Narrative Control Forums

Sean & Eric.

I think you guys had a really great episode, where y'all (including Rob) captured my essential dissatisfaction with DnD4.0.
I don't really see the "virtually unlimited reskinning" of powers as a "Pro" for the system. For while you can reskin the various powers, the underlying mechanics behind the powers were deliberately designed to be very similar to each other in the name of the ever elusive concept of Game Balance. This leads to such things as the Druid's wild shaping ability to virtually mean nothing, or my personal favorite, the Bard's "self-esteem" damage.

Sean, I also don't think the Wushu actually supports your assertion that it's a completely flavorful game. That you get an extra die for each adjective you add into the descriptive, while very sleek and minimalistic, is still "mechanically significant". If your Agent Smith from your matrix game only ever rolled 2 dice, which is the same number of dice as someone who merely said "I attack him", then you'd have a completely Color-only system. That "crunch" is replaced by narration (another form of crunch for the less-creative gamer) doesn't mean you're not getting a mechanically significant benefit for engaging the system as designed.

Great Post!

Good point Joe. I was describing Wushu as purely flavor, when in fact that goes pretty counter to the 4E discussion, where flavor has no mechanical impact. Flavor IS the mechanical effect.

The reason it worked so well for me was that the narration came before the dice rolls, not after. Which means, there are no misses, there are no fumbles, there's just non-stop badassery.... which is another topic all together.

Regarding the blandness of 4E. To Wizard's credit I think they put a lot of energy into trying to create an engaging world (cool power descriptions, skill challenges, lots of GM advice, awesome encounters, great setting material) that sits on top of nearly painfully moderate mechanics. And they did it for a great reason. In 3.x there was so many broken builds that story just couldn't keep up to provide a challenge, so it was just a matter of the GM trying to find some sick broken monster to oppose the sick, broken PCs. Hence the ridiculousness of the Epic levels in 3.x, where monsters were re-tooled not just to deal with 20+ level characters, but 20+ level BROKEN characters, and would wipe the walls with anything else.

So, I think they've done something cool with 4E. It's a fun tactical miniatures game with some great setting background, like Warhammer but coming from the other direction. I see the history of D&D as drifting from miniatures gaming, inadvertently inventing RPGs and then drifting back.

Sean

Sean/Fattig,

This episode wasn't for me. The druid discussion took up half the episode and felt more like it was a one sentence realization stretched on for twelve minutes. I dig your banter, within the parameters of the subject of the show, and I felt like this one went off the rails.

Maybe it's because I tried 4.0, realized it wasn't for me, and that's all I need to know about it. I'm glad jharney liked it, though.

But hey, that's my feedback. Keep making shows, I usually really love them, just felt compelled to say something about this one.

Rich Rogers

Hey Rich,

Thanks for the feedback. I tend to keep the shows pretty info packed and this was was much more of a discussion between Fattig and I. While it isn't our becoming our standard format, the next episode (which I'm editing now) is called "Inescapable" and it is also a discussion between Fattig and I about the draw to horror. You may find that it's also not to your taste. We don't focus on a single topic (like the Druid) but we do spend a lot of time (it's a long episode, 50+ min) talking about what horror means to us.

The NEXT episode after that, however, which I'm recording tonight should be pretty packed with with the discussion of niche protection and teamwork, I think it'll be more to your liking.

Sean

Hey Rich,

Some irony here. So, like I said, ep 48 may not be the one for you (in terms of content) but it is a response to your show (something that slipped by me when I was writing the last post), so who knows. Listen to the first couple minutes and see what you think.

Sean

Just some miscellaneous thoughts:
1. Early D&D I think, at some point, had rules for building your own spells. It gradually got filled with very specific powers
(feats, etc.) until it became 4E, IMHO is really a boardgame (clever, but still).

Yeah, Champs ran into that problem as well. Example. Someone has a Sword of Fire that's some cool attack they dig. Then they fight a vampire... who has a vulnerability... but not tot he power they made their sword with. WTF? Or, they want to use the sword to light a tank of gasoline on fire and do lots of explosion damage. Sweet once... but what if they want to do it over, and over, and over without buying some power accordingly. Or they give their sword to another character and then die and now some other character has this sword of fire they didn't pay CP for... it's very cool in concept but fought with snags along the way.

A big reason I love aspects. Sure the Sword of Fire is awesome... but it's a total catch as well. Every vampire wants to kill you, every thief wants to steal it, every normal guy wants you to use it on his enemy... and of course, lots of buildings want it to catch them on fire.

yea, so I think we're in agreement that
1. fewer abilities
2. abilities get trappings, special effects, whatever
3. #2 is supported by some aspect-like rule that actually adds SOME kind of crunch to your flavor of the power

This seems to make for smooth gaming.