RPG MUSINGS Play The Game You Want To Play

It’s unfortunate you’re not having fun with your game nights. My only suggestion is to consider the other “modes of play” available in D&D. Perhaps a few sessions that didn’t involve combat (or much combat) might be more enjoyable. If your group liked the puzzle you could take them through a more puzzle / mystery based adventure. You wouldn’t need to switch from 4e because outside of combat all the editions play in a fairly similar way.

What is “RAW” ?

For what it is worth, I’m kind of experiencing the same feelings, albeit without the litany player problems. I think my guys would be happy to continue to ramble on in 4e.

My plan is to find a logical break point for the campaign in the coming weeks, and insert some mini-campaigns and one-shots into the game night. I’ve got an okay collection of stuff I’d love to try out and my players seem willing. A few of them even offered to try running something, which would be awesome.

Hopefully in December or January, one of my players is going to run a 3 or 4 session Gamma World (newest edition….yeah. I know…more 4e style play, but I think the feel of the game will give us a break). I’d like to try something pulpy using Savage Worlds. I’d like to run them through some OSR systems. Try some indie things. Jump back into the 4e Campaign for a while. Just bounce around and see what we really like best…

I think we’re going to have to stick with fairly “rules light” stuff, because I know these guys aren’t interested in investing a ton a money into other gaming systems.

I feel like you are neglecting Rule 0.

But even if you want to play the RAW game I don’t think the players have a leg to stand on. (ha ha)

Here is the bit from the occupied space rule.

—————
Enemy: You normally can’t move through an enemy’s space unless that enemy is helpless or two size categories larger or smaller than you. Moving into a nonhelpless enemy’s space provokes an opportunity attack from that enemy, because you left a square adjacent to the enemy. (Some powers let you move through an enemy’s square without provoking an opportunity attack.)
—————-

Please see the word normally. I would say that normally refers to an active upright PC. I would say that a prone dwarf does not have the absolute ability to keep angry monsters from moving through a 5′x5′ space. I would call that the dwarf gets an OA against each monster by. You could also have the monsters give up their standard action by requiring that they shift through the occupied square.

The DM is always right.

A very interesting discussion. Thx

RAW = Rules As Written

My DnD4E game has been on hiatus since the summer (we ended right at the beginning of Paragon).

Combat was taking a long time. The players don’t hit often enough, but the monsters can’t deal damage fast enough to kill a well-built PC, so every battle is a war of attrition. We did have some fun fights, and certainly some fun sessions.

We’ve since played Hero, Savage Worlds, GURPS, with more to come.

We’ve even toyed with converting the characters to a different system when the game resumes.

@Stuart Yes, that’s always been my defense against the whole 4E kills role-play. Basically, make everything out of combat the focus. The problem is, the combats are so long, and so trying of patience, that they consume so much of the session it ruins any desire to do anything else.

@Alphastream Actually I don’t expect anyone to tell me it’s going to be alright. Actually, I wrote out the post because I was asked to go into more detail than Twitter allowed.

As for DDi, I’m fast approaching “I don’t care” status. At this point, the next tool has to absolutely blow me away to get me to re-subscribe, and that’s getting harder by the day.

I won’t play any other system under any circumstances (with the only possible exception being if someone runs a Dragon Age game I have some spare time to play a one-shot in.)

On the topic of improvisation, the enemies were statues, and the other DM-player specifically asked how they moved before setting me up. He assured his plan would work. I could only nod my head to his foresight. He’s smart enough to be prepared for me to try to react to my reaction to an encounter plan going very awry.

@Dave As DMSamuel said, “Rules (or Read) As Written” Basically do not do any interpretation of what the written rules states. Take it solely at face-value rather than try to determine the intention of the person who wrote it in the first place.

@Dixon Trimline I’m not sure what to say to you. Sorry?

@Mike Interestingly enough, I’ve been DMing longer than I’ve been playing now. 4E is the first D&D edition I’ve really been able to play despite a history going back to the original Red Box. I started playing with the group in April 2009. In November 2009 I took over for my then-DM who is now the player above who came up with the doorway plan. I’ve tried to drop the hint that I would like him to at least finish the campaign he was running when I took over, but he’s made it clear he’s content to stay on that side of the screen for now. He is running a Halloween game Saturday at a store that I’ll be playing in. Maybe I’ll get some revenge. LoL.

