Will 5e Suck Harder than 4e?

[ModelCitizen]

Here's how I read that quote:

Q: "Fighters can't do anything but fight. How do you plan to fix this?"
Mike: "This goes back to GNS, and buzzwords." *pauses to inhale deeply from a can of paint thinner* "Example: the Climb skill hogs the spotlight and is overpowered. Therefore other classes will Skill Challenge the wall."
Q: "What."
Mike: "That's all the time we have, folks!"

[Swordslinger]

I know you're trying to rescue the utter fail of 4E with some 'I meant to do that ha ha' mealy-mouthed bullshit, but seriously, if true that's the kind of shit that would make me completely swear off a product line. Fortunately it's not true, because WotC went into headless chicken mode trying to fix skill challenges before they gave up on it.

Well no, I'm not defending it exactly. I admit skill challenges were busted, and they were intended to work. They just didn't. But that's not even a big deal, because it's like having a broken air conditioner in the North pole. And it annoys me when the anti-4E crowd has to make up some bullshit about how skill challenges are half the game or something stupid like that. It's like, yeah I get that people here don't like 4E, but is the argument against it so weak that it relies on hyperbole and lies? In my opinion it only makes the people who say that crap seem ignorant.

But then, the monk and fighter in 3E were intended to be competitive classes. They didn't work. I'm a hell of a lot more peeved that the swordsman doesn't work in a sword and sorcery game. If you want to talk utter fail... that's a lot closer.

[ModelCitizen]

But then, the monk and fighter in 3E were intended to be competitive classes. They didn't work. I'm a hell of a lot more peeved that the swordsman doesn't work in a sword and sorcery game. If you want to talk utter fail... that's a lot closer.

You fucking 4rry twat. The second anyone points out any flaw in 4e you brain-damaged monkeys reach for "but but but martial/caster imbalance" like a fucking broken record. Look, Frank explained this upthread already and you were too stupid to get it, but maybe you'll get it if you see it a second time. One of the following things is true:

1) Skill challenges are intended to be a large part of the game, which means a large part of the game doesn't work.
2) Skill challenges are not intended to be a large part of the game. Since there's no other functioning ruleset to cover gameplay outside of combat, this again means a large part of the game doesn't work.

But really I don't care if you get it or not. I ignore-usered the last retard who cried about martial/caster imbalance out of context as if it magically excused every possible design flaw in 4e, so I'm doing the same to you.

[Lago PARANOIA]

They didn't work. I'm a hell of a lot more peeved that the swordsman doesn't work in a sword and sorcery game. If you want to talk utter fail... that's a lot closer.

The paladin, warlock, DEX/CHA Rogue, and WIS/CHA cleric didn't work out of the box either. Multiclassing did not work out of the box either for any range of play. Paragon multiclassing still doesn't work. Every class but wizards had exactly two epic destinies to pick from and one of them was a pile of ass for most people in the game. Not to mention that playing the 'wrong' kind of class/race combination fucked you over much worse than in 3E D&D. If you were a human, you had about a 50% chance that your third At-Will was borderline or outright unusable. The last 1/3rd of the game is equally bad for both games.

The only advantage in playability in core 4E D&D had were:

[*] The 'right' kind of noncaster single-classed swordsman was more viable for a modestly longer period of expected gameplay than in 3E D&D.
[*] The game is a lot easier so everyone gets a gold star for participating.

In return we lost:
[*] Every kind of class being viable at low ranges of play (level 1-7) at where 85% of campaigns end.
[*] Casters being able to do anything cool.
[*] Any kind of multiclassing that was not a kick in the balls.
[*] Racial flexibility. The gap between 'crap' and 'awesome' races (except for the half-orc) for the core classes are higher in 4E D&D than in 3E D&D. Most notably one of the 'crap' classes tend to be humans.
[*] Party flexibility - you WILL have at least one Warlord or Cleric per four people, that is not negotiable even with the game's lowered difficulty.

