D&D 3E vs. 4E: An Essay

[beejazz]

On diplomacy I specified the "by DCs" bit for a reason. Outside the -10 for full round bit, timing is nebulous as you say it is. The purpose of using diplomacy was mainly as an example of what could happen if you're thoughtless about this kind of thing. Personally, I really like bluff's 3.5 implementation as a model of social skills done relatively well.

[Steerpike]

It also has some good utility in Pathfinder combat (Intimidate as well) with the Feint action, perfect for Rogues.  However, this is getting off-topic...

Xeviat, do you have more thoughts on ways you think the two editions could be spliced?

[Elemental_Elf]

To be fair, 3.x did quite a good job of eliminating that aspect of the game when compared to 1st and 2nd editions (where minions and cohorts where necessary and classes eventually leveled up to the point where they earned Wizard Towers, Castles, Thieves Guilds and etc.).

I definitely agree.  If I'd been designing 4th edition, these are the kind of things I'd have been exploring more - adding tools to further customize and individualize and expand and richen and deepen a group's game.  It felt like, in order to create a balanced combat game, 4th edition did the opposite - took things away.

The thing is, adding in those sorts of rules would annoy those people who wanted a more streamlined edition.  You can't please everyone - there is no perfect edition, no perfect balance.

3rd edition took out one of my favorite aspects of being a Paladin - the quest to obtain your mount. In 2nd edition, your mount didn't simply manifest because you hit a certain level. Oh no, you actually had to go on a righteous quest to find and acquire your mount (often this meant fighting a Black Knight in one on one combat).

Some people would decry the fact that you *have* to go on a quest to gain access to an ability as the game imposing its vision on the players but, I've never seen it that way. To me, those kinds of quests make a class (and the world) feel real and exciting.

When WoW first released, it had a lot these RPG hold overs baked into the game.  As time went on, most of those really cool RPG aspects (like having to find different class/profession trainers, finding weapon masters to train you in a new weapon, leveling up your ability with a new weapon, feeding your pet, going on quests to learn new abilities/get class-specific gear, actually having to travel around the world to find transportation across the seas, being given directions in an in-world sense (rather than an exact dot on a map) , doing quests to get access to dungeons, etc.) have been dropped in the name of "new players" and "streamlining." That definitely sounds eerily similar to what the designers were talking about in the lead up to 4E.

They often say that Role Playing Game culture is like a wobbly pendulum that constantly swings between the mentalities of Simmulationism (characters living in a world), Narrativism (protagonists in a story)  and Gamism (people playing a game). Every new edition attempts to swing the pendulum away from where it was and towards a different combination of the three. 4E was Gamist (heavily codified rules, game balance, player empowerment) while at the same time Narrativist (the focus was squarely on adventuring protagonists moving through a story-driven plot). 3.x/P was Simmulationist (peripheral skills, close integration of fluff and crunch, unification of monster-character design) and Gamist (codified rules, encounter balance, player empowerment). 2E was Narrativist (the focus was always on the story, classes had story driven abilities) and Simmulationist (weapon and non-weapon proficiencies, random encounter tables). 1E was a big mess but definitely Simmulationist (focus on single characters interacting with a pseudo-medieval world) at its heart with a bit of Gamism (left over influence from wargaming).

If we back track, the 1E to 2E switch lopped off Gamism and emphasized Narrativism. The switch from 2nd to 3rd dropped the Narrativism and became more Gamist. 3E to 4E dropped the Simmulationism and utilized Narativism. Based on this, I think we will see 5E emphasize Simmulationism and Narrativism (most especially since the Gamist elements from 4E were at the heart of many people's problems with the edition).

Circling back to the issue at hand, it really felt like the time period starting around 2006 there was a meta shift in our collective culture away from Simmulationism and towards Gamism. Oblivion eliminated most of the Simmulationist elements from Morrowind by emphasizing balance (I remember one designer even decried the fact that after level 20 or so in Morrowind, many of the challenges in the game became too easy). At the same time WoW was sloughing off a great many of its Simmulationist concepts and D&D was no different (the early design of D&D began in 2006/7).

I don't play enough mainstream video games these days to know where the pendulum currently lies but if Skyrim is any indication, there's at least a recognition that some Simmulationism is good (after all, it re-introduced crafting and didn't make all the enemies level appropriate at all times).

To me, skill challenges as presented in the books are pretty boring, doubly so when the DM tells you exactly which skills you can use and makes every PC roll a check. Those are the worst kind of challenges and, sadly, the variety I think many have been involved in.

I think sparkletwist's objection to skill challenges is mostly mathematical?

I like your examples a lot, but I don't really understand what skill challenges add.  In a 3.X game, all the different characters can do all of the different things you described as individual skill checks.  Some are going to succeed, some fail, and the consequences will be altered depending on their individual results.  What is gained by grouping it all together into a skill challenge, where if you lose a certain number of the rolls you lose it all?  It just feels like a minigame from a video game - artificial and immersion-breaking.  Skill checks worked just fine, especially when there were more than the barebones of skills.

