# 4E is for casuals, D&D is d0med



## hong (Jun 8, 2008)

Peter Seebach says it better than me:

4E and the Wii


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## Brennin Magalus (Jun 8, 2008)

hong said:
			
		

> Peter Seebach says it better than me:
> 
> 4E and the Wii




Hey, I know that guy. (From another venue.)

Anyway, I am disappointed we lost you to 4e. Maybe the rest of us can take up a collection to have you deprogrammed. (Try not to take notice of any unadorned white vans in your neighborhood.)


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## hong (Jun 8, 2008)

Too late, mang. I drank the kool-aid.

Or rather, since 4E reads like WotC stole my house rules and wishlist folder, perhaps it was they who drank the kool-aid.


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## Brennin Magalus (Jun 8, 2008)

I considered the possibility they mind-seeded you. I had not considered the possibility you mind-seeded _them_. I'll have to check their blogs for signs of prurience.

In any event, where am I supposed to find another statistician that plays D&D (and is not switching to 4e)? I guess I could ask Gani but he is so advanced in years that it really would be a 15 minute adventuring day with him.


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## d10 (Jun 8, 2008)

I agree with the sentiments contained in the OP's link completely. 4E, IMHO, is a fantastic game. I commend WotC for what they've achieved. 

My feelings on 3e VS.4e are thus; In 3e your imagination was limited only by the ruleset, in 4e the ruleset is limited only by your imagination. Just because something isn't printed in the one of the three core rulebooks dosen't mean it isn't possible. The ruleset is simple, yet comprehensive, enough to become intuitive. Which in turn opens the game up to limitless possibilities gameplay wise. Which I think is the true genious driving 4E D&D.

As a DM who more often than not ended up "winging" large portions of his campaigns, mostly because my players would often do things I could never have expected, I welcome 4E with open arms. For when that situation occurs now, I'll no longer have to stop the game and look for some obscure rule. I can simply keep the game going and in doing so keep myself and group entertained.


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## Spatula (Jun 8, 2008)

People still post on usenet?!


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## WhatGravitas (Jun 8, 2008)

That is an interesting take on it and compares to well to the aims that 4E has: Bringing in more beginners, more fresh blood, and that is a good strategy, due to today's realities:

1) D&D, in any incarnation, cannot hold a candle to the White Wolf games if we get to immersive role-playing, these games often fit highly character-driven games better.
2) D&D is a pre-Forge game - love'em or hate'em, but Forge games have interesting concepts and hence also draw more specialised role-players to them.
3) A part of its niche, tactical group-gaming, is partially shared with traditional wargames and newer online games.
4) D&D is a brand and has high brand-loyalty and keeps gamers that way.
5) People have less and less time for casual activities nowadays, seriously.

So, by making the game more casual, D&D admits that it isn't one of the more specialised games - instead it utilizes the latter two aspect - keeping players via brand loyalty and making it more appealing to a casual role-playing crowd.

Because, at least I see it that way, D&D started out as very casual game - heck, it was basically Gygax and Arneson's pamphlet of modded wargaming rules!

By embracing it's casualness and cribbing intuitive concepts from other RPGs (a dash of narrative sprinkling), they made a very good entry-level game - and that's the point:

Not everybody wants to leave entry-level and entry stuff is also often associated with good memories - hence 4E could do for later editions what the original D&D sets (casual, fun games) did for modern editions: Nostalgia.

Sounds like a viable strategy and I suspect that similar considerations were behind it, considering that:

1) WotC tried to launch Gleemax.
2) WotC restructures MtG ight now.

Which both show that WotC tries to tap into that market of latent gamers that don't have the time for more invested gaming, hence also the layout of the 4E books: Non-textbook like, more like a "guide to gaming".

Cheers, LT.


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## Majoru Oakheart (Jun 8, 2008)

I think that there is a fairly large portion of D&D players who played the game to have fun with their friends killing monsters, taking their stuff, and saving the princess.

Simple, down to earth, beer and pretzel sort of affairs.  They had some laughs while sitting in their basement.  3e brought a bunch of new players to the game, that's for sure.  But, in the process(and over the years) it has alienated a lot of more casual players.

People who were very involved in the game(and I include myself in that list) were very well versed in the rules and the "secrets" contained therein.  I was the first one to say: Your character is a 3 fighter/3 bard/2 cleric/3 rogue?  Umm..you know that's a really bad character right?

I've seen people pick up the 3rd Ed rulebook and start reading only to become really intimidated at how complicated everything was.

4e seems to be an attempt to find a happy medium between 2e(full of holes in the rules and rather boring to run combats in but very easy to run and understand) and 3e(lots of interesting options, but there is a rule for EVERYTHING and you needed to know them all to be good at the game)


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## Mallus (Jun 8, 2008)

Nice Usenet post.

One thing though, rules complexity != campaign complexity, as demonstrated by the number of people who played deep, involved campaign using OD&D or beer-and-pretzels dungeon crawls under 3.5 can attest to. I'm sure my group wi have no trouble playing deep, involved, immersive campaigns --of we choose to-- using 4e.

Put another way, unlike the Wii, there really isn't a limit to how complex an app 4e can run.


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## mhensley (Jun 8, 2008)

Noobs still won't put in the effort to learn a game with a 300+ page rulebook.  Not going to happen.


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## Imaro (Jun 8, 2008)

You know one of my biggest worries with 4e is that it isn't as casual friendly as some might think.  I have taken the time to read trough numerous posts, here and elsewhere, concerning gameplay with KotS, the gameday adventure, etc.  and there has been quite a large disparity in how groups fare versus the challenges.  I am starting to think that while the rules may be simpler, the more tactical nature of the combat might be more complex than 3e.  I compare it to the article in this manner...

The author comments on the numerous buttons on more advanced systems controllers, but I think it's more apt to look at 3e as having various controllers from the classic 2 button (barbarian) to the 6 or 7 button controller (wizards and clerics).  The player was able to choose which controller they felt like dealing with dependent upon their playstyle.

4e strikes me as having the 3 button controller, but having alot of combos and codes you have to produce using those three buttons, and these maneuvers have to be pulled of in coordination with others that know the right sequences.

This is all a long way of asking what others think as far as 4e being more tactical and geared towards those who are better at that type of thing.  Does this make it more accessible to new players or like chess and checkers will it still not attract the casual gamer so much as the tactical gamer and thus still cater to a particular niche?  Thoughts?


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## hong (Jun 8, 2008)

mhensley said:
			
		

> Noobs still won't put in the effort to learn a game with a 300+ page rulebook.  Not going to happen.



 You should check out the size of WoWwiki sometime.


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## BryonD (Jun 8, 2008)

linked article said:
			
		

> Is 4E as richly detailed a game as 3E?  Well, no.



Quick someone silence him, the truth is leaking out.

FWIW, I think he is on exactly the right track.  As I've predicted before, people will pick up this simple game and run with it.  And many of them will then move on to the next fad in a matter of months.  And many of the ones who stay will be less inclined to buy more books because the simple is better approach will not fit with the more and more add-ons approach.  Does that mean no one will play?  Hell no.  But give it time.

For the first time ever, a new version of D&D is not on the the cutting edge of "richly detailed".  2E was there at first.  But late in 2E it was overtaken by other games that did more and better, and the only thing had going for it was the name.  And it was slowly but steadily dying.  The new and shiny doesn't last long and and even the new players who really like it will start wondering just what this "role playing" thing can really offer once you get past the entry level.

oh and I love this paragraph:


> If I had a group of experienced gamers, all of whom were mildly autistic like me, we would all play 3.5 or 3.75 and love the details and special cases we're so familiar with.  If I wanna play with my roommate who gets frustrated and upset and gives up because skill points are too complicated and the spell preparation system is confusing and how was I supposed to know I had to pick spells... 4E is an excellent choice.



Not exactly complimentary of 4E fans.

And yeah, by lowering the bar for the target audience, you can get a hell of a lot more people in your potential customer base.  But the problem is, his roommate buddy (49 times out of 50) isn't going to be a "new gamer".  He might have fun playing for a few hours once or twice a month...  for a few months.  But them he will move on to the next thing.

Give it two years.  Wait and see.


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## hong (Jun 8, 2008)

BryonD said:
			
		

> Not exactly complimentary of 4E fans.




Not just that, he just called you "mildly autistic"!


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## AntiStateQuixote (Jun 8, 2008)

I have not read the article, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

I have DM'd three sessions of KotS, so I actually have some experience playing this game.

I find that 4e combat is far more complex than 3.x at low levels.  The tactical options available to ALL PCs and the monsters makes things a bit chaotic.  On more than one occassion I have had to tell a player to hurry up and make a decision as he sits there and looks over his character sheet looking for the "best" current option.  At 1st and 2nd level in 3.x this NEVER happened.  You either swung your sword or charged or cast your one of three spells for the day or whatever.  Every round every player usually has an impactful tactical decision.

Add to this marking abilities, debuffs that last for one turn or until a save, recharging encounter powers for monsters, action points, daily powers, encounter powers, etc. and things get fairly complex fairly quickly.

This is NOT a simple game that plays easier than 3.x.  Again, this is based on low level play.  I remember with a shudder the nightmare of running level 9+ combats in 3.x with tons of dispel magic and other crap going off, and I hope desparately that 4e will never approach this level of complexity.  My gut feeling is that we START with a higher level of complexity at 1st level, but that it doesn't increase signficantly as we level up because the things that are going on (see list above) doesn't really change.


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## Imperialus (Jun 8, 2008)

BryonD said:
			
		

> For the first time ever, a new version of D&D is not on the the cutting edge of "richly detailed".  2E was there at first.  But late in 2E it was overtaken by other games that did more and better, and the only thing had going for it was the name.  And it was slowly but steadily dying.  The new and shiny doesn't last long and and even the new players who really like it will start wondering just what this "role playing" thing can really offer once you get past the entry level.




But what it is jumping the bandwagon on is 'rules lite'.  It's coming a little late to the party but lets face it.  Rules light games are pretty popular and 4E is pretty 'cutting edge' in that respect.

To sum up my take on it, he suggests that while there is a segment of gamers who enjoy deeply complex rule systems that there has been a trend in recent years towards 'simpler' games. As games evolved through the 90's there was a trend towards trying to find a rule for everything. This brought us the Skills and Powers books of 2nd ed, Shadowrun 3, Gurps, the infamous Palladium (god knows what edition) and yes, Third Edition. Since the release of 3.5 however the trend has reversed across the gamer community. The two best examples of this in my mind are "Castles and Crusades" and "True20". While the two systems appeal to widely different audiences, C&C is seen as 'old school' while T20 is the indy rock band both are very simple, intuitive, straight forward systems. I think 4E hopes to appeal to both, with the core mechanic of "Roll a D20 and seen what happens" staying the same but with a more progressive framework built around it.


Personally I've been entranced by the simpler systems and I'm a wargamer, chits on hexes style.  I enjoy wargaming because it is very intense, detail oriented mental gymnastics where you need to understand the workings of the system to do well.  I know exactly one other person who I have this in common with.  I need more than that for a D&D game.  Besides I never got into the D&D system since the actual 'rules' of most wargames are fairly simple too, just implementing them is tough.  I game with my sister who after 8 years still needs help doing characters, along side a father of 4.  Simpler systems let us focus on what our characters are doing, not how they are doing it.


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## ReillyMcShane (Jun 8, 2008)

I haven't gotten my books yet - on order - but from what I've read, I'm excited about 4E based upon many of the aspects that the article - and some users - stated.

First, I have played for about 30 years and, to be honest, I don't have time like I used to. I have a family to do stuff with, house to take care of, job to attend, bills to pay, etc. My old circle of D&D friends are in the same boat. We get together once every 3-4 months for a day of gaming - drink beer, eat pretzels, catch up with each other. We like to kill stuff, get treasure - typical dungeon dive. Travel times to my house (where we play) are from 1-2.5 hours - so it's not easy to get us all together. We want to maximize the time we have together. D&D is the catalyst that gets us to re-connect, and we want to enjoy the time.

With that in mind, I hope 4E is a simpler, more streamlined game. I found 3E to be great on one level (lots of detail), but then it got caught up in so many rules, it could get frustrating. As the (usually) DM, preparing for a session was a lot of work. Trying to understand what the heck each monster actually did, feats, etc. - was quite time consuming - especially for high levels. And when you don't play that often, it really can bog down a game. 

I'm a little worried that combat is going to be more confusing, but I haven't tried it yet to know for sure. But I don't mind a long fight, as long as people are doing stuff, making decisions, etc. It's when you sit there waiting for the cleric to review his 100+ spell options (my slowest player has a 16th level cleric in 3E - he can really make things go slow, but in his defense, he doesn't know the spells that well since we don't play that often) that it gets frustrating. Also, we had one player who played with us for a while when 3E came out, and he knew things far better than the rest of us. It was really frustrating to me as the DM - and the other players - as he'd pull rules out of his butt that none of us knew (of course, he never helped me out much when there were rules that might have helped me as the DM!). It was the nature of things since he played so much, but it wasn't that fun to the rest of us.

All in all, 3E is difficult because we didn't play that often together. Knowing spells, skills, feats, etc. - was a new experience every time. I rarely wrote my own adventures (which I used to do all the time) because I didn't know the rules as well as I did in 2.0 - when we played a lot more and things weren't as complex.

No doubt there will be things we miss - races, spells, whatever. But that happens every edition. But there will probably be additions we love. If streamlining the gaming system means more 'casual', it will likely be a winner in our group. Some people will prefer the deep complexity of 3E, and that's great for them. What's 'better' will simply be what fits a person's situation.

For my friends and I it's about getting together and enjoying each other's company. Drink beer, talk about the kids, jobs, old times, whatever. It's a social experience and we have a blast. 

Time will tell, but I'm optimistic about 4E.


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## Mercule (Jun 8, 2008)

Imaro said:
			
		

> The author comments on the numerous buttons on more advanced systems controllers, but I think it's more apt to look at 3e as having various controllers from the classic 2 button (barbarian) to the 6 or 7 button controller (wizards and clerics).  The player was able to choose which controller they felt like dealing with dependent upon their playstyle.



