D&D 4E Reconciling 4e's rough edges with Story Now play

andreszarta

Adventurer
I'm gonna gather my thoughts about this and respond this weekend!
So, I didn't end up responding that weekend, but now I am ready, almost a year later. So, sorry @Manbearcat, grad school has been overwhelming.

* Why does Mouse Guard not turn into a game undergirded by the feel of process simulation; of intense scrutiny/belaboring of internal causality?
Several ideas here: First of all, I think that there is not much room to finagle with the values. Since your role as the GM is to, like you said, “Factor” the details to come up with the total Obs#, a quick subjective read of the circumstances that indexes into the game-established objective tables gives us a functionally valid answer. A good enough Obs# is sufficient input into the rest of the system, we only needed a "measure" of challenge.

* Why does the game not turn into a turtle-fest where conflict is to be hedged against and avoided?
Because both success and failure lead to desirable states. Players are positioned to care about both types of outcomes and are incentivized to jump forward into action with full knowledge of both. This is evident from:

* Handling Failure. Failure happens in the form of either (a) Twists which represents an escalation of situation/a new obstacle which makes things more threatening and interesting if you're a player (or "worse" if you're an actual mouse in The Guard) or (b) the prior obstacle is resolved but one or more mice (depending upon Help) suffers a condition.

* You need both successes and failures for the Advancement of your Skills and Abilities.
Emphasis mine.
* Why does the game not become an experience that is decoupled from player protagonism and PC dramatic need?

The system recruits a disciplined GM to take the emergent qualities of the previously implied resolution to generate the next series of dramatically relevant situations. Resolution is poised to change one or multiple of the protagonist’s qualities, as well as evolve the ongoing situation in a way that allows for not only further (new) challenges to those dramatic needs, but but also higher-stakes challenges.


1) Identify what is the prerequisite substrate of the agenda of Story Now play.

Pressure to the dramatic qualities of protagonists, and openness in allowing resolution to change them in whichever way it may. Yes? Were you looking for something else?

2) How does a particular instantiation of interconnectedness (incentive structures, premise clarity, transparency in procedures and authority distribution and particularly "who gets to decide what play is about") within system/game engine facilitate that play agenda despite the idea that one component of system/engine may seem to on its surfacediscretely defy that agenda?

I don’t know if I can answer the “How”, but it clearly seems evident in Mouseguard and lets me imagine how it would be in 4e. I have been reading your PbF 4e games here in EnWorld and finally starting to grasp how despite all of the baggage that comes with setting “Objective DCs”, when we interlock those procedures with a commitment for Story Now premise setting, outcome obligations, they are as good as any other way for determining a functional measure of challenge.

Am I on the right track? Have I misstepped somewhere?
 
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andreszarta

Adventurer
Also, the reason I have decided to come back to this thread is because I want to now revisit something that slightly confuses me about running @pemerton ian scene-framed 4E No-Myth vs Low-Myth, specially when it comes to the moment when players are reading into the fiction and pronounce dramatically relevant stakes that might have not otherwise been evident from the initial framing.

I see this all the time in @Manbearcat PbF games. He frames a scene charged with thematic potential, with maybe a speck of a brewing conflict, but what instantiates the scene in its full dramatic capacity is a player willingness to assert its protagonism in whichever way the find it relevant to do so. That, I believe is truly what gets the ball rolling.

I will need to think about how to properly phrase/introduce this next line of inquiry, but also welcome any other voices that might already intuit what I am trying to get at.
 

I don’t know if I can answer the “How”, but it clearly seems evident in Mouseguard and lets me imagine how it would be in 4e. I have been reading your PbF 4e games here in EnWorld and finally starting to grasp how despite all of the baggage that comes with setting “Objective DCs”, when we interlock those procedures with a commitment for Story Now premise setting, outcome obligations, they are as good as any other way for determining a functional measure of challenge.
A relatively minor point, but I don't feel that 'objective' DCs really have any place in 4e. I know they do 'sort of exist', but in truth I don't think they are a real thing at all. That is, the core DC setting 'thing' is level, and then secondarily 'difficulty'. When SCs are in play that's it, the DCs are all at the level of the PCs and the GM gets to allocate a specific number of difficult checks (I'm working from the RC version, but DMG2 is pretty much identical).

