camazotz, just to say that I totally echo Thanlis' sentiments on your posts:

Quote from: Thanlis;3665871. Super-cool story. Thank you.
2. I love the technique. Also thank you.
3. Yeah. If I could make one change in the presentation of 4e, it'd be moving page 42 from the DMG to page... probably 15 or so of the PHB. The first ten pages are all about roleplaying, which is as it should be, but stunts should be the first mechanic players are introduced to. As is, it's left for the DM to explain 'em, which is a significant issue.

So thank you. Your post is going straight to my 4E campaign forum.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;366579Organized Play has more to do with a greater trend towards social networking than anything else. It's based on the idea that the more people you know.. the more people you know. (Which seems stupidly obvious, but here's the explanation anyway). It's not "the industry" doing this to you, it's a natural evolution of networking that the "industry" (lol) is taking complete advantage of, because they have clever consultants.

I disagree.

Organized play requires that certain restrictions be placed upon the play that takes place due to the time constraints involved. There is a difference between the type of play that goes on with organized play and your average "kitchen table" game group. Organized play concentrates more upon combat and exploration type of adventures with little role-playing involved, in my experience. This is because organized play games have adventures designed around convention time slots whose limited duration encourages linear plot types ("railroads") with specific goals that need to be accomplished while "kitchen table" gaming is of an open time duration which allows more freedom to avoid linear plot models in adventures thus becomming more conducive to role-playing opportunities.

Quote from: Thanlis;366571I will remember to just tell people that their dislike of 4e is a matter of personal taste from here on out.

I would think that's a given. I mean, I don't like Candy Apple Red cars or black licorice either, but there are plenty of folks who do. Speaking for myself, when I say "4e sucks!" read into it as a given the what I'm saying is "4e sucks for me!" While I do honestly think that there are games that are objectively bad, I have never described DnD4e as one of them. It's a well designed game, and for me that's perhaps it's downfall because I think it's too much game for general RPGing.

Quote from: jeff37923;366592I disagree.

Organized play requires that certain restrictions be placed upon the play that takes place due to the time constraints involved. There is a difference between the type of play that goes on with organized play and your average "kitchen table" game group. Organized play concentrates more upon combat and exploration type of adventures with little role-playing involved, in my experience. This is because organized play games have adventures designed around convention time slots whose limited duration encourages linear plot types ("railroads") with specific goals that need to be accomplished while "kitchen table" gaming is of an open time duration which allows more freedom to avoid linear plot models in adventures thus becomming more conducive to role-playing opportunities.

Time constraints only exist when they exist. So yes, your'e right- when it's a convention you've only got the slot. And similarly- the Thursday LFR meetup group has to close down when the shop closes. But LFR can be played anytime, anywhere.. so there are otherwise no time constraints.  One of the DMs I know has a style where he makes mashups between two adventures, and lets them run to completion.

Not only that- but you can also write your own adventures, call them MyRealms, and use any kitchen table format you like.

Quote from: camazotz;366583This has all been very interesting, and some very keen points made. There haven't been a lot of specific examples of the role-play vs. gameist/powers disconnect in 4E, however, and I thought I'd provide an example from a recent game I ran.

Right now the power mechanics in 4E seem (to me) to be the top problem in relating what the character as a set of rules and actions is vs. what the character as a virtual person in a fantasy world is. In my 4E games I emphasize to my players the importance of reading what the power descriptions are like (and sometimes they are a bit vague) vs. just focusing on the stat block....the action as described in terms of a combat action. When they actively pay attention to the intent of the power, some very interesting results arise.

The example comes to a character, a shaman, that my wife plays. By focusing on the "descriptive portion" of the text and not the power block, her character at first level appears to be able to do the following (all quoted from the PHB2):
Call Spirit Companion: "Your soul reaches out to your spirit friend, which faithfully appears at your side."
Healing Spirit: "You call to the spirits on behalf of a wounded ally, closing wounds and filling your ally with vigor."
Speak With Spirits: "You commune with the spirits, letting them guide your words and actions."
Spirit's Fangs: "When an enemy drops its guard, your spirit companion leaps on it, claws and fangs bared."
Haunting Spirits: "Howling spirits appear around your foe, distracting it from your ally's attack."
Protecting Strike: "Roaring echoes from ancient caves and hollows accompany your spirit companion's attack, infusing your allies with vitality."
Twin Panthers: "Two panther spirits leap on your foes, and the panthers channel their predatory instincts through your spirit companion so that it menaces nearby enemies."
Cleansing Wind of the North: "You call on the spirits of the frigid north to bite into your enemies and to carry away your allies' ills."

