him back in the fight and still get your attack. There's no real decision making. You don't even have to touch him anymore, it's just a total no brainer and not exciting at all. Even in Final fantasy you had to use your entire action to drop a phoenix down on the guy and it was a choice of some kind.
No reward for creativity? This has more to do with the DM then it does the system. A good DM will reward players for creativity more than they will reward a player for just using their daily power again. How well any certain game system rewards this is up for argument; I honestly think this is more in the DM's field than the game mechanics as a whole.
Well the problem is that you rarely have need of creativity, whether the DM rewards it or not. Like the game gives you infallible tools that you never really need to think outside the box.
This is bad game design; however I just don't see it in modern iterations of D&D (4e/D&DN). It should be noted that having a "healer" that can do something other than just cast heal spells every round, however, is not making them "uber".
The DDN cleric is very powerful. He has better direct damage than the wizard even, gets full armor, better hit points, and gets an infinte amount of cure minor wounds that he can use while still using his weapon. I consider him very uber.
Also the whole "heal and take an action" paradigm is awful because it removes choice from the equation. It's actually a pretty interesting choice of deciding if you want to try to heal a badly injured companion or if you want to try to take down a monster, drop a buff, etc. But that choice was apparently too "unfun" so now clerics get to have the best of both worlds.
It's a monster that's memorable. It doesn't necessarily have to be lethal.
Plenty of peopel survived mind flayers and ghouls and all the other "Too overpowered for modern gaming" monsters.
I really think that you feel that a monster is memorable because of it's lethality. Otherwise your comments are quite contradictory. If you think a mind-flayer that stuns half the party and starts to suck the brains out of one of them is any more or less thematic than a mind-flayer that stuns half the party and instantly kills one, then again, I don't know what to tell you. Your preferred flavor I suppose.
That's a bit of a hyperbole, but I feel as though the monsters have lost a lot. They're all just damage dealers.
I don't feel it's hyperbole at all. I have plenty of monsters when I DM in 4e that are quite terrifying that do things other than "just take away hit points". Losing surges, knowing you're making saving throws to not be petrified, or even having monsters that outright take a character to 0 hit points on a certain condition do not just "hit and take away hit points". If this is a problem in D&DN-Core, well it's supposed to be a simple game, and not one that I plan on ever playing.
As far as exciting, yeah it is. Knowing you have to finish the battle two team members down is very exciting. You feel like the thing is going to come down to the wire. If another PC is bleeding to death, does someone want to run over and stabilize him, or do you want to keep trying to win the fight. There's notable pressure there. One one hand your friend might die if you don't treat him, on the other everyone might die if you give up your action just to stabilize him. That's a tense choice that gets people into the game.
And I don't see this sort of action missing in 4e; I don't imagine I will see this action missing in (heavily moduled) D&DN.
Super healers takes away all that, because you can just drop a minor action, stabilize him, get him back in the fight and still get your attack.
Again, I don't see this happening in modern iterations of the game. Maybe in D&DN-Core?
Well the problem is that you rarely have need of creativity, whether the DM rewards it or not. Like the game gives you infallible tools that you never really need to think outside the box.
You can either reward creativity when it comes up, or you can punish for creativity not being used. You can, I suppose, do both, or either. Personally, I prefer to be rewarded, not punished, when I play a game.
Also the whole "heal and take an action" paradigm is awful because it removes choice from the equation.
The choice of "do I be a healbot, or do I not be a healbot" doesn't seem like one I want forced into the game. Leaders in 4e had other choices that were actually interesting - especially since their "minor action healing" was very limited.
In short, Tyranny of fun is the idea that all things that players do not like should be removed from the game. Things like getting removed from a combat by ghoul paralysis or knockout, or persistent injuries like energy drain or stat drain. Magic items are great, lets hand out a ton of those! PCs hate when their abilities get nullified, so lets have everything be vulnerable to sneak attack even if there's actually no weak spots to hit.
The Tyranny of fun is about trying to make the game nonstop fun, all the time.
If this is going to be your definition and these are going to be your examples, then I must say I love the "tyranny of fun".
Ditto.
Games are supposed to be fun. That's the blinkin' POINT of games.
i believe the term commonly used to describe the playing style you don't like is "badwrongfun" That word would also adequately serve as the "tl;dr" version of your post.
Once again, Wrecan wininnates the thread.
Not really, we already have a ready example of what happens when the "Tyranny of Fun" is used to design a game.
Go log in to Magic the Gathering Online and head for the constructed rooms, count the number of times you see "No counters, land destruct, elves, direct damage, Goblins, (Insert specific card names), Card Draw, Cards worth more than $20, Tier 1 decks, Tier 2 decks, etc".
That's what happens when you start down the "Unfun" path, all of a sudden you just end up with everyone dictating terms, and basically outlawing everything but the simplest of actions. The fastest way to make a type of game completely useless is to start cutting things out for "Unfun", because people just run with it and use it as an excuse to make everyone play their way.
i believe the term commonly used to describe the playing style you don't like is "badwrongfun" That word would also adequately serve as the "tl;dr" version of your post.
Once again, Wrecan wininnates the thread.
Not really, we already have a ready example of what happens when the "Tyranny of Fun" is used to design a game.
Go log in to Magic the Gathering Online and head for the constructed rooms, count the number of times you see "No counters, land destruct, elves, direct damage, Goblins, (Insert specific card names), Card Draw, Cards worth more than $20, Tier 1 decks, Tier 2 decks, etc".
That's what happens when you start down the "Unfun" path, all of a sudden you just end up with everyone dictating terms, and basically outlawing everything but the simplest of actions. The fastest way to make a type of game completely useless is to start cutting things out for "Unfun", because people just run with it and use it as an excuse to make everyone play their way.
You can't really compare a collectible game where power is measured by rarity to a TTRPG. BTW, do you have a TTRPG or D&D example? The only example I know of from D&D is the limited existence of stuns in 4e. And, let's face it, stun is hardly the most evocative/flavorful way to portray impairment.
I think 4th ed did some smart things by making near death, ongoing damage, save or die effects a part of the gameplay rather than something that could be resolved after the fight. It is fun to see a party member going down because of spell effect and be able to do something within the time sensitive context of the actual game.
In particular I think conditions in 4th ed were are really important and challenging part of 4th which made 4th ed play and made the game more than trading numbers and attritting hp.
To be more pointed I think D&D has to be fun for it to compete with other forms of entertainment (films and computer games etc) that are fun and easier to organise.
i believe the term commonly used to describe the playing style you don't like is "badwrongfun" That word would also adequately serve as the "tl;dr" version of your post.
Once again, Wrecan wininnates the thread.
Not really, we already have a ready example of what happens when the "Tyranny of Fun" is used to design a game.
Go log in to Magic the Gathering Online and head for the constructed rooms, count the number of times you see "No counters, land destruct, elves, direct damage, Goblins, (Insert specific card names), Card Draw, Cards worth more than $20, Tier 1 decks, Tier 2 decks, etc".
That's what happens when you start down the "Unfun" path, all of a sudden you just end up with everyone dictating terms, and basically outlawing everything but the simplest of actions. The fastest way to make a type of game completely useless is to start cutting things out for "Unfun", because people just run with it and use it as an excuse to make everyone play their way.
You can't really compare a collectible game where power is measured by rarity to a TTRPG. BTW, do you have a TTRPG or D&D example? The only example I know of from D&D is the limited existence of stuns in 4e. And, let's face it, stun is hardly the most evocative/flavorful way to portray impairment.
I would say that most of the examples needed would be from D&DN. Damage immunities gone. Status effects missing (confusion madness feeblemind). Bounded accuracy making everything pretty simple to hit even at high end. No stacking penalties. No energy drain effects. No conditional class features like sneak attack. Dragons without spells. Balors without power words. Gaze attacks that can be trivially avoided by just averting your eyes... and a penalty for doing so that can be easily countered. Less control spells for the party AND for the DM. Less utility magic and less need for diversity within the group, because every monster will fall prey to a sword in the face approach.
But its simpler... so its better right? Missing is boring right? and so are powerful enemies right? Absurd damage scaling, a complete lack of threatening monster abilities and bounded accuracy all collude to water D&DN down into a bland mush of boring. Take a look through that bestiary... you know what's threatening in there? Damage. Thats it. And sure, damage can kill you, but its boring.
So I will say again.... this is the Tyranny of "Simple = Better"
Simple =/= Better
I really think that you feel that a monster is memorable because of it's lethality. Otherwise your comments are quite contradictory. If you think a mind-flayer that stuns half the party and starts to suck the brains out of one of them is any more or less thematic than a mind-flayer that stuns half the party and instantly kills one, then again, I don't know what to tell you. Your preferred flavor I suppose.
Well I mean I don't consider ghouls or mind flayers necessarily lethal. They stun you or paralyze you but unless they get the whole party, they probably won't kill anyone. Now most of those monsters are dangerous, but they don't necessarily an instant kill. And lethality doesn't always make something iconic either. A banshee for instance is unbelievably lethal, but it's not particularly memorable and didn't gain much traction in the game as an iconic undead.
A rust monster isn't lethal at all. Energy draining undead weren't necessarily all that lethal either. You'd rarely die to a wight ever.
And I'm just pointing out here what the iconic monsters of D&D are. Not so much a personal preference as just an observation.
I don't feel it's hyperbole at all. I have plenty of monsters when I DM in 4e that are quite terrifying that do things other than "just take away hit points". Losing surges, knowing you're making saving throws to not be petrified, or even having monsters that outright take a character to 0 hit points on a certain condition do not just "hit and take away hit points". If this is a problem in D&DN-Core, well it's supposed to be a simple game, and not one that I plan on ever playing.
The thing is that I've never had any of those progressive petrification conditions ever hit anyone. First they have to fail 3 savs, which is a slim chance as it is. Then even if they're close to that there are a bunch of powers that grant bonus saves to help people free themselves. So all in all in 4E, the onyl way I've ever killed people in 4E is straight up damage.
And yeah, status effects can be annoying, but they pretty much amount to "lose a turn", whch in 4E is sadly worse than getting paralyzed the entire fight, because I've had a single turn take more time than a whole battle in AD&D.
Again, I don't see this happening in modern iterations of the game. Maybe in D&DN-Core?
Well word of power is basicalyl a minor action heal. Granted it's a bit more limited, but you're still getting to attack, heal someone at range and move. So it's very close to what a 4E cleric can do.
You can either reward creativity when it comes up, or you can punish for creativity not being used. You can, I suppose, do both, or either. Personally, I prefer to be rewarded, not punished, when I play a game.
It's more a matter of forcing creativity. When your primary schtick no longer works, you have to find something else to do.
The choice of "do I be a healbot, or do I not be a healbot" doesn't seem like one I want forced into the game. Leaders in 4e had other choices that were actually interesting - especially since their "minor action healing" was very limited.
I do, because I don't want healbot to always be such an awesome action you have to do it. I want it to be a stylistic choice. Yeah, you can play a healer cleric, but you don't have to. You can just as easily play a buffing cleric, or a melee cleric. The wizard has to choose if he wants to cast a fireball or a haste spell, so why shouldn't the cleric?
As far as the 4E leaders being limited? Wow. I never heard anyone say that before. Minor action healing at range that would always heal someone from zero, so you're guaranteed to get people conscious. At higher levels you could toss it across even large rooms. The leaders were crazy good in 4E. It was the one role you seemed to always need. I suppose it's limited compared to the D&DN cleric, given that he can bring peopel who are dying back into battle as an at-will word of power. But clerics in 3E and before had much weaker combat healing.
Well I mean I don't consider ghouls or mind flayers necessarily lethal. They stun you or paralyze you but unless they get the whole party, they probably won't kill anyone.
I guess I should say "instantly debilitating to the point of removal from combat" instead of lethal. I just think that having a Beholder with a Central Eye of Cone-Shaped This-Sucks, with various eyes that shoot lasers of "I really wish I didn't get hit by this effect" works. A Beholder that has a 1-in-10 chance of shooting with a beam that instantly kills or petrifies with only a single saving throw doesn't seem any more thematic than one that requires 3 failed saves to be totally removed.
The thing is that I've never had any of those progressive petrification conditions ever hit anyone. First they have to fail 3 savs, which is a slim chance as it is. Then even if they're close to that there are a bunch of powers that grant bonus saves to help people free themselves. So all in all in 4E, the onyl way I've ever killed people in 4E is straight up damage.
YMMV; personally, we just had 3 people out of 5 get petrified in the session before last. I've had it happen (not as often as I'd like) and I can agree that it should be a bit easier (I've often thought about raising those kinds of saving throws to a 15 DC instead of a 10 to make it a bit more...tense).
However I distinctly disagree that it should be single-roll-fail. Save or die/save or suck effects can be objectively argued to be bad.
It's more a matter of forcing creativity. When your primary schtick no longer works, you have to find something else to do.
"You can get creative or you suck" is a punishment for not being creative, not a reward for being creative. If that's what you prefer, okay, but I honestly think that the carrot is usually better than the stick.
As far as the 4E leaders being limited? Wow. I never heard anyone say that before. Minor action healing at range that would always heal someone from zero, so you're guaranteed to get people conscious. At higher levels you could toss it across even large rooms. The leaders were crazy good in 4E. It was the one role you seemed to always need. I suppose it's limited compared to the D&DN cleric, given that he can bring peopel who are dying back into battle as an at-will word of power. But clerics in 3E and before had much weaker combat healing.
Again, I can't speak for D&DN-Core, but I can speak of (significant) experience in 4e.
Apparently I am unusual as a 4e DM because I honestly challenged my players. Two heals a combat is not enough for my combats (and I would gladly argue the same for combats as intended in the DMG) and I usually do most of my games in the Paragon tier. It's rare for any monster of mine to hit and do much less than a surge of damage (discounting high hit-point characters), so much so that my players are typically running very short on surges at the end of an adventure.
