Yeah, that's me.It is an inevitable truth in game design that the more attention and detail a game lavishes on a particular aspect or subsystem, the more that aspect or subsystem will be focused upon in play. In D&D’s 4th edition, the vast bulk of the mechanics are focused on combat, and a common criticism of the game is that is all about the combat–at the expense of other aspects of RPGs. This isn’t really true–there’s nothing about 4E that prevents or actively discourages story or roleplaying or all the other out-of-combat elements of a great campaign. But it’s easy to lose sight of that when the game’s mechanical and content spotlight is firmly on the combat aspect of the game.
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I use power cards in my campaigns, and I think they’re a brilliant element of play–the greatest character-organizing innovation since the advent of the pre-printed character sheet. But they exacerbate the problem: They record combat options. Even within combat, they tend to focus players’ attention on those options. A player’s turn is coming up, and his or her natural instinct is to look down at those powers and pick one. The player is encouraged to think about only those options, and tends not to look past them.
Tends not to knock over the brazier to dump hot coals on the baddie. To play dead so the bad guy passes by, thereby setting up a flank. To taunt or bluff or show off or lure the bad guy into a spot of dangerous terrain or blind him with a sunrod. Or whatever.
This isn’t an indictment of my players, by the way–I tend to do the same thing myself, even when I’m trying not to. Flip through the power cards to figure out which mode of attack will work best. And think no further.
Getting rid of power cards isn’t really a solution. That simply transfers the powers to a list or some other organizationally suboptimal method of record; the player is still left sorting through a power catalog. How then to encourage players to think of all the other things they might do in a combat encounter besides a conventional attack?
If the player’s tendency is to sort through his or her cards when trying to come up with ideas for saving the party’s bacon, why not make use of that? That’s what I’ve done. When I start my new campaign on Saturday, I’m going to give my players a new “power.” Not really a power, actually, but a reminder. It happens to be on a power card, because it’s when the players are sifting through their power cards that they most need that reminder.
This power isn’t really anything revolutionary in itself–basically, it says “you attempt to use a skill, bit of equipment, or something in the environment in a creative way.” But it’s phrased as a power and put on a power card. Feel free to download and print–I’ve put six copies of the card on a sheet so you can print out one page and have cards for everyone in the party.
What do you think? Useful to you? Any other ideas for encouraging players to think beyond their specific powers?
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I like it!
A nice way to remember everyone that you can do thing out of the box, the other great one was terrain in dmg2…. What about an Encouter powered up version? something that not only reminds but also actively encourages crazy stunts?
This is a good idea. In my games, my players have the option of using the Do Something Cool power, an encounter power that recharges every time they think of something cool to do. Even then, it’s not always easy for me to think outside the rules, though.
The important thing to remember about powers like these is that the DM has them too….
Definitely agreed that the GM should keep this sort of thing in mind, too. For some reason, I don’t seem to have as much trouble remembering that as a GM. Maybe it’s because monsters generally have fewer powers. Or maybe because the GM is handling multiple creatures instead of just one PC.
Even though I believe I have this power as a GM, I find myself loathe to use it. It’s one thing to bend the rules in favor of the players, but a very different thing to bend them in favor of oneself. Still, I think after a GM has let the players Think Outside the Box or Do Something Cool a few times, they’ll be more amenable to when he wants to try something. Potentially, he can even work with them (particularly those who might bear the brunt of the bending) to see what they would find fair and fun.
I agree that bending the rules pro-monster is generally unnecessary and not always fair, especially given the GM’s broad perspective on the gaming world. I’m not so much encouraging any party to bend the rules so much as to simply remember that you can take actions that aren’t defined by your character’s strict mechanical abilities.
That said, allowing a little rule-bending in reward for creative thinking is also a solid idea, and I’ll point the readers to your very clever power along that vein at http://community.wizards.com/therenegade/blog/2010/07/10/do_something_cool