@Bob The only thing I would say about the spell system in 4E is “Does it even matter?” The way the system is built, whatever kind of spell you come up with can be “made” by finding an already existing one and re-skinning it. And before you say “That’s what I don’t like” don’t worry, I agree with you. ;-)

@1sowa Something that I didn’t put enough focus on in the post is that my group likes to argue and will interpret RAW in whatever way works best for them. As I mentioned on Twitter, it becomes easier for me to just take the sucker punches rather than sit and argue for a half-hour over rules. It winds up being me vs. the group, which is the exact opposite of how I want to run a game.

@Wyatt I hear you. For me, I’ve made the investment. Pretty significantly. I would guess at least a couple of thousand dollars between books, adventures, minis, props, DDi and even a laptop I asked my wife to buy me as a birthday present so I could run Masterplan at the table. That is why I steadfastly refuse to bother with any other system. I’ve got so much 4E material I may never read half of it. In fact, I’ve never even opened the majority of the sourcebooks I’ve purchased. There is no chance I’m going to go spend money on yet another system, convince my group to fall in-step and buy their own parts, and spend time learning and teaching another system.

“For example, my players had their dwarf defender get knocked prone in a single doorway, then used the argument that by RAW a bull-rush wouldn’t move him since he’s a dwarf.”

I often wonder what it is about the text of the rulebooks for 4E that even makes a comment like this possible. Would you have taken that kind of crap in previous editions? Yet you and thousands of others have lost part of what the role of being a DM is – to bend the rules when the story demands it.

@The Red DM I think I’ve made it pretty clear that I’ve never DM’d a previous edition, so I have no idea what I’d do in that case. As for bending the rules, I’ve also tried to make it clear that the player who came up with the plan was my DM before I took over and that he was very specific in asking questions about the scene in order to assure I’d have no out once his ultimate plan was set into motion. He simply gamed me.

As for what’s in the rulebooks that allows what you quoted, according to RAW, whenever a dwarf is the subject of forced movement, the dwarf is pushed one less square than he’s forced. Bull-rush allows the charging creature to push one square on success. I’m awful at math but even I can subtract one from one and achieve accurate results.

[...] are however a couple of problems, some of which were pointed out in the recent blog post over at rpgmusings by Alio the [...]

For what it is worth the way I have always solved the rules abuse issue is by 1) using the fact that the DM gets final say and can “cheat” and 2) I rarely use RAW and my players know it. Of course for every “cheat” I do in my favor they get the same consideration. There are plenty of times I let them get away with crap that should never happen just because it makes the game fun.
It is a fantasy game where anything is possible, I pretty much play with that as the unbreakable rule #1.

@Alio I’ve been DMing for 26 years. I still get “gamed” from time to time when something catches me by surprise. So as far as that goes I wouldn’t worry about it.

But reading this I see some problems that maybe a different course of action might fix.

1) Worry less about the rules that govern the PCs. Basically trust your players and WotC to be doing the right thing to keep the PCs mechanically in line. It is an important thing to realize that if someone feels the need to cheat all the time at DnD there are bigger concerns here than their abuse of the rules. So don’t worry about it. Just trust that its going all right.

2) If combats are taking a really long time – make them simpler. I find an encounter with monsters of the PC level at most and 1-2 levels below goes by pretty fast. Such encounters can still challenge PCs, especially if you tweak the damage up a bit. Also avoid brutes and soldiers above the PCs level if you have 1 enemy per PC.

3) This is probably the biggest one: Institute a ban on rules discussions at the table. Tell your players that you will listen to their points when the game is finished but during the game you reserve the right to make rulings regardless of RAW. The trick then is to err on the side of the PCs when you are not sure.

You know the game is about fun, otherwise you wouldn’t be having this problem. Getting rules discussions (which can be way to much like forum discussions) out of your games and making rulings that promote fun without a 20 minute argument is the way to go.

This comes back to “Say yes, but sometimes you have to say no.”

