"Bounded Accuracy"

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Stevethulhu said:
My sole issue with 4e was that it was a minis board game masquerading as an RPG. It wasnt particularly like any videogames I've played, other than the artwork. The game play wasnt conducive to playing much of a role, other than your combat role. But nor was it particularly like playing a video game.
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I can see that. For me it was the "Healing surges" and one-use powers, along with assigning combat roles like "striker" etc, that reminded me of an MMORPG.
 
Voros said:
But Arduin, Deities & Demigods, Godbound and lots of anecdotal stories from our childhood and the history of the game show that a not insignificant number of people do enjoy high level play, they just don't like the grind to get there.
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That doesn't sound incommensurate with a small minority to me.

It's never been easier than right now with 5E to actually get a high level D&D game up and running, and the idea that you have to start at first level and work your way up doesn't really seem to be a thing in today's D&D culture, yet people don't seem to be doing it.

Of course you could object that most of the audience is playing adventure paths and WOTC don't make them for high levels. But of course, there's probably a good reason they don't do that also.

Still, I think a D&D alike such as I described earlier could find a reasonable audience. But I'm sceptical it would ever be all that large.

Part of the issue I think is the aspirational nature of it. Playing a 20th level Wizard sounds like a great idea until you have to deal with the bookkeeping. Solve that problem and perhaps the audience would be somewhat larger.
 
Chris Brady said:
WoTC did put out some pretty good board games using the system.
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People say this all the time, but it is in no way true: The board games share a couple pieces of game terminology, but the only mechanic they have in common is using a 1d20 + modifier roll compared to difficulty.

TJS said:
It's never been easier than right now with 5E to actually get a high level D&D game up and running, and the idea that you have to start at first level and work your way up doesn't really seem to be a thing in today's D&D culture, yet people don't seem to be doing it.
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It's true that people don't seem to be playing high level characters: https://www.enworld.org/threads/nobody-is-playing-high-level-characters.669353/

(Although there's some obvious bias in D&D Beyond stats, it's the only meaningful stats we have.)

But I'm not sure what you're basing your second claim on. I haven't seen anything to suggest that skipping 1st level has become significantly more common; in fact, it appears to be quite rare.
 
Justin Alexander said:
People say this all the time, but it is in no way true: The board games share a couple pieces of game terminology, but the only mechanic they have in common is using a 1d20 + modifier roll compared to difficulty.
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It's clear you've never played either the RPG or the board games. I owned both and played both, they're very similar, the 4e mechanic is the base for the Board Game.
 
Justin Alexander said:
But I'm not sure what you're basing your second claim on. I haven't seen anything to suggest that skipping 1st level has become significantly more common; in fact, it appears to be quite rare.
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Not a lot to be honest. But I've seen a lot of claims that it's common for many people to make characters just for adventure paths, even if that's higher than level 1.

And anecdotally I've seen a lot of questions on social media about prospective 5E games basically asking "what level are we starting at?"

It may not be all that more common than in 3E days, but I think the second point holds. It's a lot easier in 5E to create a 15th level PC from scratch than it was in 3E.
 
Justin Alexander said:
People say this all the time, but it is in no way true: The board games share a couple pieces of game terminology, but the only mechanic they have in common is using a 1d20 + modifier roll compared to difficulty.
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I dunno, I played the Gamma World boardgame, and it seemed pretty similar to the 4e system
 
The 4e Board Games (the adventure system ones) have: At-will/utility/daily breakdowns for powers, healing surges. Hell a lot of powers were even pretty much the same as their 4e counterparts.

The main difference was in some simplification (HP was flattened and you didn't roll for damage, things just did a flat amount of damage, most of it was like 1 damage unless it was a daily).
 
TristramEvans said:
Then I guess pretty much every RPG is a superhero game, starting with OD&D.

I have a much different definition of a superhero myself, so it's not how I would phrase it, but generally most games allow the possibility of a level of competancy that is many times that of a "normal" inhabitant of that game's world/reality. In a game that uses a level system, it seems practically unavoidable.
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If we go back a few decades, I was talking with a GM who never ran anything but C-punk 2020. He had an opinion that went something like this: "Your character sees a drug addict with a shotgun coming around the corner. If you don't feel afraid for your character, you are playing the wrong game."