That's partially why I am always shocked when I read about people disliking Skill Challenges. From my perspective, I was doing stuff like my examples long before 4E and Star Wars Saga released the rules for Skill Challenges. It just seemed like a natural part of the game, even if it was unstated.

What I like most about skill challenges is that it gives the challenge a basic framework with a more regimented DC. Not that I always stick to a single DC (especially if PCs are doing really strange or difficult things) but I like having the basic guideline as a reference point.

The idea of the collective failure has to be interpreted through the lens of what actually failed.

Take my example with the desert. Let's say the Endurance Check, the Nature Check (to find edible animals) and the Athletics checks all come up failures. The Challenge is failed. What do those failures tell me about the group's failure? First off the Fighter using Endurance likely collapsed from heat stroke, the Druid who tried to find game come up empty handed and the Ranger who tried to find a better path wound up getting lost. So now the group is in a terrible situation as everyone is slowly starving, one of their fellows is completely lost and must be found and another compatriot has feinted. None of that sounds like a good situation. What if the character using Perception to keep an eye out for dangerous creatures and Bandits wound up failing? Well, obviously, some kind of enemy would come rushing in.

As with everything, Skill Challenges are not always needed but it is nice to have the rules available for when they fit the narrative (like Montage Scenes).  

One sided slaughters are a feature and not a bug of older editions. The whole point is that the party is supposed to do everything in their power to self-select their challenges and sometimes deliberately bypass the logic of the fight. Sometimes they're supposed to sit on the mummy's sarcophagus, drill holes in the lid, and find a way to burn it to death instead of letting it out to fight. It's part of the old survival horror bit.

This is what I was trying to get at with my "I don't really care about scaling" rant.  3rd edition was bad enough about this, but 4th edition elevates this to a fine art.  Why does the game need such a finely calibrated assumed-default set of challenges, treasure, power, etc?  Why does there need to be such a ridigly defined assumed arc to progression?  If this is what player empowerment means - where players are expecting a certain challenge level, getting annoyed if they can't kill everything they encounter, and whining that they didn't get the +1 Wounding Short Sword they put on their wish-list - I want none of it.

I actually used the Wish List in several campaigns over the last few years and believe me you it is as awful as you imagine. The worst part about it is that players somehow expect a chance for their wishlisted items to drop from even the least suited monsters (like wanting a Giant-Sized +2 Flaming Axe Ultimate Compensation to be dropped by a random Wolf the characters encounter in a forest). Many players actually get huffy when, after a few fights, an item from their wishlist doesn't magically manifest. I've heard tales from other DM's who were actually asked "aren't you going to roll a percentile die to see if my item drops?"

Yeah...

To be dead honest, we have video games to blame for this "always fighting level appropriate enemies and obtaining level appropriate gear at key stages during character advancement."

I find that haughty sense of entitlement so bewildering. It all reeks of artificiality, which really takes me right out of the game.

[Xeviat]

It also has some good utility in Pathfinder combat (Intimidate as well) with the Feint action, perfect for Rogues.  However, this is getting off-topic...

Xeviat, do you have more thoughts on ways you think the two editions could be spliced?

My simplest idea for splicing the editions would be to take the entirety of 3E and adjust its scaling:

1) Have attack bonus and saving throw bonuses all scale at +1/2 per level. +1 BAB classes would need to get something in return for what they're losing; I think a damage bonus would work well. This scale follows how spell saves scale (for a caster's highest level spells), so the difference between equal level characters doesn't grow in scope as the game progresses.

2) I would reconsider skills and look into turning it into a proficiency system, more like 4E's skills. At first level, characters would gain a number of proficiencies; these could be skills, weapons, armor ... creating a balance between the classes. As characters gain levels, they'd get additional proficiencies, which could also be used for feat-like things like skill focuses. I'm really not sure how to deal with people's dislike of untrained skills getting better as people level-up; if people are expected to make a variety of skill checks, and not always of their choosing, then they need to scale (otherwise you might as well not make the check past 5th level or so). Another way to fix the issue would be to adjust skills to never be used defensively. Skills roll against Saves when used against a person; bluff vs. will, for instance. Stealth/Hide/Move Silently would be tough (I've always wanted an Awareness defense ...).

3) Hammer down the item progression. Yes, it means you'll "have to" upgrade your items. You have to upgrade your items already, the system just doesn't tell you when you should. Then, I'd provide guidelines on what to do with your group if they're low on items, or high on items (if standard items exist for +to hit/damage (or save DCs), AC, Saves, and DR/Energy resistance, then a lack or glut of items might equate to a level adjustment).

4) Look really close at the offensive potential of core spellcasters. A 20th level Wizard is going to have 17 to 23 spells that deal 20dX damage; [note=Damage]Why am I focusing on damage so much? The answer is simple really; it's all a fighter can do in combat. As I want characters to be balanced in combat, based around my years of experience with players, then the character's damage potential needs to be reasonably balanced. Sure, a wizard can deal more damage than a fighter, as the fighter's defenses are better and the wizard will need to sacrifice some of their offense to shore up their defenses. My point is that these combat actions (offensive, defensive, mobility) can be compared to each other.