   Taken by themselves, even as brief as they are the descriptive portion of the powers paints some interestingly evocative pictures. Leaving them divorced from the mechanics, you can develop some interesting results. For example, in the most recent scenario the players encountered a series of summoning stones in an abandoned temple. Each stone summoned an elemental, which I described as a spirit of the elements. The player jumped on this, and asked if she could commune with the spirit (which was incomprehensible to the players when it spoke) with her ability to speak with the spirits.
   Now, reading how the power itself works left me with this: the power itself is simply granting you a bonus to your next skill check based on your Wisdom modifier. The intent of the power is to give the player a slight boost. However, the flavor text is indicating that much more, from a role-play perspective, should be going on. What to do? The mechanical approach suggests that I simply state no, she can't use this power to speak to the elemental because its not specifically intended to convey other information. Alternatively, I could infer that the power lets her speak to "personal" spirits only and at best they may give her a boost to a diplomacy check to negotiate with the spirit. This would probably fulfill the design intent of the power, maybe. Unfortunately, the descriptive text explicitly leaves "what" and "who" the spirits she is communing with are. I didn't really want to force the character to be limited according to the power mechanic, especially when the effect of the text implies otherwise. So what I did was let her make an insight roll, modified by the power bonus, and based on that success she was able to begin speaking with the "elemental spirit," which in the end benefited my storyline anyway by getting the info the entity had out in to the players' hands.

Anyway, each of the powers described above are very sparse, but leave massive room for interpretation/extrapolation until you then read the power block. The best solution to blending the power mechanics with the role play process I have found is to get players to look at their abilities as having two components: the descriptive component, which is not only a summary of how the power seems to look, but an effective description of what the power does even in a non-combat situation, and the actual power mechanic, which is how the power default in a combat encounter. By taking this approach, I have often gotten players to think outside of the box in the 4E games, and this has led to some interesting power uses in a context that encourages role play while avoiding the static combat-based only uses of the powers themselves.

Of course, the problem with the power mechanics is that they don't make anything clear as to their use other than as combat abilities. The number of times I have seen players wrestle with odd problems such as how to cut down a rope tied up high (to release a candelabra, perhaps) who don't even consider that they could eldritch blast or magic missle the rope in to oblivion is fairly common. Yet, there's no reason they couldn't take such actions; the rules certainly don't forbid them, but the power descriptions seem so specific that the idea of extrapolating outside of the combat turn for their use appears forbidden, even if it isn't.

Anyway, just wanted to share  a bit with my actual play experiences about at least one component of the 4E mechanics that causes many of the problems for people. My hope right now is that with the looming Essentials set that WotC tries to integrate a bit more contextual use for powers, or provide more flavor text that helps people to see the versatility of the power mechanics in something other than a rigid combat setup. Well, except for all those highly-specific combat powers (i.e. most exploits) that it's hard to imagine being used in non-combat ways simply because activating them effectively starts a combat round. Ah well....

And the power of the DM to make the game better than rules ever could reveals itself again. I really like your approach and if I were to participate in this sort of game could most likely tolerate even 4e. Good job.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;366579Or even more likely- someone gets a new job, or a schedule changes, or someone moves away. It happens.

Often when one person leaves- or even a character dies.. game groups can even break up. (I know I'll get shouted down for saying that. Go ahead. I'll just link the OSR blogs that say the same thing).

So your'e back to square one, but now the pool is smaller. And in a party-based social game that (by it's nature) grows more social when you have more than 3 players.. that's not good.  

That's where organized gaming comes in

I've made a commitment to organize a group with a playerbase of around 8 people in my local town in Germany. We don't game unless there's GM and 4 players (if there's less than 5 people we wargame or play a boardgame instead). We got our own forum to discuss schedules etc and are in daily contact by email as well. When someone moves away - which has happened thrice just in the last 5 months - I make a commitment to fill that gap and recruit a new player to join our group.

In short, I know exactly what you're talking about and do everything to preempt the scenario of looking at a less than functional playerbase (from a purely numerical point of view, where 'less than functional' means 'less than 4-5 people who can meet regularly').

