More tabletop game thoughts: in a recent episode of Dimension 20, Brennan said, after checking the math on a proposed monk stunt, "Isn't it great when a character can *just do* the thing everybody wants them to be able to do?"
He immediately followed that up by dropping a giant ice spear on the character and knocking him to 0 HP, because every battle in Dimensino 20 is a boss battle (which is not a bad format for TV) and this one seemed to have both lair and legendary actions.
But laying aside that very Brennan Gonna Brennan moment, the line sums up a big part of my philosophy for action-adventure games: the heroes should be able to do what the heroes should be able to do.
Like, D&D basically offers no model for the character with the whip to do the stuff that you think a character with a whip to do. Or for Legolas to slide down the stairs on a shield or run up the oliphaunt tusks.
You can flavor that through narration by just describing what your dash action consists of or how you're using a Dexterity (Acrobatics) check to circumvent difficult terrain, of course.
A game like 4E might offer you a very specifically detailed and mechanically described set of moves that your character might have like Surf On Shield.
A game like Dungeon World goes the opposite direction and gives you a bunch of very loosely defined, open ended moves.
A game like Dungeon World goes the opposite direction and gives you a bunch of very loosely defined, open ended moves.
Increasingly, though, what I find my design thoughts tending towards is a sort of middle ground between those extremes, where you navigate the battlefield in general using D&D-style rules but you've got a limited ability to just *declare* a stunt that fits your character-foo.
Like, if you are playing as Legolas, you've got a Swift Sure Stride power that, once per serious encounter interval, you can just GET SOMEWHERE that you could potentially climb, jump, and/or run to, and not worry about rolling for it.
And in D&D you can follow the "Oh just play as an Eladrin and say that's what you're doing when you teleport" and that kind of works, but for me the "character can do what they should be able to do" philosophy is, for one moment you step outside the mechanics... but...
...you are still in that moment constrained by the story, and the mechanical constraints of a fey step or misty step or similar ability are designed to mimic teleportation. The constraints of Legolas Gonna Legolas would be different.
And why "Just get the spell." is so often the answer to these. Lot of people play rangers as "not-really-spellcasting" to emulate this kind of feel.
So what I'm stumbling and groping my way towards here is a game that plays at its baseline a lot like 5th edition D&D, but with a few changes to make combat more interesting and varied by adding room for narrative improvisation within the space of mechanics.
Three basic changes:
One, if you *almost* succeed, like say, off by 1 or 2 on a d20 roll, you can turn it into a complicated success, like in PbtA type games. Game runner has room to for instance halve the damage if your proposed complication doesn't seem that bad.
One, if you *almost* succeed, like say, off by 1 or 2 on a d20 roll, you can turn it into a complicated success, like in PbtA type games. Game runner has room to for instance halve the damage if your proposed complication doesn't seem that bad.
Two, if you succeed by a wide enough margin (maybe +4 or more on a d20, and also on a natural 20), you can cause a complication for the enemy by your attack. If the game runner feels it's *too good*, they can counter it would be in lieu of damage (or of extra damage for a nat 20)
There would be a stock list of possible complications for people who aren't good at improvising on the fly, and again, these would be things where the constraints would be more narrative than mechanical. The story of what could/should happen would drive it.
And three, especially for non-magical characters, there would be a resource/use limited ability to *just do* narrative-based stunts that fit your character, as defined by specific traits/powers you have used to define your character.
And I know there are games that lean much more heavily on Story Justification for combat mechanics to begin with and I am so tired of being told "just play those" instead of reconciling them when what I'm looking for just *isn't* that freeform.
I mean, like, part of the secret of making fun jump physics in a video game is that you need to have an actual sense of gravity and a real sense of weight and moment to the character's movement... and then the ability to just leap clear of that.
The ponderousness of movement on the ground and the fact that jumping is limited by time and circumstances makes the freedom of jumping around and doing rad stunts in a video game feel important and powerful.
In this model, things like moving a certain amount of 5 feet increments on your turn (and having a turn) and an action economy and rolling for hit and damage, that's the baseline physics of the game, and the gloss of narrative-driven stunts is the jump physics.
4E powers all had strictly defined mechanical endpoints. A power used to pin an enemy to the wall with an arrow offered no path to any other end result than "target damaged and immobilized", no matter how you flavored it.
You might, as game runner, allow somebody who had a card saying they can make a special attack that immobilizes an enemy with an arrow to do other, similar tricks with arrows, the skill for which is implied by the existence of this card.
I certainly did.
I certainly did.
And I definitely don't agree with the criticisms of 4E that you mentioned. I think it comes down to the flexibility of the person running the game and if they're flexible enough then the existence of these special moves in the hands of the players can spark all kinds of ideas.