I won't touch out of combat ritualesque spells.[/note]3E's standard day was 4 encounters (just like 4E), so that means around 5 spells at full power per fight (not to mention the piles of low level spells which can deal damage, or more potently can be used for buffs and other utility effects). 100d6 damage is an average of 350; if I'm generous and give their targets a 50% save rate, that's still 262 damage in a day. I'm going somewhere with this. A 20th level fighter would need to have a +7 Con mod to have that much HP; +3 could come from a +6 Con item, then with a starting +2 mod they only need to get 5 Wishes or read a +5 Manual of Gainful Exercise ... that's not entirely out of the question, I suppose. Can a fighter deal that much damage, even to a single target, with a full-attack action? I'm not sure.

5) Explore switching daily spells to encounter spells. This can be done very easy with my old 3E MP system; just cut MP by 1/4th and have it recover with a solid minute of rest (or 10 minutes, or an hour ... depends on what pace you want). Out of combat spells can still cost MP, you just tend to regenerate it after. Spell preparation would still limit what a caster can do, but I'm still worried about the whole "welp, guys, I don't have the right spell, lets wait till tomorrow" issue that rituals did a lot to counter. sparkletwist shows that some people really didn't like rituals, no matter what I do to them.

Trying to work off the 4E chassis seems like it would be more difficult. I've figured out a way to have the at-will/encounter/daily system and the 1-9th level spell system; At first level, your cantrips are at-will and your 1st level spells are encounter. As you gain new spell levels, they're daily at first. At certain levels, your daily slots upgrade to encounter slots. I'm currently looking at rewriting the half-caster classes (bard, paladin, ranger) to use spells as their dailies (paladin and ranger only had 1-4th level spells, after all); I got this idea from the way the Bladesinger alt-Wizard was handled. I'm also looking into the possibility of changing dailies from using their own slots to using Action Points, and then work out a dynamic system for granting APs to help set-piece battles have more dynamics; this would allow for Fighters to not have true dailies, as they'd just use their APs for extra attacks.

The more I work, though, the more I end up leaning towards building my own system off 4E's skeleton.

As for my whole point for the thread, I was analyzing the things I liked about 3E more than 4E, while highlighting that those issues felt superficial to me. I've only been defending 4E as hard as I have been against sparkletwist because I don't see most of her issues as issues for me. I can see them, and I can see why someone wouldn't like them, but some of them seem like splitting hairs to me. The lack of prices on mundane goods is such a small thing that it could really just be handwaved to a few silver for most things; Players are dealing with so much money, even at first level, that mundane goods aren't an issue past level 1. The names of monster powers seem like a minor detail to me; players don't even see those names.

I think 4E is an amazing system that has some math errors that irritate me so much that I have a hard time running it anymore; simply giving out the 5 tax feats for free and reducing the number of total feats by 5 feels so inorganic to me. None of my solutions are organic enough to pass muster, so it's been a year since my group came to a 4E game (partly because one of the players is a vehement opponent of 4E, whose arguments feel self-contradictory to me, and partly because of busy adult lives). But as good of a system I think 4E is, something did feel different to me. The book was boring to read, as I had to read through a list of powers to get an idea of what the character was like (in 3E, even the cleric, sorcerer, and wizard told me more about what they were) Part of it could have been that I was 18 when I started playing 3E, so I look back at it with rose-colored glasses.

[Steerpike]

4E dropped the Simmulationism and utilized Narativism

Utilizing the GNS framework, I don't think 4E is very Narrativist at all.  When I look at 4E's rules, I don't see a game designed to facilitate telling a story, as I do when I look at Burning Wheel or FATE or even Risus.  There are very few narrative mechanics, and the form of player empowerment has nothing to do with storytelling.  What I do see is a game about fighting (rather the opposite of a game about stories, about narratives).  Not adventuring, not even dungeon-delving, fighting.  If I had to pick a pole that 4E swings to, I'd say it's Gameism.  It doesn't seem to have much interest in representing an immersive, believable world or in telling a rich story; I'm sure a skilled DM could do both while running 4E, but the system would give him or her no help.

Like take Burning Wheel.  Now that's a Narrativist system.  Character stats are built around background, beliefs, instincts, and traits (adjectives describing the character) - around a character's personality.  There are emotional attributes for different races.  Rules like Let it Ride and Say Yes encourage a seamless story in which the players take the part of co-narrators.  Conflict mechanics are centered on things like intent and stakes (the more personal and story-driven, the better).  You gain experience from following your beliefs.  The whole thing is set up to favour organic story advancement rather than a linear plot, to discourage railroading and encourage player participation.  I can't think of a single mechanic 4E possesses that really works along these lines.