This has lead to a lot of hard choices for the healer, on who they want to heal and when, who they are willing to leave on the ground, who needs to use their second wind and when, and who needs the surge-less healing or temp hit points or saving throw worse.
I've killed characters, and not infrequently. I've had encounters where a player is on the ground with zero surges, so simply stabilizing them is the best the party could accomplish. What I have not done is simply instantly-killed or removed from combat a character for a single poor d20 roll.
I guess I should say "instantly debilitating to the point of removal from combat" instead of lethal. I just think that having a Beholder with a Central Eye of Cone-Shaped This-Sucks, with various eyes that shoot lasers of "I really wish I didn't get hit by this effect" works. A Beholder that has a 1-in-10 chance of shooting with a beam that instantly kills or petrifies with only a single saving throw doesn't seem any more thematic than one that requires 3 failed saves to be totally removed.
Yeah beholders are actually lethal monsters. Ghouls and mind flayers, not really so much. The thing is that back then in the older editions it wasn't necessary to immediatley coup de grace anyone who got paralyzed, because they didn't risk recovering, so yeah you got hit by a ghoul, you were out of the combat, but you weren't necessarily going to die, because the ghoul wouldn't finish you until all your companions died.
..."window.parent.tinyMCE.get('post_content').onLoad.dispatch();" contenteditable="true" />However I distinctly disagree that it should be single-roll-fail. Save or die/save or suck effects can be objectively argued to be bad.
It doesn't necessariyl have to be, so long as the creature presents a unique sort of threat. A medusa doesn't have to insta gib you with a save or die, but it certainly needs to be dangerous enough that you close/avert your eyes to avoid the gaze. If you just fight it eyes wide open like any other monster, then it's a failure to me.
"You can get creative or you suck" is a punishment for not being creative, not a reward for being creative. If that's what you prefer, okay, but I honestly think that the carrot is usually better than the stick.
Well, I suppose if you want to phrase it that way, then yes, that's generally what I prefer. Simply because it forces creativity, where as the other method you're unlikely to ever get someone to try something creative.
..."window.parent.tinyMCE.get('post_content').onLoad.dispatch();" contenteditable="true" />Apparently I am unusual as a 4e DM because I honestly challenged my players. Two heals a combat is not enough for my combats (and I would gladly argue the same for combats as intended in the DMG) and I usually do most of my games in the Paragon tier. It's rare for any monster of mine to hit and do much less than a surge of damage (discounting high hit-point characters), so much so that my players are typically running very short on surges at the end of an adventure.
Well the problems I had with 4E was simply that the challenge was always just straight HP attritition and overwhelming force. You pretty much had to rely on draining the PCs healing by raw attrition, and that was it. And depending on your PC party structure the battles could be hard or easy. Generally the more healers they had, the easier things were, because combined with the ritual to trade surges, they wouldn't be likely to run out.
This has lead to a lot of hard choices for the healer, on who they want to heal and when, who they are willing to leave on the ground, who needs to use their second wind and when, and who needs the surge-less healing or temp hit points or saving throw worse.
I'm not sure what choices there are as healer, when someone is on the ground, it's always in your best interest to heal them first, simply because you're losing an action by leaving them there. So I would never under any circumstances ever see a healer not heal someone on the ground. The only time it remotely became a choice is if you have two guys down and you have to pick who gets healed.
I've killed characters, and not infrequently. I've had encounters where a player is on the ground with zero surges, so simply stabilizing them is the best the party could accomplish. What I have not done is simply instantly-killed or removed from combat a character for a single poor d20 roll.
I never managed to run the party out of resources like that in my 4E games, though that could be because the combats took too long so we didn't really strive for super long adventures. We tried to get things done in a night or two and that generally meant 3-4 combats for an adventure. The main issue with the attrition game was that it was simply really boring and slow.
I ran probably 10-15 adventures of 4E and played probably 6-8 as a PC, so I am moderately experienced, but hardly a veteran of the edition.
Apparently I am unusual as a 4e DM because I honestly challenged my players. Two heals a combat is not enough for my combats (and I would gladly argue the same for combats as intended in the DMG) and I usually do most of my games in the Paragon tier. It's rare for any monster of mine to hit and do much less than a surge of damage (discounting high hit-point characters), so much so that my players are typically running very short on surges at the end of an adventure.
This has lead to a lot of hard choices for the healer, on who they want to heal and when, who they are willing to leave on the ground, who needs to use their second wind and when, and who needs the surge-less healing or temp hit points or saving throw worse.
I've killed characters, and not infrequently. I've had encounters where a player is on the ground with zero surges, so simply stabilizing them is the best the party could accomplish. What I have not done is simply instantly-killed or removed from combat a character for a single poor d20 roll.
This is my experience of 4th ed. Our DM pushes us and as such the sense of danger and risk is everpresent. We have certainly started encounters with players on one or no surges. But we have only a few deaths in our 20 level campaign - far less than in previous editions.
That said 4th ed is not perfect. For one thing I have noticed is that there are a lot of healing spells and abilities and less spells that address ongoing conditions. And I have not seen many people fail 3 saves. So while I think the game has to be fun, I would agree that the danger in 4th ed could be tweaked upwards just touch IMO.
In any edition of D&D, lethality is largely porportional to the 'softness' of your DM. The only major differnece with 4th is that hp-bloat means first level characters (and maybe some of the more frail second level characters) are somewhat less likely to be murdered by a fluke
I think that the general perception of 4th being easy comes from two factors. One is that enhanced durability at first level, where Tim the Wizard isn't going to fall down the first time a goblin shoots a bow at him. It's harder to notice that HP bloat worked for both sides, and Bolg the Goblin will, compared to his 3rd edition incarnation, take more punishment than an M1 Abrams tank and get off far more shots at the wizard1. The other is the fact that 4e attracted a lot of "new school" gamers, who think about characters in a very different way. Instead of deriving fun from the challenge of survival, they derive their fun from the journey of existing.
A similar shift in player philosophy has occured in Video Games, in a very similar 90s-to-2000s sort of time frame: Let's take a look at a popular Video RPG of the oldschool era: 1986's Might and Magic: Secret of the Inner Sanctum. This game gives you a lot of freedom with your character(s), a decently sized world with numerous secrets, oh, and just beating it was considered enough of a challenge that you could send your score in to the company to get a certificate for beating the flipping game! It's something most players were not expected to do. If you won, you did amazingly well and deserved a pat on the back. Sure, you could have fun and not win, but the prize was winning.
Cut to 23 years later and the start of a new PC Fantasy RPG franchise with Dragon Age: Origins in 2009. Dragon Age gives you a lot of freedom with your character, a decently sized world with numerous secrets, and fully expects you to finish. Compared to Might and Magic, it's also trivial to complete. Bioware will not mail you a certificate if you finish. You played the game, didn't you? You're kind of expected to finish and see the ending. Whether you won or not isn't the point, it's that you enjoyed yourself getting there.
The people who made Might and Magic were working under a different philosophy than the ones that made Dragon Age. It doesn't make them (either of them) wrong, but it does make the point that some of the standard approach to challenge, winning, and Game Overs (TPKs) has changed since the TSR days. It's easy to, without that frame of reference, look at these 4e (and to an extent, 3e) campaigns where everybody plays the same character from 1st to endgame, no one ever died that didn't get resurrected, and so on, and say... "That's got no challenge. That wouldn't be fun.", when really it's not just the system that's changed, it's the players too.
Interestingly, in the tabletop market seems to be teetering on the brink of another change in its demographic. OSR has gained more steam than I think anyone expected it would, but in retrospect it's no surprise. D&D and its compatriots in the market are in indirect competition with Dragon Age, and World of Warcraft, and all their ilk -- and the Video Game Industry has got the "Have fun getting there" angle pretty well covered, alongside the "Super-in-depths system mechanics" angle they can take because they have, oh, a computer to do the background math... So among those who stick with tabletop, there's a drift towards elegance. D&DN's playtest is some of the simplest D&D I've ever seen... especially the early packets were incredably clean: very unlike a computer game (or 3e or 4e) which indulges in its complexity. There's also a drift, I think, towards the "Fight to win" mentality, and I'm not sure where I stand on that. I, personally, like the risk of death. I like the idea of SoD, Stoning, Enervation, and the like. But, I'm still a man who was born after the release of Might and Magic. I'm still, in some ways, part of the New School, and I know when I DM that I tend to pitch softballs that just look like they're hard2, like 3-step petrification 'chickatrices' in place of the CR 3 stoning cocatrice3.
1 Which is to the benefit of the PCs, despite being balanced, oddly enough. A good rule of thumb is that anything that reduces randomness across the board, like everything having a higher hp-to-dpr ratio, helps the PCs while anything that increases randomness in a "Fair" manner, like more lethal crits, hurts the PCs. This is because an average NPC is expected to have a combat life-span of one combat... 5 rounds was a good estimate in the sweet spot of 3.x. In that time, they have to make a very finite number of rolls, and thus very few chances to have their lifespan brought short by a highly random event. the PCs, on the other hand, are rolling so many dice or having so many dice rolled against them that by the law of large numbers, eventually the worst will happen. Institute the popular "Triple-20-is-an-instadeath" rule in 3rd edition? Sure, the odds of a PC getting it or a monster getting it are about even, but it will MATTER a lot more when the monster gets it, and the odds of any one PC getting hit by it are astronomically higher than the odds of any one monster getting hit by it
2 The opposite of a Softball is something hard, right? I know nothing about baseball except that I'd rather watch golf.
3 The profanity filter doesn't like the 'trice to have it's full name.
OP: I disagree. Take into consideration that the gameplay is out of the hands of the designers, unlike other games, and it becomes difficult to see how they can make fun mandatory.
I see your points as interesting commentary but I don't think I'd actually try to change anything on the basis of what you're saying, and I hardly see the introduction of more tools and an effort to make the gameplay more reliable as a move into Alpha Complex.
I don't see the point of multiple saves? The percentage chance of multiple saves can be collapsed into one single percentage roll.
The point is to give the players a chance to respond and do something about it, rather than it to just happen.
The point is captured in the Alfred Hitchcock story about filmaking with regards to the difference between surprise and suspense, where throwing a grenade into a room of people sitting at a table is a surprise, while a bomb ticking under the table is suspense. The three saves is a way of building suspense.
My fondest experiences in 4th ed have been fights where somebody goes down, the prexisting plan goes out the window, and the scramble to save a party member begins.
I don't see the point of multiple saves? The percentage chance of multiple saves can be collapsed into one single percentage roll.
The point is to give the players a chance to respond and do something about it, rather than it to just happen.
The point is captured in the Alfred Hitchcock story about filmaking with regards to the difference between surprise and suspense, where throwing a grenade into a room of people sitting at a table is a surprise, while a bomb ticking under the table is suspense. The three saves is a way of building suspense.
My fondest experiences in 4th ed have been fights where somebody goes down, the prexisting plan goes out the window, and the scramble to save a party member begins.
If the point is to give players the chance to respond and do something about it, why not actually give them that chance instead of roll another save? Why not allow roleplaying or actions prompt extra saves as and when it's necessary?
I don't see the point of multiple saves? The percentage chance of multiple saves can be collapsed into one single percentage roll.
The point is to give the players a chance to respond and do something about it, rather than it to just happen.
The point is captured in the Alfred Hitchcock story about filmaking with regards to the difference between surprise and suspense, where throwing a grenade into a room of people sitting at a table is a surprise, while a bomb ticking under the table is suspense. The three saves is a way of building suspense.
My fondest experiences in 4th ed have been fights where somebody goes down, the prexisting plan goes out the window, and the scramble to save a party member begins.
If the point is to give players the chance to respond and do something about it, why not actually give them that chance instead of roll another save? Why not allow roleplaying or actions prompt extra saves as and when it's necessary?
You can use the heal skill. There are also spells, abilities and magic items that enable saves.
the game. Simple.
Make 3 difficulties. Easy, Normal, and Hard.
Easy: If you want to cure stomp and relax. Might harm the story outcome in critical mission
for going the easy route(killing all werewolf invested townfolks instead of finding a cure).
Normal: Like how you always play your D&D. (find the cure, but only kill some werewolves)
Hard: More challenging, but also more rewarding. (find the cure, no werewolves were killed,
and the townfolks thank you and spread stories of your heroic action. Might even attract
someone who can benefit you, because of your outstanding heroic deeds.)
If my character heard a story about a small group of adventures that found a cure
for a invested werewolve town and didn't killed nobody. My character would think
these are the most badass heroes ine the entire land. I would like to meet them.
Just before reading this I was going to write a thread (and I still might) called "why you cannot play a dragon, demon, or vampire" with the main point being that though these things may be very cool, allowing players to have their PC become the thing that all characters are supposed to fear and fight against ruins some huge aspects of the game... that being fluff, threat, and reward.
again, I really hope this gets copied and resent to the emails of the designers of the game as many times as possible. If Next keeps going like this, I wont be buying it or pushing for it.
Not really, we already have a ready example of what happens when the "Tyranny of Fun" is used to design a game.
Go log in to Magic the Gathering Online and head for the constructed rooms, count the number of times you see "No counters, land destruct, elves, direct damage, Goblins, (Insert specific card names), Card Draw, Cards worth more than $20, Tier 1 decks, Tier 2 decks, etc".
That's what happens when you start down the "Unfun" path, all of a sudden you just end up with everyone dictating terms, and basically outlawing everything but the simplest of actions. The fastest way to make a type of game completely useless is to start cutting things out for "Unfun", because people just run with it and use it as an excuse to make everyone play their way.
None of this invalidates the viewpoints you are arguing against. In fact, it just reinforces the opposing viewpoints.
Land destruct isn't fun to a lot of people. In fact, a lot of people who have been playing since the game was first available think that land destruct and turn stopping decks are downright boring to play with, much less against.