4) Don’t try and remember all the rules. How to charge. How grabbing works. How to bull rush. How push & pull work. Those are really the only rules you need to know aside from “roll d20 add something and compare to a difficulty” Nearly everything else tells you how it works or can be looked up at a glance (btw this is a big reason why I still have a DDI sub – I run from a lap top and have the Compendium open, I can check everything as I need to if I want).

5) Ignore the magic item rules changes if they don’t work for you and your game. Welcome to home brewing :) This is one of the strengths of 4E to be honest. I’ve played with “pick a class then pick powers from anywhere” (stats in powers were not changed) and it worked fine at Paragon. It is DnD and there is a huge and proud tradition of making your own stuff up – from setting material to rules. Join the club. Change the things you and your players need to change to make the game better for you folks.

6) I don’t really have an answer to the “stuck with powers” thing. I’ve never played in a game where the sort of “out of the box” thinking that escaping from the “power mold” would be OK. But this is really the crux of getting people out of that mold. Go back to points 3 & 4 and add a liberal dose of “make cool stuff possible” – eg ropes to swing on, tables to leap over, book cases or crates to push over, and make doing those things as good as making a normal attack. Then your players will want to do those sorts of things.

7) The last resort – tell people that are knowingly gaming the rules to mess up an encounter to not come back. Seriously it works. No doubt this person is a friend on some level, but they are breaking @wilw’s law (Don’t be a Dick) with this sort of behavior and you really don’t need that at a table – especially from someone who knows you haven’t been DMing for long and who handed the job over to you knowing how hard it is. I’ve had to do this before, along with try to curb the misogyny of a player, and have not regretted loosing either behavior from my games. More fun because of less people breaking @wilw’s law is a bonus for me and the other players.

Oh and feel free to make some Dragon Age RPG characters, 4E will feel a lot less restrictive then. You don’t even have to play the game. Just make a character or two.

(Oh you could also implement “Don’t be a Dick”as your primary table rule with “Lightning From the Heavens” as a consequence for players that break it. It’s a way of saying “Respect. It works bitches” and making your players remember the game isn’t just about them.)

Well, I’m The Angry DM so I’m just going to say it: you’ve kind of painted yourself into a corner. If 4E is not doing it for you and you won’t play anything other than 4E, you’re screwed. Or at least, you’re done gaming. Of course, a break could be just what you need.

I’m going to admit that I have been going through my own 4tigue and my group is rolling itself back to 3rd Edition for a bit to take a break. I haven’t talked about it much because it comes down to personal taste. I think 4E is a good game. Its fun and its well put together, but it isn’t quite the experience my group and I are looking for.

I am going to say that I think your relationship with your players is a big part of the problem (something I also said on Twitter). I don’t think 4E is helping the situation and I certainly understand your 4tigue, but IF you were to change systems, I think some of the problems would follow you. It is a classic problem that arises when a newer DM runs games for a more experienced group. On the one hand, the group is savvy enough to game the system and master the structure of the game. On the other hand, having less experience, it can be hard to take a more hard-line roll and tell them “no, this is not working.”

What struck me most of all is that your dwarf player a) admitted he was gaming the system to win and b) also admitted he was abusing something he himself thought was broken (or at least not working as intended). The fact that your players share your feelings that the mechanics lead to odd or silly results suggests they are open to it if you take a more firm hand on the reins.

Remember, it is your job to make the game challenging (I won’t plug my Winning D&D post again). Part of that is preventing abuses of the system that shut the monsters down. And that requires a certain amount of DM Fiat and common-sense adjustments. If the dwarf wants to lay on the ground in front of a bunch of living stone warriors, you are entirely within your rights to stomp on his head and make him pay for it, whatever the rules. Angry DM rule # whatever I am up to: “Don’t play the game, play the situation.” Think about how a group of living stone monsters would respond to am immovable dwarf laying on the ground and think about how being stomped on the head would affect the dwarf.