1) Have attack bonus and saving throw bonuses all scale at +1/2 per level. +1 BAB classes would need to get something in return for what they're losing; I think a damage bonus would work well. This scale follows how spell saves scale (for a caster's highest level spells), so the difference between equal level characters doesn't grow in scope as the game progresses.

I think this could work pretty well, although the idea that a 10th level Wizard and a 10th level Fighter have an equal chance to hit feels odd to me.  Possibly this comes from my fencing experience - in fencing, the whole goal is to hit the peson, obviously, and a skilled fencer is going to be much better at that.  But I can see the argument - HP is abstract, after all, and the Wizard's lower damage would represent a lack of accuracy.  So I think I could get behind this - or, at least, as a player, it wouldn't annoy me very much.

2) I would reconsider skills and look into turning it into a proficiency system, more like 4E's skills. At first level, characters would gain a number of proficiencies; these could be skills, weapons, armor ... creating a balance between the classes. As characters gain levels, they'd get additional proficiencies, which could also be used for feat-like things like skill focuses. I'm really not sure how to deal with people's dislike of untrained skills getting better as people level-up; if people are expected to make a variety of skill checks, and not always of their choosing, then they need to scale (otherwise you might as well not make the check past 5th level or so). Another way to fix the issue would be to adjust skills to never be used defensively. Skills roll against Saves when used against a person; bluff vs. will, for instance. Stealth/Hide/Move Silently would be tough (I've always wanted an Awareness defense ...).

I don't like this at all if it's actually a strict proficient/non-proficient system.  Take two Rogues: a first level Rogue and a 20th level Rogue.  In a strict proficiency system, where you are either proficient or non-proficient, those two are equally good at being stealthy or picking locks.  That really doesn't make much sense; in my experience, 3.X Rogue players are more excited about getting skill bonuses than combat bonuses.  AD&D got around this by making Thieving a kind of clumsy minigame (Hide in Shadows, Pickpocket, etc).  I suppose, though, that you'd probably be drawing more from 4E and having it so that skills did scale with your level (the +1/2 your level thing).  I would still probably prefer Pathfinder's skill system (max ranks = your level, anyone can take any skill, class skills provide a one-time +3 bonus), but I could live with it if there were plenty of skills/proficiencies on the list.

It'd be interesting to do a d20 hack that went the opposite direction from 4E and emphasized Skills instead of Feats.  So instead of even having a Base Attack Bonus or Saving Throws or Initiative feats or whatever, you just had Combat (Longsword), a Willpower skill, an Initiative skill, etc.  Hardly original (plenty of games have done this) but still... anyway, probably wouldn't be your bag.

3) Hammer down the item progression. Yes, it means you'll "have to" upgrade your items. You have to upgrade your items already, the system just doesn't tell you when you should. Then, I'd provide guidelines on what to do with your group if they're low on items, or high on items (if standard items exist for +to hit/damage (or save DCs), AC, Saves, and DR/Energy resistance, then a lack or glut of items might equate to a level adjustment).

I don't see why nerfing monster defence or whatnot isn't as acceptable a form of scaling, but OK, this makes sense.  It kills the sense of wonder from magic items a bit and feels very mechanical and vide-gamey, but a good DM might be able to imbue the process with a more fantastic feel.

4) Look really close at the offensive potential of core spellcasters. A 20th level Wizard is going to have 17 to 23 spells that deal 20dX damage; 3E's standard day was 4 encounters (just like 4E), so that means around 5 spells at full power per fight (not to mention the piles of low level spells which can deal damage, or more potently can be used for buffs and other utility effects). 100d6 damage is an average of 350; if I'm generous and give their targets a 50% save rate, that's still 262 damage in a day. I'm going somewhere with this. A 20th level fighter would need to have a +7 Con mod to have that much HP; +3 could come from a +6 Con item, then with a starting +2 mod they only need to get 5 Wishes or read a +5 Manual of Gainful Exercise ... that's not entirely out of the question, I suppose. Can a fighter deal that much damage, even to a single target, with a full-attack action? I'm not sure.

I think this would be vital, and absolutely necessary, to create anything close to a balanced 3.X.  Pathfinder helps this but by no means does it eliminate the problem.

5) Explore switching daily spells to encounter spells. This can be done very easy with my old 3E MP system; just cut MP by 1/4th and have it recover with a solid minute of rest (or 10 minutes, or an hour ... depends on what pace you want). Out of combat spells can still cost MP, you just tend to regenerate it after. Spell preparation would still limit what a caster can do, but I'm still worried about the whole "welp, guys, I don't have the right spell, lets wait till tomorrow" issue that rituals did a lot to counter. sparkletwist shows that some people really didn't like rituals, no matter what I do to them.

An easy fix, and I'm fine with this.  You might want to have a look at the Recharge Magic Variant for 3.X to see one alternative way to handle this.

Why am I focusing on damage so much? The answer is simple really; it's all a fighter can do in combat.

