Yes, exactly!MadScientistWorking wrote:So every single scenario that you can come up with is useless and meaningless if there isn't a rule mechanic for it?LR wrote:Except that when the players roll Arcana, it doesn't have any rules to reference, because magical obsidian towers aren't real things. The DM can go on and on about the arcane rituals required to make an obsidian tower, but until that ritual exists as a thing that PCs can find and use, it's nothing but meaningless and insulting fluff.Halloween Jack wrote: Wait, you mean there are skills to know things about things?
So if I could roll Nature to know things about a swamp, I could roll Arcana or Dungeoneering to know things about a magically spontaneously generated physics-violating obsidian tower full of monsters?
So Kaelik's original argument about needing detailed rules for magic rock construction was stupid?
Thanks, good to know!
More seriously, as far as I can tell there's sort of one core disagreement between the Denners and the pro-4e people. A couple of posters upthread commented something like, "the game splits into combat, which needs well-defined rules, and social interactions/everything else, which people can just sort of figure out and we don't need rules for." But we tend to think that you really, really do need rules for everything else, for two reasons:
1) It allows players to draw conclusions about the world. In Magical Instant Tower case, in 3e or something we can say, "oh, there must be a high level caster around who put that up, he can probably do X and Y and Z as well." If the assassins kill the king, we can say "they must have been high enough level to get through whatever defenses he had." If there's a 10' pit we can say, "Oh, given my abilities I know I can jump that far pretty consistently." Or maybe "oh, given my abilities I probably can't jump that far." If rules for those things don't exist, it's hard to make those sorts of predictions and the players have much less agency.
2) It allows the players to do stuff the DM doesn't expect/want. The problem with "NPCs react however the DM decides they should" is that then the PCs really can't affect those reactions--the NPC is going to react however the DM decides, regardless of what the players do. And this isn't good for the DM either, because sometimes (ideally, usually) doesn't have a specific set of reactions in mind and would rather find out how successful the PCs are. I show up with my 22 charisma character and try to talk someone into something--does it work? Should I expect it to be easy because he's a peasant and so easy to talk into stuff? If I fail to sweet-talk a peasant should that make me suspicious that he's something else (and now we're back to point 1)? Or does it just mean the DM is saying, "fuck you, he doesn't like you?"