Here is a link to a thread at RPG.net that I was reading earlier.  The responses greatly dismayed me--the majority of gamers, it seems, encourage player metagaming and will often give out metagame information.

For instance:

QuoteI make it obvious by describing them as 'faceless mooks' or such like. Also by using 2D card miniatures for minions.

It's not fun for my players to blow dailies on mooks.

QuoteI make it reasonably clear, and I let them know if they ask. I know the class, role, etc. of all the PCs, it's unfair to keep them completely in the dark.

QuoteI make it pretty obvious. I use cardboard counters laid flat for minions, and I use 3d miniatures or counters in stands for non-minions. A glance at the game map tells the players the minions from the non-minions.

Like Pete, I quickly discovered that players were annoyed when they blew dailies on minions. Where's the fun in that?

QuoteWhen I put enemies into a combat situation, I give a brief description of each one, grouping types of monsters together. I might say "these small goblins are all armed with spears and wear tattered leather armor". A player can make an appropriate skill check to learn a monsters keywords and role. Minion is a role. If one of my players asks me what his character knows about the goblins with spears and rolls well enough, I tell him they are minions (or brutes, or soldiers, etc.) along with anything else they have the right to know (defenses, vulnerabilities, etc.)

If no one checks, or no one rolls well enough (for simplicity, I only let each monster be examined once) then they can find out the goblins are minions by hitting them with an attack.

QuoteIf asked, I routinely point out what role a monster has.

QuoteIn my games, I haven't gone out of my way to tell them, but they're usually easy to identify.

First, there's more than 5 of the same mini, usually a cheap plastic mini, commanded or augmented by a handful of well-painted expensive metal minis.

They usually see that and deploy anti-minion tactics ("Wizard coming on line!")

add: Oh, and Mike Mearls said in the D&D Podcast that he does make minions pretty easily identifiable as such, if not saying "they're minions", right away.

QuoteWhether a monster is a minion or not should never be in doubt. There's nothing that tricking someone into wasting a cool power on a monster with no hp adds to the game.

...Minions exist to fulfill an out-of-character dramatic convention, and players need to know it to be able to respond appropriately.

Again, there is literally one situation that arises in a game in which players don't know what is or isn't a minion that does not arise in a game in which players do, and that situation is a shitty childish "gotcha!" that is not worth anyone's time.

QuoteI generally announce who's a minion and who isn't. I'd have angry players on my hands if they dropped a daily (especially a single-target daily) on a minion.

(Emphasis added.)

And this was only up to page three.

Honestly, this, to me, feels exactly like the "tyranny of fun" that one wise poster wrote about so long ago.  (His name eludes me.)  It's not "fun" to waste a daily on minions, so you are encouraged (or, as the last quote points out, coerced) to give metagame knowledge to the players, and they are expected to act on this metagame knowledge.  In short, you're supposed to shoot immersion to hell for the sake of "fun."

For me, this is mildly nauseating, in that non-literal-hyperbole-for-the-sake-of-hyperbole kind of way.  If I were to run a 4e game, the players would never know which of the enemies were minions.  The only time I would distinguish a difference in power level between NPCs is when it would make sense from an in-game perspective.  The orc chieftain, for instance, might have hide armor decorated with human skulls because it is a status symbol.  Not because he's tougher than the other orcs (even though he might be), but because that's the orc equivalent of war medals.  Orcish minions, however, would look like normal orcs because "minions" don't exist outside of combat.

If a player blew a daily on a minion, I'd describe the effect as if he had used a daily on the orc chieftain or orc warrior (except that he'd kill the minion in one hit, of course), and if the player asked if that orc were a minion, I wouldn't tell him.

So, to get back to the original topic...

Tell me: is this an example of the tyranny of fun, or am I misunderstanding the concept?

Not sure if it's an example of the Tyranny of Fun. What it is, is an example of what a huge crowd of babies 90% of D&D players these days appear to be.

This is my favourite:

QuoteI generally announce who's a minion and who isn't. I'd have angry players on my hands if they dropped a daily (especially a single-target daily) on a minion.

I mean, I suppose this would be true if your players were seven fucking years old. For the rest of us the idea that this is a concern is (or should be) simply mind-boggling.