This is not quite true.  The fighter's job is also to take hits, to tank - or, really, to deflect hits with his high armour and shield.  His utility isn't just in dishing out damage, it's in keeping the Trolls away from the more fragile Wizard or drawing the Kobolds' fire from the Sorcerer while those classes get ready to use their killer spells.  I wonder, also, if taking and receiving hits is all the fighter should do, but maybe that's a discussion for another time.

Part of it could have been that I was 18 when I started playing 3E, so I look back at it with rose-colored glasses.

I don't think this is it - I've been playing for about 12 years now, and I've recently had good reactions to plenty of game systems as well as bad ones.

The more I work, though, the more I end up leaning towards building my own system off 4E's skeleton.

I think this sounds like it's the best course of action for you.

For my 2cp, here are some things I think could improve 4E - or, rather, things that a system based on 4E could do that 4E itself doesn't.  You almost certainly won't agree with all of these things, and that's OK, it's just a list of ideas.

1) Remove healing surges and consider removing or restructuring martial encounter powers, as these features are immersion-breaking and artificial, and exemplify the cartoonish, video-game feel that simulationist types loathe.  Consider something like Iron Heroes' token system or the like as alternative means of fueling martial powers.

2) Expand the skill system beyond a meagre 17 skills.  Remove skill challenges.  Ensure that players who want to build skill-based characters with utility outside of combat, whose non-combat skills balance their decreased combat utility, have a chance to do so.  Make sure that skills improve over time.  This helps to flesh out the non-combat rules and ensures that the game is more than a tactical gridmap wargame with a bit of plot sketched between encounters. Remember that skills like picking locks, finding and detecting traps, being able to negotiate, being sneaky, discovering ancient secrets, gathering information, getting along in the wilderness etc are as if not more important as fighting is to many roleplaying games, and as such should be as if not more central to the mechanics of the game.  My group has plenty of sessions where there was minimal combat if any, but I doubt we've ever gone a session (or even more than about 10 minutes) without making skill checks.

3) Deal with the feat tax issue - for those bothered by this kind of thing - not by giving out feats or fiddling with character stats but by looking closely at monster design.  Lower monster Defences, attack bonuses, and the like accordingly so that feat tax need not be an issue.  Rigging monsters so that they're built on the same chassis as players could actually help this problem hugely, as it would ensure that monster stats are scaling at the same level as players'.

4) Likewise, tinker with monsters so that stat-boosting magic items aren't necessary to keep up with them.  Cull the bulk of magic items that simply provide numeric bonuses (+1 to saves or deflection or attack or whatever) because those are boring, annoying, and divest other magic items of their feel of wonder.  Stress items that have unique magical abilities or weapons that do unusual things, like harm creatures of only a certain type or return to your hand after thrown and whatnot.  This invests magic items with their proper gravitas.  Magical weapons could still be powerul, but perhaps more contextually.  Characters should not go shopping at Ye Olde Magicke Shoppe and load up on +2 Rings of Protection and +1 Arrows (admittedly mine sometimes do this, but on the other hand their home-base is Sigil, not your standard D&D medieval village).

5) Add back in the full Alignment spectrum.

6) Add in multi-classing options if possible.  If this leads to balance issues, where a multi-classed character is slightly less powerful than a single-classed character, realize that versatility helps to mitigate this disparity.

[beejazz]

If we're talking core math, best case scenario for a new-school game has characters of the same level within about a ten point range*. In my game, I just wrote it so abilities go from +0 to +5 (and there's no stat/mod split) and skill training gives you a +5. Same sort of logic goes for skills, attack skills, saves, etc. As long as the progression has the same slope after that, the gap won't widen or shrink much. I'd go for a steeper slope and fewer levels/slower advancement to save on your work load.

*This applies most to things like saves (you can't choose not to use them) and less to things like magic (it's entirely okay for a character to have 0) but you can apply the same system across the board and just use trained/untrained to say who can do what sometimes.

[sparkletwist]

Hammer down the item progression. Yes, it means you'll "have to" upgrade your items. You have to upgrade your items already, the system just doesn't tell you when you should.

You know, if this is your thing, I think the DMG2 had some decent ideas here with its "alternative rewards" system and you can actually get around the objections that people like Steerpike or me have to this whole mechanic. In the DMG2 version they tried to shoehorn it a little too much into the expected 4e item upgrade treadmill and kind of shot it in the foot by not allowing them to outright grant enchantment bonuses, but I think the idea is solid and worth importing more comprehensively: instead of throwing away your "generic +1 sword" for a "generic +2 sword" or something video gamey like that, your unique and legendary +1 weapon with tons of backstory gets a blessing from a god that makes it a +2 weapon... and you can keep on using it! So, it lets characters keep their unique and wondrous magic items throughout the campaign while still staying on the power curve.

A 20th level Wizard is going to have 17 to 23 spells that deal 20dX damage

A 20th level Wizard is probably not going to be using many "high level blasts." I mean, seriously, you have dominate monster and wail of the banshee. You can just make guys be your slaves or flat out drop dead, so why are you worrying about damage at all? If you're using a higher level slot for a blast, it's probably going to be because it's quickened, not because you're casting polar ray. (This d6-per-level-damage stuff was good at level 1, which is why shocking grasp is a level 1 spell. We can do much, much better at level 20)

sparkletwist shows that some people really didn't like rituals, no matter what I do to them.