So, the only time an 'objective' DC is even theoretically possible is in A) some action a PC takes in combat which triggers a skill/ability check; B) A 'stand-alone' skill check, many of which are likely to be triggered, effectively as defenses. The PHB and DMG1 list a bunch of DCs and modifiers, but essentially these are just text linking specific fictional scenarios with DCs that inevitably mirror the ones in the DC-by-level chart (because otherwise they wouldn't be good DCs to use, too easy or too hard). So, in effect all, for example, the door breaking DCs tell us is what fiction should go with a door that has a DC equivalent to the hard DC for level 10, say. OK, that's an 'iron door'. Whatever, the GM is always going to use the appropriate DC, so it is just a definition of color. The others are likewise, the jumping rules just tell you how big a hole to put in the floor at each level to make things dicey. Likewise the climbing DCs give us a pretty good idea of what low level PCs will face for climbing challenges, and some elements that might add to that fiction at somewhat higher levels.

My point being, PCs always (in a game that is run correctly IMHO) face basically the DCs on the DC-by-level chart. Just as an additional interesting point, I think of difficulty in these 'stand alone' checks as similar to effect in BitD. If you are using a really effective 'move', given the fiction, then its easy, if you do something goofy and not so effective, it will be hard. Another approach would be to let the player describe what the stakes are for failure, and the reward for success, and then set easy/medium/hard based on that.
 

I agree with what the Mad Arab is saying. While 4e has some vestiges of simulationist D&D (“This object has this specific DC”), for the most part the game wants to operate by rule of story. PCs face challenges (DCs) appropriate to their level — because that’s what makes a good story — not because “these DCs reflect how the world really is”.

So at 30th level the obstacle is not “a door” to get past, it’s an abyssal energy infused astral diamond lattice; or better yet, some more abstract obstacle that is only a “door” in a figurative sense.
 

Also, the reason I have decided to come back to this thread is because I want to now revisit something that slightly confuses me about running @pemerton ian scene-framed 4E No-Myth vs Low-Myth, specially when it comes to the moment when players are reading into the fiction and pronounce dramatically relevant stakes that might have not otherwise been evident from the initial framing.

I see this all the time in @Manbearcat PbF games. He frames a scene charged with thematic potential, with maybe a speck of a brewing conflict, but what instantiates the scene in its full dramatic capacity is a player willingness to assert its protagonism in whichever way the find it relevant to do so. That, I believe is truly what gets the ball rolling.

Just wanted to highlight and double down on this. The design of functional Story Now game engines requires that players (a) be able to be aggressively goal-directed so that (b) the traditional paradigm of "GM hooks players (via metaplot, via setting hooks/side quests)" is properly inverted. 4e facilitates this with:

* A large number of provocative premises embedded in the game's conflict-charged setting elements (in particular the Dawn War elements but you also see it in the short PBP I'm running for @zakael19 with things like the deva vs rakshasa thematic elements where reincarnation and the duty of the pure of heart to mend the taintedness of a corrupted soul is at hand) and then those conflicts being embedded in Themes, Paragon Paths, and Epic Destinies, thereby providing rocket fuel for players to propel play with their clear objectives.

* Player-authored quests that give focus to micro and macro objectives and a vehicle for clear signaling (or "breadcrumb laying") from player to GM that basically says (with zero mucking about) "frame scenes about this stuff exactly."

* Those last two are at goal/objective level. However, zoom into the action declaration level and 4e gives thematically potent prospects everywhere; its AEDU scheme and how that intersects with the features of Class and Role and Theme/Path/Destiny, the keyword structure, the broad-descriptor Skill system, page 42 Stunting and Countermeasures with Hazards.