Not necessarily.  I've got a player who achieved functional mastery of the cleric pretty quickly -- even starting with an 8-10th level character for an ongoing game -- but she was quickly frustrated with the barbarian's rage and trying to figure out when to use that one shot and what the trickle-down impacts of the stat modifiers were.

The barbarian isn't necessarily "easier" than the cleric.  It's just different.



> 4e strikes me as having the 3 button controller, but having alot of combos and codes you have to produce using those three buttons, and these maneuvers have to be pulled of in coordination with others that know the right sequences.



I don't know that anyone (outside play-testers) has played enough 4e to say that with any confidence.  Contrary to your first take, I've thought 4e just looks like you only have to manage the decent combos and all the "trick" codes are phased out.

I still think there will be differences in ease of play, depending on the player and how well a given class matches their mentality.  I do well with personal and/or group tactics, so I'll play a rogue, warlord, or one that dips into the other (how's that for an odd mix?) -- I suspect I'd flummox things up as a defender or, especially, controller.  Another player is good at playing meat-shield or artillery while helping others with tactics -- looks like either warlock or fighter would be easiest for him, or wizard if he wanted to step things up.  Another is wonderful at identifying where people need support, but heaven help us if he starts with tactics, so he's going to be best suited for a support-focused leader.  And the player above (cleric) would do well with something in the heat of things and powers that are either at-will or reliable, so fighter it is, though she might appreciate a TWF ranger -- controller and leader types are right out.


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## Andor (Jun 8, 2008)

d10 said:
			
		

> I agree with the sentiments contained in the OP's link completely. 4E, IMHO, is a fantastic game. I commend WotC for what they've achieved.
> 
> My feelings on 3e VS.4e are thus; In 3e your imagination was limited only by the ruleset, in 4e the ruleset is limited only by your imagination. Just because something isn't printed in the one of the three core rulebooks dosen't mean it isn't possible. The ruleset is simple, yet comprehensive, enough to become intuitive. Which in turn opens the game up to limitless possibilities gameplay wise. Which I think is the true genious driving 4E D&D.
> 
> As a DM who more often than not ended up "winging" large portions of his campaigns, mostly because my players would often do things I could never have expected, I welcome 4E with open arms. For when that situation occurs now, I'll no longer have to stop the game and look for some obscure rule. I can simply keep the game going and in doing so keep myself and group entertained.




In all seriousness, if all you want from a game system is a skeleton of a conflict resolution system on which to hang the unlimited worlds of the imagination. (No bad thing) What does 4e offer you that, for example, FUDGE does not?

System light gaming is a wonderful thing, but there are plenty of excellent ones out there already. What does 4e have over them?


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## Man in the Funny Hat (Jun 9, 2008)

Andor said:
			
		

> System light gaming is a wonderful thing, but there are plenty of excellent ones out there already. What does 4e have over them?



It is D&D.  They are not.

I'm quite serious.


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## Lorion (Jun 9, 2008)

Man in the Funny Hat said:
			
		

> It is D&D.  They are not.
> 
> I'm quite serious.




Exactly. It's got brand recognition. You'll ALWAYS find people to play. Try that with FUDGE.


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## Kichwas (Jun 9, 2008)

There are reasons to slam 4E, but this isn't one of them.

"OMFG, they've turned it into a game for casuals, my raiding guild is doomed! DOOMED! DOOMED I SAY!"

...

Yeah... this kind of complain -IS- the complaint that gets posted -EVERY FREAKING TIME- an MMO gets a patch of any kind, or even worse, an expansion...

Let's find something better to criticize, please. 

'Only for casuals' sounds so much like MMO-QQing.


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## Intense_Interest (Jun 9, 2008)

The only people who throw on the "Casual" label on people are the ones that want to be labeled as "Supercool"/"Hardcore".

4E isn't "casual", its just a well-designed system that has a smoother learning curve and better base-level assumptions and balance concerns.  If a non-competitive game like 3E requires Optimization and System Mastery, it isn't "Hardcore", its "Badly designed".

*"4E is Casual" is the new "THAC0 kept the riff-raff out."*


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## WhatGravitas (Jun 9, 2008)

arcady said:
			
		

> Let's find something better to criticize, please.
> 
> 'Only for casuals' sounds so much like MMO-QQing.



You mean 4E critics are like MMORPGs!?

Cheers, LT.


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## Kichwas (Jun 9, 2008)

Well I did note, there are a lot of good reasons to slam 4E, for actual concrete things in or missing from the books, but this just isn't one of them.

All 'for casuals' really means is 'its appealing to an audience not defined by people exactly like me.'


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## Mercule (Jun 9, 2008)

Intense_Interest said:
			
		

> The only people who throw on the "Casual" label on people are the ones that want to be labeled as "Supercool"/"Hardcore".
> 
> 4E isn't "casual", its just a well-designed system that has a smoother learning curve and better base-level assumptions and balance concerns.  If a non-competitive game like 3E requires Optimization and System Mastery, it isn't "Hardcore", its "Badly designed".
> 
> *"4E is Casual" is the new "THAC0 kept the riff-raff out."*



This.

Who cares if it's "casual"?  Is it fun?

Note:  There is no "yeah, but".  There is either "yes" or "no".


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## Lord Zardoz (Jun 9, 2008)

mhensley said:
			
		

> Noobs still won't put in the effort to learn a game with a 300+ page rulebook.  Not going to happen.




I will take issue with that for two reasons.  First, your talking about casual gamers, not newbs.  I learned how to play D&D 'Cold'.  Having never before played and having no friends who played, I learned how to play D&D by buying the books and reading them.

The second point is that a Noob / Casual Player will sit at a table and play the game if someone can bring them up to speed quickly.  And what does a Noob need to learn to play 4th edition?  If you hand them a pre-generated character, they only need to learn 7 things.

1)  Nearly every roll will be 1d20 + Lvl / 2 + Modifiers.
2)  Their character AC, and Fort / Ref / Will Defense
3)  About 5-6 Class powers (At will / Encounter / Daily / Inherent class features)
4)  The character can perform a Minor / Move / Standard action every round
5)  How to use an Action Point
6)  Healing Surges and 2nd Wind
7)  How to make a saving throw (1-10 bad, 11 - 20 good)

If you are going to do a 'cold bootstrap' of the player, and have them create their character from scratch, they need to learn a little bit more.

7)  Race and Class Selection
8)  Weapon selection and Proficiency modifiers
9)  Skill, Feat and Class power selection.

And if the Newb is the first guy of his circle of friends to buy the books and learn the game:
X)  How to DM.

Every other element of the game is going to be handled by the Dm (triggering Opportunity Attacks, implementing combat advantage, and the like).

Pure Casual gamers will never learn the game cold.  But for both casual gamers and dedicated newbs, this edition is probably the easiest to learn.  There is not 100+ pages of spells to sift through.  There is no need to figure out what your iterative attacks are.  Learning how to 'shift' is easier than learning how to use 5 ft Step.  Grab is easier than Grapple.

And the work of running the game in play is also easier.  No tracking of spell durations.  All effects are ongoing until you save.  No tracking of HP for pure cannon fodder, assuming you used minions.  You have, for the first time, clear directives on how to create a level appropriate encounter, as well as guidelines on how to ensure that the monster is appropriate.  (chose a total XP appropriate to the level of the party.  use monsters close in level to the players).  No need to count rounds until a rechargeable ability is used.  Just roll a dice and if it hits high enough, you can use it.

Between 2nd, 3rd and 4th Edition, 4th appears to be the easiest to learn so far.  Having never played anything prior to 1st edition, I cannot speak to the ease of learning for those.

END COMMUNICATION


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## Treebore (Jun 9, 2008)

d10 said:
			
		

> My feelings on 3e VS.4e are thus; In 3e your imagination was limited only by the ruleset, in 4e the ruleset is limited only by your imagination. Just because something isn't printed in the one of the three core rulebooks dosen't mean it isn't possible. The ruleset is simple, yet comprehensive, enough to become intuitive. Which in turn opens the game up to limitless possibilities gameplay wise. Which I think is the true genious driving 4E D&D.
> 
> As a DM who more often than not ended up "winging" large portions of his campaigns, mostly because my players would often do things I could never have expected, I welcome 4E with open arms. For when that situation occurs now, I'll no longer have to stop the game and look for some obscure rule. I can simply keep the game going and in doing so keep myself and group entertained.





Holy smokes! Why didn't anyone tell me that 4E is a clone of C&C? Is it easily compatible with every edition of D&D too?


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## TerraDave (Jun 9, 2008)

Spatula said:
			
		

> People still post on usenet?!




There still _is_ a usenet. Weird.


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## Andor (Jun 9, 2008)

Mercule said:
			
		

> This.
> 
> Who cares if it's "casual"?  Is it fun?
> 
> Note:  There is no "yeah, but".  There is either "yes" or "no".




Sometimes it's fun to play checkers or Carcassone. Othertimes it's fun to play Advanced Civ or Age of Rennessance.

I'll drive 30 min to play the first couple of games. I'll drive a lot longer to play the others.



			
				Lorion said:
			
		

> It is D&D. They are not.
> 
> I'm quite serious.




It has the D&D name and brand recognition. Opinions seem to be split on if it's still D&D though. I haven't played it yet so I can't say one way or the other myself, but they seem to be a lot more "It's just not D&D anymore." opinions floating around than I recall from the 3e days. There certainly were some very vocal 3e detractors, even here, but percentage wise 4e seems to have turned off an alarmingly large number of posters.

The name is nothing to sneer at though. I recall sitting in the big bar on 2 at origins and argueing with Eric from Wizard's Attic who felt that 3e should be inelligeable for the 'Best new game of the year' because it was D&D even though (as I said) it was a different game with a different system written by different people for a different company. 

It was a new game but it still felt like D&D to me though, and most people agreed.


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## FireLance (Jun 9, 2008)

TerraDave said:
			
		

> There still _is_ a usenet. Weird.



Usenet is the one true... ah, nevermind.


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## Intense_Interest (Jun 9, 2008)

Andor said:
			
		

> Sometimes it's fun to play checkers or Carcassone. Othertimes it's fun to play Advanced Civ or Age of Rennessance.
> 
> I'll drive 30 min to play the first couple of games. I'll drive a lot longer to play the others.




Are you comparing 4E to Checkers while 3E is Age of Civilization?  If so:

Calling 4E Checkers is a new version of "THAC0 kept the Riff-Raff out".  It's petty and wrong-headed.

Also, I'll drive an extra hour to play Settlers of Catan vs. anything else, but thats because it is the Best Game Ever (anecdotally).  Your decision to generate value by your concept of "complexity" is about the same kind of anecdote.


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## pemerton (Jun 9, 2008)

Normally I agree with Hong, but on this occasion I don't. Saying that 4e is simpler than 3E, and hence for casual gamers, is like saying that HeroQuest is simpler than 3E (true), and hence for casual gamers (false) - in fact, most gamers who play HeroQuest are probably more serious than the average 3E player.

I am a serious gamer. And on reading the 4e rulebooks I think it is a game that is far more attractive to me than 3E ever was. Of course, one can generalise unwisely from one's own experience, but 4e has one dominant feature that makes it attractive to a serious gamer: sophisticated and (more-or-less) balanced mechanics on which meaningful story can be hung in many different ways.

To compare it to another game for serious players, namely, Rolemaster. Anyone familiar with the longrunning series of Rolemaster Companions will know that these consisted of complex optional rules intended to enable the system to deliver slightly different play experiences. In 4e, a good number of those variations in play experience can be produced at the table without needing to change the mechanics, by instead adopting a particular shared narration of ingame events within the parameters set by the mechanics of action resolution.



			
				BryonD said:
			
		

> Quick someone silence him, the truth is leaking out.
> 
> FWIW, I think he is on exactly the right track.  As I've predicted before, people will pick up this simple game and run with it.  And many of them will then move on to the next fad in a matter of months.  And many of the ones who stay will be less inclined to buy more books because the simple is better approach will not fit with the more and more add-ons approach.  Does that mean no one will play?  Hell no.  But give it time.
> 
> For the first time ever, a new version of D&D is not on the the cutting edge of "richly detailed".  2E was there at first.  But late in 2E it was overtaken by other games that did more and better, and the only thing had going for it was the name.  And it was slowly but steadily dying.



The notion that even 1st ed AD&D was richly detailed compared to some of its contemporaries or near-contemporaries - RM, RQ, C&S, etc - is a little implausible. Even moreso for 2nd ed.

3E was not a richly detailed game on a par with those systems either - it was an uneasy compromise between the abstract gameplay mechanics of hit points and armour class, and the simulationist detail of skill points and formulae for magic item creation.

So far, the more I read of the 4e books the more impressed I am by the cleverness of the mechanical design, and the flexibility it permits for the layering of as much narrative detail as one might like in respect of matters like actions during skill challenges, performance of rituals and so on.



			
				Imperialus said:
			
		

> But what it is jumping the bandwagon on is 'rules lite'.  It's coming a little late to the party but lets face it.  Rules light games are pretty popular and 4E is pretty 'cutting edge' in that respect.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> As games evolved through the 90's there was a trend towards trying to find a rule for everything. This brought us the Skills and Powers books of 2nd ed, Shadowrun 3, Gurps, the infamous Palladium (god knows what edition) and yes, Third Edition. Since the release of 3.5 however the trend has reversed across the gamer community. The two best examples of this in my mind are "Castles and Crusades" and "True20". While the two systems appeal to widely different audiences, C&C is seen as 'old school' while T20 is the indy rock band both are very simple, intuitive, straight forward systems. I think 4E hopes to appeal to both, with the core mechanic of "Roll a D20 and seen what happens" staying the same but with a more progressive framework built around it.



I don't really agree that 4e is "rules lite" - depending what the measure is, of course, but it seems to have mechanics considerably more complicated than Call of Cthulhu, for example.

I'm also not sure I agree with your timelilne - Basic Roleplaying, for example, can be a very rules light system if some of the RQ complexity is stripped away, and it has been around for ever. Tunnels and Trolls likewise is venerable and rules light. And one of the most mechanically complex and clunky RPGs - Rolemaster - is nearly as old.



