Challenge the Player, not the Stat Block (D&D)
Daniel B:
Quote from: Callan S. on May 23, 2009, 11:28:11 PM
Also, anyone remember progress quest?
8-O
I just looked... stat-block challenge incarnate.
.. must .. resist .. unreasonable urge .. to play ... aaaaargh!! ...
Callan S.:
I have a level 64 enchanted motocycle mu-fu monk called Revalicious. Her motto is "I will have revenge - then revenge+1...+2...+3..."...let me tell you about my character...
Noooo! But yeah, I'd also use that as the defintion of an absolute stat block challenge. And indeed it was made to parody mmorpg play, which appear to give choice but as with my 'always the same optimal choice' example from above, there really isn't a choice.
Jonathan, does progress quest sound a good example of an absolute stat block challenge? Apart from the automation, I mean, rather than people having to roll and add up manually to do the same thing.
LandonSuffered:
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So how can it be a "back in the old days" vs. "in our games today" issue
I don't know? Is it? I thought that was just hyperbole and just a way in which Jonathan was making his approach distinct? I mean, were looking at practical, get it to the game table tomorrow issues - the historical order of things just don't matter in terms of that. Atleast for myself I'm not interested in history for this thread (and wont be revising my memory of history based on this thread, if that's a concern)
Um…maybe I should say something or two here about the point of my thread, since we’re starting to get all crazy and stuff. I’ve been down at the Seattle Folk Life Festival enjoying the sun and caring for an over-excited (and barfing) dog…sorry I haven’t had a chance to respond sooner.
In reading my initial post, it appears I had two main points:
1) Recent readings of some of the Old School Renaissance forums (Grognardia, Odeforblackdougal, etc.) as well as threads on other “old school” forums has reminded me of an important difference between old D&D and more recent versions: what I called (perhaps in rather inflammatory fashion): "challenge the player, not the stat block."
2) I enjoy that particular type of gamist play, and remembering it makes me want to get into an old school-type D&D game.
Now over the course of this thread, one could infer from my postings that I have a rather negative perspective of D20 D&D. This is accurate. There are a lot of things I initially liked about the game when it came out, but after actually playing the game (on multiple occasions) I have come to the conclusion that it doesn’t work for me (i.e. it fails to satisfy) on a VARIETY OF DIFFERENT LEVELS…so much so that I’ve stopped playing it all together. AND I thought it may have soured me to D&D (the game) completely.
However, some of those things that I dislike about D20 I found difficult to articulate…until I found someone nailing it down for me in an old school blog. And that’s the whole “challenge the player-thing."
SO: great, now what? Here’s what:
a) If I’m playing a game that is going to challenge me at all, (i.e. satisfy a gamist agenda), I want to be challenged IN PLAY. Not before play. Period.
b) Old School games set a foundation for allowing players (not their characters…i.e. the numbers on the paper) to be challenged in play. They do this in several ways but the two main ways are: fewer mechanic choices prior to play (random attributes, a limited equipment selection, no skills/feats/mixing classes during advancement, etc.), AND fewer rules stipulations during play (e.g. no skills, feats, monster “types,” limitations on magic, etc.) necessitating more improvisation, clever thinking, and innovation. There are other ways Old School games do this, too (morale and reaction rules, for example), but these are secondary in my mind to the others.
c) D20 games fail to provide the same sort of in play challenge by dint of too much definition (for lack of a better word to describe the intersection of extensive rules with extensive options). For the most part, the game is “create the coolest character” prior to actual play.
Raven: I’m not sure exactly what you mean when you write:
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again, I'm not seeing how that maps to skills and feats and ability scores ala a "stat block", things which don't have the level creep problem of hit points and combat (making skill checks doesn't or shouldn't become more difficult as your level rises) and which it seemed the thread was initially talking about.