* Ok, so those tools are all great right. But here is the final piece; players have to use them aggressively and provocatively. It isn't enough to play well tactically, strategically in 4e. Players_must_play well premise-wise and theme-wise. They have to set big, bold, clear, explosive objectives and make big, bold, clear, creative, and explosive action declarations. If you look at those PBP threads on this forum, you'll see exactly that by @darkbard @Nephis @zakael19 (even though he is new and just learning the ropes of the game so he can GM it, he's doing quite well!). Whether live at the table or via PBP format, games will stall out and be lame if players don't "bring it" and do so consistently. So players; don't be passive...be aggressive..."bring it"...relentlessly.
 

games will stall out and be lame if players don't "bring it" and do so consistently. So players; don't be passive...be aggressive..."bring it"...relentlessly.

Yes!

The storygame-wrapped-in-a-tactical-game that is 4e functions best when you acknowledge 4e's narrativist roots, but play it as a game-ist player.

(Game-ist player: as Ron Edwards said in the (in)famous GNS essay, Game-ism is "step on up", over and over, and that's exactly what the players of game-ist games want and need to do for the game-ist game to work.)
 

andreszarta

Adventurer
A relatively minor point, but I don't feel that 'objective' DCs really have any place in 4e. I know they do 'sort of exist', but in truth I don't think they are a real thing at all. That is, the core DC setting 'thing' is level, and then secondarily 'difficulty'. When SCs are in play that's it, the DCs are all at the level of the PCs and the GM gets to allocate a specific number of difficult checks (I'm working from the RC version, but DMG2 is pretty much identical).

So, the only time an 'objective' DC is even theoretically possible is in A) some action a PC takes in combat which triggers a skill/ability check; B) A 'stand-alone' skill check, many of which are likely to be triggered, effectively as defenses. The PHB and DMG1 list a bunch of DCs and modifiers, but essentially these are just text linking specific fictional scenarios with DCs that inevitably mirror the ones in the DC-by-level chart (because otherwise they wouldn't be good DCs to use, too easy or too hard). So, in effect all, for example, the door breaking DCs tell us is what fiction should go with a door that has a DC equivalent to the hard DC for level 10, say. OK, that's an 'iron door'. Whatever, the GM is always going to use the appropriate DC, so it is just a definition of color. The others are likewise, the jumping rules just tell you how big a hole to put in the floor at each level to make things dicey. Likewise the climbing DCs give us a pretty good idea of what low level PCs will face for climbing challenges, and some elements that might add to that fiction at somewhat higher levels.

My point being, PCs always (in a game that is run correctly IMHO) face basically the DCs on the DC-by-level chart. Just as an additional interesting point, I think of difficulty in these 'stand alone' checks as similar to effect in BitD. If you are using a really effective 'move', given the fiction, then its easy, if you do something goofy and not so effective, it will be hard. Another approach would be to let the player describe what the stakes are for failure, and the reward for success, and then set easy/medium/hard based on that.

Thank you for highlighting the difference between objective DCs, and SC level-based DCs. It's been a while since this thread started so I might have been inadvertently conflating the two, but I think it's a good reminder that there is a difference and the difference is clear.
I agree with what the Mad Arab is saying. While 4e has some vestiges of simulationist D&D (“This object has this specific DC”), for the most part the game wants to operate by rule of story. PCs face challenges (DCs) appropriate to their level — because that’s what makes a good story — not because “these DCs reflect how the world really is”.

So at 30th level the obstacle is not “a door” to get past, it’s an abyssal energy infused astral diamond lattice; or better yet, some more abstract obstacle that is only a “door” in a figurative sense.

Yes, I'm totally in sync with what you are saying.
 

andreszarta

Adventurer
We are playing a No-Myth 4e Story Now game

At the end of character creation, we end up with a number of characters that each have a significant number of thematic seeds ripe for dramatic exploration. This as a natural byproduct of 4e systemic support that generates these types of characters with these types of issues (to varying degrees of effectiveness, as @pemerton often points out, with the Ranger being a class with less of this “ripeness” of thematic content).

