[D&D] Editions, Metacosmology and Setting
Grimcleaver:
Quote from: David Berg on February 16, 2011, 02:14:20 AM
Hey Grim, this separation makes a lot of sense to me too, largely because I found different bits appealing from different editions, and would like to use each edition for the one thing it did best. What did you enjoy most about the cosmologies in play? I think that'd nicely clarify the value of the categories you're drawing, plus meet the AP requirement!
What I love about the 2e cosmology in play is how untouched and brand new it feels--but at the same time dusty and vintage. Like finding some $300 comic book in your attic by your favorite artist that you forgot you even owned, yellow pages but still striking and powerful. To be specific, we had a buddy of ours from another game group come to our place to run an "old-school second edition game" set in all places--dark ages France. What? We were all thinking dungeon crawl snorefest in a non-setting ripped from a history book so as to require no creativity, but we made the best characters we could and faced it bravely as a roleplaying challenge. It was amazing. Think Season of the Witch with mudspattered smoke filled towns and long stretches of dirtclod strewn roads. The monsters were pulled from things like the Fiend Folio (the crusty old one) and the Cyclopedia. The kobolds were far from the yipping dog lizards we'd come to know, and were more like melted yowling baby things riding oche yellow elephant tusked ogres as mounts. Wow. I felt like I was rediscovering a game that I had never played. Since then I've been in love with that whole abandoned world that existed before everyone took for granted what was what.
What I love about the 3e cosmologies, is that each one is totally different: different planes, different gods, different arrangements of planes. The most striking experience I've had with this is our Planescape game, which has changed from a Greyhawk-centered 3e Planescape to a Planescape-as-its-own thing game midstream. The PCs are getting ready to dive into a distant formian dominated section of Mechanus to ambush a party on their way to the deepest levels of Acheron to swap a copy of a lichdom formula with a slightly altered counterfiet that causes horrible death to the wizard attempting the ritual--all as part of an intricate plan to give the laugh to the Fraternity of Order. Only now, rather than the PCs being ultimately headed to the Mausoleum of Wee Jas, I suddently realize now that I get to send them to the hidden enclave of any one of an infinite number of gods that fill not only that plane but every plane--because Planescape is no longer beholden to any other setting. It's entirely its own. What a heady rush of power and unfettered freedom. I love it!
Grimcleaver:
Quote from: contracycle on February 17, 2011, 11:40:45 AM
System isn't just special effects; if you don't have system you don't really have a game.
Don't mistake "special effects" for "fluffy unnecessary thing". Try making a big budget blockbuster at home with your camcorder. But inversely watch Weta or ILM make a movie without a director or actors or crew. That's what I mean. They're tools to craft and tell a story. Bad ones stick out like wires holding up pie-pan spaceships. Good ones energize and synergize with the story and make the whole thing a lot more fun. The core mechanics of D&D are cool and elegant, simple and powerful, which is why we like them so much. There are some really bad systems out there (ironically a lot of them, like GURPS or Palladium are supposed to be ways of creating sets of rules to facillitate storytelling...but are a mess) to a degree that they're unusable and are better off scrapped or stripped for parts.
I suppose in part its that I'm a sentimentalist too. Yeah THAC0 is a clunky bad mechanic--but it also means something. A bit like the bubbles and scratches in Quinton Terrantino or Robert Rodriguez movies, they are a cue to the player that you're going somewhere with history, somewhere classic.
contracycle:
So. Firstly, "telling a story" is dangerous ground for any kind of comprehensible discussion. I for one think the term is virtually useless, in that it can mean so many things, and in addition, if there are people who play primarily for challenge, or primarily for exploration, then "story" can only be a tool itself, not an end. As a result this doesn't serve as an explanation, I still have to guess at roughly what you mean. You say that good system energises play, but as Caldis pointed out your account of a succesful game didn't make any mention of any system action. And when you do mention system in the later case you describe them as "wonky" and "uncooperative". All of which suggest that you are really overriding or ignoring the system in large part, and might be better served by something else. Why waste effort fighting it? System isn't a secondary function like special effects, it's more like the camera itself.
It is still pretty unclerar what this thread is really about. What sort of feedback are you looking for? As it happens, I'm also interested in cosmologies and how they inform play but I don't have anything much to contribute on this point becuase it as yet unclear what this has to do with the play of any particular game. This is more or less the aim of calling for some sort of AP to contextualise a discussion. Was the cosmology of the game you described a relevant factor?
Lastly, and as an aside, this "a non-setting ripped from a history book so as to require no creativity," is a sentiment I couldn't agree with less. And not because you'd "solve" this problem by throwing in a bunch of fantastical monsters and magic powers.
Erik Weissengruber:
There are a number of systems-related decisions and categories in your post. Once which can tie together Editions and Settings.
Epic level. It's pretty impossible to kill people at this level using the rules as written.
- 3.5 introduced the "Epic" level did it not? Broad distinctions in character effectiveness are systemic. And you appear to like this feature.
- Was "Epic" or "Epic-ness" a part of the setting where the adventures took place? If so the Setting ties to system-as-developed by a particular issue in a particular setting
I'd allowed some liberties to be taken on the player side with the rules (stacking abilities that don't stack, counting multiple enchantments and whatnot just to up the ante on whether or not)
- Sounds as if you are drifting the system to make something work for your table
- Did these liberties help flesh out the setting (and its metacosmology)?
That said there was plenty of that on the NPC end. Thorin, in particular, could dish out (through some impressive rules tinkering) a blistering 300 points of damage a hit. What does that even look like on a scale where a normal warhammer maxes out at 10? People were just coming apart in gory spray, which combined with great cleave just made him look like Sauron.
- Look at how comparison of damage values allowed to create certain kinds of color within your game. Your systems tinkering enabled a certain kind of fiction to be established.
He even activated his boots of flying and one hit killed an enormous shadow worm that had just erupted from the catacombs beneath Candlekeep, like a huge fist rising out of a sandcastle.
- Did the parameters of magic items in the edition you were using make this moment possible?
As for your first question, I don't know that any of our great roleplay experiences in that game arose from the mechanics
- I don't mean great moments when the characters did or said something that, if turned into a comic book or movie, would have the audience saing "cool." I mean when some system-constrained outcome, decision, or even made the 4 human beings around the table say "wow!".
You've laid down a couple. Actual Play reports should focus around the activities of the people at the table, not just recounting of the fiction you created.
Erik Weissengruber:
Let's take a page from the
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forge/index.php?topic=31097.msg284282#msg284282
My take is that there exists a working middle ground between hard-and-fast paid for and effectively dysfunctional freeform under one person's control.
- Your game sounds like it was lots of fun for everyone involved. Would you say it was functional freeform under 1 person's control? Or did you develop your own customized system?
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