[FatR]

But then, the monk and fighter in 3E were intended to be competitive classes. They didn't work. I'm a hell of a lot more peeved that the swordsman doesn't work in a sword and sorcery game. If you want to talk utter fail... that's a lot closer.

But... that's just emulating the genre, where any competent magic users are supposed to be terrifying monstrosities beyond understanding of mortals, only defeatable because the plot fellates the hero.

Almost not trolling.

No seriously, I'm as against martial/melee disbalance as anyone, but sword and sorcery subgenre is a fucking awful example to bring against it. Conan and other Robert Howard's characters run into situations where they would have been totally fucked without magical help, usually from artifacts of plot convenience, almost every time they meets actual magicians, as opposed to mere crazy cultists and shit.

[Lokathor]

Q: Is there a timetable as to when we can start playtesting?
Greg: The open playtest starts up sometime in the spring, and that's about all the information we have at this point.

At least this this was a helpful answer.

Everything else... :/

[tussock]

"the basic orc will remain relevant longer" it says, and they'll have simple captains and clerics and shit like they did in AD&D and 2nd Ed.

If they're starting us above 1st level by stealth again, then keeping Orcs relevant through to 7th or so is quite a bit longer. It's basically the ethos of E6, keep more of the monster manual in play for longer by not letting bonuses get out of hand; with PCs gaining options rather than ever more +1's (or at least less +1's).

It could make for a spectacularly useful monster manual, and the "core" character options should give us quick and easy NPCs. Sounds a shitload like 2nd edition in a lot of ways though, hopefully with a more enabling bent than that particular tome.


I mean, I like that Fighters auto-hit in AD&D at high levels, because the +5 sword and buff spell doesn't even matter. But I guess they won't have +x swords any more, or strength +x to hit, or maybe even magic +x to hit, so never mind. Without stacking multiclass bonuses you can just give starting fighters +5 to hit.

[ishy]

If you advance the orc by giving it for example more and more cleric levels you're not really fighting a basic orc anymore. And eventually the impact of its orcish abilities fade away compared to their new cleric abilities.

Keeping the basic orc relevant can only be done if you pretty much only gain horizontal advancement. And that is not the d&d I like.

[Swordslinger]

There were a several parts of 4E that did not work out of the box. The game isn't perfect by any means, nor did I ever claim it was. There are plenty of legitimate bad things you can say about 4E.

Bitching about skill challenges as if it was the worst thing in the world shouldn't be one of them. It makes no fucking sense. 3E didn't have a skill challenge system and we don't hear everyone saying bitching that half the game is missing or that you can't use skills out of combat. You make skill checks, the exact same mechanic that's in 4E.

You know, I don't mind people bashing 4E for legitimate reasons. If you think the combat's too long, or there aren't enough interesting powers, great. You're perfectly entitled to your opinion and or play style. But when I hear bullshit like Skill challenges are half the game or that 4E modules don't include static DCs because everything scales by level, then I'm going to speak up. Statements like that are disingenuous and yes they deserve to be challenged.

I hate this bullshit idea that people seem to have around here that you're either with 4E or against it. Fuck that. Can't we just talk about the pros and cons of each system honestly without picking a camp and resorting to hyperbole and lies? A lot of you dudes remind me of a bunch of ignorant sports fans defending your home team no matter what.

Some people even go so far as to put me on ignore because they can't stand having their lies challenged. Ridiculous.

If people just want to hear the daily "4E is the devil and 3E is god" sermon, then go ahead. It's obviously a lot of people here aren't interested in hearing the truth or even another point of view. But I walked into your church, so I guess it's my own fault. You guys segregate yourselves from the rest of the internet for a reason and that's so you don't have to deal with dissenting opinions.

Well I'm done here.

[RobbyPants]

But when I hear bullshit like Skill challenges are half the game...

Wait. How are they not? At best, they're a third of the game, if you count MTP as the other third.

[tussock]

Swordslinger's of the opinion that badly broken rules aren't broken at all because no one is using them anyway, because of how broken they are, and that we're not allowed to talk about them as being broken and useless because he gets to define all our arguments for us.