Importantly, characters may also define “Quests”, major and minor, which, out of all of these thematic signaling mechanisms, rely some the biggest clues for potential character proactivity.

At the end of character creation, we also have some kind of notion of a setting penciled-out. This may come as a natural extension of the kinds of characters that have been created, which themselves suggests the kinds of populations, geography and politics that surround them; as well as (potentially) conversations and choices that are made during character creation to ground the characters in a logical place and time (“we are all part of the same kingdom”, “we live in a desert”, “the gods are gone, and primal energies abound”).

Contrary to other Story Now games, we do not start the game with key NPCs in a relationship map of pre-defined motivations or conflicts (I’m thinking DitV’s towns here), nor do we have a predefined setting with timelines already at work (BitD’s Doskvol). If anything this kind of setup mostly resembles Apocalypse World in its initial setup.
________
Play Begins:
The penciled in-setting gets instantiated in a HERE and a NOW.

The Dome of Illumination has served for centuries as the imperial seat of accumulated knowledge and prophesy. The antechamber is open to the outdoors, accessed by an intricately cut archway. The central area is decorated with an elaborately tiled pool, a statue of an ancient Dragon-King in full flight looms overhead, held aloft by great chains. Priests are allowed free reign of the place so when the sculpted stone doors open to the dome itself, its no surprise when a member of the clergy with multiple clerks in tow files out. Spectral servants close the doors behind the regalia-clad Dragonborn Inquisitor.

Being familiar with the crest of Chanvati's mercantile family, the draconic holy-woman stops when she sees you. "Inform him" she sternly instructs her herald, serpentine eyes never leaving you. The young herald steps forward, clears her throat and makes significant effort not to gawk at the massive form of the Goliath slave next to the lowly merchant Chanvati; "The Dome of Illumination is inaccessible to those of neither royal blood nor divine sponsorship while an Inquisition stirs the Empire. I am afraid those of your station will have to seek council elsewhere." Two well-armed and armored members of The Inquisitors' Guard step forward next to the herald to back up her claim with force if necessary.

What do you guys do?

What I see from “Redeem the Past, Chase the Future” and “The Slave and her Sovereign”, is that when the GM frames a scene, there is really no indication as to WHAT the conflict of interest TRULY will be, only possibilities:

Being familiar with the crest of Chanvati's mercantile family, the draconic holy-woman stops when she sees you. "Inform him" she sternly instructs her herald, serpentine eyes never leaving you.
Seems like, thematically, our conflict of interest COULD be about Chanvati’s assertion of THEIR rights as member of a mercantile family within the Dome of Illumination. Like, that’s a legitimate move @darkbard could have acted on, yes? What YOU say my rights are vs what I say my rights are.

The young herald steps forward, clears her throat and makes significant effort not to gawk at the massive form of the Goliath slave next to the lowly merchant Chanvati. (…) Two well-armed and armored members of The Inquisitors' Guard step forward next to the herald to back up her claim with force if necessary.

Seems like, thematically, our conflict of interest COULD be about Chanvati and Pa’avu’s ability to push their way into the. Like, that’s a legitimate move either player could have acted on, yes? How far YOU are able to go vs how far I am able to go?

A few questions at this point:
1.
I imagine that there might even be more possibilities that I have not addressed initially:

Like, “Spectral Servants”, taken literally for this example, depending on the protagonist’s religious beliefs, one of them might say “I did not expect you to also enslave undead souls at your house of knowledge.A conflict of morals.

The Inquisitors' Guard”, “Not so long ago you and I served in the same war…A conflict of loyalty.

Am I reading too far into this? Given a No-Myth style of game, are all of these pronouncements legal/fruitful/conducive to good play? Is my suggestive interpretation of the players role, one where they truly read the initial fiction and endow it with dramatic meaning, in line with what we are talking about here?


2.
When framing the initial circumstances, the GM is, not only, TRULY divesting themselves of how these will resolve, but also WHAT they are truly, and ACTUALLY, about. That aboutness is hinted at, but only made real by the players pronouncement of these as issues. Is this correct? This is very similar to “Trollbabes’” player-initiated conflict, no?

