| Post/Author/DateTime | Post |
|---|---|
| #1chikennipplzOct 11, 2009 14:14:27 |
I just wanted to throw this out there and get some input. I think it would be very beneficial if let’s say everyone knows everyone's powers in the group i.e. conditions, benefits, bonuses to others etc. Does anyone use like a cheat sheet at the table for every player that has everyone powers on it? I think it would be helpful to even have the flavor text handy so I can see what is going on and such. I think it would be very useful because in our party we have a Shaman and a Bard and they are doing their powers and usually they say I use X power and everyone gets this and that and it seems to make the encounter go just a little bit longer because 4 secs later the fighter is saying ok know what do I get? Also the Shaman says I use this and I think it would be helpful to read a flavor text personally of everyone so I can visualize what is happening. I don't think our group would want to read a flavor text every time. I was starting of getting all the powers into excel, but it turning into quite a task. So what is everyone’s input, stupid?, any other fixes and or ideas. Thanks in advance. |
| #2garner_adamOct 11, 2009 14:19:45 | I'd try to avoid the paper clutter that could occur with that. You might want to try instead having the leaders give out various colored tokens or pieces of paper that represent some bonus. Even a small strip of paper that says "+1 ac" and handing it to another player will help them remember. Especially if the leader asks for them back when they're gone. Bright and unsually colored tokens and paper work best for this. |
| #3chikennipplzOct 11, 2009 14:32:08 | we do use counters under our figures, but it seems like we need that little something extra |
| #4garner_adamOct 11, 2009 15:55:45 | Then I'd recommend asking the leaders to make a single extra copy of their most commonly used power and when they use it to benefit some one else have them pass the copy over. Try that out for a one session and then slowly add additional copies as necessary. |
| #5sallaOct 11, 2009 19:24:20 | Anything that lasts until the end of someone's turn, I can usually remember easily enough. Stuff that will last until the end of the encounter, I write down on the blank space around the 'Action Point' card on my character sheet. |
| #6koukOct 11, 2009 23:39:52 | I also go with the "Here's a card with the relevant info on it" approach. They keep it in front of them, or you can paperclip it to their character sheet even.
Worse comes to worse, you can create silly paper hats, for either yourself or the player benefitting to wear as a reminder. |
| #7guest911165327Oct 13, 2009 23:16:07 |
I am so stealing this. My group seems to have a problem with remembering bonuses and the such and paper hats will work wonders! |
| #8congzillaOct 14, 2009 8:42:20 | That is way to metagamey for me. Players learn each others strengths or weaknesses threw play just as the characters learn the same from adventuring with the party. |
| #9lofgrenOct 14, 2009 10:45:22 |
I believe you meant to say "worse comes to BRILLIANT!" |
| #10Duke5150Oct 14, 2009 13:04:31 | As a DM, I keep track of everything on scratch paper, and record everything on the laptop. The players use index cards for power cards, and they all have scratch paper too. So its easy to keep track of everything, with very little writing. |
| #11sallaOct 14, 2009 13:24:23 |
You'd probably hate me, then. I openly disclose my character's abilities to the rest of the party, in character, upon induction into the adventuring group. "How can we plan group tactics if we don't know what we can do?" |
| #12lofgrenOct 14, 2009 13:45:45 |
I'm not sure this fits the definition of metagame. Usually when I hear metagame, it refers to aspects outside the game that influences the way it is played. For example, taking feats that make you more effective against undead creatures because you know your DM really likes zombies. I think the things being discussed in this thread are not the metagame, they're just the game. |
| #13sallaOct 14, 2009 14:12:16 |
Well said. |
| #14DanTrackerOct 14, 2009 16:01:12 |
i agree with this except that it doesn't feel meta, just that getting to know your team takes some playtime together. at one table, the group knows that moving an enemy away from my druid will likely induce a charging savage rend. they look for ways to move enemies away from me so i can charge at them. my warlock uses hellish rebuke, if she gets hit then whoever was affected by hellish rebuke gets hurt again. thus, the fighter doesn't mark an enemy that i hit with hellish rebuke; i want that enemy to hit me and take the extra damage. |
| #15congzillaOct 15, 2009 8:10:09 |