			
				Andor said:
			
		

> In all seriousness, if all you want from a game system is a skeleton of a conflict resolution system on which to hang the unlimited worlds of the imagination. (No bad thing) What does 4e offer you that, for example, FUDGE does not?



200 or so pages of power descriptions, magic items etc, plus the same (or a bit more) of monsters. That is, it's not rules light.

A better departure for comparison might be HeroWars/Quest. This is a system with a simple core mechanic which, in its various implementations and once magic is added quickly becomes quite complex in play. It is completely non-simulationist, and intended to support fairly serious narrative play.

4e is a system with a simple core mechanic, a few associated mechanics (like hit points and healing surges) but a host of unique powers (and obviously many more to come) which implement those mechanics in various subtle ways. It is not as non-simulationist as HeroWars - for example, turns take place in ingame time, most attack powers correlate  at least roughly to particular ingame happenings, movement and position are tracked in combat, etc - but the simulationism is subordinate to a serious gamist agenda (which is probably ripe to be twisted to a narrativist one, provided that the narrativism is not too gritty or serious).


----------



## Family (Jun 9, 2008)




----------



## Sylrae (Jun 9, 2008)

Andor said:
			
		

> It has the D&D name and brand recognition. Opinions seem to be split on if it's still D&D though. I haven't played it yet so I can't say one way or the other myself, but they seem to be a lot more "It's just not D&D anymore." opinions floating around than I recall from the 3e days. There certainly were some very vocal 3e detractors, even here, but percentage wise 4e seems to have turned off an alarmingly large number of posters.




To me it seems to play more like Dragon Strike (a board game D&D imitation with simpler rules). It's D&D-Like, and it's great for 1 shot sessions. But for something longer, the mechanics are not what I would look for in a less mechanics based game about rich storytelling without an emphasis on combat (White Wolf); OR what I would want from D&D, which would be story oriented but have more combat. It plays more like a board game, and less like a D&D campaign or a white wolf campaign (that's not just WoD, but also the Trinity series of White Wolf games.)

from the session I played, and what I read in here, it seems like it will be a better Idea to incorporate some of the ideas I like from 4e into my 3.5e games, rather than trying to "Fix" 4e itself.


----------



## Leatherhead (Jun 9, 2008)

hong said:
			
		

> You should check out the size of WoWwiki sometime.



I would like to point out that WoW noobs don't bother with looking things up on WoWwiki, or virtually any other online resource for that matter. However, they sometimes read the small book that comes with the CDs that covers generic commands and has a brief description of the races and classes.


----------



## Sylrae (Jun 9, 2008)

Mercule said:
			
		

> This.
> 
> Who cares if it's "casual"?  Is it fun?
> 
> Note:  There is no "yeah, but".  There is either "yes" or "no".




What if the "yeah, but" is followed by "not as much as 3.5 (which is more detail oriented), OR White Wolf (which is more story oriented)"



			
				Andor said:
			
		

> It has the D&D name and brand recognition. Opinions seem to be split on if it's still D&D though. I haven't played it yet so I can't say one way or the other myself, but they seem to be a lot more "It's just not D&D anymore." opinions floating around than I recall from the 3e days. There certainly were some very vocal 3e detractors, even here, but percentage wise 4e seems to have turned off an alarmingly large number of posters.




To me it seems to play more like Dragon Strike (a board game D&D imitation with simpler rules). It's D&D-Like, and it's great for 1 shot sessions. But for something longer, the mechanics are not what I would look for in a less mechanics based game about rich storytelling without an emphasis on combat (White Wolf); OR what I would want from D&D, which would be story oriented but have more combat. It plays more like a board game, and less like a D&D campaign or a white wolf campaign (that's not just WoD, but also the Trinity series of White Wolf games.)

from the session I played, and what I read in here, it seems like it will be a better Idea to incorporate some of the ideas I like from 4e into my 3.5e games, rather than trying to "Fix" 4e itself.

I think for now instead of getting the 4e books im just gonna get all the 3.5e books i wanted but never had the cash to buy, hopefully before theyre hard to find.

then maybe ill start buying the nWoD books.

I may change my mind about 4e if they put out further supplements that are good enough, or I may change my mind if 4e fials and they release a 4.5e thats drastically different. only time will tell, but for the present, 4e is not something I'm really motivated to blow 110$ on.I'm


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## Intense_Interest (Jun 9, 2008)

Sylrae said:
			
		

> What if the "yeah, but" is followed by "not as much as 3.5 (which is more detail oriented), OR White Wolf (which is more story oriented)"




Some of the most casual games I've ever been a part of were White Wolf properties.  Drift-in, Drift-out narrative about stalking an apartment building that looked like the one we were in.

And further, post-conversion of 2E to 3E had its own casual air, called "not having System Mastery".  The fact that 3E was a bag of rats to DM was what made the table-time become highly optimized, which led to making D&D a "Hardcore" indulgence.  Which is why we've got what we have here.

Failing to chase players away from the table by its very nature isn't "casual", its a bad game.


----------



## FireLance (Jun 9, 2008)

Interesting bit from another of Malstrom's articles:



> *Why Experienced Gamers Prefer Obstacles*
> 
> I have often asked why wealthy people prefer the obstacles to becoming rich remain (these obstacles consist of the taxes on income, legal walls, as financial education which wealthy teach themselves but universities and government schools do not). Is it raw elitism where the rich got what they wanted and want the rest of to remain poor to they can appear like ‘lords’ over us as if they were special? Maybe. The reason why the wealthy prefer the obstacles is that they spent considerable time, money, and effort to get around those obstacles and would be furious to see younger generations not have to go through those same ‘trials’.
> 
> ...



Sounds very familiar...


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## babomb (Jun 9, 2008)

I certainly hope 4e's not like the Wii; my Wii has sat idle for months.


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## hong (Jun 9, 2008)

Andor said:
			
		

> Sometimes it's fun to play checkers or Carcassone. Othertimes it's fun to play Advanced Civ or Age of Rennessance.
> 
> I'll drive 30 min to play the first couple of games. I'll drive a lot longer to play the others.




In MY day, generic food metaphors used ice cream and chocolate, and we LIKED it.


----------



## pemerton (Jun 9, 2008)

hong said:
			
		

> In MY day, generic food metaphors used ice cream and chocolate, and we LIKED it.



On this occasion I will agree with you, Hong!


----------



## ProfessorCirno (Jun 9, 2008)

FireLance said:
			
		

> Interesting bit from another of Malstrom's articles:
> 
> Sounds very familiar...




Sounds very wrong, too.  Most video games these days are absolute crap, and that's not because of nostalgia goggles.  

The problem with removing "obstacles" is that you also remove the reward of surmounting them.  When there's no obstacles - when there's nothing to work for - then there's no reward.

Also, Family, you realize that 1) CAD is a horrible comic, and 2) B^U openly admits in a thread that he has NO IDEA what he's talking about with that comic, and he just made it to jump on the 4e bandwagon?


----------



## Taloras (Jun 9, 2008)

Honestly?  Ive looked thru the books over the last few days.  I will NEVER play 4E.  Period.  End of story.  The only thing this version has thats a redeeming factor is the pretty artwork.

Seriously, just looking at the book makes my head hurt.  3E was intuitve.  It took me 30 minutes to learn to play.  This?  Ive been looking at the books for 3 days and cant figure it out.  Simplified?  Clearly not. 

And im not alone in this.  -everyone- i know IRL who has looked at 4E agrees that 4E killed D&D.


----------



## Fenes (Jun 9, 2008)

ProfessorCirno said:
			
		

> The problem with removing "obstacles" is that you also remove the reward of surmounting them.  When there's no obstacles - when there's nothing to work for - then there's no reward.




There are obstacles like the dragon in the way of saving the princess, or the four guards patrolling the perimeter of the target bunker - and there are obstacles like complicated and obscure rules or clumsy game controls and useless interfaces. 

People often confuse the two.


----------



## Family (Jun 9, 2008)

ProfessorCirno said:
			
		

> Family, you realize that 1) CAD is a horrible comic, and 2) B^U openly admits in a thread that he has NO IDEA what he's talking about with that comic, and he just made it to jump on the 4e bandwagon?




1.) This particular comic was not.
2.) There's lots of room!


----------



## FireLance (Jun 9, 2008)

ProfessorCirno said:
			
		

> Sounds very wrong, too.  Most video games these days are absolute crap, and that's not because of nostalgia goggles.



I thought the key point of the quote was not so much on nostaligia or the quality of video games today versus yesterday, but that experienced gamers may consider some of the obstacles in a game to be features while many non-gamers consider them to be bugs (and are hence non-gamers, at least with respect to that game), and that experienced gamers consider them to be features because they are emotionally invested in their ability to overcome them.


> The problem with removing "obstacles" is that you also remove the reward of surmounting them.  When there's no obstacles - when there's nothing to work for - then there's no reward.



One good rule of thumb would be to determine whether the game succeeds because of the obstacle or in spite of it. If the latter, you can get rid of it without affecting most people's enjoyment of the game.


----------



## Kid Charlemagne (Jun 9, 2008)

ProfessorCirno said:
			
		

> Sounds very wrong, too.  Most video games these days are absolute crap, and that's not because of nostalgia goggles.




Pong is the one true game.  All others are pale imitations of the real thing.


----------



## Mathew_Freeman (Jun 9, 2008)

mhensley said:
			
		

> Noobs still won't put in the effort to learn a game with a 300+ page rulebook.  Not going to happen.




Um, every player did this at some point, surely?


----------



## Dlsharrock (Jun 9, 2008)

Shut up! Pong sucks. Pong 4e is the way of the future. Mind you, opinion seems to be divided as to whether Pong 4e really is Pong anymore. The bats have been simplified and the kind of people you meet at Pong conventions aren't nearly as smelly as they used to be.


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## Dlsharrock (Jun 9, 2008)

mhensley said:
			
		

> Noobs still won't put in the effort to learn a game with a 300+ page rulebook. Not going to happen.



3.5 wasn't exactly a ripping yarn.


----------



## Imaro (Jun 9, 2008)

Allright, played my first session yesterday and all it did was reinforce my suspicions about 4e.  You still need rules mastery, not only of such things as combat mastery and flanking, etc. but also of your powers, how they interact with others powers, etc.

You also need to be a tactically oriented player as all it takes is one that doesn't understand tactics (and a DM who isn't shabby in that department) to send the whole party spiraling towards defeat.


----------



## Dr. Strangemonkey (Jun 9, 2008)

Leatherhead said:
			
		

> I would like to point out that WoW noobs don't bother with looking things up on WoWwiki, or virtually any other online resource for that matter. However, they sometimes read the small book that comes with the CDs that covers generic commands and has a brief description of the races and classes.




I'm a WoW noob.  First thing I did was find WoWwiki.

Anecdotal, perhaps, but less silly than this over-generalization.  We live in the era of itunes.  Anyone who's a n00b in WoW is going to look for online resources as a matter of instinct.

I don't even open an instruction manual anymore without checking for online resources first.


----------



## Dlsharrock (Jun 9, 2008)

Imaro said:
			
		

> You also need to be a tactically oriented player as all it takes is one that doesn't understand tactics (and a DM who isn't shabby in that department) to send the whole party spiraling towards defeat.



[sarcasm]Tactics in combat? Whatever will those crazy spliff-smokers at WotC think of next![/sarcasm]


----------



## Imaro (Jun 9, 2008)

Dlsharrock said:
			
		

> [sarcasm]Tactics in combat? Whatever will those crazy spliff-smokers at WotC think of next![/sarcasm]





I guess my point was something like this... which is the more widely and casually played game... chess or checkers?


----------



## Mathew_Freeman (Jun 9, 2008)

ProfessorCirno said:
			
		

> Sounds very wrong, too.  Most video games these days are absolute crap, and that's not because of nostalgia goggles.
> 
> The problem with removing "obstacles" is that you also remove the reward of surmounting them.  When there's no obstacles - when there's nothing to work for - then there's no reward.
> 
> Also, Family, you realize that 1) CAD is a horrible comic, and 2) B^U openly admits in a thread that he has NO IDEA what he's talking about with that comic, and he just made it to jump on the 4e bandwagon?




1) Most examples of anything are crap, with a few standing out. This hasn't changed over time.

2) Exactly what sort of obstacles are you talking about?

3) I thought that comic was pretty funny, actually. 

I also agree with the general thrust of the first link, and it has made me realise why so many gamers have such negative reactions to 4e - it is simpler to pick up (although it can't make you decisive!) and it does run faster (with a bit of practice).

I honestly feel like I did when I got 3e - this is so much of a better product than the previous game. It'll never be perfect, but right now it's great.


----------



## Dlsharrock (Jun 9, 2008)

Imaro said:
			
		

> which is the more widely and casually played game... chess or checkers?




Chess? 

Or do you mean, which is easier to pick up and learn from scratch? In which case checkers. Not that I get the link you're trying to make. Are you saying checkers/4e is easier to lose/die because the rules are simpler?

I'm not trying to be a smart-ass. I'm genuinely interested and lapping up these 4e/good/bad discussions as I'm toying with buying the books and running a 4e session.


----------



## Imaro (Jun 9, 2008)

Dlsharrock said:
			
		

> Chess?
> 
> Or do you mean, which is easier to pick up and learn from scratch? In which case checkers. Not that I get the link you're trying to make. Are you saying checkers/4e is easier to lose/die because the rules are simpler?
> 
> I'm not trying to be a smart-ass. I'm genuinely interested and lapping up these 4e/good/bad discussions as I'm toying with buying the books and running a 4e session.




sorry, IMHE, checkers is the more played game.  

4e however is like chess, though from read throughs alot of people are claiming it's much simpler than 3e and harkens back to a simpler 1e in operation.  My oppinion is that 4e is deceptive, like chess which has rules which aren't all that numerous or hard to pick up ... however to play a good game of chess it takes alot more than just knowing the rules.  4e is the same way, From the two combats I ran last night the players really have to not only have rules mastery of such things as combat advantage, flanking, movement, their powers, how their powers interact with others powers, etc.  