That is not my personal opinion, but that's the line I draw for superhero games.
 
Chris Brady said:
WoTC did put out some pretty good board games using the system. And for me, the closest video games you could use as an example were the Strategy based JRPGs with it's squares of range.
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IMO the closest videogame to 4e was the original Guild Wars, with it's strong class delineation and few things to handle. Add a conversation between each fight and you're there. It's like Chess Boxing...

TristramEvans said:
I can see that. For me it was the "Healing surges" and one-use powers, along with assigning combat roles like "striker" etc, that reminded me of an MMORPG.
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IMO D&D should separate a class's combat and non-combat sides more, like Ryuutama or The One Ring does. Things like skills help, but as your skill picks tie in with your class picks and your combat attributes, things are still quite joined together.
 
TristramEvans said:
Yeah, Gygax didn't understand what that word meant either.
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Or maybe he did. After all if a single individual can take on 160 trained warriors and come out ahead what would you call them? However the 8th level fighter in OD&D is greatly watered down in comparison. As they only can take on 8 trained warriors (1 HD) is a combat round.

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TristramEvans said:
I dunno, I played the Gamma World boardgame, and it seemed pretty similar to the 4e system
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There was a Gamma World--?

Oh, I see what you did there. ;)

Chris Brady said:
It's clear you've never played either the RPG or the board games. I owned both and played both, they're very similar, the 4e mechanic is the base for the Board Game.
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Justin Alexander said:
People say this all the time, but it is in no way true: The board games share a couple pieces of game terminology, but the only mechanic they have in common is using a 1d20 + modifier roll compared to difficulty.
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EmperorNorton said:
The 4e Board Games (the adventure system ones) have: At-will/utility/daily breakdowns for powers, healing surges. Hell a lot of powers were even pretty much the same as their 4e counterparts.
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Here's how Healing Surges work in the board game: "If your Hero is at 0 Hit Points at the start of your turn, you must use a Healing Surge token. Discard one Healing Surge token and regain Hit Points equal to your Hero's surge value. You then take your turn as normal."

They don't work that way in 4th Edition.

For example, here's how the Healing Strike power works in the board game: "If you, choose one Hero within 1 tile. That Hero regains 1 Hit Point."

And here's how Healing Strike works in 4th Edition: "...and the target is marked until the end of your next turn. In addition, you or one ally within 5 squares of you can spend a healing surge."

Note how healing surges in the board game are a Life counter (you can be killed this many times); they are not triggered by other abilities, nor limit how many healing abilities can affect a character over the course of the game.

Like I said: The board games grabbed some 4th Edition terminology and draped them over mechanics that are, at best, vaguely similar. The board game plays completely differently from 4th Edition, and if you try to play it like 4th Edition you will lose the game.
 
TJS said:
Not a lot to be honest. But I've seen a lot of claims that it's common for many people to make characters just for adventure paths, even if that's higher than level 1.
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Possibly. But given that all the official adventure paths for 5E start at Level 1*, the doesn't suggest to me that people are routinely skipping 1st level when starting new campaigns.

* The only possible exception would be Dungeon of the Mad Mage (6-20), but even that's billed as Part 2 of the Waterdeep series that starts with Dragon Heist (1-5). (It's just that the connection between the two in actual practice is essentially nonexistent.)

What's VERY common is for people joining an existing campaign to roll up a character at the same level as the other PCs; and ditto if someone's character dies and they're rolling up a replacement. But I think that's probably been the de facto mode of play since at least the '80s.
 
Justin Alexander said:
Possibly. But given that all the official adventure paths for 5E start at Level 1*, the doesn't suggest to me that people are routinely skipping 1st level when starting new campaigns.

* The only possible exception would be Dungeon of the Mad Mage (6-20), but even that's billed as Part 2 of the Waterdeep series that starts with Dragon Heist (1-5). (It's just that the connection between the two in actual practice is essentially nonexistent.)

