Quote from: StormBringer;548579It is an interesting mechanic, but I don't think simply applying it to combat rolls is very effective on a number of levels.  Perhaps a class feature for Fighters, or maybe everyone gets a +4 going into combat (all out beat-down), but subtract the number showing on the escalation die from that as combat wears on and everyone loses energy.  So by round 6, everyone is rolling at -2, but the Fighter's natural abilities and class skills should keep them in the positives.  Windjammer's suggested changes would also make this a more interesting mechanic overall.

It depends on what you want to model, really.

As fights wear on, people get tired and they make mistakes, especially in a tight melee where you have to be paying full attention, all the time, else you're dead. Representing this as an escalating penalty makes the characters flail around ineffectually; they make mistakes, but it doesn't really come back to punish them, other than the fight dragging on for longer. It gives you a longer period to think "this hasn't worked, time to back off", and that's perfectly fine.

Then there's the average path - combat continues until one side gives up or is dead... which almost every game does, and that works too.

An escalating bonus from everyone in the fight getting tired, though... now it gets deadly. The characters are making mistakes, absolutely daft bits of footwork, poorly-judged swings, and lapses of concentration, and that's what you can represent with a bonus; your opponents are handing you an advantage. Lethality of the fight goes up, because your opponents are making it easier for you to kill them - not so much at a player level, but at the level the character experiences.

Now, you need some sort of mechanic to represent combat training (Which, in a class-based system, could easily be a class feature - say, combat classes get to nudge the "escalation" one step in their favour, while non-scholarly classes have to nudge it one step worse), and it absolutely has to affect PC's. Now you've got a system with even more weight put on the decision of when and where to fight (And if you need to!), because the "shit got real" step comes around even faster, your "safe" period is shorter. And the reason you'd do it this way, rather than just reducing everyone's hit points, is to make combat more dangerous and unpredictable; afaic, melee combat should be a deadly mess, and the absolute last place anyone sensible would want to be.

Quote from: Peregrin;548625Right.  Which means if anything 5e would be tainted by "Forge ideas", not 4e.

Well no, that's where the argument you put forth turns against you: if Mearls wasn't involved in the design of 4e at a core level, it does not follow 4e is or isn't a Forge related game, either way. I'd rather think that Mearls being hired to participate to the development of 4e shows that his ideas, as developed on his blog, pleased someone in WotC enough to give him a shot at it, so while the evidence from his blog isn't telling critically, I think it's an element that tends to show there was at least Forge sympathy at the level of the design.

Anyway, the point is moot IMO. The truth is in the pudding: 4e is very much in compliance with some aspects of the Forge's theory, including focusing on the game as a gamist enterprise with a sprinkling of narrativism to round it all up. It's pretty obvious to me that 4e wouldn't have been what it was without professor bat penis spewing bullshit about brain damage and 'coherent' games a few years prior.

Sprinkling of narrativism?  There's not an ounce of narrativism in it.  

Also, there was a much better post by Mearls on RPGnet years back where he said he believes D&D defies GNS theory by finding a middle-ground between all the proposed modes of play (I believe it was later than that linked blog post).

Quote from: Peregrin;548632Also, there was a much better post by Mearls on RPGnet years back where he said he believes D&D defies GNS theory by finding a middle-ground between all the proposed modes of play (I believe it was later than that linked blog post).

Maybe, but that doesn't change the fact that the rethoric Mearls uses to this day tends to show that he actually conceptualizes game plays and separates them accordingly in a way that is consistent with GNS. And that is wrong at a fundamental level IMO, which is how you get stupid polls that make you choose between being an "Actor caring for story" or a "Storyteller who likes to affect plot" without any regard for actual immersion, which itself gets dumped with "simulationism" which at the core of the theory, has always been a dump site for elements that didn't fit the neat gamist and narritivist categories. This is fundamentally how GNS fails, and how Ron chose to manipulate the model to his advantage, pimping his own brand of "role playing" (story gaming) in the process, btw.

Quote from: Peregrin;548632Sprinkling of narrativism?  There's not an ounce of narrativism in it.