They also have to use all of this knowledge in a (group) tactically sound way.  If the DM and the players have a large disparity in their tactical ability this game will definitely bring that to the forefront in every encounter.  It will either be super easy or super hard for the PC's.


----------



## mhensley (Jun 9, 2008)

Treebore said:
			
		

> Is it easily compatible with every edition of D&D too?




It isn't compatible with any of them.


----------



## mhensley (Jun 9, 2008)

Dlsharrock said:
			
		

> 3.5 wasn't exactly a ripping yarn.




I never said it was.  The only version of D&D that did a reasonable job of pulling in the uninitiated was Basic D&D.  That was your D&D for the casual player.


----------



## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jun 9, 2008)

Imaro said:
			
		

> My oppinion is that 4e is deceptive, like chess which has rules which aren't all that numerous or hard to pick up ... however to play a good game of chess it takes alot more than just knowing the rules.



Knowing the rules in 3E can be exactly what makes life so difficult. Adjudicate something seemingly simple as Wall spells (where do I place it? How can I shape it), or Lines (what happens if I use a 20° angle).
Handle Sunder, handle trip, handle disarm. 

Some rules are easier to learn, some are worse. Some you can't. (Unless someone can - "proving" all his explanations in the rules- explain all the grapple rules and tell me the number of attacks a monster has while grappling when using a grapple check or when using natural attack, what damage it deals, how Constrict stacks with normal damage and so much more. And, after explaining all that to me, explain why grapple is so broken with larger creatures...).

This all stuff you learn and is purely mechanically. It is ultimately totally useless in regards to problem-solving or for conducting "gaming fun".

Understanding tactics isn't easy, or for everyone. But at least it is a clear example of problem-solving that can conduct fun (if you like getting tactical). You don't really have to understand or learn each power, because it's fundamentals are still all simple. 
Power X and Y both can slide the target. They also have extra effects (maybe one lasts longer, or one allows a larger distance, or one is daily and deals more damage...). The fact that it slides your targets alone is an important aspect for tactical thinking. A general understanding of tactics will tell you when it is useful to use it (like: When the enemy is not in any flanking position yet, standing close to a squishy, when there is 100 ft chasmn or a fire pit) and when not (the enemy is standing right between the Rogue and the Fighter). 
Power Z is a close area effect. Close area tells you it is a good idea to use when there are a lot of valid targets around you. If not, either move or pick a different power.


----------



## WizarDru (Jun 9, 2008)

After playing 3e/3.5e weekly for, what, 8 years now?  We STILL have to go check the books for stuff like grapples, coup de graces, dispels and other such wonky stuff.  It's not hard, but it's counter-intuitive to rules mastery.  4e seems to alleviate that, so we'll go with it.

For me, an RPG's best utility is to provide a framework without getting in the way.  4e appears to do that for me more than previous games.  I had fun in AD&D.  I had fun in Basic.  I had fun in GURPS.  I had fun in Talislanta.  I had fun in 3.X.  And I expect to have fun in 4e.


----------



## Scribble (Jun 9, 2008)

Imaro said:
			
		

> Allright, played my first session yesterday and all it did was reinforce my suspicions about 4e.  You still need rules mastery, not only of such things as combat mastery and flanking, etc. but also of your powers, how they interact with others powers, etc.




Sure, just like any game you do still need to actually learn the rules, and the more you know about it the better. However,  I don't consider this "rules mastery."

They've done a pretty decent job of eliminating the "haha you picked this power, now you suck stupid noob!" pitfalls.

For the most part any power you pick will be a viable option. You might still have to learn to sue it to best effect, but it's not going to be a detrimental thing.

They've also made the system pretty polished. They seem to have boiled it down to: "here is a set of rules based on one system that will account for 90% of the things that will happen in the game. For those things that don't here is the base mechanic, so ad-hocking is simply a manner of choosing the appropriate parts."

Thats the beauty of the system. It allows you to handle VERY complex ideas without getting bogged down by the details.



> You also need to be a tactically oriented player as all it takes is one that doesn't understand tactics (and a DM who isn't shabby in that department) to send the whole party spiraling towards defeat.




Sure, but this is true of almost any game out there... (except maybe candyland...)  There's always going to be an element that you need to get better at. It's what makes the game a game.

Knowledge of how to play the game better is one thing. In the player, it creates a sense of; wait I can do better then that!  It makes them want to come back and try harder.

Knowledge of simply HOW to play the game... Is another. It makes people just give up in frustration. 


To use your chess example...

I like Chess. I'm not the worlds greatest chess player, but I know the rules and it's fun. Even when I loose. It challenges me to try new things and improve my game.

Conversely, I HATE the card game   -Hole. I can't for the life of me get the rules. Everytime someone suggest to play it, people are normally drunk, and have so many various house rules that the game devolves into: "Dude you can't play that card... why didn't you play that card.. you forgot to do this..." and finally when I loose "haha you suck stupid noob!"

Consequently I don't ever want to play   -hole... EVER.


----------



## Imperialus (Jun 9, 2008)

pemerton said:
			
		

> I don't really agree that 4e is "rules lite" - depending what the measure is, of course, but it seems to have mechanics considerably more complicated than Call of Cthulhu, for example.
> 
> I'm also not sure I agree with your timelilne - Basic Roleplaying, for example, can be a very rules light system if some of the RQ complexity is stripped away, and it has been around for ever. Tunnels and Trolls likewise is venerable and rules light. And one of the most mechanically complex and clunky RPGs - Rolemaster - is nearly as old.




Note to mods.  I'm dancing pretty close to the no politics rule here, it was just the best 'real world' example I could think of.  Edit away if you think I've crossed the line.

Perhaps rules lite isn't the best way to describe it, rules... streamlined?  perhaps would work better.  There is also a whole range of rules complexity running the gamut from Red Box D&D all the way up to Rolemaster.  It's like trying to pin someone on a political spectrum (intended for example not debate).  You have Michal Moore on one side and Anne Coulter on the other.  99% of people fall somewhere in between the two.

I think 4E has moved towards the rules lite side of things, it certainly has when compared to 3.X.  Also while rules lite and rules heavy systems have always existed they tend to fall in and out of favor with the larger gaming community, just like how the political climate swings back and forth between conservative and liberal (again example, not debate).  

It's a generalization, but I think it's fair to say that during the 90's there was a trend among the more popular systems to increase the complexity of the rules.  Gamers wanted to know how difficult it was to do X, Y or Z and have the rules to back them up.  After a certain point though this begins to become untenable.  Rules systems become too unwieldy and you end up with things like grapple checks and 300+ cleric spell lists.

After 3.5 was released there was a very distinct reversal of the trend.  Games like Mutants and Masterminds, True 20, and Castles and Crusades were published and attracted a fairly significant following.  It's not D20 related but Shadowrun also made a similar transition between 3rd edition and 4th edition where they unified the system, and eliminated floating target numbers making it 'rules lite' in comparison to 3rd edition.  4th ed is the most popular SR edition to date, and this is in spite of that horrible video game.

I think 4th edition is trying to capture the same sort of audience that was attracted to T20, C&C, and whatnot.  It's still much more rules heavy than either of them but, when compared to 3.5, it's much simpler.


----------



## Dlsharrock (Jun 9, 2008)

Imaro said:
			
		

> sorry, IMHE, checkers is the more played game.
> 
> 4e however is like chess, though from read throughs alot of people are claiming it's much simpler than 3e and harkens back to a simpler 1e in operation.  My oppinion is that 4e is deceptive, like chess which has rules which aren't all that numerous or hard to pick up ... however to play a good game of chess it takes alot more than just knowing the rules.  4e is the same way, From the two combats I ran last night the players really have to not only have rules mastery of such things as combat advantage, flanking, movement, their powers, how their powers interact with others powers, etc.
> 
> They also have to use all of this knowledge in a (group) tactically sound way.  If the DM and the players have a large disparity in their tactical ability this game will definitely bring that to the forefront in every encounter.  It will either be super easy or super hard for the PC's.




I still don't understand the point you're making. Isn't this about DM moderation, not rules? If I run a game with a group of players who prefer deep, immersive, characterisation, I don't run kick-the-door-down dungeon crawls, so if I run a game with a group of players who lack tactical smarts why would I trip them up with tactically challenging situations? I may be misinterpreting, but you seem to be saying that this is the situation, because the DM is directly competing with players in 4e??

That pretty much goes against my whole philosophy for GMing any system, so if that's what 4e advocates I don't think I will give it a go after all.

Nah, I'm just being obtuse. I will really. But I am a bit confused by the point you're making Imaro.


----------



## Spatula (Jun 9, 2008)

Dr. Strangemonkey said:
			
		

> I'm a WoW noob.  First thing I did was find WoWwiki.
> 
> Anecdotal, perhaps, but less silly than this over-generalization.  We live in the era of itunes.  Anyone who's a n00b in WoW is going to look for online resources as a matter of instinct.
> 
> I don't even open an instruction manual anymore without checking for online resources first.



Then you're not a noob,  at least not in the way that the comment was meant, I think.  There's people who are new to something and thus inexperienced, and then there are those who are simply not interested in learning more than the surface features.  I believe the "noob" comment was referring to the latter type, which comprises (IME) the majority of the WoW player base.


----------



## Intense_Interest (Jun 9, 2008)

Imperialus said:
			
		

> It's a generalization, but I think it's fair to say that during the 90's there was a trend among the more popular systems to increase the complexity of the rules.  Gamers wanted to know how difficult it was to do X, Y or Z and have the rules to back them up.  After a certain point though this begins to become untenable.  Rules systems become too unwieldy and you end up with things like grapple checks and 300+ cleric spell lists.
> 
> -snip-
> 
> I think 4th edition is trying to capture the same sort of audience that was attracted to T20, C&C, and whatnot.  It's still much more rules heavy than either of them but, when compared to 3.5, it's much simpler.




The catalyst for the early-90s complexity-in-gaming era is Street Fighter II.  It's a well-documented if not globally accepted moment in gaming history.

And having more or less rules don't matter if the rule systems are kludgy add-ons that don't contribute to a tenable learning curve.


----------



## Agamon (Jun 9, 2008)

WizarDru said:
			
		

> After playing 3e/3.5e weekly for, what, 8 years now?  We STILL have to go check the books for stuff like grapples, coup de graces, dispels and other such wonky stuff.  It's not hard, but it's counter-intuitive to rules mastery.  4e seems to alleviate that, so we'll go with it.




I'll say.  On DDGD, not one of us had played before.  As DM, I looked up bull rush (and found I didn't need to, as I was right with how it worked) and potion of healing, and that's it.  The players didn't even have books.  I had fun spending more time adjudicating some weird stuff one player kept trying that wasn't in the rules than looking stuff up.  Now that, plus a high level of tactics, are the hallmarks of a great game to me.


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## Agamon (Jun 9, 2008)

Intense_Interest said:
			
		

> The catalyst for the early-90s complexity-in-gaming era is Street Fighter II.  It's a well-documented if not globally accepted moment in gaming history.




The RPG?  Yeah, that was a rules-heavy, very broken game.  My first WW game that then turned me off of all WW games (until Exalted, which was kinda cool).


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 9, 2008)

Imperialus said:
			
		

> It's a generalization, but I think it's fair to say that during the 90's there was a trend among the more popular systems to increase the complexity of the rules.



Increased complexity is the natural state of things. It's an essential feature of the splatbook treadmill. OD&D got more complex with the release of Blackmoor and Greyhawk. AD&D became more complex after Unearthed Arcana. The only time complexity might be reduced is when a new edition is published, the examples from D&D being 2e (1989) and 4e (2008).

I disagree with your idea that the 90s was the decade of increased complexity. The top selling games of the period were 2e (less complex than 1e prior to the splats) and Vampire (which I would characterise as medium complexity). GURPS and HERO, both highly complex and reasonably well selling games, debuted in 1986 and 1981 respectively. The 90s was, if anything, the decade of a return to simplicity with the publication of Feng Shui and 7th Sea.



> After 3.5 was released there was a very distinct reversal of the trend.  Games like Mutants and Masterminds, True 20, and Castles and Crusades



Mutants & Masterminds isn't particularly simple. According to Ken Hite's State of the Industry column, Troll Lords had 1% market share in 2005, which is insignificant. Compare D&D at 53% and White Wolf at 19%.



> I think 4th edition is trying to capture the same sort of audience that was attracted to T20, C&C, and whatnot.  It's still much more rules heavy than either of them but, when compared to 3.5, it's much simpler.



That doesn't make sense. If 4e was trying to capture these fans (all three of them) it would be of equal complexity.

A far more likely hypothesis is that by far and away 4e's main target audience is fans of 3e. It was created by doing market research to find out what the flaws were with that system. The results highlighted issues such as class balance and SoDs, which 4e fixes.


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## ProfessorCirno (Jun 10, 2008)

Family said:
			
		

> 1.) This particular comic was not.
> 2.) There's lots of room!






			
				Tallarn said:
			
		

> 3) I thought that comic was pretty funny, actually.




The comic wasn't funny.  It was classic B^U - too many panels, overexplained humor, and really stupid strawman arguments.  The only reason you like the comic is because it attempts to make fun of people who dislike 4e (When in reality all it does is make 4e supporters look really silly).

And to top it all off, it's completely off base.  In everything.  Hell, one of the COMPLAINTS about 4e is that you're fighting dragons at level 1.

Hey, free of charge, I'll post that comic again, only this time, it'll be funnier AND more honest!


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## The Little Raven (Jun 10, 2008)

ProfessorCirno said:
			
		

> The only reason you like the comic is because it attempts to make fun of people who dislike 4e (When in reality all it does is make 4e supporters look really silly).




This sounds awfully like you're ascribing a motivation or belief to another poster, which is against the forum rules.


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## Family (Jun 10, 2008)

ProfessorCirno said:
			
		

> The comic wasn't funny... And to top it all off, it's completely off base




Well I think I'm pretty solid on point two...there's lots of room on the 4e bandwagon.