Quote from: B.T.;318124If I were to run a 4e game, the players would never know which of the enemies were minions.  The only time I would distinguish a difference in power level between NPCs is when it would make sense from an in-game perspective.  The orc chieftain, for instance, might have hide armor decorated with human skulls because it is a status symbol.  Not because he's tougher than the other orcs (even though he might be), but because that's the orc equivalent of war medals.  Orcish minions, however, would look like normal orcs because "minions" don't exist outside of combat.

If a player blew a daily on a minion, I'd describe the effect as if he had used a daily on the orc chieftain or orc warrior (except that he'd kill the minion in one hit, of course), and if the player asked if that orc were a minion, I wouldn't tell him.

I don't pay much attention to the "tyranny of fun" stuff, so I can't answer the question you posed, but what I've quoted is exactly how I feel about the identification of minions.

The series of D&D podcasts in which the Penny Arcade guys, the guy from PvP, and (later on) Wil Wheaton played 4e were generally very entertaining and showed the game to good effect except for the way the DMs scrupulously identified minions all the time. Now, I get that they would explain what minions were at first, to explain to both the players and listeners about this nifty new DM tool (which I like a lot). Makes perfect sense. But to continue to do it after the game is well underway grated on me. I mean, doesn't it defeat the purpose of minions to blatantly identify them? I wonder how much this element of the podcasts have colored potential (and eventual) 4e players? Something meant to shed light on a new element of the game may well have set an unintended precedent. Or was it unintended? I wish someone like mearls, who actually posted here for a while, would show up and give us the story straight from the horse's mouth. If any of the 4e designers have given a definitive answer about this, I didn't see it, and would appreciate a link or quote.

If I were GMing 4e, I wouldn't identify minions. If I were playing 4e with a GM who didn't identify minions, I'd (obviously) save my dailies until I ran into an opponent who was demonstrably strong enough to be worth it. If this meant that I lost a turn whilst "probing" for the really tough nut, so what? It's just part of the challenge.

Quote from: B.T.;318124Tell me: is this an example of the tyranny of fun, or am I misunderstanding the concept?

Don't know; it's not "my" catchphrase. However, I'm surely glad I skipped the current edition of D&D.

Because, apart from the rules themselves - which I find distasteful - it also (apparently) encourages a rather repugnant attitude to the RPG experience. That, or it was there all along and I was blissfully unaware.

My players threaten to beat me severely when I start giving them metagame knowledge.

They don't see the fun in me holding their hands through the game.

Not impressed, but then, I'm not surprised either.

It's pretty easy to figure out who's a minion.  If the players have any brains at all they'll know what's what by the end of the first round, so it doesn't really matter if the dm tells them up front or not.

An adventurer, in a game where power is rigidly tiered (like, you know, D&D), should be able to easily recognize opponents where are inferior, weaker, on the same level, stronger, and overpowering.

Also, bullshit monsters like the nilbog need to go fuck themselves.

My six year old daughter doesn't demand to know who is what and so on when we play OD&D.

Shit, to most of those people that's probably child abuse on my part.

Quote from: paris80;318130Don't know; it's not "my" catchphrase. However, I'm surely glad I skipped the current edition of D&D.

Because, apart from the rules themselves - which I find distasteful - it also (apparently) encourages a rather repugnant attitude to the RPG experience. That, or it was there all along and I was blissfully unaware.

I don't see how game rules can be distasteful, unless we're talking F.A.T.A.L or some-such. The 4e rules are fun in play and remind me of old school D&D (minions, by the way, remind me a lot of 0 level NPCs and goblins with 1d6-1 hit points as well as kobolds with 1d4 - all of which could be mowed down pretty quick). I also don't think it's anything about the game itself that encourages the attitude towards minions in discussion here. It's the way the designers presented those rules, most notably in the podcasts I mentioned above.

Quote from: ColonelHardisson;318128The series of D&D podcasts in which the Penny Arcade guys, the guy from PvP, and (later on) Wil Wheaton played 4e were generally very entertaining and showed the game to good effect except for the way the DMs scrupulously identified minions all the time.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I have to wonder if a deal was or was not struck between WoTC and these guys to act as a "public face" of 4E.