The purpose of this thread is to address a problematic gaming trend that seems to be taking over in modern D&D. I've named this the Tyranny of Fun, as I'm not sure if it has any other name that I've seen.
What is the Tyranny of Fun?
In short, Tyranny of fun is the idea that all things that players do not like should be removed from the game. Things like getting removed from a combat by ghoul paralysis or knockout, or persistent injuries like energy drain or stat drain. Magic items are great, lets hand out a ton of those! PCs hate when their abilities get nullified, so lets have everything be vulnerable to sneak attack even if there's actually no weak spots to hit.
The Tyranny of fun is about trying to make the game nonstop fun, all the time.
Tyranny of Fun Elements in Next
-Word of Power healing
-Heal from zero
-Energy drain nerfed into the ground
-Hardly any means to remove a character from a combat
-No ability nullification (You can assassinate a genaltinous cube?)
-Super Clerics
What's wrong with Tyranny of Fun?
You may think: Well it's trying to be more fun? What's wrong with that?
Just because you're winning doesn't mean it's fun
This principle that comes from an episode of the Twilight Zone. In this particular episode, a compulsive gambler dies and wakes up in a casino. At first he wins and thinks: "I'm winning this must be heaven!" However, by the end of the episode he realizes that not only does he win, but he always wins, and concludes that he is in fact in hell, not heaven. I feel like D&D has started to resemble this more and more with each edition. It becomes increasingly less likely that the players lose. Even minor defeats, like having your magic sword sundered, getting energy drained or getting knocked out for a combat are largely a thing of the past.
But it's a game, it should be fun, right? Well not really. Games have their high points and low points. Anyone who has played anything remotely competitive knows that you can lose. And you can lose bad. Whether it was a game of basketball, Chess or Call of Duty Team deathmatch, you can get your ass kicked. And you know what, that probably wasn't very fun. That probably sucked, and sucked bad. But you wouldn't want to remove the possibility of losing entirely, because it would ruin those games. The victory becomes meaningless if the game is too easy and eventually people would just give up the game.
You need to challenge people and that means having memories of glorious victories and crushing defeats.
Monsters need identity
Monsters live and die on thier special abilities. If you want them to be memorable, they have to have bad things happen. I still remember the first time I ever fought a ghoul as a PC in 2nd edition, where you saw their ability to paralyze a PC for the combat. That was scary, that was really scary. I can't remember the first orc or goblin I fought. In fact I can't remember *any* orc or goblins I fought, because they were bland damage dealers.
Now lets think of the memorable iconic D&D monsters: Mind Flayers, Beholders, Rust monsters, ghouls, wights, gelatinous cubes, Medusas. All those things had abilities that were going to screw you over, possibly even kill you. And these are monsters we remember in D&D. Think about that for a minute. We remember the energy drainers and the things with petrifying gazes, so much so that many of them become iconic parts of the game. Lets not lose that.
And this gets back to the first point. You were fighting fearsome opposition. PCs need to feel like brave heroes fighting against fearsome opposition, not high-powered bullies kicking puppies.
Fight till I'm dead!
A big Tyranny of fun trend is constantly being able to be restored to combat, even when you get knocked out or paralyzed or whatever. Whether it's a healer healing you from 0 with a minor action or just getting a new save every round to shrug off that hold person, you're never out of any fight. And you may think: Well what's wrong with that?
First, it's just stupid in many cases. Constant healing leads to a whack-a-mole sort of combat, where PCs are constantly popping up only to get dropped by the next hit.
Well think about it for a minute. When you're a threat even when you're lying face down bleeding, yet you're helpless, then the monster tactic to solve that problem is to straight up kill you before you can heal. Thus instead of a PC sitting out one battle, he now has a dead character. And that's exactly what happened with hold person when it had an inconsistent duration. When you know that the guy is only helpless for a short bit, there's a rush to go Coup De Grace him and remove him from combat entirely. You will go after him over attacking other enemies even because he's helpless. In other words, the effect is much similar to being able to fight while at negative HP. Yeah, it makes PCs more powerful, but it's all or nothing. The only way for a monster to stop you from getting back up is to kill you. Which means every battle you're going all-in. There's not much room for a capture scenario or anything close to it, because a character who is knocked out is one word of power from being resotred to a fully functional combatant.
The only other option is of course to play the monsters off as dumb AIs who can't react to what's going on and only attack standing PCs, because we all know chaotic evil gnolls have a sense of fair play, right? But you know, I mean we're playing with whack-a-mole style combat, so why not have the monsters act dumb too? Why are we straining verisimilitude?
Is it really that bad to have a PC sit out of a battle? No, of course not. It sucks, but it's not the end of the world.
How do I kill it? I stab it of course!
It's largely becoming a trend in making monster resistances/immunities less and less powerful, or in many cases nonexistent. Creatures like oozes used to be immune to sneak attack and similar vital strikes, but now they are not. Why? Because we don't want the rogue feeling bad because you tell him his sneak attack doesn't work.
Some oozes were immune to certain weapon types. Slashing weapons would cause them to split in half (to two functional oozes) instead of actually doing real damage. Incorporeal undead required a magic weapon to hurt them.
Why the change? Well presumably because people got upset when their main schtick didn't work. So the Fun Police come along and say "Well that can't happen, you can sneak attack anything, screw common sense!"
Why is this a bad thing: Well for one because it stifles creativity. If your basic tactic always works, then why bother ever coming up another. Necessity is the mother of invention. You have no need to ever invent anything if you don't need it. It was one of the main reasons 4E had such little improvisation, because your powers were just so good that you didn't need to improvise. They always worked, so really why bother trying to think of some innovative strategy when you can just Twin Strike until the thing goes away. The answer is you rarely do.
Having people's main abilities get shut down leads them to be more multi-dimensional characters and makes them more interesting. It also leads PCs to think more heavily. When your primary tactic gets nullified, now you need to think up some kind of back-up plan. Now you're doing cool stuff you never would have thought to try before and you end up with cool stories like, "Remember that time we lured that black pudding down to that unstable dungeon corridor and I used my horn of blasting to trap it? That was awesome!"
Nobody ever remembers the time they spammed twin strike for 5 straight rounds, because they're doing that all the time.
Playing the Healer is boring, so lets make him uber
Yet another trend is to buff up the healer class, typically the cleric to insane levels so people will want to play him. This is because it's felt that being a support character is boring, and instead of just rebalancing the game around not requiring cleric, we try to make the guy playing one not feel like a mobile first aid tent while still dispensing the heals, so he gets to kick ass while dropping heal spells in the same turn. This makes healer types ridiculously overpowered naturally, but it's the only way someone can possibly have fun playing a cleric apparently.
But he's the cornerstone of your group, and why, becasue you need that guy who heals unconscious PCs and gets them back in the fight. So because of Tyranny of fun, you're married to the cleric.
If we didn't need unconscious people to come back mid-combat, we could pretty easily just make combat healing optional, allow people to use healing surges/potions/whatever between combat and then not have to worry about forcing people that really don't want to play a support class into playing support. Now we don't need the Tyranny of fun appeasment for clerics.
ConclusionIn closing, let me say that there's not anything wrong with trying to make the game more fun, however all things must be done in moderation. Just because candy is delicious doesn't mean you should eat only candy.
Great post, mate.
I agree wholeheartedly.
Just to add something, here's an episode of Extra Credits that deals with exactly what you're talking about:
www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/counte...
They're calling it "counter-play" although it's a term someone there coined, so also not an "official" name for what you described.
The discussion in the video is all about video-game design, not tabletop RPGs, but in this case I don't see why the theory can't be applied to RPGs as well.
Worth a look. I think you'll like the video.
I think you're refering to the problem of "instant gratification" rather than the tyrany of fun.
If I understand well, I fully agree with you.
If you give your players everything they want, then the game has no meaning
if everyhting is handed, there is no feeling of accomplishment.
Things have more value if you sacrificed to get them in the first place.
That is more of a DM's problem than it is with the system though (unless "wealth by level" stays in the game)
I agree with most of what the OP stated, and most of this post as well, but I do think the current system does somewhat contribute to it and I'd like to see the sytem provide more challenge to allow for more rewarding success.
For monster identity accross editions they can use keywords and optional rules as an appendix in the monster manual, or include the optional rules on monster design in the DM guide. The same notion can apply to spells as well. So if level draining in its current form removes hit points, you can go to the level draining section in the appendix to be offered optional rules to include loss of level. This would include other keywords like turned to stone, paralysis, etc.
For healing in combat and being raised in mid combat, that has always been a problem with D&D, but they could offer an optional rule in the healing section or DM guide to make dropping below zero difficult to recover.
It is too early to tell if cleric will be over powered, but the main focus of words of power is to allow the cleric to do other things, but if they go down that route it does start to raise question on why other classes do not have similar abilities. It appears to draw from 4E in reference to a minor action. I don't mind that, but it raises the question on why not include minor or swift actions are part of the standard action economy.
Great post, mate.
I agree wholeheartedly.
Just to add something, here's an episode of Extra Credits that deals with exactly what you're talking about:
www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/counte...
They're calling it "counter-play" although it's a term someone there coined, so also not an "official" name for what you described.
The discussion in the video is all about video-game design, not tabletop RPGs, but in this case I don't see why the theory can't be applied to RPGs as well.
Worth a look. I think you'll like the video.
Nice video.
I definitely think D&D could benefit from applying the concepts they outline there. Most of the D&D abilities don't have any depth of counters. Things like combat healing especially could benefit from that.
That says a hell of a lot more about you than it does about the people you think you're criticizing.
The only way you can 'win' a cooperative game with no defined victory conditions or end point is to have fun playing it.
This pretty much sums up my feeling on matters. The game isn't just about the DM having fun, but the player's having fun...And because your players are not MY players, that means your game does not equal my game. If that's how you want to run your game, great. Add that stuff back in...But by putting in mechanics such as save or die into the core of the game I think you're going to be alienating a lot of players. As someone said earlier in this thread, how people play games and what they expect from them has changed dramatically over the years.
I don't see the point of multiple saves? The percentage chance of multiple saves can be collapsed into one single percentage roll.
The point is to give the players a chance to respond and do something about it, rather than it to just happen.
The point is captured in the Alfred Hitchcock story about filmaking with regards to the difference between surprise and suspense, where throwing a grenade into a room of people sitting at a table is a surprise, while a bomb ticking under the table is suspense. The three saves is a way of building suspense.
My fondest experiences in 4th ed have been fights where somebody goes down, the prexisting plan goes out the window, and the scramble to save a party member begins.
If the point is to give players the chance to respond and do something about it, why not actually give them that chance instead of roll another save? Why not allow roleplaying or actions prompt extra saves as and when it's necessary?
Simplicity again can be the culprit. Tiered effects are often better than binary ones. For example, if you have to make consecutive saves versus petrification, maybe the first failed save causes you to get slowed down, the second moreso, and the third is total petrification. Binary systems like this are always less interesting to me, and leave less room for reaction and response from the players. Paralysis, petrification, suffocation, fear, madness, confusion, exhaustion.... almost every status effect could be broken down into 3 different tiers of hinderance so you don't have save or suck, but you keep the danger level. The injection of the "dying" effect into the binary system of dead or alive does exactly this. Why the step hasn't been taken to add this sort of thing into every effect that removes a character/creature from the fight is beyond me. I, for one, have never appreciated binary effects like this, but I also think that their removal cheapens the game. Adding a buffer between normal and out-of-the-fight is a good step. You can also differentiate important and unimportant NPCs this way, giving players and important NPC monsters the benefit of multiple saves and tiered effects while denying this to less important enemies to keep the game flowing and PCs who choose to focus on control spells feeling as effective as they should.
Totally agree with every word of the OP's post, and the OP is 100% correct in that the design of the game is currently centered at encouraging the tyranny of fun.
Can you give any actual examples to back that up?
The only way you can 'win' a cooperative game with no defined victory conditions or end point is to have fun playing it.
The faulty assumption you make here is that people recognize that D&D is cooperative.
Totally agree with every word of the OP's post, and the OP is 100% correct in that the design of the game is currently centered at encouraging the tyranny of fun.
Can you give any actual examples to back that up?
That'd be a first.
Why wouldn't people recognize D&D as cooperative?
I dunno, but ask people like the OP and Baalbamoth.
We only made it to level 7 in 4th ed because of most of those points. We ran it RAW for a while with the encounter building guidelines but PCs had it quite easy and all got bored.
That's surprising. Most of my encounters were always challenging, some of them were too much so. I had a PC in my group determined to kill all the plants, molds, and fungi they saw with fire because of how frequently I used fantastic terrain to make the encounters fun by adding more challenge.
@Thread: That's right, I said I increased fun by increasing the challenge. But what I didn't do was increase the bookepping the players had to deal with or arbitrarily throw in permanent loss effects to make things scary (I can do that with proper description. I don't need the mechanical crutch). Their actions had consequences, and the encounters were hard, and they had fun by working together to overcome those challenges. If that's the ToF, then sign me up.
Your actual complaint, to the extent it's coherent, seems to be that the newer editions take away the possibility of losing meaningfully, and to have nothing whatsoever to do with "fun" however defined.
And the problem with that complaint is that, take it as a matter of empirical observation by someone who actually PLAYS Pathfinder, 4E and (briefly) Next - it is just flat-out false. Ask the characters in my 4E game if it's possible to fail, if you can find one that lives long enough. This "newer editions are too easy!" meme old-schoolers like to run with is Just. Not. True, and I say that as someone who is a lot more interested in OSR games than current-edition ones at the moment.
Ask any of my current players if my game is "so much easier" than my 1E/2E games. They'll laugh their butts off. Much of the completely random death is reduced but the pure beatdowns their characters take is still in full swing.