I guess I should clarify a bit. I agree that what I mean is very borderline for the defenition of metagaming. A lot of the complaints that I hear about 4e is that it feels to much like a video game with the new power system (the inclusion of armor sets probably doesn't help either although I think it is a cool concept). Some players I have come accross get to know everyones powers too well to the point that every round they are telling other people what to do. A lot of how I feel about this probably just comes down to my style of play, if I wanted to play a completely tactical miniatures game I would have bought WH40k. I enjoy the story and the role play and I look at encounters as the building blocks of the dramatic action that makes up that story not a randomly injected chess game. When I am at the table I have no issue with someone saying hey help me flank this guy or lets focus on this guy, I hate to hear hey use X power on this guy so I can move him two squares and trigger Y power. When I hear that I just think "Uthar, Invoker of Kelemvor thinks you have been hitting the wineskin too hard my freind! What are these squares you speak of?" Maybe I am just a 1e / 2e gragnard but I don't feel that the way the game is played has or needs to change with the changes to the system, for me it just encourages additional roleplaying to account for the "out of character elements" ie., powers, that the new system is based on. I know some people enjoy using the new elements by name and embrace playing 4e as a changed game and I can appriciate that. When I play in LFR games I play it like 40k in a dungeon too, but for my home game you wouldn't know we weren't playing 2e until you saw someones character sheet. |
| #16DanTrackerOct 15, 2009 10:09:05 |
no, this is exactly what i feel too. i don't want to here the specifics of the tactics using terms of squares and conditions. i'd rahter hear it expressed in character, "don't worry about that enemy, i'll take him down myself," "i use words of viscious mockery and he cries a bit while he won't be able to make effective attacks for a moment [do x damage and -2 penalty to attacks till my next turn.]" as a DM, i've got to hear the numbers, but if the players get into the fluff a bit, it helps to reinforce the fact that we're playing a game. i don't think you're a gargnard! i like the table running that way as well. |
| #17lofgrenOct 15, 2009 12:19:57 |
It has absolutely nothing to do with edition. Like it or not, there is a strategy game going on here alongside the storytelling. That's the whole point of an RPG. If there were no game, we would just be telling stories. When we talk to each other referring to squares, powers, and +1 this, -1 that, and what's th DC to jump over that wall? it's just for clarity's sake. We're writing a communal story here. There's no reason the writers shouldn't communicate with equal clarity as the characters, who spend a lot more time together, train together as warriors, and have a much more clear understanding of their body's limitations. If the DM refuses to tell me how difficult it is to jump over a wall, then I get really, really annoyed. My character would have a pretty good idea of whether or not he could make the jump, and whether it was easy or a hail Mary act of crazy desperation. The only way to communicate that to me-the-player is to tell me what the DC is so that I can compare it to my skill level. Then I can get the vicarious thrill when I roll the die that is similar to the tension my character would experience if he decided to try to make the jump even if it was difficult, and I can make the same calculation in my mind that he would as to whether or not it is a worthwhile risk. Also, regardless of edition, most people do not actually improv their characters' every line. Maybe it was different back in the day, but in every group I have been people have said things like, "My character slumps in the corner and drinks an ale," without acting it out. Here and there you throw an actual line out so that people can get a feel for the character, but even then I generally see players describe their characters in the third person ("Gognak says, 'The mountains have betrayed us! It's an ambush!'") When people communicate player-to-player, that's just for the sake of the players discussing strategy. Usually they will then follow it up with more evocative descriptions of what the characters actually experience, which in my games often looks nothing like what the powers describe. When you are changing the flavor so much you really have no choice but to refer out of character to the names that the books gave the powers, because otherwise people have no idea what mechanics you are actually talking about. |
| #18congzillaOct 15, 2009 13:12:12 |
It has absolutely nothing to do with edition. Like it or not, there is a strategy game going on here alongside the storytelling. That's the whole point of an RPG. If there were no game, we would just be telling stories. When we talk to each other referring to squares, powers, and +1 this, -1 that, and what's th DC to jump over that wall? it's just for clarity's sake. We're writing a communal story here. There's no reason the writers shouldn't communicate with equal clarity as the characters, who spend a lot more time together, train together as warriors, and have a much more clear understanding of their body's limitations. I highly dissagree with the point in bold. The rules are there to resolve actions not because D&D is a strategy game. And strategy is deffenitly not the point of rpgs. As to some of your other points, obviously players constantly need to know all sorts of out of game things like DCs in order to choose actions for the character. I also am fully aware sutuational modifiers need to be verbalized such as 'Your at a -1 to hit the guard.' You had to do all those things in every addition. My main issue is with players who memorize every class, race, and monster in the game and use that knowledge at the table. What I hate even more is players who use they're knowledge of another players class to tell them what to do. That is metagaming imo. It is just a coincidence I guess that those types of players will always be the first to describe everything in terms of powers and squares. I play with a power gamer in my home game but he is also probably our best roleplayer too, because he leaves what his character wouldn't know at the door. |