Plus, disagreement and lies are synonymous now.

@ishy: "the basic orc will remain relevant LONGER"

My emphasis. Longer, eh. People keep missing the last word there. It's not a synonym of "forever".

[Mask_De_H]

If you advance the orc by giving it for example more and more cleric levels you're not really fighting a basic orc anymore. And eventually the impact of its orcish abilities fade away compared to their new cleric abilities.

Keeping the basic orc relevant can only be done if you pretty much only gain horizontal advancement. And that is not the d&d I like.

Unless the orc abilities are done up so that they're useful throughout, either through scaling or through being well designed powers. And what's wrong with mostly horizontal advancement? Having more shit to do is generally a good thing, as long as the abilities are meaningful and kept to a manageable number.

[ishy]

@ishy: "the basic orc will remain relevant LONGER"

My emphasis. Longer, eh. People keep missing the last word there. It's not a synonym of "forever".

So you level slower. That is you know, not even interesting enough to talk about.

And what's wrong with mostly horizontal advancement? Having more shit to do is generally a good thing, as long as the abilities are meaningful and kept to a manageable number.

Because horizontal advancement usually means that your vertical advancement is really slow and I like d&d chars progressing. Plenty of games can work without any vertical advancement at all, but I like having it in d&d.
Besides the difference between not having enough meaningful and having too many choices are different for everyone and most important not that big. Unless you make everyone incompetent at the start.

[Aryxbez]

http://www.enworld.org/forum/news/31731 ... tions.html

So what have we learned from this? Based on that comment about "the basic orc will remain relevant", I can see leveling up not mattering. At all. The Oblivion-style level scaling begins!

I would truly hope not there, since if want guard dogs that are relevant for all levels of play, ye have Fantasy/Spy-Craft for that. Although mentioning of how they'll least be different kinds of orcs at higher levels could be promising. So long accommodates the high level assumptions, like if everyone is expected to fly on common basis, would think the higher level Orcs better be able to do so as well, or at least, a way to actually counteract it.

Can't we just talk about the pros and cons of each system honestly without picking a camp and resorting to hyperbole and lies?

Well I'm under the impression that is what the Gaming Den does, that's part of the point of this forum I'd say. Although yes, 3rd edition is spoken highly, and make it sound really cool and awesome (sometimes like there's "balance"). However helps they seem to have system mastery, so they know how to properly build encounters and shore up any problems that come up properly. Otherwise, I guess out all the Fantasy Games, D&D is apparently has the coolest stuff of them all? (do dig concept can go from conan to wolverine to some kind of Alien God)

However, I do play 4th edition, since came out even, but do recognize in what Frank's saying, that by the rules, Skill Challenges were the other half of the game. Doesn't seem like you've commented on his further posts explaining that part. As yes, don't have to use them, and can just Fiat the whole way (or "Magic Tea Party"), since Diplomacy has no actual rules effect outside of Skill Challenges for example.

Q: What are you doing to make sure that each character/player feels useful in each part of the game?
Mike: It goes back to the three pillars and supporting the different kinds of play - we definitely are working on having DM and player tools and options in place so that characters are engaged. Example - you can have that master climber, but you want others to feel included and involved in whatever thing when that master climber gets to show off.

for so many reasons.

Would you be willing to explain, not really sure what he was saying there. Sounds like he's saying wants everyone to be involved at all times, even when a PC is in a "spotlight" moment? Perhaps I'm missing something, thought meant "three pillars" in that there's "social, combat, and exploration", and I would hope PC's are active in all parts of the game quite.

[Username17]

Mike: It goes back to the three pillars and supporting the different kinds of play - we definitely are working on having DM and player tools and options in place so that characters are engaged. Example - you can have that master climber, but you want others to feel included and involved in whatever thing when that master climber gets to show off.

Would you be willing to explain, not really sure what he was saying there. Sounds like he's saying wants everyone to be involved at all times, even when a PC is in a "spotlight" moment? Perhaps I'm missing something, thought meant "three pillars" in that there's "social, combat, and exploration", and I would hope PC's are active in all parts of the game quite.