Of course not.  If there was, then the game would be "incoherent" and that's bad, according to Uncle Ron's cult.

Quote from: Peregrin;548632Also, there was a much better post by Mearls on RPGnet years back where he said he believes D&D defies GNS theory by finding a middle-ground between all the proposed modes of play (I believe it was later than that linked blog post).

As Ryan Dancey explained, that was intentional with 3e.  At some point after that, they apparently decided that success of overrated and they'd rather write a niche game that caters to a smaller audience.  It sure is a lot easier to print and sell 5,000 copies like the more successful Forge-influenced games generally do than 50,000 or 500,000, after all.

How many copies do you think 13th Age is going to sell?

Quote from: Peregrin;548622Mearls wasn't a lead/core designer on 4e, though.  When the original team was in place, he struck me as the most "out there" on the WotC team in terms of opinions on how RPGs work.

Can you name me one designer on the team of either 4e or 5e that you think understands or "gets" playing by interpreting the setting and events through the eyes of the player's PC?

ADDED: How about a designer on the team who thinks of themselves primarily as a player and not a GM?

I'm a 'my little pony' in human form!

That, or the God of War's bastard child...or a Star Child made of glitterdust, or a Demon's tear made manifest.

Maybe even Ryan Dancy's love child!

Quote from: One Horse Town;548654Maybe even Ryan Dancy's love child!

I can't see many situations where that would be relevant in a game, to be honest.

Quote from: Ladybird;548657I can't see many situations where that would be relevant in a game, to be honest.

OGL, baby, OGL.

An open license to game!

Quote from: Peregrin;548622Mearls wasn't a lead/core designer on 4e, though.  When the original team was in place, he struck me as the most "out there" on the WotC team in terms of opinions on how RPGs work.

I'll have to get back to you - I'd have to look up Races & Classes to see who did what when.

IIRC Rules Compenddium had more complaints on simulationism from another late era 3.5 designer (someone complaining about how their thri-kreen suffocated due to realistic suffocation rules) but again, I don't have an exact quote on me.

While the evidence is circumstantial evidence, I personally doubt any serious game designer - particularly professionals working for WOTC - could have been unaware of Forge concepts given how trendy they were at one point. Look at the finished product and you can believe what you like.

Quote from: One Horse Town;548654I'm a 'my little pony' in human form!

That, or the God of War's bastard child...or a Star Child made of glitterdust, or a Demon's tear made manifest.

Maybe even Ryan Dancy's love child!

You must be one of those people who don't play rpgs.  At least that's what certain people on certain forums would have you believe.  Trying to decipher the vitriol, but it seems a common message is that people who don't want their 1st level characters to be super snowflake special must not be playing the game with anyone because obviously that's the point of RPGs and that's how everyone plays.

Of course, these are the same people who say, "I never had any PCs die in editions prior to 4e, so I don't know where this "4e is less lethal" stuff comes from."  And then they proceed to describe the " games prior to 4e" with 3e references only.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;548671You must be one of those people who don't play rpgs.  At least that's what certain people on certain forums would have you believe.  Trying to decipher the vitriol, but it seems a common message is that people who don't want their 1st level characters to be super snowflake special must not be playing the game with anyone because obviously that's the point of RPGs and that's how everyone plays.

Of course, these are the same people who say, "I never had any PCs die in editions prior to 4e, so I don't know where this "4e is less lethal" stuff comes from."  And then they proceed to describe the " games prior to 4e" with 3e references only.

I don't know of these Ar-Pee-Gees you speak of.

I'm here for the knitting.

Quote from: One Horse Town;548674I don't know of these Ar-Pee-Gees you speak of.

I'm here for the knitting.

When I was in 7th grade, my RPGs were

Rape
Preventative
Glasses

Quote from: Sacrosanct;548676When I was in 7th grade, my RPGs were

Rape
Preventative
Glasses

Harsh school.

Quote from: One Horse Town;548679Harsh school.

You've never heard that term before?

It's from the military, regarding the standard issue glasses you had to wear:




Of course, when I was in 7th grade, I had a pair just like them.  They're called "rape preventative glasses" because they make you so ugly you don't have to worry about getting raped.