I would never resort to LFR again unless I had to. The benefits of an established social network (one that isn't hard work to sustain personally) are enormous, but

1. as long as I can set up and contribute to my own network I rather do that.

2. there's other things to the LFR I don't like, so I try to stick to alternatives while I can. See 1.

Quote from: Drohem;366341My play style preferences are in the minority in the group and the will of the tribe prevails.

Ah. Sorry.

Seanchai

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;366594Time constraints only exist when they exist. So yes, your'e right- when it's a convention you've only got the slot. And similarly- the Thursday LFR meetup group has to close down when the shop closes. But LFR can be played anytime, anywhere.. so there are otherwise no time constraints.  One of the DMs I know has a style where he makes mashups between two adventures, and lets them run to completion.

Not only that- but you can also write your own adventures, call them MyRealms, and use any kitchen table format you like.

Sounds great, as long as you like 4E and LFR. Likewise, I am sure that Living Traveller is great as long as you like the Official Traveller Universe.

The thing is that LFR is very restrictive in what game system and what campaign can be used while actual social networking sites can act as a focal point for all gamers within that area and can allow a broader choice of games and play styles than just one. Instead of being forced to play one game system and campaign, an actual social networking aite for gamers can allow those gamers to self-select which games and campaigns to play in. Hell, an actual social networking site could also include LFR as an option.

EDIT: I guess that my point here can be summarized by saying that organized play set up by a game publisher tends to be exclusionary unless you like that particular game system and campaign while a gamer social networking site is very inclusive because there are more RPG gamers than there are players of a particular game system or campaign setting.

This also goes back to the OP. In the beginning, the RPGA was a very inclusive group that welcomed all game systems. Now the RPGA is only LFR.

Quote from: Peregrin;366347...I will agree that it is less versatile than the old d20 system, if you're looking for broad mechanics.

I think this is the heart of the matter. I don't think 4e to be more or less "gamist" than it has been for decades, but I do think that 4e doesn't provide broad mechanical support.

Seanchai

Quote from: Benoist;366357I think it misses my point: it's not about the books themselves, the rules or advice they contain, but about what's actually happening at the game table when you use them.

Which is a fine point. But whose responsibility is it to fix that (assuming there's a problem objectively or subjectively with that)?

Seanchai

Quote from: RPGPundit;3663684e assumes that what matters is the game system, and that this is more important than the actual play in the world.

No, 4e assumes the DM and the players have the actual play covered, that they picked up the rules to be just that: a set of rules on which they can build their own game.

Seanchai

Quote from: Seanchai;366621No, 4e assumes the DM and the players have the actual play covered, that they picked up the rules to be just that: a set of rules on which they can build their own game.

Seanchai

So are you saying the actual play doesn't depend on the rules used? What I'm saying is the rules of 4e work against my enjoyment of the game. Specifically the powers rules, how they're designed, and the effect they have on combat. What you seem to be saying here is that I'm wrong, the rules are just rules and how the game is played is independent of them. I really feel like I have to be misinterpreting you, because that would be a silly thing to say.

Quote from: Seanchai;366612I think this is the heart of the matter. I don't think 4e to be more or less "gamist" than it has been for decades, but I do think that 4e doesn't provide broad mechanical support.

Seanchai

I don't agree. I think 4e is loads more "gamist" than any other version of DnD ever, and more even than many other RPGs in general.

Quote from: Sigmund;366629I don't agree. I think 4e is loads more "gamist" than any other version of DnD ever, and more even than many other RPGs in general.

4e has more rules than OD&D, but it also has a significantly higher percentage of non-gamist material than OD&D. Depends on how you define "loads."

Quote from: Thanlis;3666324e has more rules than OD&D, but it also has a significantly higher percentage of non-gamist material than OD&D. Depends on how you define "loads."

What, the "storytelling" bits in the DMGs?  The weapon lists?

I think people are talking about the core of the game.  OD&D is a far cry from being driven by gamey bits the same way 4e is.

Saying "Well, the party should encounter X amount of Y creature based on the terrain and weather" or "The party can move at X rate down the corridor because their encumbrance is Y" is sim, saying "Well I should throw in these guys and that, because they're cool and will create an interesting challenge!" or "They should need X successes on this skill challenge to succeed if they want a 40% chance of getting their way" is gamist.

The challenges and encounters are central to play, rather than the world being central to play with encounters and challenges being present in it.