The statement by itself is rambling and incoherent. However, with the other things they've released there is a picture emerging and it is not pretty.

• The first issue is that the "three pillars" do in fact refer to the Combat, Exploration, and "Interaction" minigames.
• They've already admitted that players will be able to trade competency in one minigame for competency in another.
• They've even admitted that you'll be able to trade one hundred percent of your competency in one minigame for competency in another. Seriously, they talked about one character being 80% combat and 20% exploration contrasted with another character that was 100% damage.
• "Simple" characters get to not even have secondary skills or numbers on their character sheet.
• So when they talk about the climbing master being overpowered, they are literally saying that there will be other characters in the party who don't have a climb skill at all, and indeed nothing on their character sheet to allow their character to interact in dungeon exploration in any way.
• This all supposed to be OK because something something magical teaparty.

Basically, I see two ways this can go down:

• Having skills costs something but doesn't actually do anything good, because normal people can magical teaparty their way through those sorts of encounters as well or better than you can. I am thinking of AD&D Thief Skills, where you might have a 13% chance to "hear noise" while everyone doing pure magical teaparty could probably hear noises just by saying their character was listening. Or Palladium Fantasy skills, where anyone could probably just declare that their character was tying a knot, but having a relevant skill put a 28% chance of success right there in black and white.
• The Magical Teaparty characters are essentially frozen out of everything. I am thinking of course of late expansion-filled 3e and 4e here, where on launch you could do all kinds of shit by just declaring it and having the DM make up a DC on the fly. But after a bunch of books came out with various feats you did not have, the playspace your character could interact with was very much smaller.

I am openly contemptuous of people saying that they can balance one character who has a number on his character sheet that says how well he can climb and another character who doesn't. One person is playing Cops and Robbers and the other person is playing an actual game. There can be no meeting of the minds there. One person is shouting "Bang! I shot you!" and the other player is rolling an objective attack roll. This is a catatrofuck waiting to happen.

-Username17

[Windjammer]

Any further info about this?

Apparently, Bruce Cordell made a Class Acts puff piece for the Ranger. He violated most of the design guidelines for 4e powers. Which is a feat, because that shit isn't complicated or interesting. There were Utilities that did damage, attacks that did the wrong number of Ws, powers that did not interact with the timing of the game properly, interrupts that did not list triggers, and some other stuff I don't even remember.

I've bookmarked Collins' apology when it was posted here on the Den.

Secondly, Bruce Cordell's lack of knowing or handling the rules isn't even his most damning shortcoming. There's several of these in what's left of WotC R&D. (I still can't wrap my head round the fact that they fired Rob Heinsoo but kept Mike Mearls in place when Heinsoo designed the PH figher and Mearls was lead developer (!) for MM 1, the book with no single correct number, and skill challenges. It boggles the mind.)

No, Cordell earns his award for greatest D&D failure in recent years for his adventure writing. Once at the pinnacle of that sub-industry (Return to the Tomb of Horrors) he has impressed us with Nightwyrm Fortress and Marauders of the Dune Sea, respectively the P3 module in the H-P-E series and the Dark Sun intro.

4E is basically the edition to solely churn out dull and awful adventures. And in this morass Cordell manages to stand out. P3 is quoted by the few people who actually played the HPE series as the one that made them leave it: it was more railroady and less plot-worthwhile than any of the rest. And the Dark Sun module? I'm just going to post my favourite review (for more see here).

Like other reviewers, I find it shameful that this adventure was ever deemed worthy of carrying the "Dark Sun" name, let alone the D&D name. In fact, it's just a shame to have carried any name whatsoever, short of "Todd," which I hate anyway. So let's start with that: this adventure should have been named "Todd."

"Todd" was obviously conceived as a generic (or at least non-Dark Sun) adventure. This is not necessarily a bad thing, I've done it myself, and haha let me tell you, there's nothing like the look on a D&D player's face when you put him face to face with Captain Mal and River Tam. I digress.