Your actual complaint, to the extent it's coherent, seems to be that the newer editions take away the possibility of losing meaningfully, and to have nothing whatsoever to do with "fun" however defined.
And the problem with that complaint is that, take it as a matter of empirical observation by someone who actually PLAYS Pathfinder, 4E and (briefly) Next - it is just flat-out false. Ask the characters in my 4E game if it's possible to fail, if you can find one that lives long enough. This "newer editions are too easy!" meme old-schoolers like to run with is Just. Not. True, and I say that as someone who is a lot more interested in OSR games than current-edition ones at the moment.
Ask any of my current players if my game is "so much easier" than my 1E/2E games. They'll laugh their butts off. Much of the completely random death is reduced but the pure beatdowns their characters take is still in full swing.
I have lost more PCs in meaningful deaths in 4e than any other system. Sure in 3e and AD&D I had PCs die, but it was never meaningful or interesting; it was almost always due to a single random die roll.
Side note: In 4e players care a lot more about the story and their PCs than they ever did in pre 4e D&D. This might be due to the fact that player death isn't so random and arbitrary.
..."window.parent.tinyMCE.get('post_content').onLoad.dispatch();" contenteditable="true" />Side note: In 4e players care a lot more about the story and their PCs than they ever did in pre 4e D&D. This might be due to the fact that player death isn't so random and arbitrary.
This is a big part of it. High PC turnover is, in my experience, bad for roleplay. The players won't want to put any effort into coming up with a backstory, or an interesting personality, for a character if the odds are against him being able to have time to explore them because he's going to push up daisies in 3 game sessions. So you wind up with, at best, generic characters ('city-hating elf ranger #8128', 'goblin-hating drunk dwarf fighter #1849', 'sticky-fingered halfling rogue #2849'), if not utterly flat characters that are somehow less interesting than that.
The other problem has, traditionally, been that there's been no way to lose a fight in D&D that didn't result in at least one PC death, if not a TPK. Don't give me that 'the PCs could have run' stuff; most of the monsters in the game are faster than the PCs (especially if any of them wear heavy armor) and have special movement modes like flight. Failure should not always, or even frequently, result in death, or else death becomes cheap and meaningless.
I'm not against many of the things that ToF removed, like taking PCs out of a fight, immunities, full-time healers, ability score drain (although I think this case should be reversible) (you mentioned just that ones). But I'm also not against not having them.
Now there is some consideration to do: If I remember correctly, the designers have talked about problems balancing damage options against "Save or Suck" spells/abilities. Every game deals with the relationship between these things differently. Actually these kind of things that were removed by ToF are things that each game deals with it in different ways.
And the "take an action to do a check" is mainly a rework of 4e saving throw.
Side note: In 4e players care a lot more about the story and their PCs than they ever did in pre 4e D&D. This might be due to the fact that player death isn't so random and arbitrary.
Your anecdotal experience is not a universal fact. Stop pretending it is.
What is the point of D&D? Wait, I've got it! Call on me, call on me!
To have fun, of course!
There goes a great deal of your argument.
Besides which....
Why does "losing meaningfully" have to equal "great, I can't do anything but wait this fight out. I must be buildling character"?
The others have taken care of most of the rest.
7 pages of discussion,
HOW do people manage with only 10 posts per page!?
Wizard that cannot acces to better spell because DM dont want.
Players 3 level behind the rest of the group.
Players at home for 4 games, because it's character is dead and the party was unable to leave the dungeon
Cursed item
And so on. In fact Dnd was tougher than real life.
In 2013 I dont want to skip an entire session because my character fall into a traps and the rest of the party is too busy in an encounter to recue him.
If I want real competition I can go for Battleground in WarCraft, or play Magic, "No Mercy" is the norm out there.
7 pages of discussion,
HOW do people manage with only 10 posts per page!?
Going above 10 posts per page is a serious hassle when half the time you're following this forum on your phone.
Tyranny of Fun Elements in Next
-Word of Power healing
-Heal from zero
-Energy drain nerfed into the ground
-Hardly any means to remove a character from a combat
-No ability nullification (You can assassinate a genaltinous cube?)
-Super Clerics
I'll agree that all of these are issues, but re-instating them would still leave us with the initial problems that were addressed with their removal.
Word of Power healing, for example, is meant to address how boring it is to be stuck healing every round (when doing so is the most efficacious style of play). Removing the Word of Power healing, then, must coincide with some other change to prevent someone from being stuck in the healbot role. Increasing the cast time to a minute, to remove healbot entirely, is one potential solution.
Skipping over some points for the sake of brevity, I think my most disliked change is the lack of ability nullification, just because it seems the most blatant. Fire elementals really, really should be immune to fire. Rock monsters don't have weak points that can be exploited with a dagger. The problem comes when a character is overly specialized, and nullification affects that one character overly much. A level 9 rogue in 3E, for example, would add 1d6 damage from a shortsword and then 5d6 damage from sneak attack (per attack); an undead or fortified opponent would drop the rogue's contribution by 83 percent, which is way un-fun. That would be like a monster being immune to fire, so the wizard has to drop from throwing 9d6 fireballs down to a 1d10 crossbow.
If you're going to introduce monsters that are immune to sneak attack or fire damage, then you need to reduce the disparity between a character's primary gimmick and whatever else they can do. My rule of thumb is 70% - a rogue without sneak attack, or a wizard deprived of spells, should deal no less than 70% of what they could do if they did have those things. That's enough that you will always try to use your best tactics, when possible, but the situation doesn't become hopeless when you are deprived of them.
Failure should not always, or even frequently, result in death, or else death becomes cheap and meaningless.
Another very important point. Anything that bypasses HP, especially if it's a single-hit effect where you have no chance to respond, feels excessively cheap and should be avoided; I'm all in favor of slow petrification over 2-3 rounds, as a nice compromise. The enemies need ways to take a player out of combat without that being incredibly lethal, though, or else no combat will ever feel dramatic. Dealing HP damage, as the primary means of resolving combat, could stand to be less lethal by default; I'm always in favor of expanding death's door, all the way down to -max HP if necessary.
..."window.parent.tinyMCE.get('post_content').onLoad.dispatch();" contenteditable="true" />This is a big part of it. High PC turnover is, in my experience, bad for roleplay. The players won't want to put any effort into coming up with a backstory, or an interesting personality, for a character if the odds are against him being able to have time to explore them because he's going to push up daisies in 3 game sessions. So you wind up with, at best, generic characters ('city-hating elf ranger #8128', 'goblin-hating drunk dwarf fighter #1849', 'sticky-fingered halfling rogue #2849'), if not utterly flat characters that are somehow less interesting than that.
The other problem has, traditionally, been that there's been no way to lose a fight in D&D that didn't result in at least one PC death, if not a TPK. Don't give me that 'the PCs could have run' stuff; most of the monsters in the game are faster than the PCs (especially if any of them wear heavy armor) and have special movement modes like flight. Failure should not always, or even frequently, result in death, or else death becomes cheap and meaningless.
Yeah. Well see this is a lot of part of what I'm talking about that's missing from the 4E style minor action healing, and how I talk about PCs not losing.
It's not that you can't TPK in 4E/D&DN, it's the fact that that's your only weapon. In prior editions you could have a given PC "lose" a combat without killing them. Getting mind blasted by a mind flayer or dropped to dying and being knocked out of the encounter gave people a sense that they got thier ass kicked without actually killing anyone. This is becasue there was no emphasis on making every player relevant every combat. It was okay for one PC to feel like crap and say "Well I really sucked that encounter."
There's one punishment for failure in 4E/D&DN, and that's character death: A straight up TPK, or at the very least a Coup De grace on a downed PC midcombat. The important part about sitting out of combat in older editions was that it did suck, and it was a good punishment for failure that wasn't too extreme. Yeah you felt bad because your character got dropped and you couldn't participate in a combat, but at the same token, your character was still alive and you could try harder next time.
In the new Tyranny of Fun paradigm, there is no elimination from combat short of death.
Word of Power healing, for example, is meant to address how boring it is to be stuck healing every round (when doing so is the most efficacious style of play). Removing the Word of Power healing, then, must coincide with some other change to prevent someone from being stuck in the healbot role. Increasing the cast time to a minute, to remove healbot entirely, is one potential solution.
Well the fundamental problem of "sticking" people into a role they don't want is the issue, not the fact that being a support character needs a buff. If the game wasn't set up where you needed to have a healer, then this problem goes away. Because the guy who would rather player a fighter in fact just picks a fighter. and the guy who wanted to play a support healing role gets to play a support/healing role. I don't see the problem there.
Skipping over some points for the sake of brevity, I think my most disliked change is the lack of ability nullification, just because it seems the most blatant. Fire elementals really, really should be immune to fire. Rock monsters don't have weak points that can be exploited with a dagger. The problem comes when a character is overly specialized, and nullification affects that one character overly much. A level 9 rogue in 3E, for example, would add 1d6 damage from a shortsword and then 5d6 damage from sneak attack (per attack); an undead or fortified opponent would drop the rogue's contribution by 83 percent, which is way un-fun. That would be like a monster being immune to fire, so the wizard has to drop from throwing 9d6 fireballs down to a 1d10 crossbow.
Well wizards really don't have that issue because they get a ton of different spells to choose from. If you picked only fire spells, then you really pretty mcuh deserve to be totally useless when you meet a fire elemental. As far as rogues, you're correct, having an overspecialized design is highly problematic and the idea is to give them a secondary schtcik that they do pretty well too.
Another very important point. Anything that bypasses HP, especially if it's a single-hit effect where you have no chance to respond, feels excessively cheap and should be avoided; I'm all in favor of slow petrification over 2-3 rounds, as a nice compromise. The enemies need ways to take a player out of combat without that being incredibly lethal, though, or else no combat will ever feel dramatic. Dealing HP damage, as the primary means of resolving combat, could stand to be less lethal by default; I'm always in favor of expanding death's door, all the way down to -max HP if necessary.
Yeah exactly. There's nothing wrong with gradual petrification. The main problem with the 4E model was that petrification wasn't lethal enough. I mean even if you did absolutely nothing, it was something that would usually just go away on its own, and usually the status conditions before weren't al that bad.
A good solution for a medusa might be something like this:
On the initial attack (in 4E the attack vs fort, or the first saving throw in D&DN), you are stunned. This condition cannot be removed as long as you see the medusa, and because you're stunned you can't actively close your eyes. If you see the medusa on another round, you have to make a save versus permanent petrification. If you start your turn with no line of sight to the medusa, you get a save to remove the stun. This creates an interesting dynamic where your party has to actively help you by throwing a cloak of your eyes, pushing the medusa out of the room or conjuring a wall between you. And it reinforces the fact that you really want to shut your eyes when you're fighting a medusa. And yet, we're going to an ability that doesn't instantly wipe out a character, instead it forces the PCs to a possibly difficult tactical decision. Do they use an action to save the stunned character, limiting thier own ability to fight and knowing he's going to be out of commission for minimum 1 round after that, or do they leave him to his fate and hope he survives. Characters with push abiltes may have the option of damaging the medusa and breaking its line of sight with him. And of course, all the while the PCs have to decide if they want to risk opening thier own eyes and meeting the same fate the stunned PC did.
Why wouldn't people recognize D&D as cooperative?
I dunno, but ask people like the OP and Baalbamoth.
community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/758...
11) You Want a War- I’ll give you a war… DM sees the game as a contest between the DM and the Players, and generally the players always loose until he feels guilty and goes all Monty/meta. In his game you’ll have flashbacks of Cartman saying “Respect ma Athorita!”
answer: it's a bad habbit.
It's not that you can't TPK in 4E/D&DN, it's the fact that that's your only weapon.
Wut.
In prior editions you could have a given PC "lose" a combat without killing them. Getting mind blasted by a mind flayer or dropped to dying and being knocked out of the encounter gave people a sense that they got thier ass kicked without actually killing anyone.
I think your "failure" condition versus "success" condition is your limiting factor. In the games I play, players can, in theory, walk thru encounters, healing away, and never even having anybody drop below zero hit points, and still "lose". They will fail to accomplish a goal. This is exactly why I love healing surges: they'll heal themselves and heal themselves, but it doesn't matter if the whole group is clerics, eventually there will be no more (combat significant) healing to be had. At that point, they have the hard choice of walking into an encounter they cannot heal in, or stopping for the day.
If you go to rescue the dragon from the evil princess and you only get halfway thru her dungeon before you have to break for the day, things get noticed, and the princess slays the dragon in a ritual that the PCs failed to interrupt (or just moves, taking the dragon with her, and accomplishes her ritual somewhere else free from those pesky kids PCs.
This is either something you have never taken into account, or something you have never experienced. A failure does not mean "I sat out an encounter because I was petrified into a statue". A failure is the lack of accomplishing a goal. "We didn't rescue the dragon from the princess" is a goal. "Making it thru the encounter without being removed" should not be the height of your goal-making as a PC or GM (assuming you want story-heavy games and not "survive the hate the GM will put you thru" games).
This doesn't even take into account "failing forward" but it makes the whole
In the new Tyranny of Fun paradigm, there is no elimination from combat short of death.
part of your argument completely null and void.
7 pages of discussion,
HOW do people manage with only 10 posts per page!?
I tend to stay out of discussions like this so there's no need to change it.
Ok, honestly, I never knew you could.
Why wouldn't people recognize D&D as cooperative?
I dunno, but ask people like the OP and Baalbamoth.
community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/758...
11) You Want a War- I’ll give you a war… DM sees the game as a contest between the DM and the Players, and generally the players always loose until he feels guilty and goes all Monty/meta. In his game you’ll have flashbacks of Cartman saying “Respect ma Athorita!”
answer: it's a bad habbit.