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## I'm A Banana (Jun 10, 2008)

Well, 3e did have that whole "sliding scale" thing, in theory. It was as complex as you wanted it to be, because you could always simplify and abstract things out -- part of the idea was that it would be easier to simplify something complex than it would be to complexify something relatively simple (if you were looking for that complexity). Because Wizards, at the time, didn't want to tell you what kind of game to run, they would do all the "hard work" and leave you to make it easier if you wanted (which should be pretty easy!).

That was the promise. In practice, a combination of fans who were gaga over the complexity and a failure to deliver in all areas of that promise (like with accounting for treasure and in high-level play) meant that 3e ended up carrying the "complex" tag even slightly further than previous editions, probably, with its "place for everything and everything in its place" ideal.

3e wasn't trying to be the PS3 or even the Xbox 360. It was more like it was trying to be a home computer, like a Linux PC: something that worked well that you could tinker with endlessly. It was, at best, trying to be _quintessential_ D&D. Take all the bits from the past, and reassemble it in a way that made it work like it was always kind of supposed to from the beginning.

In many respects, it succeeded wildly at that goal. Not that it didn't still have its problems, but its problems were things that D&D had ALWAYS struggled with (high level play, complexity, blah blah blah). These problems weren't un-solvable, and they didn't require all of 4e's fiery burnination to accomplish, but heck, if you need a new edition anyway, why not solve those problems with it. With the hammer of 4e, every problem looked like a nail, after all.

4e doesn't want to be quintessential D&D, at all. It doesn't want to be a ruleset that you take and play with as you like. Not even a little. It wants you to play, not tinker. In pursuit of that goal, it becomes not just simpler, but _simplistic_. The comparison to the Wii is apt, though we're still lacking the Development Kit for 4e. It's not a ruleset that lets you do what you want, its a ruleset that gives you what it thinks you want. And, given WotC's famous ability for market research, its probably right, more often than not.

3e wasn't the PS3, or the Xbox 360. 3e was a hacker's computer. 4e is kind of like the Wii, but the comparison looses some momentum in that the Wii isn't replacing anyone's computer, while 4e is replacing 3e (at least for WotC, if not for everyone). 

To imagine the rage of the 3e fans, imagine if, for instance, you had to write your ENWorld post using the Wii's Internet channel and that little on-screen keyboard. If you had to buy a Dev Kit to program it. If, every time you wanted to IM a friend, you would need four sets of codes that could only be acquired offline to identify their machine, your machine, their IMing program, and yours. Imagine if you would have to buy one of Nintendo's $30 perhiphials shaped like a shopping cart to use Amazon.

This is part of the reason some of the 3e fans are ardently against 4e. It's not (just) that 4e isn't something their not interested in. Its that 4e means that something they ARE interested in is in danger of becoming so small, so niche, and so pigeonholed that, like most earlier editions, it becomes harder to actually get people to play it. And without a community, any table-top game is dead in the water.

Luckily, the excitement for Pathfinder means that, at least for another year or two, 3e can probably hold out, and can maybe even drift alongside 4e, informing it as it goes. It is, after all, the Open Source D&D. 

I think my reaction to 4e is something akin to a hacker looking at an iPhone. It has some neat features I want, but it also locks me into some things I absolutely don't want (minis-heavy combat, weird PC/NPC/Monster interactions, bland repetitive abilities, etc) So I'll tinker with it, beat it around, void my warranty, and, in the end, do what I want with it. I think that WotC is infinitely smarter than Apple in that they basically encourage you do to that, even though the game doesn't really want you to do that.


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## pemerton (Jun 10, 2008)

Doug McCrae said:
			
		

> I disagree with your idea that the 90s was the decade of increased complexity.



Agreed.



			
				Doug McCrae said:
			
		

> A far more likely hypothesis is that by far and away 4e's main target audience is fans of 3e. It was created by doing market research to find out what the flaws were with that system. The results highlighted issues such as class balance and SoDs, which 4e fixes.



I'd add - I think that 4e has also been influenced by some trends in game design that have so far been influential more in boutique or indie games, but that the designers think could be have more widespread appeal if adapted into an already-popular fantasy RPG. My reasons for thinking this are (i) the influences are pretty plain to see and (ii) Rob Heinsoo basically said as much in an interview, when he compared 4e in certain respects to indie RPGs.

I thus think that the 4e design is a combination of giving the market what it knows it wants, and giving the market what the designers believe the market will want once it has been exposed to it.


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## pemerton (Jun 10, 2008)

KM, we've talked around a lot of this stuff a fair bit and obviously have quite different takes on a lot of things about 4e in particular, and RPGs more generally. So I'll just pick up on a couple of the points you made to try and offer one alternative perspective.



			
				Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> 4e doesn't want to be quintessential D&D, at all. It doesn't want to be a ruleset that you take and play with as you like. Not even a little. It wants you to play, not tinker. In pursuit of that goal, it becomes not just simpler, but _simplistic_.



I don't entirely agree with your first sentence here, because "quintessential D&D" is too hard to pin down. If quintessential D&D is White Plume Mountain and the Ghost Tower of Inverness then 3E didn't deliver it either, because those modules only work on the assumption that action resolution is primarily a matter of direct player-GM interaction rather than the application of game mechanics.

But if quintessential D&D means high fantasy action with a high body count and little grittiness, than 4e looks like it does deliver.

If quintessential D&D means rules tinkering, then I agree that 4e is different from all earlier editions. But I don't think that rules tinkering - which is the passtime of a minority of GMs - is really quintessential to any RPGing experience. Play is what is quintessential, and every edition of D&D has delivered quite a different play experience from the earlier one.

As to 4e being simplistic, I don't see that at all. It has 400+ pages of subtly-crafted powers. Well-designed, yes. Simplistic, no. I think you might be confusing elegance of design - which makes the game rules fairly easy to take in - with being simple to play. As Imaro has noticed with his chess/checkers analogy, there is no reason to think that playing 4e is a simplistic experience.

(Of the mainstream RPGs that I'm familiar with, the only ones I might be tempted to label simplistic in play are Basic D&D played in a certain spirit, and Tunnels and Trolls - but I'm sure that's doing both games a disservice.)



			
				Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> bland repetitive abilities



When I look at 4e I have to say I don't see bland repetitive abilities. I see a wide range of complex interactions between rather evocative abilities. Not that the rules text is evocative - I don't need it to be, as the fun will come in play, not reading (in this respect 4e reminds me a little of ICE games, which have bland rules text but produce very evocative play, and it is the opposite of 2nd ed AD&D, which has reasonably evocative rules text but in my experience tends to produce rather bland play). But looking at the powers and imaging the sort of play they might deliver, I get the sense that it would be fun and exciting play.


----------



## hong (Jun 10, 2008)

ProfessorCirno said:
			
		

> Hell, one of the COMPLAINTS about 4e is that you're fighting dragons at level 1.




Now this is funny.


----------



## ProfessorCirno (Jun 10, 2008)

First off, good lord, that was an amazing post Kamakazi Midget.  I dunno what to add.  Well, there is this:



			
				pemerton said:
			
		

> When I look at 4e I have to say I don't see bland repetitive abilities. I see a wide range of complex interactions between rather evocative abilities. Not that the rules text is evocative - I don't need it to be, as the fun will come in play, not reading (in this respect 4e reminds me a little of ICE games, which have bland rules text but produce very evocative play, and it is the opposite of 2nd ed AD&D, which has reasonably evocative rules text but in my experience tends to produce rather bland play). But looking at the powers and imaging the sort of play they might deliver, I get the sense that it would be fun and exciting play.




I ahve to disagree.  Trudging through the lists of powers was boring and painful.  They all start to melt together.  Ok, one does damage + wisdom, the other does damage + charisma, but it's still the same thing.  Occasionally you'd see an ability that shifted you or an opponent.  Maybe one gave them one of the ten _trillion_ marks we'll need in combat.

But they were still all very...what's the word?  Same-y?  Like I said, they really started to melt together for me.


----------



## Charwoman Gene (Jun 10, 2008)

Not everyone who is mildly autistic likes 3e over 4e.  I get my minutia fix other places.


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## Charwoman Gene (Jun 10, 2008)

ProfessorCirno said:
			
		

>




For the rest of my days I will imagine the Big Head Guy from this comic as Prof Cirno.


----------



## I'm A Banana (Jun 10, 2008)

> we've talked around a lot of this stuff a fair bit and obviously have quite different takes on a lot of things about 4e in particular




I like 4e. I like my Wii.  



> I don't entirely agree with your first sentence here, because "quintessential D&D" is too hard to pin down.




As I was using the term, I meant it to mean this:

"This game is essentially the same game as before, meaning that if you are familiar with Fireball in 1e, you will recognize it in 3e, and if you know what a Bodak is in 2e, you will recognize it in 3e, and if you are aware of how a wizard works in BD&D,  you will see a similarity to how it works in 3e."

3e was the "same game." It had barbarians and half-orcs and the Great Wheel and spell slots and straightforward fighters and all of those other sacred cows. The underlying rules may have changed (multiple subsystems resolved into d20 rolls), but you can basically do the same things you've always done with this game.

4e is, at least in this respect, a dramatically "different game." It has what it thinks you want most, it has sacrificed sacred cows very efficiently, the rules have changed so much that you cannot do the same things you've always done with this game if they are markedly different than the things that most other people have done with this game. If you want a dungeon survival or simulationist or Great Wheel or  straightforward-fighter 4e, you're basically boned. 4e is meeting what they see as the greatest demand. They're probably right, but 3e chose a more inclusive approach (which lead to its complexity, in part). 

When I say 4e doesn't want to be "quitessential D&D," I'm saying that 4e has no real interest or investment in most of the sacred cows, memes, and habits that D&D had acquired in the previous editions. 3e obviously did.



> As to 4e being simplistic, I don't see that at all. It has 400+ pages of subtly-crafted powers.




Options are not complexity. Complexity would be if each of those options had some Gygaxian sub-system and table you could roll on (for instance). That's not necessarily desirable. 



> I think you might be confusing elegance of design - which makes the game rules fairly easy to take in - with being simple to play. As Imaro has noticed with his chess/checkers analogy, there is no reason to think that playing 4e is a simplistic experience.




If 4e isn't remarkably simpler to play than 3e, then I don't know what half this buzz is about. In my experience, its about the same, but I've only  played low-level 4e so far, and low-level 3e wasn't very complex, either.  

I believe their promises about the game being simpler, and this makes the Wii analogy work well, because its a simpler, more basic system. 

The difference between "simple" and "simplistic" is largely subjective, lying on that "is it so simple that it's not fun any more" cusp. There are several elements of 4e that fall into this department for me. There are certain Wii games that fall into this department for me. 

I see 400+ variations on "I damage him and inflict a condition or move him some distance" to be pretty simplistic. 

But either way, this isn't the heart of my post. The heart of it lies in how 3e is much more like an Open Source computer if 4e is a Wii, and that, yes, if everyone had to buy a Wii because the Nintendo could cancel Linux, there would be a whole buttload of annoyed people who didn't want to have to buy peripherals to shop at Amazon or type messages to the internet using the Wii browser. Thus, this is part of the reason why there is a substantial vocal populace who has a lot of problems with 4e being "forced" on them. 

Simple is good and fine and fun for a lot of people, but if you CANCEL the complexity and force people to accept the simplicity, there's going to be some bad blood.

To Generic Food Metaphor it, if you stop letting people cook their own meals and just serve them McDonald's every day because its "Simpler" and more people buy McD's than cook their own meals, you're going to get a lot of cooks who are very pissed, even if they don't make up much of the populace.


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## pemerton (Jun 10, 2008)

ProfessorCirno said:
			
		

> Trudging through the lists of powers was boring and painful.  They all start to melt together.  Ok, one does damage + wisdom, the other does damage + charisma, but it's still the same thing.  Occasionally you'd see an ability that shifted you or an opponent.  Maybe one gave them one of the ten _trillion_ marks we'll need in combat.
> 
> But they were still all very...what's the word?  Same-y?  Like I said, they really started to melt together for me.



Well, I guess different people look for different things in a game. I've been looking mostly at the Fighter, Paladin and Wizard powers to start with. Yes, mechanically the damage rolls are somewhat samey - that's a feature, not a bug. But the effects are not samey, and the stats that produce that damage and those effects are not samey. And it is the stats and effects that are important to roleplaying, as much as (if not more than) the damage.

Just concentrating on the Paladin powers, I look at Str-based attacks, and Cha-based utilities, and they speak to me about the sort of character I might design and roleplay around those powers - bellicose, arrogant, leading his companions into battle. And that would be a very different character from one who was based on Cha attacks and Wis utilities - gentle (in a certain fashion), insightful, guiding his companions without bullying or bossing.

Core 3E did not give me anything of a comparable mechanical subtlety on which to hang my character. In fact, the game mechanics of 3E barely spoke to the roleplaying at all. (Barbarian rage, and perhaps some bard and monk abilities, are the only examples that come to mind at the moment.)


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## Lord Mhoram (Jun 10, 2008)

Charwoman Gene said:
			
		

> Not everyone who is mildly autistic likes 3e over 4e.  I get my minutia fix other places.




That is why I play Hero. 

I'm used to bland mechanics that the player fills in the "Cool factor" for. 4th has got me stoked like I haven't been for an RPG since Hero 4th edition back in '89.


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## I'm A Banana (Jun 10, 2008)

> Just concentrating on the Paladin powers, I look at Str-based attacks, and Cha-based utilities, and they speak to me about the sort of character I might design and roleplay around those powers - bellicose, arrogant, leading his companions into battle. And that would be a very different character from one who was based on Cha attacks and Wis utilities - gentle (in a certain fashion), insightful, guiding his companions without bullying or bossing.




The weirdness here, for me, is that you needed 4e's powers to show you this.

I look at some of my 2e characters and see this, and I can't even really remember what use paladins had for Cha in 2e aside from needing a lot to be able to take the class.

4e is not, for me at least, telling me anything new when it says "A high STR means that you hit things. You might be belligerent or aggressive or beefcake or some sort of dinosaur man. A high CHA means that you are persuasive. You might be suave or sexy or smoove or some sort of medieval Tom Cruise."