Minor spoilers ahoy, matey!

As I said, nothing wrong with porting an adventure to a new setting. But when converting an adventure from one setting to another, you actually have to know and understand your destination setting--especially something so radically different as Dark Sun--which Bruce Cordell (no relation to Bruce Campbell, I am told) clearly did not. For example, we know that for most Athasian city-dwellers, literacy is a crime. We know this because the EFFING DARK SUN BOOK TELLS US THIS ON PAGE 14!!!!! Yet the first hook in the adventure is to have House Shom pass out scrolls to everyone carrying a sword. Because House Shom are, apparently, idiots. Literate idiots, I'll give you that. But when the long-dead Athasian Gods were handing out brains, House Shom thought they said "Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and desert you!" (that's right, gentle reader, you've just been textually rick-rolled. You're welcome.)

Then there's the dungeon with the underground river (like, with water and giant sea creatures and stuff) with absolutely no explanation as to how this came to pass on a completely arid world. (How do we know Dark Sun takes place on an arid world? Because the EFFING DARK SUN BOOK TELLS US THIS ON PAGE 4!!!!! AND THE FIRST 3 PAGES ARE THE GORRAM TABLE OF CONTENTS!!!) Seriously, access to the stream would be worth more than all the treasure combined in this module and the next 10 Dark Sun adventures combined. In fact, your players could be excused for just stopping at the river room, and pretty much setting up shop to be the richest bastards on the planet.

Finally we have a mysterious dungeon which nobody on the planet seems to be able to locate. Which is understandable considering that the entrance only has a 100 foot gigantic frowny face made of rock, or that it's within a 6 day walk of Tyr, surrounded by a giant sand vortex that should be viewable for miles and miles, populated by some creatures with no visible means of sustaining themselves. Oh, except the river. I forgot about the river. Which the cave denizens presumably use for snorkeling, water skiing, and playing water polo with Team Kuo Toa when they're not using it for raising their gigantic and completely inexplicable water-breathing lobster creature. On Athas. The desert planet. Which we know is a desert planet because of page 4 of the goddamned Dark Sun book.

As somebody else pointed out, the table maps are kinda handy, but obviously produced from a non-Dark Sun source as it shows horses and oxen, two creatures that don't even exist on Athas. (maybe they are metal sculptures of these mythical-to-Athas beasts? Yeah, I'm gonna go with "metal sculptures" because hell why not, rivers and metal statues of horses for everyone!) The other side of the map is--bizarrely--dedicated to a relatively minor encounter that has nothing to do with the main focus of the adventure other than to wear the players down a bit. (side trek: the author missed a golden opportunity here, and instead of spiders that spin glass webs should have placed a magic fairy forest where the PCs have to fight Clerics and Paladins.)

And it's not just the world inconsistencies that make this such a dog. I paid $12 for this thing. TWELVE bucks! And for that I get a lame setup ("hey how about some dude sticks a scroll in your hands saying to wander out into the desert with no idea where you're going, and find this, you know, face dungeon place"), a yawn-worthy and pretty short dungeon crawl (except for the river, holy crap your PCs are going to be rich beyond their wildest dreams!!!!), and a conclusion that basically amounts to, "um...you know...whatever works for you is how you should end it because hey we already have your twelve goddam dollars so you know, there's that."

This adventure is a real insult to Dark Sun fans, and the fact that it's the first 4e adventure out of the gate makes the insult even more insulty. The only positive thing I can say about it is that the adventure (such as it is) is well organized, typos are relatively few, and the encounters are presented in an easy to DM manner, if you were to actually run this disaster. Which you will not. Oh no, no, no. You will not buy this steaming pile, you will not incorporate it into your Dark Sun campaign, and you will most definitely not subject your poor players to it. Not if you don't want that game night to be know forever as "the night [insert your name here] sucked the soul out of the universe and destroyed all love and double rainbows forever and ever oh my god I hate [insert your name here] SO MUCH!!!!!"