Adversarial gaming more relies on the DM having a blackguard's honor: it's trivial for the DM to make the players lose -- give them no chance at all, but that isn't fair. Instead, adversarial gaming, when it works, works with the understanding that the DM will try his darndest to kill you... within paramaters where his success is not guarenteed. It works when the DM either obeys the rules for encounter balance slavishly but playes the monsters hyper-intelligently (creating "Tucker's Kobolds"-like scenarios), or if they don't exist includes a loophole that the players are expected to find that gives them an out from an otherwise unwinnable position to a winnable one (or straight to victory, in some cases. Either way, it creates a "King's Quest" style scenario).
It's not my prefered style of play, but I can understand it, at least.
It's not that you can't TPK in 4E/D&DN, it's the fact that that's your only weapon.
Wut.In prior editions you could have a given PC "lose" a combat without killing them. Getting mind blasted by a mind flayer or dropped to dying and being knocked out of the encounter gave people a sense that they got thier ass kicked without actually killing anyone.
I think your "failure" condition versus "success" condition is your limiting factor. In the games I play, players can, in theory, walk thru encounters, healing away, and never even having anybody drop below zero hit points, and still "lose". They will fail to accomplish a goal. This is exactly why I love healing surges: they'll heal themselves and heal themselves, but it doesn't matter if the whole group is clerics, eventually there will be no more (combat significant) healing to be had. At that point, they have the hard choice of walking into an encounter they cannot heal in, or stopping for the day.
If you go to rescue the dragon from the evil princess and you only get halfway thru her dungeon before you have to break for the day, things get noticed, and the princess slays the dragon in a ritual that the PCs failed to interrupt (or just moves, taking the dragon with her, and accomplishes her ritual somewhere else free from those pesky kids PCs.
This is either something you have never taken into account, or something you have never experienced. A failure does not mean "I sat out an encounter because I was petrified into a statue". A failure is the lack of accomplishing a goal. "We didn't rescue the dragon from the princess" is a goal. "Making it thru the encounter without being removed" should not be the height of your goal-making as a PC or GM (assuming you want story-heavy games and not "survive the hate the GM will put you thru" games).
This doesn't even take into account "failing forward" but it makes the wholeIn the new Tyranny of Fun paradigm, there is no elimination from combat short of death.
part of your argument completely null and void.
I applaud your style on that topic, so few DM's will actually have the enemy do something when the PC's rest, most just have them wander around in their rooms waiting to be killed
D&D has lost alot of it's threat from monsters, alot of monsters were *really* dangerous to fight in AD&D. It did make for tension, creative thinking, and challenge. Admittedly, it wasn't always great. Save or Die tends to be tense, but brutal. Overall though, it made it a challenge.
Today there is a trend to taking away threatening powers, or replacing them with powers that are just inconvienent.
There is also the trend of giving PC's two hit point values, the displayed one and the hidden one, the hidden one being all of their heals + base health. 4th edition really embodied this issue, with plentiful healing allowing characters to replenish their health frequently, and from what I've read on these boards, making combat long drawn out affairs with little real threat.
IMO these threatening powers should be present, I'm ok with them even being optional components of the creatures (Though this would create elitism). I think this trend towards easy-mode is determental, and honestly, I question if it's actually what most players want. If video games can be equated to RPG's, then we can infer that at least some significant amount don't want easy-mode as a common complaint in video games is how easy they've become.
Keith Baker is the Hellcow and he's the only sacred cow I intend to fight for.
I applaud your style on that topic, so few DM's will actually have the enemy do something when the PC's rest, most just have them wander around in their rooms waiting to be killed
D&D has lost alot of it's threat from monsters, alot of monsters were *really* dangerous to fight in AD&D. It did make for tension, creative thinking, and challenge. Admittedly, it wasn't always great. Save or Die tends to be tense, but brutal. Overall though, it made it a challenge.
Today there is a trend to taking away threatening powers, or replacing them with powers that are just inconvienent.
There is also the trend of giving PC's two hit point values, the displayed one and the hidden one, the hidden one being all of their heals + base health. 4th edition really embodied this issue, with plentiful healing allowing characters to replenish their health frequently, and from what I've read on these boards, making combat long drawn out affairs with little real threat.
IMO these threatening powers should be present, I'm ok with them even being optional components of the creatures (Though this would create elitism). I think this trend towards easy-mode is determental, and honestly, I question if it's actually what most players want. If video games can be equated to RPG's, then we can infer that at least some significant amount don't want easy-mode as a common complaint in video games is how easy they've become.
I think this demonstrates a lack of practical experience with/ or understanding of 4th ed. Nothing stops the DM from invoking wandering monsters or making responsive dungeons. The claim about hp also misses the point that hp are a time sensitive strategic resource in 4th ed, which has a hard cap rather than in previous editions where hp were a neverending pool of hp if you had healing magic available. Despite 4th ed being far from perfect, it is hard to make an assessment of 4th ed being easy for PC without seeing the whole system in operation.
..."window.parent.tinyMCE.get('post_content').onLoad.dispatch();" contenteditable="true" />This is a big part of it. High PC turnover is, in my experience, bad for roleplay. The players won't want to put any effort into coming up with a backstory, or an interesting personality, for a character if the odds are against him being able to have time to explore them because he's going to push up daisies in 3 game sessions. So you wind up with, at best, generic characters ('city-hating elf ranger #8128', 'goblin-hating drunk dwarf fighter #1849', 'sticky-fingered halfling rogue #2849'), if not utterly flat characters that are somehow less interesting than that.
The other problem has, traditionally, been that there's been no way to lose a fight in D&D that didn't result in at least one PC death, if not a TPK. Don't give me that 'the PCs could have run' stuff; most of the monsters in the game are faster than the PCs (especially if any of them wear heavy armor) and have special movement modes like flight. Failure should not always, or even frequently, result in death, or else death becomes cheap and meaningless.
Yeah. Well see this is a lot of part of what I'm talking about that's missing from the 4E style minor action healing, and how I talk about PCs not losing.
It's not that you can't TPK in 4E/D&DN, it's the fact that that's your only weapon. In prior editions you could have a given PC "lose" a combat without killing them. Getting mind blasted by a mind flayer or dropped to dying and being knocked out of the encounter gave people a sense that they got thier ass kicked without actually killing anyone. This is becasue there was no emphasis on making every player relevant every combat. It was okay for one PC to feel like crap and say "Well I really sucked that encounter."
There's one punishment for failure in 4E/D&DN, and that's character death: A straight up TPK, or at the very least a Coup De grace on a downed PC midcombat. The important part about sitting out of combat in older editions was that it did suck, and it was a good punishment for failure that wasn't too extreme. Yeah you felt bad because your character got dropped and you couldn't participate in a combat, but at the same token, your character was still alive and you could try harder next time.
In the new Tyranny of Fun paradigm, there is no elimination from combat short of death.
Congratulations, you got everything comPLETEly backwards. It's far easier to lose without dying in 4e and previous editions; previous editions had the bad turnover.
I think this demonstrates a lack of practical experience with/ or understanding of 4th ed. Nothing stops the DM from invoking wandering monsters or making responsive dungeons. The claim about hp also misses the point that hp are a time sensitive strategic resource in 4th ed, which has a hard cap rather than in previous editions where hp were a neverending pool of hp if you had healing magic available. Despite 4th ed being far from perfect, it is hard to make an assessment of 4th ed being easy for PC without seeing the whole system in operation.
The big trick tho, is that it is very, very easy to make 4e easy (even accidentally) while it actually takes some reasonably serious know-how and system mastery (on the DMs part) to make the game particularly challenging, without being ridiculously brutal.
Some of the things that previous iterations of D&D relied upon to keep characters in check are simply not there in 4e; whereas some of the aspects that 4e relies upon to keep characters in check are overlooked, missed, or mistaken (especially with a casual glance at the rules - see note 1). It's extremely easy to come from DMing previous editions and not know how to make good monster group compositions and how to pace the adventure so that the players feel challenged (and yes, occasionally fail) without being overwhelmed.
To further exacerbate the issue, the pre-made adventures for 4e are not particularly difficult, and even less so with a good party make-up with characters proficient in the system. This, on top of the dry storytelling tips, lackluster plotlines, poor encounter composition, and overall emphasis on the combats with much less emphasis on the exploration and story composition make a lot of people's encounters with (pre-made adventures in) 4e very misleading how the system operates with a proficient DM.
Note 1: There are outright misleading truths being tossed around (I've run into people that think you can spend an infinite amount healing surges whenever or wherever you want, for any reason). I can't mention the more oft-spoken ones here because it tends to start up edition wars, but suffice to say, there is a great deal of mis-information on 4e being thrown around the web in the name of blind-hatred-of-new-editions.
The purpose of this thread is to address a problematic gaming trend that seems to be taking over in modern D&D. I've named this the Tyranny of Fun, as I'm not sure if it has any other name that I've seen.
What is the Tyranny of Fun?
In short, Tyranny of fun is the idea that all things that players do not like should be removed from the game. Things like getting removed from a combat by ghoul paralysis or knockout, or persistent injuries like energy drain or stat drain. Magic items are great, lets hand out a ton of those! PCs hate when their abilities get nullified, so lets have everything be vulnerable to sneak attack even if there's actually no weak spots to hit.
The Tyranny of fun is about trying to make the game nonstop fun, all the time.
Tyranny of Fun Elements in Next
-Word of Power healing
-Heal from zero
-Energy drain nerfed into the ground
-Hardly any means to remove a character from a combat
-No ability nullification (You can assassinate a genaltinous cube?)
-Super Clerics
What's wrong with Tyranny of Fun?
You may think: Well it's trying to be more fun? What's wrong with that?
Just because you're winning doesn't mean it's fun
This principle that comes from an episode of the Twilight Zone. In this particular episode, a compulsive gambler dies and wakes up in a casino. At first he wins and thinks: "I'm winning this must be heaven!" However, by the end of the episode he realizes that not only does he win, but he always wins, and concludes that he is in fact in hell, not heaven. I feel like D&D has started to resemble this more and more with each edition. It becomes increasingly less likely that the players lose. Even minor defeats, like having your magic sword sundered, getting energy drained or getting knocked out for a combat are largely a thing of the past.
But it's a game, it should be fun, right? Well not really. Games have their high points and low points. Anyone who has played anything remotely competitive knows that you can lose. And you can lose bad. Whether it was a game of basketball, Chess or Call of Duty Team deathmatch, you can get your ass kicked. And you know what, that probably wasn't very fun. That probably sucked, and sucked bad. But you wouldn't want to remove the possibility of losing entirely, because it would ruin those games. The victory becomes meaningless if the game is too easy and eventually people would just give up the game.
You need to challenge people and that means having memories of glorious victories and crushing defeats.
Monsters need identity
Monsters live and die on thier special abilities. If you want them to be memorable, they have to have bad things happen. I still remember the first time I ever fought a ghoul as a PC in 2nd edition, where you saw their ability to paralyze a PC for the combat. That was scary, that was really scary. I can't remember the first orc or goblin I fought. In fact I can't remember *any* orc or goblins I fought, because they were bland damage dealers.
Now lets think of the memorable iconic D&D monsters: Mind Flayers, Beholders, Rust monsters, ghouls, wights, gelatinous cubes, Medusas. All those things had abilities that were going to screw you over, possibly even kill you. And these are monsters we remember in D&D. Think about that for a minute. We remember the energy drainers and the things with petrifying gazes, so much so that many of them become iconic parts of the game. Lets not lose that.
And this gets back to the first point. You were fighting fearsome opposition. PCs need to feel like brave heroes fighting against fearsome opposition, not high-powered bullies kicking puppies.
Fight till I'm dead!
A big Tyranny of fun trend is constantly being able to be restored to combat, even when you get knocked out or paralyzed or whatever. Whether it's a healer healing you from 0 with a minor action or just getting a new save every round to shrug off that hold person, you're never out of any fight. And you may think: Well what's wrong with that?
First, it's just stupid in many cases. Constant healing leads to a whack-a-mole sort of combat, where PCs are constantly popping up only to get dropped by the next hit.
Well think about it for a minute. When you're a threat even when you're lying face down bleeding, yet you're helpless, then the monster tactic to solve that problem is to straight up kill you before you can heal. Thus instead of a PC sitting out one battle, he now has a dead character. And that's exactly what happened with hold person when it had an inconsistent duration. When you know that the guy is only helpless for a short bit, there's a rush to go Coup De Grace him and remove him from combat entirely. You will go after him over attacking other enemies even because he's helpless. In other words, the effect is much similar to being able to fight while at negative HP. Yeah, it makes PCs more powerful, but it's all or nothing. The only way for a monster to stop you from getting back up is to kill you. Which means every battle you're going all-in. There's not much room for a capture scenario or anything close to it, because a character who is knocked out is one word of power from being resotred to a fully functional combatant.
The only other option is of course to play the monsters off as dumb AIs who can't react to what's going on and only attack standing PCs, because we all know chaotic evil gnolls have a sense of fair play, right? But you know, I mean we're playing with whack-a-mole style combat, so why not have the monsters act dumb too? Why are we straining verisimilitude?
Is it really that bad to have a PC sit out of a battle? No, of course not. It sucks, but it's not the end of the world.
How do I kill it? I stab it of course!
It's largely becoming a trend in making monster resistances/immunities less and less powerful, or in many cases nonexistent. Creatures like oozes used to be immune to sneak attack and similar vital strikes, but now they are not. Why? Because we don't want the rogue feeling bad because you tell him his sneak attack doesn't work.
Some oozes were immune to certain weapon types. Slashing weapons would cause them to split in half (to two functional oozes) instead of actually doing real damage. Incorporeal undead required a magic weapon to hurt them.
Why the change? Well presumably because people got upset when their main schtick didn't work. So the Fun Police come along and say "Well that can't happen, you can sneak attack anything, screw common sense!"