| #19congzillaOct 15, 2009 13:15:07 | We also use the Alea tools in our game so a lot of effects do not need to be verbalized as much so that does help a lot. |
| #20lofgrenOct 15, 2009 14:09:46 |
All I'm saying is that if you have an RPG, then there must be some element of strategy going on. This is true regardless of edition and it's true of every RPG I've ever played. If there is no element of strategy, then you do not have an RPG. If we were discussing the difference between RPGs and Monopoly then I would say that storytelling is the point of RPGs, because that is what distinguishes them from other games. The point of RPGs is to combine the two pasttimes - gaming and storytelling. If all you need is a mechanic to resolve actions, then we could just play rock-paper-scissors. As soon as there is an opportunity to customize your character's abilities against the challenges that will be presented for him, there is an element of strategy whether you acknowledge it or not. As to some of your other points, obviously players constantly need to know all sorts of out of game things like DCs in order to choose actions for the character. I also am fully aware sutuational modifiers need to be verbalized such as 'Your at a -1 to hit the guard.' You had to do all those things in every addition. My main issue is with players who memorize every class, race, and monster in the game and use that knowledge at the table. What I hate even more is players who use they're knowledge of another players class to tell them what to do. That is metagaming imo. It is just a coincidence I guess that those types of players will always be the first to describe everything in terms of powers and squares. I don't think I agree that "those types" of players are the same. If somebody asks me how far away the monster is because he can't see the board, I say "five squares." If somebody asks me if I can move a monster into position so we can flank him, I say, "Well, I have Thorn Strike so I can pull him one square if you can get me close enough." At the same time I am extremely touchy about other players telling me what my character should do. Strategizing is one thing. Advising is another. Appointing yourself Supreme Commander and treating me like a footsoldier is unacceptable behavior at the gaming table, and it doesn't matter whether you behave that way using in-world terminology or game terminology. It's the behavior that is rude is disrespectful, not the specific words. I play with a power gamer in my home game but he is also probably our best roleplayer too, because he leaves what his character wouldn't know at the door. I just can't abide by that style of play. It seems silly to me. I also firmly believe it is impossible. I see the players as writers of the story and directors of the action, but they are also the actors. It would be silly to say that actors, directors, and writers should not discuss scenes, vocabularly, and sentence structure of their characters' lines, because those are the basic building blocks of storytelling in their medium. DCs, attack modifiers, squares, and powers are the basic building blocks of the DnD medium and I don't see any value in obscuring that. Discussing these things is no different from discussing our character's motives, psychology, and story arc. These are things the character would not understand, not with the level of clarity and awareness that the player does, but if we don't discuss them with the rest of the group you end up with unfulfilling stories. If two players agree beforehand that they want their characters to have a fight and make up, then when they design the scene they can end up with probing dialogue that reveals hints of the characters' true feelings for each other and lays bare their personalities. If you don't discuss it beforehand then you are more likely to end up with a confusing waste of "screentime" (i.e. the time that everybody else sitting at the table could have used to do something fun), and maybe even hurt feelings if one of the players does not pick up on what exactly you are trying to accomplish with your character and takes it personally. In the same way, if you and another player discuss stratey before your turns, you can end up with a very satisfying action sequence that would have a place in any movie. If you don't, you are more likely to end up with a bunch of disconnected turns where each character just does his own thing, which feels much more gamey to me since, storywise, all of these actions are taking place within split seconds of each other. |
| #21cloudwrathOct 16, 2009 13:25:49 | My session include a battle mat, miniatures, colored dry erase markers, and a dry erase board. We have made a legend consisting of color combinations. On the dry erase board we have all combatants and then as they gain and lose effects we mark them on the board with a few pen strokes. Writing the legend down and learning it is the toughest part, but everyone can see it and it really helps speed things along. |