Another reviewer recommended "The Vault of Darom Madar" from Dungeon 181 instead of this 32 page hate on paper. I heartily concur. In fact, if it came down to running this adventure or running the editorial section of the Wall Street Journal, I'd say you should bone up on how to read a PNL statement before embarking on your journey to "Temple of the Fiscally Irresponsible Elves."

Bruce Cordell has lost it. Completely. He shouldn't be at the helm of D&D, and anything he's going to produce is going to be god damn awful. Frank is right about Cordell not bothering to read the rule set he's writing for. This review (and the others to go with it) cement the fact that Cordell cannot be bothered to read the campaign setting he's writing adventures for.

[Username17]

I would totally run Temple of the Fiscally Irresponsible Elves. The Elves have fiat money, while the Dwarves are on the gold standard. Both are having problems with stagflation, but for different reasons. The Elves have a rather traditional money printing crisis where rampant printing to keep up the opulent parties of the previous administration has gotten price increases "baked in" to wages and goods contracts, leaving the government without a mechanism to encourage spending. Then the economy gets hit with a commodity shortage caused by the nearby Orcs being dicks, and real outputs fall simultaneously with continued expectations of continuous price increases baked into everyone's future contracts.

Meanwhile, the Dwarves have a hard gold standard, but because people keep mining it and Dwarves naturally want to save, the gold piles of those who have gold relative to the amount there is to buy keeps rising, which causes price level inflation. But because all the Dwarves want to save and none of them want to invest, the kingdom can't attract investment even at a zero percent interest rate. And with prices continuing to rise and gold being put into the system only for a handful of miners and craftsdwarves, the amount of dwarves able to participate in the market at all keeps falling and unemployment is hitting record levels.

Your task is to get the Elves to tighten their money supply so that price levels stabilize and the treasury can gain traction with monetary policy and promote solid investment. This is very difficult, because all the Elven debt is marked at very high interest because of the assumptions of future money printing. The Elven kingdom fears mass defaulting if the money river is interrupted, which their informal court system is ill-equipped to handle.

Your other task is to get the King Under the Mountain to soak up the extra desired savings of the Dwarven people by borrowing it all and then solving the unemployment crisis by using the borrowed gold to put Dwarves to work, which the King Under the Mountain does not want to do because with the economy in its current depressed state the Kingdom's tax receipts are at historical lows and he won't be able to pay back a massive borrowing program as long as Dwarves aren't going to work.

I think this adventure could be pretty cool.

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

I would totally run Temple of the Fiscally Irresponsible Elves.

Small problem Frank...

In fact, if it came down to running this adventure or running the editorial section of the Wall Street Journal, I'd say you should bone up on how to read a PNL statement before embarking on your journey to "Temple of the Fiscally Irresponsible Elves."

That's the "Temple of the Fiscally Irresponsible Elves... as written by the Wall Street Journal Editorial section.

[tussock]

• The first issue is that the "three pillars" do in fact refer to the Combat, Exploration, and "Interaction" minigames.
• They've already admitted that players will be able to trade competency in one minigame for competency in another.
• They've even admitted that you'll be able to trade one hundred percent of your competency in one minigame for competency in another. Seriously, they talked about one character being 80% combat and 20% exploration contrasted with another character that was 100% damage.

I consider that exactly like what every version of D&D since '78 works like. Most most obviously so for spellcasters. People like it.

[*] "Simple" characters get to not even have secondary skills or numbers on their character sheet.
[*] So when they talk about the climbing master being overpowered, they are literally saying that there will be other characters in the party who don't have a climb skill at all, and indeed nothing on their character sheet to allow their character to interact in dungeon exploration in any way.
[*] This all supposed to be OK because something something magical teaparty.[/list]

From what they've said, climbing is just something people do. Half your movement rate and no Dex or whatever. You make a DC 15 Dex check if anything interesting might happen. Jumping the same, you jump a half move and that ends your turn, DC 15 Str check to make +1". (4e went back to inches and no one noticed!)