3.
Notably absent, is any form of stake establishment prior to player initiation. While “retrieving the ancient Scrolls of Xanthar” is one of the Minor Quests, the GM does not immediately assume that the achievement (or not achievement) of those stakes are on the line here.

4.
When you framed this scene, @Manbearcat, did you have a threshold or rubric for deciding, if the scene had enough promise for conflict or are you more neutral?

________________

Ok, so moving on, the way @darkbard and @Nephis decide to play this, is that Chanvati decides to “outsmart” the herald and convince him that the circumstances deserve a reassessment of their entry, and Pa’avu both backs Chanvati but also buys into my teased-out conflict of "a tests of wills".

They both roll, unprompted by the GM, notably punctuating that conflict about "something” is in their purview to initiate. The GM’s response is to formalize their actions into SC and finally set stakes.

___________________

I don’t want to extend past here in case there are some elements that I am getting wrong, mostly out of fear that I might end up going too far in the wrong direction. Is there anything in what I have said that rings wrong?

I haven’t truly gotten to my REAL QUESTION which eventually seeks to contrast this approach with the one @pemerton teases out where he himself actually has some level of prep (I’m thinking of the Beholder rising up from the chasm) and how that works (or not) with @Manbearcat’s approach.

I am also a bit confused as to what happens now that we are within a SC when it comes to the GM moving us to the next "scene".
 

zakael19

Adventurer
Just wanted to highlight and double down on this. The design of functional Story Now game engines requires that players (a) be able to be aggressively goal-directed so that (b) the traditional paradigm of "GM hooks players (via metaplot, via setting hooks/side quests)" is properly inverted. 4e facilitates this with:

* A large number of provocative premises embedded in the game's conflict-charged setting elements (in particular the Dawn War elements but you also see it in the short PBP I'm running for @zakael19 with things like the deva vs rakshasa thematic elements where reincarnation and the duty of the pure of heart to mend the taintedness of a corrupted soul is at hand) and then those conflicts being embedded in Themes, Paragon Paths, and Epic Destinies, thereby providing rocket fuel for players to propel play with their clear objectives.

* Player-authored quests that give focus to micro and macro objectives and a vehicle for clear signaling (or "breadcrumb laying") from player to GM that basically says (with zero mucking about) "frame scenes about this stuff exactly."

* Those last two are at goal/objective level. However, zoom into the action declaration level and 4e gives thematically potent prospects everywhere; its AEDU scheme and how that intersects with the features of Class and Role and Theme/Path/Destiny, the keyword structure, the broad-descriptor Skill system, page 42 Stunting and Countermeasures with Hazards.

* Ok, so those tools are all great right. But here is the final piece; players have to use them aggressively and provocatively. It isn't enough to play well tactically, strategically in 4e. Players_must_play well premise-wise and theme-wise. They have to set big, bold, clear, explosive objectives and make big, bold, clear, creative, and explosive action declarations. If you look at those PBP threads on this forum, you'll see exactly that by @darkbard @Nephis @zakael19 (even though he is new and just learning the ropes of the game so he can GM it, he's doing quite well!). Whether live at the table or via PBP format, games will stall out and be lame if players don't "bring it" and do so consistently. So players; don't be passive...be aggressive..."bring it"...relentlessly.

I just want to chime in with how very revelatory and paradigm shifting this experience has been. Especially in the core setting (although I bet Dark Sun would also be great with the inherent character challenges of its backgrounds/themes/setting), when you as a player step back and look at the combination of background+class fantasy+race conceptualization it's not hard to do a quick 4 sentence summary that neatly encompasses instinct + major drives, and then you can actualize that fantasy through play.

I'm running a series of trad 5e games, and getting almost whiplash from the difference in perspective between "scene responsive to character quests /response/complication/response/complication/resolution" I get in @Manbearcat 's pbp; and the classic "grab the players and drag them towards the (often badly) pre-written plot" of a classic WOTC adventure.
 


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