Those are archetypes, they exist for me before I even worry about what class to choose, and I know the class can add some dimension to the archetype: as a paladin, the high STR guy beats up evil guys like Superman. The high CHA guy is probably like one of those eerily friendly Mormons.

I look at 4e's Paladin powers and see: "Damage and move. Damage and condition. Damage. Damage and healing." The same thing I see with every other class power out there, though there are minor subtle changes here and there that a good DM can call out in play.


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## pemerton (Jun 10, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> As I was using the term, I meant it to mean this:
> 
> "This game is essentially the same game as before, meaning that if you are familiar with Fireball in 1e, you will recognize it in 3e, and if you know what a Bodak is in 2e, you will recognize it in 3e, and if you are aware of how a wizard works in BD&D,  you will see a similarity to how it works in 3e."



Ah, I see what you mean. What's interesting about that is that, in fact, fireball in 3E is (in play) almost unrecognisable from fireball in 1st ed, because of the vastly different hit point and saving throw numbers in each game.

I agree that 4e has not kept many of these tropes. But I think it's too early to know what effect, if any, the dropping of those tropes will have on actual play experience. Some people at least say that, to them, it plays more like AD&D than 3E did. I find this surprising, but not obviously absurd.



			
				Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> I see 400+ variations on "I damage him and inflict a condition or move him some distance" to be pretty simplistic.



Well, it's all about the interactions (and I think this is Imaro's point). Again, it's too early to judge exactly how complex those interactions are, but I think they might be fairly complex. This looks to me like clever game design: easy entry, but (if I am right about the complexity of the interactions) the game keeps giving no matter how hard you push it.



			
				Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> To Generic Food Metaphor it, if you stop letting people cook their own meals and just serve them McDonald's every day because its "Simpler" and more people buy McD's than cook their own meals, you're going to get a lot of cooks who are very pissed, even if they don't make up much of the populace.



Well, I don't see it this way. So, if I may mix some metaphors, generic food and otherwise: 3E was McDonalds. It gave me a whole lot of crap flavour with rules mechanics intended to reliably produce that flavour. 4e is a set of mechanical tools that allow me to narrate my own flavour, whatever that might be, over the top of them without having to be worried that the mechanical framework supporting my flavour will collapse.

Roughly speaking, I think if you care more about the narrative content of the game then tweaking mechanical subsystems, 4e is likely to be a better game for you than 3E was. Of course it's early days, and I may be proved wrong. But at the moment I think the evidence provided by the design, and the playtest reports that we have had, is running my way.


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## pemerton (Jun 10, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> The weirdness here, for me, is that you needed 4e's powers to show you this.



Of course I don't need 4e to show me this. I can play different paladins in AD&D if I want. The point is that, mechanically, they won't be any different - when it comes to resolving the action in the game, they won't play differently.

This is what the 4e designers were talking about when they said that, in play, you'll now experience a shifty Kobold as different from a pack-fighting Gnoll.



			
				Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> I look at 4e's Paladin powers and see: "Damage and move. Damage and condition. Damage. Damage and healing." The same thing I see with every other class power out there, though there are minor subtle changes here and there that a good DM can call out in play.



What you see as subtle changes I see as a mechanical framework that makes the narrative difference _actually matter in play_. And that narrative difference is not something that I'm going to wait for the GM to call out in play. The narrative is something that I, as a player, am constructing when I build my character, and when I then use the action resolution mechanics to deliver a play experience which gives rise to the story that I want to tell.


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## I'm A Banana (Jun 10, 2008)

> I agree that 4e has not kept many of these tropes. But I think it's too early to know what effect, if any, the dropping of those tropes will have on actual play experience.




For those people who absolutely loved straightforward fighters, it was known the moment they said "No more straightforward fighters!" like it was a wonderful thing. Same thing for those who loved Bigby and those who adored half-orcs and those who were intimate with the Great Wheel. 

For a good chunk of D&D players, the tropes were the _point_ of the play experience. Without the tropes, it's just not the same experience, and, thus, not very fun for them.

I think WotC is obviously on-target when it assumes that the chunk was pretty small, and that most people don't give a rat's arse about who Bigby is, and that a D&D interested in recruiting new blood can't assume people will care about Bigby. 

But those who already do definitely know what effect it will have on their play experience, and knew before 4e was released. 



> Well, it's all about the interactions (and I think this is Imaro's point). Again, it's too early to judge exactly how complex those interactions are, but I think they might be fairly complex. This looks to me like clever game design: easy entry, but (if I am right about the complexity of the interactions) the game keeps giving no matter how hard you push it.




Sure, but the powers themselves are still bland and "samey" to me to get me excited about any of them. I'm left going "Meh, does it REALLY matter?" at every level I can choose something. Nothing stands out. 



> Well, I don't see it this way.




What's wrong with it? 4e wants, from all I can tell, to be simpler, more accessible, and to give more people what they really want based on what they enjoyed about the game before, stripped down to "bare essentials" and given elements that will help push sub-industries like minis and DDI that can help enrich the basic game. Evidence includes almost every review saying "simpler! more streamlined! faster!", minis-focused combat, the ads for DDI plastered in many places, etc., etc., et al. 

This is like giving everyone McDonald's, because most people eat at McDonald's, and maybe letting them pay extra for "angus burgers" and "salads" if they want some options.

3e wanted to give every D&D fan something to love, and to be able to customize the basic core for their own needs. It wanted to be a framework so that you could take and do what you wanted with it, based on what you enjoyed, whatever that was. Evidence includes the OGL movement, the SRD, genre supplements, the conversion manual, etc., etc., et al.



> 4e is a set of mechanical tools that allow me to narrate my own flavour, whatever that might be, over the top of them without having to be worried that the mechanical framework supporting my flavour will collapse.




3e was this, too, and moreso than 4e, since it doesn't assume you want to use Tieflings and Dragonborn, but rather assumes you want to use what D&D has always used, and then gives you rules for adding medusae and angels. 

Regardless of the quality of the rules, or whether you personally felt they met your needs, the _intent_ seems fairly obvious to me. 

Maybe its just McD's is too harsh? Perhaps it would go over better if I said 4e was firing all the cooks so that they could make us all Applebee's? Or Outback Steakhouse? Or Nathan's Hot Dogs? Or Long John Silver's? 

They certainly aren't telling me to tinker with the system to produce the flavor I want. They're telling me "Hey, you think Points of Light and Dragonborn are cool, right?!"

I mean, its D&D, so it won't ever be able to surrender that tinkering mentality entirely, and 4e doesn't tell you not to or you'll void your warranty (like the iPhone does!), but it is telling you "You never really liked gnomes that much anyway, did you?"

It's going to be right more often than not. More people buy McD's in a day than cook dinner from scratch in a day. Its giving people what they have said they've wanted. 

4e fires 3e, though, and so the cooks are basically told that they can't make any other food with their old ingredients. They now have to assemble them based on pre-approved designs that meet with certain criteria. McD's can always have a new limited edition sandwich, and can even bring back classics! It can make meatloaf that may or may not be just like momma used to make, but will probably be vaguely similar to what most people's mommas used to make, and might just be good enough that most people don't really care, and a few are _really into it_ (hot smack I love those nuggets!). 

But man, those cooks who made stuff from scratch and liked it, weird and obsessive and unusual as they are, were happy with the earlier edition (which did try to prepare meals for you, especially toward the end), and you can't really expect them to love the new world order.



> Roughly speaking, I think if you care more about the narrative content of the game then tweaking mechanical subsystems, 4e is likely to be a better game for you than 3E was.




"I think if you care more about eating food than about making it, this New World Order of fast food is likely going to be a better way to eat for you than making food from scratch was."

This ends up being false, too, because, as Michael Pollan points out, narrative content is not independent from mechanical subsystems.

But perhaps I've wrung this metaphor about as tight as it can go at this point.


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## Intense_Interest (Jun 10, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> 3e wanted to give every D&D fan something to love, and to be able to customize the basic core for their own needs. It wanted to be a framework so that you could take and do what you wanted with it, based on what you enjoyed, whatever that was. Evidence includes the OGL movement, the SRD, genre supplements, the conversion manual, etc., etc., et al.
> 
> 
> 3e was this, too, and moreso than 4e, since it doesn't assume you want to use Tieflings and Dragonborn, but rather assumes you want to use what D&D has always used, and then gives you rules for adding medusae and angels.




First, man did Monsters-as-PCs in 3E suck.  House rules in 3E is house rules in 4E.

Yet wasn't the main complaint that the subscription model is holding back content that players want?  So really, the problem is that you can't get all you want right now, right?

So therefore 4E is the Mall with a few empty storefronts.  Thankfully the Mall itself doesn't leak, has a good design, and won't collapse on you randomly.  Every new book gives us a few more storefronts open to enrich the experience, instead of weakening it.



> "I think if you care more about eating food than about making it, this New World Order of fast food is likely going to be a better way to eat for you than making food from scratch was."
> 
> This ends up being false, too, because, as Michael Pollan points out, narrative content is not independent from mechanical subsystems.
> 
> But perhaps I've wrung this metaphor about as tight as it can go at this point.




Narrative content will never be sold to you in printed form.  They're called "books".  

Mechanics of something like FATAL, true, limit the narrative content (or at least push it into a specific niche), but once you co-opt the House Rule idiom, the mechanics of the system are set to be nigh-independant, from what I can tell.


----------



## I'm A Banana (Jun 10, 2008)

> Yet wasn't the main complaint that the subscription model is holding back content that players want? So really, the problem is that you can't get all you want right now, right?




No, the problem is that 4e existing means that 3e might not be able to exist (and certainly not in the form it has before). 4e is giving people what it has figured out they want, but in serving the mainline exclusively, you're going to cut out the outliers, whereas 3e made special efforts to include the outliers.

Like how Linux users would feel if they had to surf ENWorld on their Wii.

Thus, the original analogy is fairly apt, but misses a large portion of the reason people have a problem with 4e. Not so much because there IS a simpler alternative, but because the simpler alternative means that there will be no more complex option (or that it will change drastically at least).

3e trufans aren't PS3 users, they're Linux users.



> Narrative content will never be sold to you in printed form. They're called "books".




Wait, that doesn't make sense. Narrative content is sold to me in printed form all the freakin' time. In books. But that has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that narrative content in an RPG is not independent of mechanical systems (because they create a cohesive "supersystem" in the same way that various forms of life make an ecosystem that determines our food). So....?



> Mechanics of something like FATAL, true, limit the narrative content (or at least push it into a specific niche), but once you co-opt the House Rule idiom, the mechanics of the system are set to be nigh-independant, from what I can tell.




I'm only explaining that 4e is selling fast food, while 3e was selling raw fruits and veggies and meats. Each has its strengths, but 3e was obviously geared toward tinkering to get what you want and 4e is obviously geared toward consumption as-is (though often with a choice of flavors, I'd imagine, and with an intelligent admission that people are going to mix Sprite and Coke in the fountain).


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## Intense_Interest (Jun 10, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> No, the problem is that 4e existing means that 3e might not be able to exist (and certainly not in the form it has before). 4e is giving people what it has figured out they want, but in serving the mainline exclusively, you're going to cut out the outliers, whereas 3e made special efforts to include the outliers.
> 
> Like how Linux users would feel if they had to surf ENWorld on their Wii.
> 
> ...




Murf.

4E is a modular system that was built to incorporate new resources for players and DMs in its subscription model.  Its far more Linux-like to most users than 3E is.

3E is Unix, 4E is Linux.  Calling it "casual" is trying to prove how much of a Hardcore "gourmand" you are.




> Wait, that doesn't make sense. Narrative content is sold to me in printed form all the freakin' time. In books. But that has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that narrative content in an RPG is not independent of mechanical systems (because they create a cohesive "supersystem" in the same way that various forms of life make an ecosystem that determines our food). So....?




How far do you think this food analogy goes?  You don't get extra points for a Combo.



> I'm only explaining that 4e is selling fast food, while 3e was selling raw fruits and veggies and meats. Each has its strengths, but 3e was obviously geared toward tinkering to get what you want and 4e is obviously geared toward consumption as-is (though often with a choice of flavors, I'd imagine, and with an intelligent admission that people are going to mix Sprite and Coke in the fountain).




Tinkering with 3E meant that you started with your poisonous apples and your tasty oranges.  Sometimes you used the apples well, most of the time you realized that it didn't work and started to work within a set, limited framework of alterations.

4E is the FDA.  It won't clear the case-based homeopathic remedies (house rules to fit a table), but it won't squash new recipes and was built exactly for that.


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## pemerton (Jun 10, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> For those people who absolutely loved straightforward fighters, it was known the moment they said "No more straightforward fighters!" like it was a wonderful thing. Same thing for those who loved Bigby and those who adored half-orcs and those who were intimate with the Great Wheel.
> 
> For a good chunk of D&D players, the tropes were the _point_ of the play experience. Without the tropes, it's just not the same experience, and, thus, not very fun for them.



All this is true, I agree. But I don't think that this goes to any issue of "casual" vs "hardcore", or to any question of simplicity vs complexity (I'm not sure that you think so either - maybe this is just a tangent).



			
				Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> the powers themselves are still bland and "samey" to me to get me excited about any of them. I'm left going "Meh, does it REALLY matter?" at every level I can choose something. Nothing stands out.



Interesting, because I have quite a different reaction in looking through them and thinking about how I might build different sorts of characters. Admittedly I'm still getting familiar with my books, and I haven't read all the powers yet, but the Fighter powers combined with the Feat and Weapon rules gave me lots of ideas about different sorts of PCs, the Wizard powers suggested different sorts of casters (including a classic 1st ed Illusionist using Force Orb, Prismatic attacks, Confusion and Maze) and the Paladin powers the different concepts I mentioned earlier.

I agree that they all largely fit the description "damage + effect", but the different effects combined with the different stats that are used suggest to me quite a rich potential for play - both tactically rich and thematically rich.