I don't like 4th edition's rituals for specific reasons, not just "because they're rituals." I don't like them because they take too much time and cost too much money. If you made them more like 3e spells, i.e., not take so long or cost so much money, then I would like them.

[Steerpike]

Yeah, I liked at least the idea of Rituals because they seemed to go against the grain of so much of 4E seemed to be about i.e. mechanics, fights, damage-dealing, balance obssession, powergaming as the assumed default state of play, etc.  Whereas most magic in 4E feels incredibly bland - "ooh, a slightly differently coloured power blast that creates a ball/ray/burst of ice/fire/acid/electricty/light/force and deals damage to the monsters, I am so stricken with awe and wonder I just wet myself" - Rituals held the potential to feel like actual magic, conjuring images of goat's heads and weird invocations in forbidden tongues not meant to be spoken by mortal mouths and meeting in a circle of stones at midnight after bathing in the blood of murderers, eating a live spider, and flagellating yourself with a whip made from the hair of virgin halflings.  Or whatever.  I don't really think, in practice, that's how Rituals played out, but I liked the idea of ceremonial magic being a big deal, as opposed to 1/encounter debuffs, uninspired utility spells (oh, I can fly now?  and turn invisible?  holy crap the designers really pulled out the stops on these spells, guys!) and the other boring, homogenous junk the regular spell-lists were just packed with.

[Elemental_Elf]

Yeah, I liked at least the idea of Rituals because they seemed to go against the grain of so much of 4E seemed to be about i.e. mechanics, fights, damage-dealing, balance obssession, powergaming as the assumed default state of play, etc.  Whereas most magic in 4E feels incredibly bland - "ooh, a slightly differently coloured power blast that creates a ball/ray/burst of ice/fire/acid/electricty/light/force and deals damage to the monsters, I am so stricken with awe and wonder I just wet myself" - Rituals held the potential to feel like actual magic, conjuring images of goat's heads and weird invocations in forbidden tongues not meant to be spoken by mortal mouths and meeting in a circle of stones at midnight after bathing in the blood of murderers, eating a live spider, and flagellating yourself with a whip made from the hair of virgin halflings.  Or whatever.  I don't really think, in practice, that's how Rituals played out, but I liked the idea of ceremonial magic being a big deal, as opposed to 1/encounter debuffs, uninspired utility spells (oh, I can fly now?  and turn invisible?  holy crap the designers really pulled out the stops on these spells, guys!) and the other boring, homogenous junk the regular spell-lists were just packed with.

This so much. WotC needed to tinker with the idea more fully to find what worked. Sadly, the metadata from the Character Creator probably told them putting resources into Rituals was a fool's errand. I always thought it would be cool if some of the darker rituals worked more like Incantations from 3.5's Unearthed Arcana.

[Elemental_Elf]

4E dropped the Simmulationism and utilized Narativism

Utilizing the GNS framework, I don't think 4E is very Narrativist at all.  When I look at 4E's rules, I don't see a game designed to facilitate telling a story, as I do when I look at Burning Wheel or FATE or even Risus.  There are very few narrative mechanics, and the form of player empowerment has nothing to do with storytelling.  What I do see is a game about fighting (rather the opposite of a game about stories, about narratives).  Not adventuring, not even dungeon-delving, fighting.  If I had to pick a pole that 4E swings to, I'd say it's Gameism.  It doesn't seem to have much interest in representing an immersive, believable world or in telling a rich story; I'm sure a skilled DM could do both while running 4E, but the system would give him or her no help.

But look at how much of the game is left to the DM to decide. They don't tell you how far a horse can go in a day, that you can buy flour, that your fire spells can light combustibles, how you can use your powers out of combat or the lack of rules for peripheral skills (crafting, profession, performance), etc. The game leaves all that information up to DM fiat, who judiciously adjudicates such issues in terms of his story. It's like the old Straczynski quote, "Traveling at the Speed of Plot." Everything that is not about a band of Adventurers doing heroic things in a Dungeon is left intentionally vague.

Hammer down the item progression. Yes, it means you'll "have to" upgrade your items. You have to upgrade your items already, the system just doesn't tell you when you should.

You know, if this is your thing, I think the DMG2 had some decent ideas here with its "alternative rewards" system and you can actually get around the objections that people like Steerpike or me have to this whole mechanic. In the DMG2 version they tried to shoehorn it a little too much into the expected 4e item upgrade treadmill and kind of shot it in the foot by not allowing them to outright grant enchantment bonuses, but I think the idea is solid and worth importing more comprehensively: instead of throwing away your "generic +1 sword" for a "generic +2 sword" or something video gamey like that, your unique and legendary +1 weapon with tons of backstory gets a blessing from a god that makes it a +2 weapon... and you can keep on using it! So, it lets characters keep their unique and wondrous magic items throughout the campaign while still staying on the power curve.