A lot of criticism of 4E amounts to people basically deciding they were going to interpret everything one very narrow way and then complain about that interpretation.
E.g., a common complaint about the Second Wind power that all heroes have is, "Wait so I just press a button on my hotbar and magical green energy surrounds me and heals me, even though my character isn't magical? Well that's silly."
And. Like. Who made you imagine that?
And. Like. Who made you imagine that?
And the most extreme form of the "rigid powers allow for no imagination criticism" amounted to "since you win by doing damage obviously you just use your encounter powers in every encounter in order of most damage to least, and the dailies for a boss battle."
And under this thinking it didn't matter what other cool things the powers did and which ones might be situationally more useful in a different order because the game "expected you to" just treat them as damage pumps.
And the same people who insisted the game had to be played this way also insisted it was boring and pointless and had no actual tactics and no variety to fights.
So. Don't know why they chose to play that way. But they blamed the system for their choices.
So. Don't know why they chose to play that way. But they blamed the system for their choices.
I have not played 13th Age but I have been reading their SRD and the "This is an improvisational talent." talents have definitely been nudging my thinking.
But this thinking is not limited to 4E! There are people who say the Warlock is the most boring and pointless class in 5E because "all you do is cast Hex followed by Eldritch Blast every battle" and.
You can do other things?
You can do other things?
I mean, even if blasting away for high steady damage is exactly your jam combat-wise, the Warlock is one of the most story-rich classes and the non-combat stuff they get is just *great*. Infinite disguise self as early as level 2?
The Warlock equivalent of Fireball is Hunger of Hadar, a spell that opens a portal to the cold and hungry void between the stars and the shapeless things that dwell therein.
First time my Warlock used it in our saturday game, it went something like,
"Can we just drop a fireball into the guard house?"
"I don't have fireball."
"...I have something *like* fireball."
*one minute later*
"HOW IS THAT LIKE FIREBALL?"
"Can we just drop a fireball into the guard house?"
"I don't have fireball."
"...I have something *like* fireball."
*one minute later*
"HOW IS THAT LIKE FIREBALL?"
The text of this spell includes the phrases "a cacophony of soft whispers and slurping noises", "no light, magical or otherwise, can illuminate the area", and "2d6 acid damage as milky, otherwordly tentacles rub against it."
And people who stopped reading their spell list after two spells will swear they are pointless and boring.
I have played with people who love Critical Fumble tables so much they import them into whatever they're playing but I'm just not interested in a game where skilled swordfighters stab themselves 5% of the time.
Style dice as in "I like your style, add 1d6 to the roll"? Nah, I honestly and openly hate that kind of mechanic. It makes who gets to do the cool stuff dependent on who is best at impressing the game runner on the spot.
And just as an axiom of reality, the player who is best at coming up with cool stuff on the spot is ALREADY going to get to do more cool stuff than the people who can't think of such things or describe them easily. A mechanic shouldn't exacerbate that if it can help it.
What I'm talking about is more about stepping outside of the die rolls, like a stunt you would normally have to roll for, maybe make multiple rolls, is just handwaved with an explanation of what you're doing, which can come from the game runner if you're not good at narration.
Like 13th Age has the Fighter Bravado attack, which reads "Once per battle, as a standard action, you can pull off an attack that is outside of what is normally covered by the rules. Smash a pillar to collapse the ceiling. Flip a table and charge into a wall of enemies with it...
... Smash an enemy into an open pit of lava. Improvise. Your GM will help you with the specifics, such as how many enemies you can catch, what the damage would be, and any additional effects. This talent allows you to pull off the stunt without additional skill checks..."
...though you still have to roll to hit.
That's got the high points there:
1. You step outside the rules.
2. You forget about rolling for steps along the way.
3. The GM's job includes figuring out how this works, even if you have no idea.
That's got the high points there:
1. You step outside the rules.
2. You forget about rolling for steps along the way.
3. The GM's job includes figuring out how this works, even if you have no idea.
That is very much the flavor of the kind of thing I'm thinking of. Sometimes with more of a mechanical endpoint implied (like the aforementioned super acrobatic movement power), sometimes more open-ended.
Yeah, power stunts are a very common feature in superhero RPGs. The old TSR Marvel Superheroes game had a very similar system and over time the feats you pulled off could become part of your power set, modeling how power creep in comics work.
On some level this is more of me trying to bring a little more superhero sensibility to fantasy action-adventure, which I feel is more in line with how high magic, high fantasy action-adventure plays out in media other than tabletop gaming.
Like, to loop Dishonored back in: using acrobatics, stealth, superpowers, and experimental gadgets to fight mostly ordinary mortal human criminals and (para)military forces would be *way* easier to model with a superhero RPG than any fantasy game I can think of.