			
				Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> 4e wants, from all I can tell, to be simpler, more accessible, and to give more people what they really want based on what they enjoyed about the game before, stripped down to "bare essentials"



More accessible I agree with. These are the clearest-written D&D rules I've seen since Moldvay Basic. But simpler and "bare essentials" I don't really agree with - I remain of the view that Imaro is right about the emergent tactical complexity, and I think that the game has far more than the "bare essentials" of (for example) Moldvay Basic. I think it has more of the "bare essentials" than 3E, because (for example) it has advice in the DMG on how to handle players who want to adopt director's stance (sidebar, p 28).



			
				Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> given elements that will help push sub-industries like minis and DDI that can help enrich the basic game.



This stuff I agree is there but is of little personal interest to me. It's certainly not part of what makes the game attractive to me, nor part of what makes me think it is a good game.



			
				Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> This is like giving everyone McDonald's, because most people eat at McDonald's, and maybe letting them pay extra for "angus burgers" and "salads" if they want some options.
> 
> 3e wanted to give every D&D fan something to love, and to be able to customize the basic core for their own needs.
> 
> ...



I can't relate to the Wii vs Linux metaphor because I am not a computer person. But I can relate to the generic food metaphor, and I don't find it at all helpful. I apologise for the lengthiness that is about to ensue, but I want to try and explain why I don't find it helpful.

I'm a vegetarian who's sort of a hippy food snob. I live in a suburb of Melbourne called Fitzroy, which is (on a somewhat smaller Australian scale) a little like living in Greenwhich Village if one lived in NYC. When I watch TV I watch almost exclusivly SBS (in US terms, a bit like PBS on steroids). I am an academic in two literary disciplines - philosophy and law. When I go to the movies I mostly go to arthouse cinemas to watch non-Hollywood movies. By the standards of any mainstream cultural assessment in either the US or Australia I am part of the self-proclaimed cultural elite (though, being an academic rather than a private lawyer, not part of the financial elite!).

The reason I say all this is to try to give you a broad sense of my tastes. And my RPGing tastes aren't all that different from the picture I've tried to paint. I find Ron Edwards' essays and RPG reviews insightful, and I enjoy narrativist play. It is because I think that 4e is better suited to satisfying these sorts of RPGing tastes that I think it is a better game than 3E. And I don't think it does this by becoming more bland, or more generic, or more cookie-cutter, or more simplified (and I find the analogy to McDonalds utterly inapt). I think 4e achieves what I believe it achieves because it offers robust mechanics that support a degree of narrative flexibility, and player control of the narrative, that is (for D&D) unparalleled.

You are painting a picture of 3E as a free-thinker's paradise. But for me that notion is bizarre. I look at 3E as suffering from the same problems that have always plagued D&D - clunky mechanics that get in the way of narrative choice (eg by so tightly linking mechanics and in-game physics that I can't conceive of my PC successfully doing X unless s/he has the feat for X). As I said on another thread, the whole hit point mechanic in 3E, which is very hard to interpret as anything other than literal toughness, automatically lowers the tone of any game, because it makes the nature of human life and death in the gameworld almost cartoonish.

When it comes to hit points, however, 4e keeps the virtues of hit points as an effective combat resolution mechanic while rendering it, at the metagame level, a type of Fate Point system rather than any attempt to model in-game physics. This opens the door for a type of serious storytelling that (IME) D&D has not really permitted in the past, but which games like Rolemaster, or RuneQuest, or HeroWars, have.

And that's why I don't think 4e is simplistic, or at odds with serious or deep roleplaying, or in general a step away from "hardcore" towards "casual".

I do agree that it makes life harder for rules tinkerers. As I noted in a recent post on another thread, one of the things about 4e that I think is wonderful - namely, the realisation of thematic elements through the powers of the various monsters and characters - creates an obstacle to making adventures about new themes for which monsters don't yet exist. (Luckily, the MM seems to cover a pretty wide thematic range, relative to the sorts of themes one might try and explore using a high fantasy game as the vehicle.) But designing RPGs isn't playing them. In my posts in this thread I'm trying to do my best to evaluate 4e as a game to be played.

Apologies for an overlong post.


----------



## I'm A Banana (Jun 10, 2008)

> 4E is a modular system that was built to incorporate new resources for players and DMs in its subscription model.




Yes, and the Sky is Blue.

But more specifically, 4e presents a fantasy world with characters and empires and towns and says "Have Fun with These." They gave me a menu of options that I can choose from and that they can add to.

And 3e gave me a head of lettuce and said "Here's how you make a salad out of it. And here's how you make a sandwich out of it."

4e says "You like dark heroes, right? Here's tieflings! They have an ancient empire and a conflict with the dragonborn!"

3e says "D&D has, in the past, given you half-orcs. Here's how they look now, in Stereotypical D&D Land. Do whatever you want with 'em, whatever you've been doing for 30 years, or some of this new hotness we've got going on, or whatever."

I'm not really trying to say that either is better, just that they are entirely different goals. It's also a continuum, not a binary choice. 3e was more focused on a toolset ("Here's prestige classes! Now go make some yourself!"), 4e is more focused on an instruction manual ("Here's some really cool paragon paths! Wait for more!"). These aren't exactly exclusive of each other, but its a very different intent that has lead to certain things that some people liked about 3e getting axed to make it a better instruction manual. And because 3e runs the risk of being "canceled" because of that, people who like those things aren't happy about it.



> How far do you think this food analogy goes? You don't get extra points for a Combo.




....okay, reiterating the point you're trying to respond to:

Narrative content in an RPG is not independent of mechanical systems.



> Tinkering with 3E meant that you started with your poisonous apples and your tasty oranges. Sometimes you used the apples well, most of the time you realized that it didn't work and started to work within a set, limited framework of alterations.




Point the first, I'm not talking, nor do I care, about the _quality_ you personally found in 3e's attempt to do what 3e attempted to do.

I'm putting forth a really very mundane proposition, there. That 3e was more of a toolkit than 4e is, because 4e isn't concerned as much about you modding your home game to accommodate all sorts of weirdness, largely because the team found that those rules cluttered up the main books while adding very little to most games.

Some people really liked the toolkit and are angry that it is being retired in favor of the ready-to-eat meal.

I'm a little shocked that this is even a controversial position. Of COURSE 4e wants to be ready to play out of the box. That's one of their explicit design goals. And 3e wanted to give you a whole box of tools that you could make a large range of games under. That was one of its explicit design goals. And the two aren't mutually exclusive, its just a matter of focus. I'm confused as to how the idea of 4e being "more ready to go right away" than 3e, and 3e being more "tinker-intensive" than 4e, is somehow inaccurate. That's kind of the bleedin' POINT of the link in hong's initial post: 4e is the Wii. 4e doesn't need the processing power of the more robust game systems because it knows what most people find fun, and it serves THAT (and rather well).

The point that not everyone finds it fun, because some people like a more tinker-intensive system, would seem to be almost self-evident.

Which brings me back to my original post: its more accurate in my mind, if 4e is the Wii, to say that 3e is a Linux machine (heck, its entirely Open Source!) than to say that 3e is like the PS3, and that some of the 3e anger comes from feeling like they're being kind of forced to browse the web with a Wii. That lack of choice, that feeling that what you like is being taken away just because you're not part of the majority, is where a lot of the frustration can come from. The Wii is vastly more popular than Linux, and is a lot of fun, but it doesn't have the exclusive domain on what people find fun, especially some of the "fringe" people that 4e is alienating that 3e speciflcally tried to mostly accommodate. 

In no possible way does this mean that 4e somehow cannot handle people's house rules and minor tweaks. The sky is blue, of course it can.  That doesn't really change the intended focus of the edition: you're not supposed to HAVE to house rule it (while 3e basically MADE you house rule it, even if you didn't really want to -- oddly enough, just like every other D&D edition, as far as I can tell).


----------



## hong (Jun 10, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> Some people really liked the toolkit and are angry that it is being retired in favor of the ready-to-eat meal.




People who want to hack, will hack, no matter what.



> In no possible way does this mean that 4e somehow cannot handle people's house rules and minor tweaks. The sky is blue, of course it can.  That doesn't really change the intended focus of the edition: you're not supposed to HAVE to house rule it (while 3e basically MADE you house rule it, even if you didn't really want to -- oddly enough, just like every other D&D edition, as far as I can tell).




... did you just make a virtue out of bad design?


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## Darth Shoju (Jun 10, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> I like 4e. I like my Wii.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




I largely agree with what you are saying. 4e is different, and doesn't really fit this version of D&D. The problem is, groups like the one I game with were tired and frustrated with 3e, and it was largely those sacred cows that were causing the problems. Shortly before 4e was (officially) announced, we were looking at heavily house-ruling 3e to fit what we wanted it to be, but it was looking like it wasn't going to be particularly compatible with any of the 3e material being released. 

This leads me to the other portion of your theory, that people who like 3e and want to stick with it are frustrated because 4e will replace it. Others are suggesting that 4e is so different that it should have been called something other than D&D. If this had been done, and all of those people who were frustrated with 3e bought that game instead, would it have kept that edition in print? Would everyone have gotten what they wanted? Or, if 4e by a different name had been so popular, would any company be able to profit enough by sticking with 3e? 

I'm not sure what the answer to those questions is. We've got Paizo looking at keeping 3e alive as Pathfinder, but that isn't a true equivalent to my hypothetical situation, as Pathfinder doesn't have the brand name recognition and Paizo doesn't have the resources of WoTC. 

I guess what I'm ultimately saying is, should people be forced to use a set of rules that weren't working for them so it can be kept alive for those who were enjoying it? In that scenario, only one group is really getting what they want. In the current scenario, rules systems exist to satisfy both parties, but one will have to settle on not getting as much product support as they used to (and maybe additional trouble finding a group to play with).

I'm not sure what better alternative there is to this problem.


----------



## I'm A Banana (Jun 10, 2008)

I'm cutting most of what I agree with for brevity's sake. 



> You are painting a picture of 3E as a free-thinker's paradise.




Not really, or at least, that's not really my intention.

3e was more of a toolbox than 4e is. 4e is more of a "packaged" deal than 3e was. 4e comes ready to eat. Faster, more convenient, easier to spread. These are very much the notions behind fast food: get it fast, get it easy, make it standardized so that people know what to expect. To a certain extent, this follows with the Wii -- it is easy, it is catchy, it is efficient. You don't need much depth to play Wii Fit. 

In the food respect, because 3e is more of a toolbox, its more like unmolded, raw ingredients. This was part of its appeal, and also one of its flaws, kind of in the same way home cookin' looses out to fast food: it's not convenient, it creates very different games, and it is hard to spread because it requires an investment of time and effort, and can be more uneven. To a certain extent, this matches Linux -- it requires an involvement, a special knowledge, and a willingness to put in time and effort above and beyond normal to pick it up (even if it ain't much). 

That's not exclusive, of course. Its a continuum. 3e had pre-packaged rules bits (especially late in the game). 4e can put up with house rules and add-ons. 



> As I said on another thread, the whole hit point mechanic in 3E, which is very hard to interpret as anything other than literal toughness, automatically lowers the tone of any game, because it makes the nature of human life and death in the gameworld almost cartoonish.
> 
> When it comes to hit points, however, 4e keeps the virtues of hit points as an effective combat resolution mechanic while rendering it, at the metagame level, a type of Fate Point system rather than any attempt to model in-game physics.




In my view, this is far too binary of a way to approach the Heisenberg Uncertainty Points.  Or, for that matter, anything about 3e or 4e relative to each other. It's not a switch that you flip, it's a slight nudge of focus. 3e HP's can be fate points, and 4e HP's can be literal toughness, each when they need to be. 4e perhaps does a better job of stating and working with the notion that they aren't ALWAYS toughness, which is good, but hardly a revolution.

The vast majority of the game is a nudge in a different direction, not an overhaul. The nudge just occured at a very basic level.  



> And that's why I don't think 4e is simplistic, or at odds with serious or deep roleplaying, or in general a step away from "hardcore" towards "casual".




Well, there's a bone of contention.  

The thing is that if you're right 4e HASN'T shifted more towards casual, then every point about 4e being easier, simpler, quicker, etc. is actually exceptionally misleading, because its just DIFFERENTLY hardcore (party dynamics and one-word ability interactions and the like are, if they are important, going to require a whole lot of attention).

If you're wrong, and 4e HAS shifted more towards casual, than that meshes with the reviews and the opinions, but it also means that it can't be too hardcore, because then one-word ability choices and an inability to quickly comprehend interactions between powers would routinely bone a party.

Right now, I've only experienced low-level 4e, which has its annoying complexities, but is mostly simple...a lot like low-level 3e (but less "get hit and die or hit and win", which I like). 

I don't see 4e as particularly complex. You move enemies near the guys who hit them hard and away from the softies. You inflict ailments that give the bad guys less turns. Your primary concern is damage, as much as you can dish out, of whatever type causes it. Every choice you make in the game will do one of those three things, sometimes more than one of them at once. The only way that could be made especially hardcore is if the DM became antagonistic and gave you purposefully difficult and unusual encounters, which would still scare away newbies on both sides of the screen (players who couldn't cut it and DMs who couldn't understand the subtleties of those one-word interactions and party dynamics). 

So here's the thing: Either the cake is a lie and 4e really is as complex and obnoxiously stringent as 3e was (but in a different way), or its not, the cake is truth, and it will loose one of the things that drew certain people to 3e.

But regardless of that outcome, 4e is still less of a toolbox than 3e was, and that has already alienated some people.

And abandoning 3e and telling those people to play 4e is a little bit like forcing Linux users to post to ENWorld using the Wii: it doesn't do what they want it to do, and they can't use what they want to use anymore because there's nothing to support it. 

Fortunately, its not quite that dire, thanks to Pathfinder at least, but this is what some people might be feeling when they aren't interested in 4e.


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## I'm A Banana (Jun 10, 2008)

hong said:
			
		

> ... did you just make a virtue out of bad design?




Ask any newly potty trained toddler: doing it yourself has its own rewards. 



> If this had been done, and all of those people who were frustrated with 3e bought that game instead, would it have kept that edition in print? Would everyone have gotten what they wanted? Or, if 4e by a different name had been so popular, would any company be able to profit enough by sticking with 3e?