D&D Next has a great little PDF for putting some flavor on top of what would otherwise be a bland +1 Weapon. I just made a new weapon. It is an Abyssal Dagger whose blade is black metal and its hilt is crafted from the horns of lesser demons. The owner of the blade suffers nightmares every night but never remembers the substance of the dreams upon waking. The Dagger is Unbreakable by normal means. When the blade strikes a foe, the bearer hears a fragment of a song sung in Abyssal; if the lyrics were ever deciphered, they would reveal a secret [i.e. plot hook].

sparkletwist shows that some people really didn't like rituals, no matter what I do to them.

I don't like 4th edition's rituals for specific reasons, not just "because they're rituals." I don't like them because they take too much time and cost too much money. If you made them more like 3e spells, i.e., not take so long or cost so much money, then I would like them.

Rituals are stupid expensive and they were never pushed to their logical extreme because no one bothered with them (due to their initial cost). I really wish WotC had greatly reduced the cost of rituals, especially the lower levels ones. I have played in tons of 4E campaigns and never saw a ritual cast once. I only see them cast in my 4E games because I hand them out like candy.

[Steerpike]

But look at how much of the game is left to the DM to decide. They don't tell you how far a horse can go in a day, that you can buy flour, that your fire spells can light combustibles, how you can use your powers out of combat or the lack of rules for peripheral skills (crafting, profession, performance), etc. The game leaves all that information up to DM fiat, who judiciously adjudicates such issues in terms of his story. It's like the old Straczynski quote, "Traveling at the Speed of Plot." Everything that is not about a band of Adventurers doing heroic things in a Dungeon is left intentionally vague.

Not providing rules for things and leaving things intentionally vague does not equate to narrativism.  And DM fiat is kind of the opposite of narratvisim as well, in a sense  Generally speaking, narratvism isn't really about the DM's story, it's about creating a story together, as a group, encouraging player-participation in the story.  The mechanics of 4E do not put the story at the center.  They do not encourage player-participation in the construction of narrative.  They do not foreground character back-stories, personality, or beliefs.  They do not provide a means for the players to influence the story beyond the actions of their characters.  They put combat at the center.

Narrativist systems use the rules of the game to create and encourage storyelling.  4E does not do this.  If having to come up with how much flour costs on my own time is meant to be a selling point, it's a pretty weak one.

Now I'm not saying a 4E campaign can't have a great story if the DM and the players put the effort in to make one, but this doesn't make it a narrativist system, a system which goes out of its way to priviledge the narrative over other concerns (like, you know, fighting and stuff).

For the record, when I play D&D I'm not looking for a narrativist experience, and I'd be somewhat ambivalent about adding serious "narrativist" mechanics into D&D, at least unless they were purely optional (which can be a bit inelegant).  But let's not kid ourselves that 4E stands up there with Nobilis or Amber Diceless or something.

D&D Next has a great little PDF for putting some flavor on top of what would otherwise be a bland +1 Weapon. I just made a new weapon. It is an Abyssal Dagger whose blade is black metal and its hilt is crafted from the horns of lesser demons. The owner of the blade suffers nightmares every night but never remembers the substance of the dreams upon waking. The Dagger is Unbreakable by normal means. When the blade strikes a foe, the bearer hears a fragment of a song sung in Abyssal; if the lyrics were ever deciphered, they would reveal a secret [i.e. plot hook].

Definitely a step in the right direction.  Ideally speaking, I think mechanics and fluff should converge more than this, but I commend the effort.

[Elemental_Elf]

But look at how much of the game is left to the DM to decide. They don't tell you how far a horse can go in a day, that you can buy flour, that your fire spells can light combustibles, how you can use your powers out of combat or the lack of rules for peripheral skills (crafting, profession, performance), etc. The game leaves all that information up to DM fiat, who judiciously adjudicates such issues in terms of his story. It's like the old Straczynski quote, "Traveling at the Speed of Plot." Everything that is not about a band of Adventurers doing heroic things in a Dungeon is left intentionally vague.

Not providing rules for things and leaving things intentionally vague does not equate to narrativism.  And DM fiat is kind of the opposite of narratvisim as well, in a sense  Generally speaking, narratvism isn't really about the DM's story, it's about creating a story together, as a group, encouraging player-participation in the story.  The mechanics of 4E do not put the story at the center.  They do not encourage player-participation in the construction of narrative.  They do not foreground character back-stories, personality, or beliefs.  They do not provide a means for the players to influence the story beyond the actions of their characters.  They put combat at the center.

Narrativist systems use the rules of the game to create and encourage storyelling.  4E does not do this.  If having to come up with how much flour costs on my own time is meant to be a selling point, it's a pretty weak one.

Now I'm not saying a 4E campaign can't have a great story if the DM and the players put the effort in to make one, but this doesn't make it a narrativist system, a system which goes out of its way to priviledge the narrative over other concerns (like, you know, fighting and stuff).