Do not allow the party to game the system. Appeal to logic and common sense. If the dwarf player says “you can’t do that,” ask him “why not? You are laying on the ground in front of a stompy guy made of rock. Do you think it couldn’t stomp you until your race/class combination? Next time, don’t lay on the ground in front of giant rock monsters.” And if they do not like it, remind them that they felt the situation was silly to begin with. Ultimately, remind them that it is your role to make the game challenging and to adapt the game to the party’s actions. If someone else would like to step up and DM with a different style, they are welcome to, but you are not going to let the rules get in the way of common sense. Ask them if they really want a system they can win all the time by gaming mechanical minutae or if they want a game that keeps them on their toes and responds to their actions logically and consistently.

So, that’s my advice. I think you need to address your relationship with your players regardless of what you do about the game system. I don’t think it will fix 4E for you, but I think it will prevent the problems from following you wherever you might go in the future.

Ultimately, D&D is a republic, not a democracy. The players give authority to the DM, but the DM runs the game. If they don’t like that DM, they can choose another, but they can’t run the game by vote or by committee.

@anarkeith I hear you, but one issue I face is that the guy who came up with the plan, the one who I assumed DM responsiblities from, is the guy whose home we play in. I can’t very well tell him he’s out of the game. ;)

@thelodahl I think you may be onto something there. Perhaps the intention of putting the rules into the hands of everyone does bring down some of the curtain the DM may have once hid behind. I don’t have reference to compare to, but it does sound like your theory has legs. I’ll look into your site as soon as possible.

@Geek Gazette I actually do much the same. I let players get away with quite a bit, but I’ve always made it a point that I’m consciously letting them get away with something. I always felt like the honor system was enough for grown men. This particular instance, however, felt like it just went a little too far.

@acabaca I never really said anything about rationality here. My miniature collection came from only playing the D&D Miniatures game while it was still supported by WotC. The main component, and I’ve said this already, is that I have zero desire to bother trying to learn a new system. I have tons of D&D 4E books that have yet to even be opened. I’m not going to head out and buy more books to sit on a shelf.

This hobby has cost me a lot of money I don’t really have to spend. I never even intended to play D&D beyond the original 4E Starter Set with my wife and kids. My buddy from our old D&D Minis game invited me into his game when the Minis group broke up, so I started playing. That led to me taking over for him as DM. That led to me dumping tons of cash into 4E. That’s it. If this doesn’t work out, I’m done with tabletop games altogether. There is no other option in my mind.

@John Pope Great post. Obviously, as above, I can’t very well kick out the player in question in this particular case. I think this post has inspired me to try to put my foot down a bit though. It won’t fix my problems with the 4E “PCs always win” syndrome, but it may help some of my issues.

As for the magic items rules, I have my own homebrew system. Hell, homebrew is pretty much my focus as a DM and blogger. My problem is, I have heard the Character Builder forces the new rarity system on players, and that system breaks mine. I did see someone tweet this morning that it doesn’t though, so it’s possible that my fear is unfounded.

Your #6 is a key point, and one I was actually thinking about on my commute to work this morning. The player who said he wanted to go back to 3.5 specifically mentioned feeling like 4E didn’t allow him to do improvised actions like he could in previous editions. Honestly, in hindsight, I take blame for that on myself. I never really describe terrain to the group, I almost always just have normal lighting in whatever location they’re in, and I don’t really pick up on cues they drop looking for improvised actions. As an inexperienced DM, this is something I now realize I really have to focus on. I’ll have to talk to them and ask them to make more effort to remind me to accomodate these things.

This is part of my problem with the action economy/power system of 4E. If a player knocks over a stack of crates onto an enemy, do I count that as his Standard action? He then loses his ability to fire off a power that turn. I’ve always feared an ensuing argument about losing actions. I guess I need to get over that and see where it leads.

@Matthew AC I’m definitely not going to invest any money in Pathfinder. I know people swear by it, but again, no other system is going to happen for me.

@The Angry DM Well said my friend. While I do maintain that 4E has issues, and strangely enough, no one has talked about them in the comments but people have on Twitter, it does seem there is significant agreement that there is a problem in my playgroup.

You’re right, I am sort of painted into a corner right now. I think I’m going to speak to my DM-turned-player tomorrow when I play his Halloween one-shot and see what he says. Going off of that, I’ll probably then talk to the group as a whole and see if we can at least address the things not covered by the system.

With respect to the dwarf, I’m a little confused as to why he wasn’t on the bad end of a savage beatdown from granting combat advantage and sucking the -2 penalty for being prone.