What's VERY common is for people joining an existing campaign to roll up a character at the same level as the other PCs; and ditto if someone's character dies and they're rolling up a replacement. But I think that's probably been the de facto mode of play since at least the '80s.
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Perhaps I'm misremembering something about the adventure paths then.

But it's pointless argument for the sake of argument because you're not addressing the original point I made and only about a third of the follow up.
 
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Moracai said:
If we go back a few decades, I was talking with a GM who never ran anything but C-punk 2020. He had an opinion that went something like this: "Your character sees a drug addict with a shotgun coming around the corner. If you don't feel afraid for your character, you are playing the wrong game."

That is not my personal opinion, but that's the line I draw for superhero games.
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Heh, this reminds me of a Shadowrun story.

Our group is coming out of a club and heading down the street to where we parked the van. A guy on the street pulls a broadsword and yells ”There can be only ONE!” Of course he was a chiphead, burned out from BTL use and lost in his chipdreams, probably not dangerous with the sword and easily disarmed, perhaps a life-long contact if we helped him. But in that second, we all drew and fired, every single one. If he actually knew how to use that thing, he would have carved us up like Easter Hams.
 
Justin Alexander said:
Possibly. But given that all the official adventure paths for 5E start at Level 1*, the doesn't suggest to me that people are routinely skipping 1st level when starting new campaigns.

* The only possible exception would be Dungeon of the Mad Mage (6-20), but even that's billed as Part 2 of the Waterdeep series that starts with Dragon Heist (1-5). (It's just that the connection between the two in actual practice is essentially nonexistent.)

What's VERY common is for people joining an existing campaign to roll up a character at the same level as the other PCs; and ditto if someone's character dies and they're rolling up a replacement. But I think that's probably been the de facto mode of play since at least the '80s.
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Anecdotally, of the twenty or so 5e campaigns I'm aware of, only one started at lvl 1 and I ran it. But anecdotes are not data..
 
Also Storm King's Thunder opening is really obviously designed to be at level 1 as little as possible. It is really not good and very abbreviated and fast. If y ou want to start it at 1 I'd suggest you instead do lost mines of phandelver into storm king's thunder and skip that opening.

And Curse of Strahd if you start at 1 is Death House, which also has problems and its generally better to start at like level 2/3 and skip it.

(This is also common advice for both of those adventure books, so I'd say that not starting at 1 being the large majority of games and using the adventure books as examples is not telling the whole story)
 
It’s not like starting at 1st in 5e even matters. Start the night at 1st level, you’ll be 3rd before the pizza gets there.
 
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CRKrueger said:
It’s not like starting at 1st in 5e even matters. Start the night at 1st level, you’ll be 3rd before the pizza gets there.
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Honestly the fact that they intentionally sped up Level 1 & 2 kind of tells me that their research is telling them that most people aren't wanting to play low level that much, and that some significant portion of those starting at level 1 are more of the "tradition" bit than actually wanting to play low level.
 
EmperorNorton said:
Honestly the fact that they intentionally sped up Level 1 & 2 kind of tells me that their research is telling them that most people aren't wanting to play low level that much, and that some significant portion of those starting at level 1 are more of the "tradition" bit than actually wanting to play low level.
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Honestly, that's pretty much where I'm at as a DM. If the players aren't newbies I'll start them at around 3rd level or so. If they've never played before, I do start them at 1st level, but if they survive they can usually hit 3rd level relatively quickly, maybe 3-5 adventures if they're not multi-classed.

(this is for TSR era D&D or the equivalent thereof, though, not 5th ed)
 
Tulpa Girl said:
Honestly, that's pretty much where I'm at as a DM. If the players aren't newbies I'll start them at around 3rd level or so. If they've never played before, I do start them at 1st level, but if they survive they can usually hit 3rd level relatively quickly, maybe 3-5 adventures if they're not multi-classed.

(this is for TSR era D&D or the equivalent thereof, though, not 5th ed)
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When I ran 1e and 2e I found the early levels sped by pretty quickly, particularly because a lot of 'classic' 1e adventures dump a load of treasure (and magic items) on the PCs.

Just started a 2e game as a player with several newbs and explaining that they can't dual wield yet or wizards can't use swords for some reason really brought back the memories.
 