The climbing master can climb anything; monsters, wall of force, waterfalls, fog, the dust shining in a ray of sunshine, who cares. He may or may not have to make Dex checks if anything might go wrong, but will have a small bonus if he does. The Jumping master can jump a double move maybe, or a full move strait up, or to any flat surface in line of sight, or to the clouds if he's also an epic balancemaster. Who cares.


So diplomancy might be everyone can start a conversation with a willing opponent, where level 2 monsters want 200gp or whatever, and you can make a DC 15 Cha check to half that. The diplomancer can then get /anything/ to talk, even the cleaning crew, but it doubles the cost and has to be paid in monster corpses.

One person is shouting "Bang! I shot you!" and the other player is rolling an objective attack roll. This is a catatrofuck waiting to happen.

More like one dude is swording in the dark with a miss chance after playing guess-a-square, while the other is just making his normal attack rolls because he's a darkfightmaster. Then someone remembers they can cause light at-will and that problem ends. Magic swords should really glow again, solve that too.

Yes, the Rogue can climb imaginary things, and the Wizard can fly, but maybe the Fighter can pitch his grappling hook half a mile in the air and use the magical rope to pull dragons from the sky with it, with his beingstrongmastery. It can be as good or terribad as is imaginable, we shall have to see.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I think this adventure could be pretty cool.

-Username17

It would be and I'm a big fan of socially responsible adventures done correctly, but the problem is that everything you just said is incredibly non-intuitive to the average gamer. I mean, even though Monetarists/Austrians would disagree with you heavily about the content of the adventure, they would at least understand what you're talking about! But the level of understanding of most Japanese/Europeans/USians about economies starts and ends with that stupid-ass family budget analogy.

If I was going to make this adventure I would make it a lot more intuitive. Such as the dwarf kingdom falling behind in productivity to the bugbear kingdom because they're heavily into a permanently mobilized MiC; but one day an earthquake devastated their greatest mines and caused massive tax decreases. In order to keep a balanced budget, the dwarves cut government spending massively (which is mostly the military, because this is a pre-social contract fantasy era) which caused them to lose a military edge against their Hobgoblin rivals. This keeps forcing them to cut budgets which causes them to lose wars and causes further budget cuts. The king is all austerity up in this bitch even though the elven and giant kingdoms are pretty much aching for him to run a budget deficit. Your job is pretty much to restore investor confidence in the dwarven governments by winning some battles or artificially boosting the economy or just convincing (or 'convincing') both domestic and foreign bankers to allow the kingdom to run budget deficits until they win battles again. Some of your enemies will just be stupid bureaucrats who don't know any better, others will be nobles and merchants who are going to be furious because they're shorting the currency and/or on the side of hobgoblins and send assassin squads. Or you can just be a dick and get the king to massively increase taxes on the poor, cause an economy crash, and get your pieces of silver from the hobgoblins.

I dunno. That might be too complex for most people to grasp, too. After what went on in Japan and Europe, I'm actually pretty fucking amazed that a population as retarded as the United States can grasp that government investiture into the economy can cause it to rise. Of course they fall back into the retard zone by derping out at suggestions of this money going to anything but military pursuits -- hence the intuition pump of the dwarves being in minor wars.

[fectin]

Lago's version has the advantage of avoiding all the economics arguments. "Our government doesn't have enough money. We're going to go steal money from other people until we have more money" is something everyone can agree will work, especially on the gold standard. Opinions may differ on what the long term effects would be, but in the short term taking gold from other people means that you have more gold.

[Lago PARANOIA]

What I was trying to get at is that the dwarven government temporarily having negative money will produce a larger amount of money in the long run.

'Taking money and adding it to the dwarven kingdom's coffers' isn't supposed to be the intended solution. Because it's supposed to be an economics lesson. Oh, sure, you could make it a big deal that money is flowing into the dwarven government which encourages other places to invest -- but the actual amount of money coming in isn't as important as investors (who would have classical economic knowledge as best) 'seeing' the dwarven government as suddenly solvent again even though it won't be unless they temporarily run a budget deficit to beef their military. Which was sort of the point! There's not enough gold for you to gain in a reasonable timespan of the adventure to make your contribution anything other than a (probably literal) confidence fairy.