I guess this teaches us a lesson: if we’re going to design the physical environment so that the PCs can get a bottle neck, then we had better have something to counter the bottleneck. I ran a short game for a party of 2 fighters, a bravelord, and a barbarian. Doing anything to these guys was tough until I got smart about encounter design: once, I threw some insubstantial and phasing creatures at them. The well executed door bottleneck did not work out. Later in that same adventure, I used a Neldrazu in conjunction with some other minor demons. That worked out great since I was able to use the forced movement teleport to nearly kill their leader. Fun, tough fights all around.

I think I’d be all right with that trick, once. After that, I will plan for it by having some lurkers hanging out in the ventilation shafts. When the dwarf pulls his submarine trick, the lurkers come out and gank the ranged softies in the back while the dwarf is prone and tied up with the meatwall at the door.

As for getting burned out? Maybe try a game like De Profundis. Basically, you play something akin to Call of Cthulu by writing in-character letters to the other participants. I believe a new edition has come out recently. It doesn’t interfere with other RPG activities, since the mode of play is so radically different. The PDF is less than $10:

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=84298

I’ve learnt two things from my DMing career:

1. When players ask for excruciating details about a room that doesn’t really demand it, your answer should be “why?”. Address their plan, rather than their question. It’s much easier to implement “say yes” when your players are open with you, and much easier to known when to invoke “but sometimes say no”; and

2. The moment a player using game mechanics to justify a non-sensical (and unavoidable) result, you need to take the discussion meta. In the prone-dwarf-in-the-doorway example, the situation wasn’t quite unavoidable (you could have dragged the dwarf away or even jumped over it – how tall can a prone dwarf be?) but if you thought it was then you need to have the meta discussion.

@theRedDM: I don’t think there’s anything specific about 4e that engenders it. I think the problem has been around – and indeed was endemic – since at least 3.0, maybe longer. It’s just that 4E inherited a lot of the same players.

Player empowerment may or may not be a good thing, by the way. For example, my wife refuses to play D&D because she doesn’t want to play a game where one player (the DM) has discretion as to the rules, the scenario, and the outcome of her actions. Surely she’s not the only “potential gamer” out there who feels that way.

And that’s exactly what I meant by point 1. When a player “actually ask[s] how the statues were moving, whether they were sliding, walking, etc”, that request is almost always prompted by some sort of plan (sometimes abusive, sometimes not). On most occasions, it’s better to simply ask the player “what are you thinking of doing?” than to give them an answer to the original question.

None of this is a criticism of you, by the way. I’m just sharing some of the system-neutral knowledge I’ve picked up. Another tidbit is that a DM, no matter how good, will never be able to out-strategise a competent player during combat. Why? Because the player has 5 times longer to lay his plans – while you’re dealing with the other four players and your own monsters, he can calculate and scheme.

Hence why I advocate not getting into those sort of contests. Go meta instead.

I’m sorry to hear your gaming experience isn’t going well. I urge you to take a break from playing or at least DMing. Burnout is a pain. It’s too bad you’ve ruled out a system shift. That might take the edge off things. I’m also thinking you might want to house rule the things you dislike in 4e but then you’ll have to face the usual question: if you change the rules will it really be 4e?

@khael I actually spoke to my Dm/player buddy and told him I was starting to feel burned out. After the current campaign arc ends, which should be either next session or the one after, I may take a break and come back around to the front of the screen for a bit.

@acabaca I tend to agree with you that I need to see the consequences of a room’s design beforehand. My prep for my session is actually taking that into account.

@Adamant – Really? You’re going there now? Does that have anything to do with the initial post?

I’ll lay this out now, for this discussion and all others that take this approach to 4e (or any other edition). I’ll bold it so it’s clear: 4E in NOT WoW. It’s NOT an MMO. Most fantasy MMOs were based on D&D first, not the other way around. If something works in an MMO, is it wrong to adapt what it does into a function of a tabletop game? No.

I have played many MMOs, and all editions of D&D. MMOs are a pale comparison to ANY edition of D&D, and there are certain things that MMOs do that D&D is just incapable of. Apples to oranges, no other way of putting it.