5e did seem quite explicit to me that lvls 1 and 2 were only there as "training" - your character isn't really even a member of a class until they get their subclass, they're just in-name-only.
 
Level 1 is partly there in 5e for complete newbies. I've seen Mearls somewhere talking about how they specifically designed it to avoid frontloading complexity. For example, if I remember right, he said the Druid doesn't get Wildshape to level 2 (I think that's right?) because they wanted to avoid having new players potentially having to deal with that and spellcasting at the same time.

Edit: There's bugger all good material for the first two levels.

No wonder people just keep going back to Keep on the Borderlands.
 
Magister said:
I think the level titles in OD&D were kinda dumb, but it might help your case if you actually shared your understanding of the word.
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I'm not certain I have a case per se, other people can use the term as they like. But I don't mind sharing my definition..

I think I'd have to start, though, with my definition of a Hero.

The term "Hero" comes from the Greeks, of course,. Wikipedia gives the definition of a Hero as a person who " in the face of danger, combats adversity through feats of ingenuity, courage, or strength." It's a fair enough definition, but I think it misses an essential element, and to undertsand that is to consider Greece as the birthplace of modern Western society. Athens and Sparta, though quite different in their beliefs and practices, represented something that was likewise represented in other cultures - society vs the wild. Man before the birthplace of cities and civilization was forever at the mercy of nature, the great unknown and dangerous world they had no control over. In Greek myths this is represented by both foreign enemies (what the Romans would call "Barbarians") but more succinctly by Monsters, metaphors for the uncontrollable and unpredictable dangers that faced mankind outside of society and threatened it. Heroes overcame these dangers, they faced these perils. In other words they willingly sacrificied the primary benefit of civilization, safety and security, to protect civilization from the perils of the external or (super)natural.

As time went on we seem this same motif reflected in Heroic narratives, even as the morals and social assumptions that composed a Hero's nature were altered to reflect the society they originated from. Arthur's knights were the embodiments of the ideals of both chivalry (as much a myth as anything else) and Christian virtue, as they faced down the the "Other" mostly represented by the remnants of a pre-Christian Pagan world. Robin Hood embodied the British national character of the peasant class against the "Other" of the parasitic fuedal upper class (and like most Heroes, he had one foot in one world and one in the other, in this case because Robin was Nobleborn himself - this is the concept of liminality, expressed by the divine heritage of the Greek demnigods as much as Christian Arthur's ties to magic and faery).

I could keep going, but I'm not here to write an essay (I certainly go into far more depth in my Phaserip writing). What's important next in the transition from Hero to Superhero is Baroness Orczy. Orczy's play and novel, The Scarlet Pimpernel, is what I would describe as the very first proto-superhero story (even if that term is being applied retroactively). In this she establishes the genre tropes of a secret identity, a unique costume, an arch-villain, and even a secret lair. There's a transition that exists here then to the superhero, occupied by the "Pulp Hero", who has a foot in both camps.

The distinction here is ambiguous. It's often put forth that the difference between a superhero and pulp hero is the possession of "super-powers", but I contest this on the basis of two characters very similar to one another - The Shadow and The Batman. Batman is clearly regarded as a superhero, though he possesses no superpowers (besides narrative contrivance). Meanwhile The Shadow is clearly regarded as a Pulp hero, but he specifically possesses supernatural abilities.

I contend then that the only defference to "pulp hero" is one of time period. The Pulp Hero represents America in the 20's to 40s. Their stories are of that time. That's the reason Batman stories are set in contemporary time periods, but the Shadow remains in the past. But because Batman has his origin among the Pulp Heroes, there's often an ambigiously anachronistic style to the world he inhabits, probably nowhere better expressed than in the Dini and Timm animated series. Likewise, someone could reinvent the Shadow for a contemporary setting. It might lose some of its charm, IMO, but there's no reason the character wouldn't be just as at home in the modern DCU as The Sandman or The Question.

OK, anyways I'm rambling - so what then is a superhero then?