For the record, when I play D&D I'm not looking for a narrativist experience, and I'd be somewhat ambivalent about adding serious "narrativist" mechanics into D&D, at least unless they were purely optional (which can be a bit inelegant).  But let's not kid ourselves that 4E stands up there with Nobilis or Amber Diceless or something.

Much of Narrativism is about giving people enough wiggle room to do cool things in a story that perhaps the rules do not account for. 4E does not openly give much of that power to players (their experience is vastly more gamist) but rather all the power is given to the DM. I'm not claiming that 4E is on the same level of Narrativism as FATE or Exalted or Marvel Heroic. However, when you venture outside of the 4E's core concept (fight/kill monsters) the game forces DM's to be Narrativist because everything is left completely vague. It forces the DM to think of player actions in terms of their story and how fast/slow they want the players to accomplish their tasks rather than relying on the arbitrary rule/guidelines that Gamist and Simmulationist games focus on.

My comparisons were simply comparing the editions of D&D to one another because all D&D Games are Gamist at their heart when you compare them to games completely tailored around other mentalities.

D&D Next has a great little PDF for putting some flavor on top of what would otherwise be a bland +1 Weapon. I just made a new weapon. It is an Abyssal Dagger whose blade is black metal and its hilt is crafted from the horns of lesser demons. The owner of the blade suffers nightmares every night but never remembers the substance of the dreams upon waking. The Dagger is Unbreakable by normal means. When the blade strikes a foe, the bearer hears a fragment of a song sung in Abyssal; if the lyrics were ever deciphered, they would reveal a secret [i.e. plot hook].

Definitely a step in the right direction.  Ideally speaking, I think mechanics and fluff should converge more than this, but I commend the effort.

I agree that the best items are those where the fluff and the effects converge. However, I definitely believe in the old adage of "if you have ten magic items, one or two of them are always going to be cooler than the others." This is why I dislike the Christmas Tree effect that 4E and 3.x push so much. Magic Items should feel special and unique, not common place and mundane.

[Steerpike]

Much of Narrativism is about giving people enough wiggle room to do cool things in a story that perhaps the rules do not account for. 4E does not openly give much of that power to players (their experience is vastly more gamist) but rather all the power is given to the DM. I'm not claiming that 4E is on the same level of Narrativism as FATE or Exalted or Marvel Heroic. However, when you venture outside of the 4E's core concept (fight/kill monsters) the game forces DM's to be Narrativist because everything is left completely vague. It forces the DM to think of player actions in terms of their story and how fast/slow they want the players to accomplish their tasks rather than relying on the arbitrary rule/guidelines that Gamist and Simmulationist games focus on.

Well, me might just have to disagree on this one.  I still don't think 4E is remotely narrativistic; I think the edition basically assumes that the players aren't really interested in anything other than defeating monsters and getting treasure, or rather (at the very lest) it assumes that those things are the central, overriding purpose of the game, rather than telling a story or collaborating on a narrative and bringing generic themes or "human" issues to the table.  Giving the DM and players pretty much 0 aid in constructing a narrative, no narative mechanics, and minimal help in world-building while aggressively concentrating on combat mechanics, grids, and loot seems like the opposite of narrativism to me.  I certainly don't see why 3.X (or even earlier editions) isn't "narrativist" by this standard; it's hardly as if the implied setting were super intrusive in 3.X, or as if the fact that they provided pricing for ten foot poles and lanterns alongside weapons in the Player's Handbook somehow destroyed the DM's storyelling powers.  No edition of D&D that I'm aware of has included any kind of mechanics that I'd characterize as properly "narrativist" in any concrete sense.  The extent to which a D&D game is or isn't "narrativist" is pretty much dependent on the DM, not the system, as I understand the term.  Perhaps this is just semantics.  Once again, I don't really think that 4E or D&D general not being especially narrativist is a weakness, I just don't think 4E privileges storytelling and narrative in any way - I think it pretty clearly privileges tactical grid-based combat at every juncture that it can.

I'm also not sure that a Gamist/Simulationist game necessarily involves "arbitrary" guidelines to accomplish tasks, but I'm not sure I understand exactly what you mean by this.  Frankly, I'm not that enamoured by GNS in general; it's a useful model at times, but it can be taken too far.

[Raelifin]

I know that when I look at systems for their narrativist content I am almost 100% looking for ways to handle interesting social conflicts rather than physical ones. My 2copper is with Steerpike. 4e isn't remotely narrativist (and honestly, neither is 3rd).

[sparkletwist]

For what it's worth, I agree with Steerpike, too.

I also agree with the rather limited utility of GNS terminology. It's fine to throw around the words "narrativist," "simulationist" and "gamist" when you want to talk about the general categories that your game play could fall into, but the detailed analyses that originally spawned the whole theory don't actually make any sense... so it's hard to say much more than that and make any sense. (It's also why I always put the terms in scare quotes when I do use them)

So can we get back to bashing 4th edition? :D