Quote from: ColonelHardisson;318145I don't see how game rules can be distasteful, unless we're talking F.A.T.A.L or some-such.

FATAL is totally fucking batshit insane. Fourth edition D&D is distasteful... to me. BIG difference.

QuoteThe 4e rules are fun in play and remind me of old school D&D (minions, by the way, remind me a lot of 0 level NPCs and goblins with 1d6-1 hit points as well as kobolds with 1d4 - all of which could be mowed down pretty quick).

0-level NPCs, goblins and kobolds are _low-level monsters_. Minions in fourth edition needn't be, if my understanding of those rules is correct (to a sufficient extent at least). So, you could have a demon minion, an ogre minion, a dragon minion(?) and whatever else, correct? Again, BIG difference.

QuoteI also don't think it's anything about the game itself that encourages the attitude towards minions in discussion here. It's the way the designers presented those rules, most notably in the podcasts I mentioned above.

You might well be right. As I said, for all I know, it might have been an issue (or non-issue for some) for any amount of time before 4e's release.

I generally identify minions.  Seriously, I think of them as movie ninjas and random mooks, only in D&D instead of in some other game.  They're a cinematic tool - not a simulation tool - and I prefer to treat them cinematically as a result.  It's just like if I were running M&M, any Cinematic Unisystem game, etc.  They don't simulate a damn thing, and I'm not going to pretend they have some objective existence as free-roaming minions out in the world.  If I treat them as anything other than a game construct designed for cinematic fights, I'd be acting ridiculous.

Besides, if I lay out a map and there's a few big guys and then a bunch of unnumbered identical minis, they figure it out anyway.  I don't even need to get to minis.  "There's a huge troll, a hobgoblin with a staff, two mean-looking goblins sneering at you with wickedly-sharp knives, and eight poorly-equipped kobold rabble wearing rags and wielding daggers."  The math is not hard to figure out, and frankly pretending otherwise bores me.

It's honestly damn close to my recent 1e Temple of Elemental Evil games.  If we have Lareth, three lieutenants wearing gold chains of office, several sergeants with badges and good equipment, and then a bunch of guys with spears and crossbows...  Well, the only reason they're not obvious minions is because there are no minions in 1e.  (Instead, they're "0-level Humans")

Also, there have been whiny players in every edition.  Usually these are younger gamers, many of whom are playing 4e right now because it's what's new.  I know it's in vogue to blame it on 4e itself, but seriously.  My players wouldn't whine, they wouldn't bitch.  They'd laugh about it and say, "Aw, shit.  Oh well."

-O

Quote from: paris80;3181510-level NPCs, goblins and kobolds are _low-level monsters_. Minions in fourth edition needn't be, if my understanding of those rules is correct (to a sufficient extent at least). So, you could have a demon minion, an ogre minion, a dragon minion(?) and whatever else, correct? Again, BIG difference.

No, that's 100% true.  I'd argue that a kobold, goblin, or human minion is functionally identical to a sub-1-HD creature in 1e.  Higher-level minions are new and different - they've never been in D&D before.  They exist to allow for more cinematic fights, and if you don't want that, you shouldn't use them.

Which is fine.  Frankly, you could run 4e up through immortality and never use a minion, and the game would still work just fine.

The way higher-level minions tend to work is something like this....

We have an Ogre.  He's a Level 8 brute, which means five of him is a good match for a Level 8 party.  We also have tougher ogres and weaker ogres, but he's the regular old ogre you might expect.

By the time you hit 16th level, you have the Ogre Bludgeoneer.  He's a minion, but fundamentally he's the same kind of guy as the other ogre.  Only, by the time adventurers are 16th level, those lower-level ogres make for a shitty fight because of the way 4e's math scales.  The ogre bludgeoneer is basically that other ogre, but tougher to hit, with a better attack bonus, and, critically, only 1 HP.  So by the time you get a few more levels under your belt, those ogres you faced before are no longer any big deal; they're pretty much wusses.  As a tradeoff for having no HPs, they get better attack bonuses and defenses.  It's hardly a fair trade, though - they're still basically wusses.

Now, I can see how folks might hate that.  I love it, but I can't fault people for disliking it.

-O