I contend that it is a cspecific character archetype that represents the Hero archetype adjusted to fit into the modern western world. Their costume, often remarked as an essential element without many people being able to describe why, represents their distinction from society. Even in it's origin - Superman's much maligned "underwear-on-the-outside" design actually comes from a very specific place - it mirrored the archetypal outfit of the "strongman" in circus and sporting events at the time he was created.

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What's important isn't just that this is the costume of the "strongman" in popular culture at the time, however, but also that this represents the dress of the "Other", someone a part of society but seperate. The Circus was a society both inside and seperate from society, just as the Superhero is both a part of and seperate from society.

In other words, the reason the costume is essential to the superhero archetype is because it's the visual representation of the concept of "liminality", the shorthand for the status the Hero has always held as not entirely a part of the society they represent.

Moreover, a Superhero's story is one of sacrifice. Sacrifice of a "normal life", of the safety and security of being a part of the modern civilized world in order to protect that world, in order to allow others to continue to benefit from that, and in order to face the external threats of "The Other" - be that Nazis, aliens, supervillains, or whatever is the current metaphor for The Wild, that which exists beyond civilization's awareness or control, that which threatens the "normal"(whether literal or moral).

I could probably keep on typing for...like, everr, as I said this is something I write and think about a lot. But I think I've at least given a picture of my definition of a superhero - comprehensive if not succinct.

So yeah, "being able to beat up a bunch of guys" doesn't really factor into it for me , personally.

But that's why my first question when the subject was broached was whether that's how the poster personally defines "superhero", because I then couched my response taking that as the conversation's assumption, regardless of my personal view of that word and what it means,
 
Also, in a much shorter post ( TristramEvans TristramEvans 's post does cover it really good, but just to explain why I find the whole "high power = superhero" concept to be missing the mark)

Would you consider mythological figures like Hercules or Sun Wukong Superheroes? Cause power level wise they are on the same level if not much higher than most figures that are undeniably superheroes. But they really aren't (they can be adapted to be, but aren't in their original stories).

Power level isn't what makes a superhero a superhero.
 
I should think it's clear that Mr. Gygax was using the original meaning of "superhero," a word that dates back to at least 1899 and was defined in the OED as a real-life hero superior to other heroes, not the modern usage that entered common parlance post-National Allied Publications' success with Superman.
 
Dumarest said:
I should think it's clear that Mr. Gygax was using the original meaning of "superhero," a word that dates back to at least 1899 and was defined in the OED as a real-life hero superior to other heroes, not the modern usage that entered common parlance post-National Allied Publications' success with Superman.
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As far as I know, the first known use of the term was 1917, would love to know if there's a source pre-dating that.

But I can't help but think you are ascribing to Gygax a linguistic comprehension that I've seen no great evidence of, considering how his legacy is a series of mangled English terms, not to mention that by the time D&D was being written in the 70s the association of superhero with the comicbook archetype was pretty much set in stone. Gygax may have been ignorant of the genre (I don't know one way or the other), but I would not suppose that he sought out an archaic meaning for a term that was in common parlance by the time he reached maturity.
 
I would have thought Gygax used the term superhero because he wanted something that meant hero+.

And it's a convenient word. He probably never anticipated that nerds would take things seriously enough that they would one day argue over whether his choice of names matched the strict definition of the words.

We could also argue about which definition is supposed to apply to a level 6 Figher (A Myrmidon) but somehow I don't think we're meant to.

1capitalized : a member of a legendary Thessalian people who accompanied their king Achilles in the Trojan War
2: a loyal follower especially : a subordinate who executes orders unquestioningly or unscrupulously
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TJS said:
I would have thought Gygax used the term superhero because he wanted something that meant hero+.
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I agree, I''d wager that was the entire extent of his thought processes on the matter.

TJS said:
He probably never anticipated that nerds would one day argue over whether his choice of names matched the strict definition of the words.
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lol, the guy who wrote two pages complaiining about the Conan The Barbarian film's casting of Arnold because "Conan is supposed to have blue eyes"?

Gygax was the Supernerd, the Nietzschian Goobermensch.

We can only aspire to his level of pedantry.

That said, I'm not really seeing much of an argument here.
 
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I just love how this thread goes from one thing to another and then to another :heart:
 
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