I mean, I suppose you could just hard-headedly scrounge up enough gold pieces anyway despite the impracticality of the solution and 'solve' the adventure without even touching the edge of even classical economics. But you could also slaughter everyone, piss on the corpses, and then have sex with the hobgoblin king before you even figure out the dwarf kingdom's finances and that would be just as good. Improvisational roleplaying is funny that way.


Have you read Stone Soup? That is more in the lines of what I'm really trying to get at. No one starts to give up their ingredients for soup unless someone makes the first move -- but once it's made, everyone ends up more satisfied than eating their original ingredients. But the cascade of soup investment doesn't happen until the traveler tricks the ingredient hoarders into thinking that a soup is already going to happen, they're just making it better and going to be entitled to a bowl.

[Username17]

In order to do the economics lesson, you actually have to have the players investigate and get the information chunk by chunk. You don't start at the Hall of the Mountain King and get a lecture about fiscal discipline from a King rapidly running out of gold no matter how hard he pinches his pennies. That comes later. You start with the adventurers going to a shop that has like three things on the shelves and all the prices are over nine thousand. The simple reality that the prices are high because people who have gold have a lot of it, and that stock is low because there isn't much point is stacking things deep when not many people have gold should let the first part sink in. The players have to see the stagflation right up front and personal.

Then they have to go to the tavern. The tavern is dirty because they fired the janitor. They fired the janitor because less people were coming in. Less people were coming in because the road crews got cut back.

You have to walk them through it step by step. If you present big macro budget shortfalls for the kingdom, everyone is going to fall back on the bullshit family budget analogy. If you go through Hole-In-The-Bucket style, the solutions become a lot more obvious.

And hey, once the players start getting the big picture, they might well decide to go way more radical. Nothing is making them stop at simple Keynesianism. They might decide that the thing they need to do is to sack the Miner's Guild and put all the gold in the Kingdom vaults, or demand simultaneous debt default across Arvandor. It would be fun to see.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

If you go through Hole-In-The-Bucket style, the solutions become a lot more obvious.

You have way more faith in the intelligence of the average gamer than I do, Frank.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Well, okay, that deserved more than a flippant response. Let me break it down.

[*] First, the players have to recognize that there even is a problem. That setup you detailed works just fine for a game with a more-or-less stable setting like the early seasons of A:TLA or Jade Empire, but dude, this is D&D and it's based off of a ridiculous European Fantasy pastiche. Stores not having stuff in them and beggars sighing and whining that 'times are tough' is the normal state of affairs. A state of near-permanent depression is normal, even in supposedly thriving cities.

[*] Secondly, you have to have the players recognize that there's something that they can do. A lot of players, when confronted with hardship, find visceral solutions like 'stab this dude in the face' a lot more intuitive than 'restore confidence in the economy by making a public investment'. So even if you get the players to recognize that this is a problem, actually getting something halfway intelligent as a solution is dubious. I can imagine a table composed of Little Trevor and Grandma just sort of staring at me blankly.

[*] Now, at that point you actually have to get players to actually care. Yes, even though fixing the economy of the Dwarven Kingdom will save more lives than wandering off and stabbing a dude in the face, most people don't see it that way. This isn't exactly helped by the setup -- hence I prefer a suggested solution where fixing the economy is done alongside typical D&D behavior like rescuing the Elven Princess (whereupon the elves secure the dwarves a loan out of gratitude) or winning the Battle of Thorny Bridge (whereupon the nobles decide that they actually can win the war and stop pulling their money out of banks).

[*] The fourth point isn't actually a problem, but if you're running a morality play then having solutions that subvert the moral -- especially obvious solutions like finding a huge chunk of gold and re-energizing the war machine -- kind of make the exercise pointless. Of course if you're not running a morality play then disregard this bullet point.