Why is this a bad thing: Well for one because it stifles creativity. If your basic tactic always works, then why bother ever coming up another. Necessity is the mother of invention. You have no need to ever invent anything if you don't need it. It was one of the main reasons 4E had such little improvisation, because your powers were just so good that you didn't need to improvise. They always worked, so really why bother trying to think of some innovative strategy when you can just Twin Strike until the thing goes away. The answer is you rarely do.
Having people's main abilities get shut down leads them to be more multi-dimensional characters and makes them more interesting. It also leads PCs to think more heavily. When your primary tactic gets nullified, now you need to think up some kind of back-up plan. Now you're doing cool stuff you never would have thought to try before and you end up with cool stories like, "Remember that time we lured that black pudding down to that unstable dungeon corridor and I used my horn of blasting to trap it? That was awesome!"
Nobody ever remembers the time they spammed twin strike for 5 straight rounds, because they're doing that all the time.
Playing the Healer is boring, so lets make him uber
Yet another trend is to buff up the healer class, typically the cleric to insane levels so people will want to play him. This is because it's felt that being a support character is boring, and instead of just rebalancing the game around not requiring cleric, we try to make the guy playing one not feel like a mobile first aid tent while still dispensing the heals, so he gets to kick ass while dropping heal spells in the same turn. This makes healer types ridiculously overpowered naturally, but it's the only way someone can possibly have fun playing a cleric apparently.
But he's the cornerstone of your group, and why, becasue you need that guy who heals unconscious PCs and gets them back in the fight. So because of Tyranny of fun, you're married to the cleric.
If we didn't need unconscious people to come back mid-combat, we could pretty easily just make combat healing optional, allow people to use healing surges/potions/whatever between combat and then not have to worry about forcing people that really don't want to play a support class into playing support. Now we don't need the Tyranny of fun appeasment for clerics.
ConclusionIn closing, let me say that there's not anything wrong with trying to make the game more fun, however all things must be done in moderation. Just because candy is delicious doesn't mean you should eat only candy.
I can see what you are saying... but I do not necessarily agree with it all.
Energy drain put the fear of gawd into pc's... but once you were hit with it, everyone I know and played with considered their character worthless at that point. And I personally would have much more rather had my characters one shotted (happened many many times) than be energy drained.
And I think the healing all the time / from 0, etc. stuff is because at least in groups I ever played in, combat took foreeeeeeeeeeeeever! Like what should have been a simple fight would take an hour. Just because of the stupid amount of hit points monsters would have. And getting wiped out within a couple rounds, then having to sit there and wait an hour real time while the rest of the group handled business, would be terrifyingly boring. Sure, maybe that character could do something else game related, maybe control some bad guys, but not all DM's are down with that. So I think the healing thing was implemented to make sure people weren't sitting out for an hour getting bored out of their skull.
I can also appreciate for the most part that monsters might need some identity.. but not ALL monsters. I personally do not care about the life stories and backgrounds and hopes and dreams of every single living breathing orc, kobold, dragon or whatever. As a PC, I want to drive my sword into their skull and take their treasure. It doesn't matter to me about their hopes and dreams and wish fulfillments. Sometimes that's neat-o to know for some monsters, but not all of them. That would be horrendously time consuming to come up with that stuf for everyone.
I most definitely think that playing support characters are boring as hell and after they made clerics worth playing, then I felt like playing them more.
I think the healers have been horribly nerfed in editions past.
Which I think is the wrong thing to do, considering they are getting their powers directly from the most potent beings or forces in the cosmos. They should be able to kick ass. Descriptions for clerics, are holy warriors that don armor, and fight in the name of their deities or faiths or whatevs. If I were a deity and was going to have some one represent me, I wouldn't have their ass go light! I'd make them a boss! :-)
Just sayin. My own personal perspectives.
The big trick tho, is that it is very, very easy to make 4e easy (even accidentally) while it actually takes some reasonably serious know-how and system mastery (on the DMs part) to make the game particularly challenging, without being ridiculously brutal.
Some of the things that previous iterations of D&D relied upon to keep characters in check are simply not there in 4e; whereas some of the aspects that 4e relies upon to keep characters in check are overlooked, missed, or mistaken (especially with a casual glance at the rules - see note 1). It's extremely easy to come from DMing previous editions and not know how to make good monster group compositions and how to pace the adventure so that the players feel challenged (and yes, occasionally fail) without being overwhelmed.
To further exacerbate the issue, the pre-made adventures for 4e are not particularly difficult, and even less so with a good party make-up with characters proficient in the system. This, on top of the dry storytelling tips, lackluster plotlines, poor encounter composition, and overall emphasis on the combats with much less emphasis on the exploration and story composition make a lot of people's encounters with (pre-made adventures in) 4e very misleading how the system operates with a proficient DM.
Note 1: There are outright misleading truths being tossed around (I've run into people that think you can spend an infinite amount healing surges whenever or wherever you want, for any reason). I can't mention the more oft-spoken ones here because it tends to start up edition wars, but suffice to say, there is a great deal of mis-information on 4e being thrown around the web in the name of blind-hatred-of-new-editions.
Good points. I am limited by my great experiences of 4th with a good DM, very experienced players (we have each been playing D&D for 30 years+). But I have seen posts here and elsewhere that there is a danger of what you describe is very real, and also I believe there has to be something in the way 4th ed was set out and explained which has created some big misunderstandings about how the game works.
Thee is also the issue that 4th ed was very different from 3rd ed and works for some styles better than others. We play a high fantasy campaign where there are scenes/encounters rather than dungeons and rooms - so 4th ed sings for us.
One thing DDN has obsolutely got right is a focus on multiple playstyles.
Simplicity again can be the culprit. Tiered effects are often better than binary ones. For example, if you have to make consecutive saves versus petrification, maybe the first failed save causes you to get slowed down, the second moreso, and the third is total petrification.
In principle I like the idea, in practise I find the save or save or save or die method to be frustrating and more than a little lackluster. The problem with it in the playtest is the combat isn't meant to last more than 2-3 rounds anyway, so a spell that requires 3 rounds to fully take effect is nearly useless. I would embrace a higher failure rate in a single round and have the effect happen right then and there, but then folks moan about how unreliable save or ---- spells are. To me, the reliability is precisely the right thing to trade off in this case. Also, with regard to status effects that don't kill you can provide the players with meaningful opportunities to act and react.
Binary systems like this are always less interesting to me, and leave less room for reaction and response from the players. Paralysis, petrification, suffocation, fear, madness, confusion, exhaustion.... almost every status effect could be broken down into 3 different tiers of hinderance so you don't have save or suck, but you keep the danger level. The injection of the "dying" effect into the binary system of dead or alive does exactly this. Why the step hasn't been taken to add this sort of thing into every effect that removes a character/creature from the fight is beyond me. I, for one, have never appreciated binary effects like this, but I also think that their removal cheapens the game. Adding a buffer between normal and out-of-the-fight is a good step. You can also differentiate important and unimportant NPCs this way, giving players and important NPC monsters the benefit of multiple saves and tiered effects while denying this to less important enemies to keep the game flowing and PCs who choose to focus on control spells feeling as effective as they should.
Yeah it's a difficult tightrope to walk. My group is very accepting of binary effects where you're alive one round and you're dead the next, and adding an obstacle or mob with that sort of effect has serious impact on how they respond to a given threat. That's as it should be, really, but the flip side is I don't tend to throw instant death things at the party in the first place unless it's appropriate in the narrative. Basically my way of differentiating between an important or unimportant NPC is that they've got the death effects at all.
As for players using them, I think the HP system undermines their application in a big way 'cause often the case is that you can use your death effect that might work or you can deal HP damage that will work. The uncertainty is enough for people at my table to use death effects sparingly. I think the big issue in 3e is that you have to do serious gymnastics to make a blaster mage work well enough to justify not casting save or death spells. The damage scales like the 2e damage spells but the mob HP are way higher.
THIS IS WORST THAN NAZI GERMANY!
It's not that you can't TPK in 4E/D&DN, it's the fact that that's your only weapon. In prior editions you could have a given PC "lose" a combat without killing them.
There's one punishment for failure in 4E/D&DN, and that's character death: A straight up TPK, or at the very least a Coup De grace on a downed PC midcombat.
Either you failed to understand the rules of 4e, or you're just lying, because those statements aren't factual in any way.
Getting mind blasted by a mind flayer or dropped to dying and being knocked out of the encounter gave people a sense that they got thier ass kicked without actually killing anyone. It was okay for one PC to feel like crap and say "Well I really sucked that encounter."
There are much more evocative ways of creating the "I got my ass kicked" experience than simply forcing someone to sit out. What you're talking about is a binary condition: either the PC is in the fray or not. But you can accomplish "Well I really sucked that encounter" just as easily through a reduction in effectiveness (unless you just want that player to sit out so you can make him go on a pizza run).
The important part about sitting out of combat in older editions was that it did suck, and it was a good punishment for failure that wasn't too extreme.
Most of the time when you sat out in older editions, you weren't being punished for a failure on your part. You were being punished for an unlucky toss of the d20. Those are very different things, and you do yourself a disservice when you try to paint this as player entitlement.
Yeah you felt bad because your character got dropped and you couldn't participate in a combat, but at the same token, your character was still alive and you could try harder next time.
Yeah, they could try harder to affect the laws of probability with their mind. Seriously, you can bear down so hard that you poop yourself, but it won't make you roll a 20.
In the new Tyranny of Fun paradigm, there is no elimination from combat short of death because they've finally understood that impairment is a dial and not a switch .
My favorite example of the tof is the simplification of magic. Removing casting time, spell failure, and components etc. What fun?
All of those increase the fun for me. Less bookkeeping, less arbitrary nonsense, more ability to actually DO things.
All of those increase the fun for me. Less bookkeeping, less arbitrary nonsense, more ability to actually DO things.
There is a lot to be said for reduced bookkeeping. Whether or not you care about restricting a character through limited resources, or increasing chance of failure, every game mechanic must be examined for one basic principle: does this rule, whatever its other merits, justify its added complexity?
My favorite example of the tof is the simplification of magic. Removing casting time, spell failure, and components etc. What fun?
None of that sounds like actualy examples of ToF.
Components were supposed to be a balancing mechanic, but they often didn't work as such. Removing them sounds like cutting dead weight to me. Now, some flavor goes with their weight. However, once the game is dropping the assumption that components create actual balance, you are free to have whatever cool and thematic components you like (or none at all if that suits you).
Casting time, I can take it or leave it. For me, the only magic in D&D that actually feels magical is rituals (and their flavor falls a bit short if used by RAW alone). Now, while that would seem like I should belong in the "yay, casting time" camp, I really don't. Casting time doesn't feel at all ritualistic to me. Ultimately, casting time always felt like a cop out for a spell not being as high a spell level as it should have been.
Spell failure, depends on reason. If you're talking about a spell having a chance of failure because the caster is somehow disrupted while casting, or having a chance of failure because casting spells is a skill and the character may make a mistake (e.g. Harry Potter style magic), then fine. I'm on board. But, if you're just talking about a chance of failure because the caster is wearing armor, then that seems quite silly to me.
Feb 27, 2013 -- 12:15PM, Rory wrote:
Now MechaPilot, you may have misinterpreted Dwarfslayer. He also wants to have a fun game. But the point that he is trying to make is that, when you take away those kind of things, aiming for more fun, you (for him) actually are making the game less fun, because (for him) you are taking away good part of the challenge of the game.
Unfortunately, no. I have entirely understood him. And he's not saying "this is what I find fun, I'd like to see some mechanical support for this playstyle." He's saying that players are spoiled entitled brats and that the removal or alteration of some of the elements that he likes is catering to them and is destroying the game. He directly attributes changes like removing energy/attribute drain (which are game-stopping accounting problems), and not forcing healer classes to be healbots to "player entitlement."
Now he also have another point, that without some things a TPK is the only way to lose in recent editions. Both things are constantly mentioned by people that like those kind of effects. This have to do with drawbacks (that includes from monster's effects to spellcasting drawbacks to balance drawbacks), which drawbacks you like, which ones are so-so, which one you do not like it.
That "TPK is the only way to lose in recent editions" is not a point because it is not true. You very much can lose in 4e without a TPK. Saying otherwise is either ignorance of the rules (as well as ignorance of good encounter design), or outright falsehood.
I personally think that "Save or Suck" are not lasting enough, but I also don't want them to dominate gameplay (I just don't like the current mechanism of these effects).
It really depends on what you mean by "Save or Suck," because (contrary to some people's binary notions) you can "suck" without being excluded from gameplay.
Now MechaPilot, you may have misinterpreted Dwarfslayer.
There was no mis-understanding. His statements about 4e were either false or flat-out lies.
My favorite example of the tof is the simplification of magic. Removing casting time, spell failure, and components etc. What fun?
All of those increase the fun for me. Less bookkeeping, less arbitrary nonsense, more ability to actually DO things.
The ToF in a nutshell. Thank you Lola B.
My favorite example of the tof is the simplification of magic. Removing casting time, spell failure, and components etc. What fun?
All of those increase the fun for me. Less bookkeeping, less arbitrary nonsense, more ability to actually DO things.
The ToF in a nutshell. Thank you Lola B.
That implies that anything that makes the game fun, regardless of if it actually makes the game better, should just get the ToF label and thrown in the trash.
Unfortunately, no. I have entirely understood him. And he's not saying "this is what I find fun, I'd like to see some mechanical support for this playstyle." He's saying that players are spoiled entitled brats and that the removal or alteration of some of the elements that he likes is catering to them and is destroying the game. He directly attributes changes like removing energy/attribute drain (which are game-stopping accounting problems), and not forcing healer classes to be healbots to "player entitlement."