(emphasis mine)
You must be playing a different version of D20 from myself…traps have challenge levels just like encounters, and difficulty ratings geared to what is approximately available to a character of a given level. If I play a 10th level Rogue, I’m going to have a Find Traps skill of 13, plus or minus my appropriate attribute bonus and any additional feat/magic bonuses, assuming I have optimized my character for his “standard role.” Any traps encountered on an adventure will be around DC 25, give or take 2 or 3 up/down depending on whether it is a “hard” or “easy” trap.
All challenges in D20 are scaled this way! From Spell saves and Dragon Breath to jumping or climbing! Adventures are scaled based on character optimization.
Look at the pre-gen characters in D20 modules that have pre-gen characters…they are optimized for their standard roles. What does this mean? Well, assuming you “optimized” you’ve got about a 50-50 chance (give or take) to accomplish most tasks you encounter. If you FAILED to optimize your character, you’ll be hard pressed to succeed in a D20 adventure (i.e. your “stat block” will be “losing” challenges). If you min-maxed your character, you’ll be blowing through some challenges…and possibly failing miserably at others.
In the end, D20 (I assume version 4 as well, which seems even more like a "scaling video game” a la World of Warcraft to my eyes) is a game of meeting a challenge prior to game play (i.e. in between sessions or before the first adventure), and resource management (hit points, spells, limited use abilities, equipment) DURING game play.
And in MY opinion that sucks.
But to each his or her own. For me, I’m happy that I see there’s still a way to play D&D that’s fun and cool in a “gamist” way (for when I take a break from all these “Story Now” games I’ve been buying lately); I’d forgotten what Old School play was really like. I am sorry WOTC/Hasbro has so royally f’d a good thing, and continue to do so by acquiring greater portions of RPG market share…but that’s NOT the point of this post.
Hey…and if anyone’s wondering what I hope to get out of this thread…not a blessed thing. I posted to AP because I was reminded of some Actual Play from the past, and how it relates to game design, and so I posted it here ‘cause I guess I just wanted to share and maybe plug those Old School web sites for folks looking for something cool and kind of fun.
Oh…and by the way: if you’ve had problems with “DM fiat” in the past, that’s a non-issue, in my opinion. At some point, every game that has a GM will have a GM fiat at some point (even D20), and when it comes up, you’ve got to hope your GM plays fair. If not, institute some sort of democracy-voting house rules or find a better GM.
And if you have a problem with creative problem solving in game…well, all I can say is that the mind is a muscle, and you might want to exercise it with some of these old school games. It WILL get stronger.
: )
LandonSuffered:
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Jonathan, does progress quest sound a good example of an absolute stat block challenge? Apart from the automation, I mean, rather than people having to roll and add up manually to do the same thing.
Sorry, Callan…cross-post (or I would have responded in the prior entry).
I’m not familiar with Progress Quest and I have no desire to download it if it IS a measure of stat block challenge (I don’t play Mafia on facebook, either). But why try to “out-video-game a video game” with an RPG? That’s a retarded waste of time.
I guess people want to do SOMEthing with those D20 books they spent money on. Hey, at least they have pretty pictures and nice paper. : )
Caldis:
Quote from: LandonSuffered on May 24, 2009, 06:11:12 PM
1) Recent readings of some of the Old School Renaissance forums (Grognardia, Odeforblackdougal, etc.) as well as threads on other “old school” forums has reminded me of an important difference between old D&D and more recent versions: what I called (perhaps in rather inflammatory fashion): "challenge the player, not the stat block."
I'll just reiterate what I said earlier. This isnt a difference in old D&D versus new D&D even though much of the talk about old school would have you believe it is. This is an agenda clash because while many of the people who played D&D back in the old school time did play in that fashion many did not. Stat blocks are irrelevant, if the game is about challenging the player then it is gamist if the game isnt about challenging the player then it's something else, there's no such thing as gamism before. Stat blocks can be a resource the player can use to meet the challenges but its still the players challenge to try and utilize them effectively. Or they can be used as descriptors of the world and we realize that a character with skill y should be able to handle challenge x in such a fashion, it's no longer in the players hand it's how the world works.
More detailed systems do provide more grounds for those trying to model a world to work with but it is still possible to challenge the player rather than the stats in such a system.
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