What constitutes player entitlement is a long discussion. From what I have read, he is saying that many changes brought by ToF makes the game less enjoyable. Just look at your assumptions. Many people actually like these kind of effects and honestly there is tons of games with healbots and no one complains. I'm not saying that I agree completely with him I just think that it is not the way you picture. That 4e was too easy is not an uncommon critique. Actually is not an uncommon critique in D&D Next.
It really depends on what you mean by "Save or Suck," because (contrary to some people's binary notions) you can "suck" without being excluded from gameplay.
I think that effects like paralysis are not lasting enough. Personally I think that status effects that have a chance to end in each round as a top lasting time is not enough. I'm personally talking about Hold spells, for example.
Unfortunately, no. I have entirely understood him. And he's not saying "this is what I find fun, I'd like to see some mechanical support for this playstyle." He's saying that players are spoiled entitled brats and that the removal or alteration of some of the elements that he likes is catering to them and is destroying the game. He directly attributes changes like removing energy/attribute drain (which are game-stopping accounting problems), and not forcing healer classes to be healbots to "player entitlement."
What constitutes player entitlement is a long discussion. From what I have read, he is saying that many changes brought by ToF makes the game less enjoyable. Just look at your assumptions. Many people actually like these kind of effects and honestly there is tons of games with healbots and no one complains. I'm not saying that I agree completely with him I just think that it is not the way you picture. That 4e was too easy is not an uncommon critique. Actually is not an uncommon critique in D&D Next.
"Many changes brought by ToF." See, that's part of the problem right there. How do you distinguish between a change that occurs "because ToF" and one that was made to make the game more enjoyable? Does every change that makes the game more enjoyable constitute ToF? Even if it actually improves the mechanics of the game? And, if not, then how do you precisely define the standard by which you judge whether a fun-increasing change is brought about by ToF or genuine improvement?
It really depends on what you mean by "Save or Suck," because (contrary to some people's binary notions) you can "suck" without being excluded from gameplay.
I think that effects like paralysis are not lasting enough. Personally I think that status effects that have a chance to end in each round as a top lasting time is not enough. I'm personally talking about Hold spells, for example.
I don't particularly care for holds. It feels too baordgamey. You know, like landing on the old "you lose a turn" square because you made an unlucky toss of the dice. Now, if a hold was simply "you can't move out of your square or attack" but you were still able to talk and use magic items or spells that target yourself, that would be different. it's not about losing restrictions, its about failure being granular instead of binary.
That "TPK is the only way to lose in recent editions" is not a point because it is not true. You very much can lose in 4e without a TPK. Saying otherwise is either ignorance of the rules (as well as ignorance of good encounter design), or outright falsehood.
If you're refering to having stuff like the princess dies if you 'don't get there in time', it sounds like you're saying that is IN the 4E rules as much as being paralysed by a goul is IN the AD&D rules.
Saying that is either a bad reading, or outright falsehood.
Mecha pilot, you need to let go of this 'just an unlucky dice roll' thing - you know how you are quite happy to accept a critical hit bonus to damage from what is just a lucky roll? Well for some folk accepting negative results (not just the possitive results) of a roll is also important. That's probably part of the ToF idea - where people will call it 'just an unlucky dice roll' when its negative for them, but just accept it when a lucky dice roll benefits them. In as much as all dice rolls involve something bad (even if it's just missing or doing less damage), someone who complains about getting a negative from 'just an unlucky roll' can never be appeased.
I'm not a proponent of extra damage on a crit. A crit is just a lucky dice roll.
That "TPK is the only way to lose in recent editions" is not a point because it is not true. You very much can lose in 4e without a TPK. Saying otherwise is either ignorance of the rules (as well as ignorance of good encounter design), or outright falsehood.
If you're refering to having the princess die if you 'don't get there in time', it sounds like you're saying that is IN the 4E rules as much as being paralysed by a goul is IN the AD&D rules.
I'm not referring to having the princess die. I'm referring to not making the assumption that failure = death when a party or individual character can be trapped, knocked unconscious, infected, etc. I'm also referring to the idea that one can fail at something other than combat, unless you're suggesting that the only possible outcome of failing a skill challenge is TPK.
If you're refering to having the princess die if you 'don't get there in time', it sounds like you're saying that is IN the 4E rules as much as being paralysed by a goul is IN the AD&D rules.
Saying that is either a bad reading, or outright falsehood.
Thats not what he was saying. He was countering the point that the only way failure can happen in 4e is a TPK. Which is either amistake on his part or a blatent lie, as I' can recall at least 2 times we've had something that could be considered a failed encounter, but we didn't lose a single PC.
1st time was when we got ambushed at our base in our sci-fi themed campaign. During the fight, 2 of our top scientsist died, and an ancient artifact we recently recovered was destroyed. The bad guys promptly turned around and left then, because destroying the artifact was their entire reason for attacking us.
2nd time I was in a duel(story reasons, we were running 4 mini-encounters at the same time) and the bad guy cheated and broke the windows and blasted us into space(said bad guy could survive in the vacuum of space), though I did manage to throw my spare fullblade at him and slice his arm open. By the end of the happenings, they had to cut my eyes out(not a big deal, the race I was, part of the flavor is that they're essentially blind, so it doesn't have any mechanical dtriment to me), and I was outfitted with a mechanical lung that will let me survive int he vacuum of space for about 3 days.
So one lost encounter without a single death, one encounter failure with a enar-death that had awesome roleplay opportunities, and setting me on the path towards my Epic Destiny.
Mecha pilot, you need to let go of this 'just an unlucky dice roll' thing - you know how you are quite happy to accept a critical hit bonus to damage from what is just a lucky roll? Well for some folk accepting negative results (not just the possitive results) of a roll is also important. That's probably part of the ToF idea - where people will call it 'just an unlucky dice roll' when its negative for them, but just accept it when a lucky dice roll benefits them. In as much as all dice rolls involve something bad (even if it's just missing or doing less damage), someone who complains about getting a negative from 'just an unlucky roll' can never be appeased.
I'm not a proponent of extra damage on a crit. A crit is just a lucky dice roll.
If you decline to take the extra crit damage, then I believe you.
Otherwise no, you are a proponent of something you gained just by luck. While you're against negatives you gained just by luck.
That "TPK is the only way to lose in recent editions" is not a point because it is not true. You very much can lose in 4e without a TPK. Saying otherwise is either ignorance of the rules (as well as ignorance of good encounter design), or outright falsehood.
If you're refering to having the princess die if you 'don't get there in time', it sounds like you're saying that is IN the 4E rules as much as being paralysed by a goul is IN the AD&D rules.
I'm not referring to having the princess die. I'm referring to not making the assumption that failure = death when a party or individual character can be trapped, knocked unconscious, infected, etc.
I'd say being trapped isn't in the rules like ghoul paralysation is in the AD&D rules.
Knocked unconcious - but that's either the same as ghoul paralysation (so you confirm the idea), or you mean some very temporary case of it which is just dodging the idea, not any kind of argument. Going down then the clerics turn is next and he revives you - that's losing?
Infection - what effects does it immediately have? Let alone if the PC's simply cure it before it's onset of effects? Is having no immediate difference from before losing?
I'm also referring to the idea that one can fail at something other than combat, unless you're suggesting that the only possible outcome of failing a skill challenge is TPK.
I think he was talking about being able to lose in combat without dying. If you want to ignore that, then you weren't really engaging his argument to begin with.
Thats not what he was saying. He was countering the point that the only way failure can happen in 4e is a TPK. Which is either amistake on his part or a blatent lie, as I' can recall at least 2 times we've had something that could be considered a failed encounter, but we didn't lose a single PC.
The point I'm making is that in 4E, you fail as a group, you very rarely fail as an individual. And yeah, sometimes that failure is about rolling bad, because that's why we have dice. If the dice couldn't make you fail, then there's no point of having them.
And yeah, you can occasionally "fail" to achieve some objective, but you win the battle. You may not kill the bad guy and he may ecsape, but you've still routed your enemy.
1st time was when we got ambushed at our base in our sci-fi themed campaign. During the fight, 2 of our top scientsist died, and an ancient artifact we recently recovered was destroyed. The bad guys promptly turned around and left then, because destroying the artifact was their entire reason for attacking us.
Which you can't even do in 4E, because you can't sunder objects.
2nd time I was in a duel(story reasons, we were running 4 mini-encounters at the same time) and the bad guy cheated and broke the windows and blasted us into space(said bad guy could survive in the vacuum of space), though I did manage to throw my spare fullblade at him and slice his arm open. By the end of the happenings, they had to cut my eyes out(not a big deal, the race I was, part of the flavor is that they're essentially blind, so it doesn't have any mechanical dtriment to me), and I was outfitted with a mechanical lung that will let me survive int he vacuum of space for about 3 days.
Well this is a specific plot device that the DM put in where the bad guy instantly wins. That's not really a loss, that's just a scripted event pretty much.
I'm talking about losing in combat, not getting beaten by some kind of plot device.
Mecha pilot, you need to let go of this 'just an unlucky dice roll' thing - you know how you are quite happy to accept a critical hit bonus to damage from what is just a lucky roll? Well for some folk accepting negative results (not just the possitive results) of a roll is also important. That's probably part of the ToF idea - where people will call it 'just an unlucky dice roll' when its negative for them, but just accept it when a lucky dice roll benefits them. In as much as all dice rolls involve something bad (even if it's just missing or doing less damage), someone who complains about getting a negative from 'just an unlucky roll' can never be appeased.
Yeah players have to accept that if you're playing a game with dice that the dice is going to matter. Yes, you can get unlucky and die. I mean, if you want a diceless RPG, they exist, but so long as you're playing with dice, there's a random element and it may mean someone loses a character over it. But that's just part of the game.
That "TPK is the only way to lose in recent editions" is not a point because it is not true. You very much can lose in 4e without a TPK. Saying otherwise is either ignorance of the rules (as well as ignorance of good encounter design), or outright falsehood.
If you're refering to having the princess die if you 'don't get there in time', it sounds like you're saying that is IN the 4E rules as much as being paralysed by a goul is IN the AD&D rules.
I'm not referring to having the princess die. I'm referring to not making the assumption that failure = death when a party or individual character can be trapped, knocked unconscious, infected, etc.
I'd say being trapped isn't in the rules like ghoul paralysation is in the AD&D rules.
Knocked unconcious - but that's either the same as ghoul paralysation (so you confirm the idea), or you mean some very temporary case of it which is just dodging the idea, not any kind of argument. Going down then the clerics turn is next and he revives you - that's losing?
Infection - what effects does it immediately have? Let alone if the PC's simply cure it before it's onset of effects? Is having no immediate difference from before losing?I'm also referring to the idea that one can fail at something other than combat, unless you're suggesting that the only possible outcome of failing a skill challenge is TPK.
I think he was talking about being able to lose in combat without dying. If you want to ignore that, then you weren't really engaging his argument to begin with.
So, traps aren't in the rules? There are no rules for being KOd? No infections, not even the magical ones, have immediate effects? And now you're moving the goalpost to combat only (BTW, skill challenges happen in combat too; and when well-designed, failure at them often makes combat harder but doesn't automatically result in a TPK just because it's a failure)? Sounds like you were never part of this discussion at all.
Mecha pilot, you need to let go of this 'just an unlucky dice roll' thing - you know how you are quite happy to accept a critical hit bonus to damage from what is just a lucky roll? Well for some folk accepting negative results (not just the possitive results) of a roll is also important. That's probably part of the ToF idea - where people will call it 'just an unlucky dice roll' when its negative for them, but just accept it when a lucky dice roll benefits them. In as much as all dice rolls involve something bad (even if it's just missing or doing less damage), someone who complains about getting a negative from 'just an unlucky roll' can never be appeased.
Yeah players have to accept that if you're playing a game with dice that the dice is going to matter. Yes, you can get unlucky and die. I mean, if you want a diceless RPG, they exist, but so long as you're playing with dice, there's a random element and it may mean someone loses a character over it. But that's just part of the game.
I'm not saying the dice shouldn't matter. That's binary thinking on your part, again.
The point I'm making is that in 4E, you fail as a group, you very rarely fail as an individual. And yeah, sometimes that failure is about rolling bad, because that's why we have dice. If the dice couldn't make you fail, then there's no point of having them.
And how did previous editions handle "failing as an individual" better? By getting knocked out of the fi-wait, 4e can do that. By having them fail somethign specif-wait, 4e can do that too.
Which you can't even do in 4E, because you can't sunder objects.
Except the part where you can. Any attack that targets a creature can also target objects unless the DM specifically says otherwise.
Well this is a specific plot device that the DM put in where the bad guy instantly wins. That's not really a loss, that's just a scripted event pretty much.
I'm talking about losing in combat, not getting beaten by some kind of plot device.
"4e doesn't let you lose outside of TPK very well."
"Here's how I lost without a TPK."
"Doesn't count."
Fantastic.
And how did previous editions handle "failing as an individual" better? By getting knocked out of the fi-wait, 4e can do that. By having them fail somethign specif-wait, 4e can do that too.
4E can only do that after you drained every single healing resource the party has, and that takes forever. That's after you've played whack-a-mole combat for an hour of real time. Even then they still have potions, though at least those take a standard action and reuqire the character to be in proximity.
"4e doesn't let you lose outside of TPK very well."
"Here's how I lost without a TPK."
"Doesn't count."
Fantastic.
You're talking about some dude getting blown out into space, and people walking around with cyber arms. that doesn't even sound like D&D to me, let alone a specific edition of D&D.
And the entire loss was a result of sucking your characters into the void of space. That just screams plot device to me, it wasn't through the base mechanics of 4E.
I mean I've lost battles in 4E before too, battles where the DM makes it obvious you have to run, but it's a scripted loss where the NPC is literally unbeatable, or nearly so. Thats far different from losing in an actual combat.
I'm not saying the dice shouldn't matter. That's binary thinking on your part, again.
Well you were complaining about getting knocked out of a combat because of bad luck. I mean yeah it sucks when that happens, but it shouldn't be removed from the game. Removing everything you don't like doesn't necessarily make the game better.
I'm not saying the dice shouldn't matter. That's binary thinking on your part, again.
Well you were complaining about getting knocked out of a combat because of bad luck. I mean yeah it sucks when that happens, but it shouldn't be removed from the game. Removing everything you don't like doesn't necessarily make the game better.
I also said that there are more evocative ways of creating the same "man I got my ass kicked," and "man I sucked in that fight" experiences that you said you were pining for than just ejecting someone from play. That's what you seem to not be getting. Playing or not is binary. Failure creating an obstacle or increasing an exsisting challenge is a consequence of failure that doesn't result in the conditions of participating or not.
So, traps aren't in the rules? There are no rules for being KOd? No infections, not even the magical ones, have immediate effects?
'Trapped' is different from 'trap'. And what are the rules for KO - are they much like being hit by a goul?
And I asked you what the immediate effects were on commonly encountered infections? Seems like you turned my words into an assertion there are no effects, simply to avoid answering.
And now you're moving the goalpost to combat only
Or I resisted your attempt to move the goalposts.
Or sure, why not, the original post was totally about skill challenges.
Sounds like you were never part of this discussion at all.
Given Dwarfslayer's right here, I'll leave that to him to decide.
I'm talking about losing in combat, not getting beaten by some kind of plot device.
"4e doesn't let you lose outside of TPK very well."
"Here's how I lost without a TPK."
"Doesn't count."
Fantastic.
I love how some facts just seem to fade right out of existance - like the aforementioned GM plot device.
Unless you treat the GM saying "Oh guys, I've decided you all lose!" as losing, rather than just GM fiat.
So, traps aren't in the rules? There are no rules for being KOd? No infections, not even the magical ones, have immediate effects?
'Trapped' is different from 'trap'.
So now a "trap" can't "trap" a person?
And what are the rules for KO - are they much like being hit by a goul?
No, they're not.
And I asked you what the immediate effects were on commonly encountered infections? Seems like you turned my words into an assertion there are no effects, simply to avoid answering.
I didn't answer you about any specific infections because my 4e books are currently boxed up. But, I just now took the time to grab my 4e DMG and there are 7 diseases in the DMG, 6 of which have an immediate effect (the 7th has an immediate onset effect as well, but it triggers when you become bloodied).
And now you're moving the goalpost to combat only
Or I resisted your attempt to move the goalposts.
Or sure, why not, the original post was totally about skill challenges.
The initial post was about how the OP thinks that challenges are being removed for the sake of making the game fun, but that doing so actually makes the game unfun. That applies to all encounter areas, not just combat.
Well, long live the king, then.
So, traps aren't in the rules? There are no rules for being KOd? No infections, not even the magical ones, have immediate effects?
'Trapped' is different from 'trap'.
So now a "trap" can't "trap" a person?
I'll bite: As a regular part of play, no.
Would you like to point out atleast a handful of WOTC modules where traps trap people and...they atleast miss the rest of the combat?
And what are the rules for KO - are they much like being hit by a goul?
No, they're not.
There you go.
And I asked you what the immediate effects were on commonly encountered infections? Seems like you turned my words into an assertion there are no effects, simply to avoid answering.
I didn't answer you about any specific infections because my 4e books are currently boxed up. But, I just now took the time to grab my 4e DMG and there are 7 diseases in the DMG, 6 of which have an immediate effect (the 7th has an immediate onset effect as well, but it triggers when you become bloodied).
Ones which are part of common play? I've played in some official WOTC stuff and...honestly, infections didn't even really come up.
So there is a bunch of WOTC stuff where those infections come up all the time?
Or are you just arguing edge cases? Saying that losing by such things 'could' be there, therefore 'could' is the same as 'it does'?
I'll buy it if infections came up as often as gouls do in AD&D.
Wait, I'm wrong because *rubbing temple* they could come up that often - therefore it is that way....
And now you're moving the goalpost to combat only
Or I resisted your attempt to move the goalposts.
Or sure, why not, the original post was totally about skill challenges.
The initial post was about how the OP thinks that challenges are being removed for the sake of making the game fun, but that doing so actually makes the game unfun. That applies to all encounter areas, not just combat.
You're showing me that you don't think you need to check your facts with the source, by just asking him. It doesn't help.
I played 4e for about 1.5 years, every week until we just got fed up. 4e got stuff right, like monster design but the only way to take someone out of a fight was to kill their stunned or prone character. Just have the baddies gang up on one guy and beat him until total death.
pathfinder gets to be too easy as well, but we have had numerous "out for the rest of the fight" occurrences that definitely put more angst into the players.
my players are now clamoring for 2e to get back to that simple elegant play that DDN is supposed to evoke. I really hope it succeeds because no one wants a watered down candy land video game where survival and "being effective" are an expectation.
if so, who cares? The OSR gaming movement has grown to such an extent that there is plenty of gaming material in case DDN disappoints. And the old D&D PDFs are releasing as well so I no longer have any angst over what the designers decide to do.
So, traps aren't in the rules? There are no rules for being KOd? No infections, not even the magical ones, have immediate effects?
'Trapped' is different from 'trap'.
So now a "trap" can't "trap" a person?
I'll bite: As a regular part of play, no.
Would you like to point out atleast a handful of WOTC modules where traps trap people and...they atleast miss the rest of the combat?And I asked you what the immediate effects were on commonly encountered infections? Seems like you turned my words into an assertion there are no effects, simply to avoid answering.
I didn't answer you about any specific infections because my 4e books are currently boxed up. But, I just now took the time to grab my 4e DMG and there are 7 diseases in the DMG, 6 of which have an immediate effect (the 7th has an immediate onset effect as well, but it triggers when you become bloodied).
Ones which are part of common play? I've played in some official WOTC stuff and...honestly, infections didn't even really come up.
So there is a bunch of WOTC stuff where those infections come up all the time?
Modules? Lol. Why would i pay for adventures (adventures that, according to some posters who have used them, are rather subpar) when I can create adventures myself? I have never used a module, and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in that, and I probably never will.
I agree with the OP.
I played 4e for about 1.5 years, every week until we just got fed up. 4e got stuff right, like monster design but the only way to take someone out of a fight was to kill their stunned or prone character. Just have the baddies gang up on one guy and beat him until total death.
pathfinder gets to be too easy as well, but we have had numerous "out for the rest of the fight" occurrences that definitely put more angst into the players.
my players are now clamoring for 2e to get back to that simple elegant play that DDN is supposed to evoke. I really hope it succeeds because no one wants a watered down candy land video game where survival and "being effective" are an expectation.
if so, who cares? The OSR gaming movement has grown to such an extent that there is plenty of gaming material in case DDN disappoints. And the old D&D PDFs are releasing as well so I no longer have any angst over what the designers decide to do.
Fortunately, DDN's mention of dials for different aspects of play leads me to believe that there will be options for both incremental and binary impairment as challenge-enhancers.
[Modules? Lol. Why would i pay for adventures (adventures that, according to some posters who have used them, are rather subpar) when I can create adventures myself? I have never used a module, and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in that, and I probably never will.
I haven't paid for a published adventure since about 1995 or so, when the Night Below mega-dungeon was released. It was, to me, the last good adventure to be released for D&D.
I don't believe that for a second.
How do you distinguish between a change that occurs "because ToF" and one that was made to make the game more enjoyable? Does every change that makes the game more enjoyable constitute ToF? Even if it actually improves the mechanics of the game? And, if not, then how do you precisely define the standard by which you judge whether a fun-increasing change is brought about by ToF or genuine improvement?
The main distinguishing characteristic is that the change for ToF is made simply for the only reason that players dislike the mechanic. Not because the mechanic is clunky or otherwise unsound from a design point of view. It's generally made because some player said "You know I hate it when I get knocked out in battle and have to wait until the end of the fight to get back up."
And the key point is that the end product of ToF doens't really produce a more enjoyable game. It's a clumsy attempt to do so, much in the same way as responding to player comments about how they hate dying in your game and giving them invincibility as an answer.
In short, if the reason you're removing something is purely becuase PCs don't like bad things happening to thier characters, then it's a ToF change.
There's certainly some mechanics, like energy drain that you can oppose from an actual game design standpoint in that it's a slow and clunky mechanic to resolve at the table. And that's fine, because there's actually a legitimate argument for it.
There's not a heck of a lot of legitimate arguments to be used for the 4E version the medusa. It's not a more tactically interesting version of petrifying gaze. It's simply a way to make petrification almost never happen because some PCs objected to having to close thier eyes when fighting a medusa. So instead you end up with this odd clunky progressive save mechanic so you can slap the nerfbat on an ability that forced PCs to fight blind. That's Tyranny of Fun.
Similarly removing lasting conditions is another issue. There's nothing mechanically problematic about having a long lasting condition, In fact, it's a lot more mechanical bookkeeping to worry about conditions that end at the end of someone's next turn like 4E is filled with. But someone decided that lasting conditions weren't fun, so instead of the 4E werewolf infecting people with lycanthropy, it just inflicts some kind of easily resistable disease effect that you heal after a few days. Because consequences weren't fun. So you know throw out all the tropes about being bitten by a werewolf making you into one, Tyranny of fun dictates it can't exist. Hell you're pushing it enough saying that a PC might be afflcited for more than 24 hours. That's as edgy and dangerous as you can possibly get in a ToF paradigm.
Removing everything you don't like doesn't necessarily make the game better.
And adding everything I like doesn't necessarily make the game better any more than removing everything I don't like...
You see how tangled this is? Pretty much this entire conversation is happening in terms defined by the speaker as they're speaking which can change at any moment to suit their position best.
And for what? What, exactly, is at stake here?
1st time was when we got ambushed at our base in our sci-fi themed campaign. During the fight, 2 of our top scientsist died, and an ancient artifact we recently recovered was destroyed. The bad guys promptly turned around and left then, because destroying the artifact was their entire reason for attacking us.
Which you can't even do in 4E, because you can't sunder objects.
Totally untrue.
Damaging objects: DMG1 pg. 65
My favorite example of the tof is the simplification of magic. Removing casting time, spell failure, and components etc. What fun?
All of those increase the fun for me. Less bookkeeping, less arbitrary nonsense, more ability to actually DO things.
The ToF in a nutshell. Thank you Lola B.
That implies that anything that makes the game fun, regardless of if it actually makes the game better, should just get the ToF label and thrown in the trash.
Its not that simple. The ToF at least as I see it has an element of group think that discriminates against the more complex or difficult mechanics. Common talking points are used to sell what we already know is subjective.
Less bookkeeping, less arbitrary nonsense, more ability to actually DO things
Lola B’s reaction was classic. I don’t see how anyone could explain why components, spell failure and casting time are fun in such few words. I would have to tell a story about players trying to substitute rat and pigeon turds for bat guano and the DM creatively rendering cheaper spell results. It would take at least a few paragraphs to explain why casting time is essential for mage duels and how much fun the duel mod was in Baldur’s Gate. I would have to go through the economics of expensive components and explain why its better than simply doing away with spells that are “OP”. When something is fun through layers of depth and complexity it doesn’t have the same simple talking points or bandwagon reaction.
4E can only do that after you drained every single healing resource the party has, and that takes forever.
Tkes a while? Maybe. Drain every hea,ling resource? Haha, no. Just drop their HP to zero and let them bleed on the floor while you take care of everyone else.
You're talking about some dude getting blown out into space, and people walking around with cyber arms.
1.Getting blown into space and nearly dying sounds like I lost.
2.Where did I mention cyber arms?
And the entire loss was a result of sucking your characters into the void of space. That just screams plot device to me, it wasn't through the base mechanics of 4E.
It was a loss in combat without me dying. I don't get what part of that you don't get.
I mean I've lost battles in 4E before too, battles where the DM makes it obvious you have to run, but it's a scripted loss where the NPC is literally unbeatable, or nearly so. Thats far different from losing in an actual combat.
Stretching. he wasn't unbeatable, I actually beat him down quite hard. The only reason he blew the window open was because it was either that or as soon as my turn came up I was going to smash his face in.
Were kind of suggesting its more of a GM created event, one where he essentially decides the NPC has this 'I win' button and uses it. That's not really winning, nor you losing.
If the rules said you had to roll on a terrain chart and regularly that chart it had being inside a space ship with the void of space outside, and it had rules for PC's or NPC's smashing the window and (now the easy part) the NPC suceeds in enacting the window smash rules, I'd agree you make a point.
Are you saying that being sucked into space thing is IN the rules as much as being paralysed by gouls is in the rules of AD&D?
Knocked out of a fight=knocked out of a fight.
Were kind of suggesting its more of a GM created event, one where he essentially decides the NPC has this 'I win' button and uses it. That's not really winning, nor you losing.
Eh, either way I failed in beating the enemy.
If the rules said you had to roll on a terrain chart and regularly that chart it had being inside a space ship with the void of space outside, and it had rules for PC's or NPC's smashing the window and (now the easy part) the NPC suceeds in enacting the window smash rules, I'd agree you make a point.
The campaign is set in space(it's a sci-fi flavored campaign). And the rule for breaking a window? An attack roll is fine.
It's nice that your GM makes that stuff up, but it doesn't happen that way for everyone else who buy the D&D books.
I dont see why you're so against this. To me it seems no different than a creative use that a player might have tried to escape. are you saying that creative uses of environments is counter to D&D?
I'm certainly saying where a gouls paralysation is actually in the AD&D text, this example of a capacity to lose without death (lets not cross subjects over to 'use of environment' too much) is not actually in the rules.
I get that some people don't discriminate between what's in the text and what they've made up "It's all D&D" they cry, and good for them.
But for people who want something actually in the text, trying to say it's all part of D&D is just forcing your play style on others.