The thing is, if WotC basically did Pathfinder and called it 4e, they might've been able to solve the problems without a massive overhaul and abandoning the 3e gearheads. And if they released a more streamlined 4e as a new minis game (for instance), they might've had their cake and ate it, too.

You don't need as massive an overhaul as 4e did to fix those problems. 

But the team, rather understandably, wasn't interested in it. 4e wasn't created just to solve 3e's problems. It was created to revive sales, to launch new revenue streams, to establish new IP and brand identity, to liberate WotC from the OGL entirely, to make D&D more broadly appealing, and also to fix some of 3e's problems. And then it also served the purposes of promoting some of the designers pet sexy beasts and design theories. 

They wanted to accomplish a lot more than just fixing a previous edition's flaws, and I'm not even sure that was one of the highest priorities, since they've fallen into a few of the traps they set out to avoid because of other considerations.



> I'm not sure what better alternative there is to this problem.




It would have been possible to fix 3e without the wholehearted shift in focus, or to better support toolboxing and simulationist gameplay in the core rules, but at least everything I mentioned above trumped that for the design team this time around.


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## pemerton (Jun 10, 2008)

KM, thanks for the thoughtful series of posts.



			
				Kamikaze Midget's Generic Fast Food Metaphor said:
			
		

> make it standardized so that people know what to expect.



This is true of fast food. I don't get the sense that it's interestingly true of 4e in a way that it wasn't of 3E. Both give races, gods, an implicit social system etc.

Fast food also implies bland, unhealthy, tasteless, poor quality etc. In short, generic. I don't get that feel from 4e at all. I get it less from 4e than from 3E precisely because of the design of 4e's powers (as I've sketched in earlier posts). It may be that my response in this respect is atypical.



			
				Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> The thing is that if you're right 4e HASN'T shifted more towards casual, then every point about 4e being easier, simpler, quicker, etc. is actually exceptionally misleading, because its just DIFFERENTLY hardcore (party dynamics and one-word ability interactions and the like are, if they are important, going to require a whole lot of attention).
> 
> If you're wrong, and 4e HAS shifted more towards casual, than that meshes with the reviews and the opinions, but it also means that it can't be too hardcore, because then one-word ability choices and an inability to quickly comprehend interactions between powers would routinely bone a party.



I see the force of your argument. I'm not sure what the true response should be. But here is one response which I would like to be true, even though it may not be.

Adorno and the other Frankfurt school theorists took the view that, when it comes to aesthetics, the masses _would_ prefer the (self-evidently, to those theorists) superior high culture over low culture if only they got the chance to be exposed to it and make it their own. (A somewhat related notion lay behind the movement for working men's colleges in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centures.)

Ron Edwards' attitude towards RPGing, as expressed in his essays, has a similar optimistic tone: the masses would love RPGs if only good RPGs were made accessible to them.

I would like to think that 4e might be something that vindicates Ron Edwards' view, and therefore the Frankfurt school aesthetic theory, at least in one aesthetic domain (namely, that of the RPG). That is, that we have a game which can be played and appreciated for what it is by the masses, not because it speaks down to them or has been made "casual", but because it speaks aesthetic truth to them and makes that truth accessible to them.

If such a thing were possible, then it could be true that a game could appeal to the casual gamer without forsaking that which makes it rich for the hardcore.

Now, all the above might seem like mere academic wishful thinking or projection! But there are a couple of historical examples that show that it can happen: in the nineteenth and early twentieth century (basically, the pre-modernist period) the great authors (eg Twain, Dickens) were also popular authors; from the 30s till some time around the end of the 70s the great flims (Casablanca, Citizen Kane, Les Enfants du Paradis, Midnight Cowboy, 2001) were also the popular films. So it doesn't seem to be a necessary cultural truth that the great cannot also be the popular.

Anyway, whether or not the any of the above is actually true, I hope it explains why I can see the force of your argument and yet refrain from fully agreeing with you.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jun 10, 2008)

ProfessorCirno said:
			
		

> First off, good lord, that was an amazing post Kamakazi Midget.  I dunno what to add.  Well, there is this:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Why do you quote pemerton but don't read what he writes? He said that the rules text itself _is not evocative_. That is not the goal of the rules text.

The question is what happens in play. And if you haven't played the game, you can't really judge it (I suppose, pemerton can neither). But if you read the powers and think about how they can interact, what it means if I slide an enemy into a flanking position, if I daze a Dragon before he becomes bloodied, what happens if shifty Kobold meets Figher with Combat Superiority, you will see a lot of potential for interesting interaction. It is an emergent complexity, but that isn't bad.

---

For house-rules in 4E: What do people consider house-rules? Creating a new monster to fit your story? Creating a new race? Creating a new feat or spell (power)? 

Or creating a new spellcasting subsystem (spell slots=> power points)? Creating a different damage resolution model (aka Hit Points => Wound Points and Vitality Points)? 

Because I absolutely don't see how you can't do the former, and that is the kind of house-rules I have done all the time in D&D 3E. And I am already doing for 4E. 
The latter is rarely done, because they require a lot of work and re-balancing. And 3E isn't any better at it then 4E...


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## pemerton (Jun 10, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> It would have been possible to fix 3e without the wholehearted shift in focus, or to better support toolboxing and simulationist gameplay in the core rules, but at least everything I mentioned above trumped that for the design team this time around.



This I agree with. Looking at 4e as a "fix of 3E" is like looking at HeroWars as a "fix of Runequest". That is, it tells you virtually nothing about the design goals of the game or the play experiences it is likely to deliver.



			
				Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> if WotC basically did Pathfinder and called it 4e, they might've been able to solve the problems without a massive overhaul and abandoning the 3e gearheads.



Now, I think this notion of the "gearhead" is interesting. As I hope I've managed to make clear, I haven't been including design (or tinkering) within my notion of _playing_ an RPG. For those for whom tinkering actually is an important, or the most important, aspect of RPGs, then I suspect 4e may not deliver, because I don't get the sense that it is easy to design well for. Good powers, for example, require a rather subtle correlation of mechanics and theme which may be harder to pull off than simply determining mechanical balance (which comes to us in 4e prepackaged in the form of the repeated "damage + effect" formula).

My use of "prepackaged" there is deliberate - maybe I've worked out what you meant by your fast food metaphor!


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## pemerton (Jun 10, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:
			
		

> The question is what happens in play.



Thanks for the post, obviously I agree with the bit I've quoted!



			
				Mustrum_Ridcully said:
			
		

> For house-rules in 4E: What do people consider house-rules? Creating a new monster to fit your story?



For the reasons I've given, I think this may be harder to do well in 4e than in earlier editions, because the emphasis is no longer on mechanical balance (this is already given to you), but on the integration of mechanics and theme, which may be harder to successfully pull off.

Of course, it may not be.


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## Spatula (Jun 10, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> It would have been possible to fix 3e without the wholehearted shift in focus, or to better support toolboxing and simulationist gameplay in the core rules, but at least everything I mentioned above trumped that for the design team this time around.



How do you fix 3e while fundamentally changing the underlying structure?  This is one of the reasons Mearls cites as needing to ditch the old system, and he has the point - the game just breaks down at high levels.  Your attack bonuses and saves are either massive or ineffective.  AC is nearly meaningless.  Combat is over in 2 rounds and takes 2 hours to play out.  Monsters have to have so many HD to survive a round of the players' attacks that they can't fail saving throws and can dump their entire BAB into PA.  Tactics largely consist of maneuvering to get the jump on your opponents when you're fully buffed and they are not, and preventing them from running away to buff and hit you back.  Which can be interesting, but the combat itself should be fun too.

This is why, while I really like 3e (up to maybe 12th level, anyway), I'm glad they made 4e.  They saw what didn't work in 3e and addressed those issues, and as a result the combat foundation is built on much sounder ground than in previous edtions.  Of course it remains to be seen how good the execution will be, in the long-term.


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## I'm A Banana (Jun 10, 2008)

> This is true of fast food. I don't get the sense that it's interestingly true of 4e in a way that it wasn't of 3E. Both give races, gods, an implicit social system etc.




4e's implied setting is much stronger than 3e's was. 3e's was kind of "Here are some races and some classes that D&D has had before, and they all work together, or not." 4e's is kind of "In a world....where empires have fallen and dragons are born...come heroes...who have destinies."

4e is more like Arcana Unearthed/Evolved in this respect, because it makes deliberate choices, omissions, and proper nouns that exist outside of name-dropping. It has a theme, a feel, a mood, a beginning and an end. 3e didn't have much of that straight out of the box, which both let you add your own, and MADE you add your own, if you wanted it.

Furthermore, with the choice to focus on new IP, the "generic mythos" creatures have been pushed a bit farther back in favor of "D&D specific" creatures. 

All this helps create an atmosphere of "Play Our Game" more than "Play Your Game."

It's still a continuum, not a binary choice, but the difference is real nonetheless.



> Ron Edwards' attitude towards RPGing, as expressed in his essays, has a similar optimistic tone: the masses would love RPGs if only good RPGs were made accessible to them.




I think tabletop RPGing has a few fundamental barriers that stop it from being loved by "the masses," and that the closest we'll ever get is the World of Warcraft/Videogame boom that's happening right now.

#1: It requires a lot of time. Even a "casual" campaign is going to require a 4-hour block of time spent just playing. Attention spans of most poeple are difficult to maintain for that long on one thing.

#2: It requires schedule coordination. That 4-hour block of time needs to be free for at least six people to play a game of D&D4. That's hard to get even amongst people who are generally good with the idea.

#3: It is an active thing, not a passive thing. It demands a higher level of interaction than WoW or any other videogame, a level that not everyone is going to be eager to do (especially over something like pretending to be an elf in a magical faery world). Related, it is a social thing: every one of those six people must contribute. This means that it cannot be one person's vision, and that it will, of necessity, lack a certain focus.

#4: It can never be topical. In addition to the "six people" thing, D&D won't really be able to address the way that normal people are feeling. D&D can't tackle the issues that at least Americans have to deal with: Contentious elections, economic hardship, emerging class struggles, questions of freedom and safety, the notion of just violence and unjust violence, of honesty and deception in places of power, of the responsibility of the media....let alone big human issues like trust, fidelity, fear, romance, war...

You might get a Pratchett novel that can take on these issues, and you could definitely get a Dickens novel or a Scorsese flick that looks at these issues, but six people pretending to be elves for four hours a week says more about those six people than it ever could about the world in general. A good DM might be able to inject a campaign with the feel of one or two of these things at a time, but it doesn't really help "the masses" since RPGing isn't a spectator event.

Games in general can deal with those, even. But I'm pretty sure D&D and tabletop gaming can not. Practically speaking, this is a niche, and it will always be a niche (though it might be a niche that is always around). 

You can get popular and complex, but you need the third ingredient of INTERESTING, and you need to ditch the idea of simplicity (though embracing convenience is a good plan).


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## I'm A Banana (Jun 10, 2008)

> How do you fix 3e while fundamentally changing the underlying structure? This is one of the reasons Mearls cites as needing to ditch the old system, and he has the point - the game just breaks down at high levels. Your attack bonuses and saves are either massive or ineffective. AC is nearly meaningless. Combat is over in 2 rounds and takes 2 hours to play out. Monsters have to have so many HD to survive a round of the players' attacks that they can't fail saving throws and can dump their entire BAB into PA. Tactics largely consist of maneuvering to get the jump on your opponents when you're fully buffed and they are not, and preventing them from running away to buff and hit you back.




All of this is one problem:

The Math.

That solution doesn't mandate that you get rid of the Great Wheel or that you introduce an ancient human empire that has fallen or that you remove the option to disarm from combat.

One possible answer to how you could have done this: fix the numbers, leave the rest alone.

Heck, examples of this were occurring in 3e. E6 and FFZ all had variant reward schemes that tried to preserve the sweet spot without messing with much of the rest of the system.  

But, again, 4e had many more agendas than just fixing 3e's problems.


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## Spatula (Jun 10, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> All of this is one problem:
> 
> The Math.
> 
> That solution doesn't mandate that you get rid of the Great Wheel or that you introduce an ancient human empire that has fallen or that you remove the option to disarm from combat.



Well, I agree with you there.  The change-for-change's sake alterations to the implied setting are my personal sore spot concerning 4e.  But the fluff doesn't have anything to do with the 3e-as-toolbox, 4e-as-finished-product design differences.  If they had kept the Great Wheel and all of that but everything else was still the same - not a huge stretch given the general lack of story in the PHB - it's still a completely different system that does not aim to cater to the tinkerers.



			
				Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> But, again, 4e had many more agendas than just fixing 3e's problems.



That's true of anything designed by a team or commitee.


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## pemerton (Jun 10, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> It can never be topical. In addition to the "six people" thing, D&D won't really be able to address the way that normal people are feeling. D&D can't tackle the issues that at least Americans have to deal with: Contentious elections, economic hardship, emerging class struggles, questions of freedom and safety, the notion of just violence and unjust violence, of honesty and deception in places of power, of the responsibility of the media....let alone big human issues like trust, fidelity, fear, romance, war...



I'm not sure I agree with you about this. Of course there's a sense in which those issues won't be directly in play (except perhaps just vs unjust violence). But nor are they directly in play in a film like Bad Education (which I mention because I rewatched it the other evening on DVD). That doesn't stop Bad Education saying something meaningful about humanity which is relevant to all those topical issues. And I do feel that RPGs can do something similar.

Given the spontaneous nature of RPGs I don't think they'll ever be on a par with great works of narrative art. But the authenticity of the expression by the players themselves can generate a different sort of aesthetic experience which I think has a value of its own.


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## I'm A Banana (Jun 10, 2008)

> But the fluff doesn't have anything to do with the 3e-as-toolbox, 4e-as-finished-product design differences. If they had kept the Great Wheel and all of that but everything else was still the same - not a huge stretch given the general lack of story in the PHB - it's still a completely different system that does not aim to cater to the tinkerers.




Actually, it has something to do with it.

The stronger the setting is implied, the less "wiggle room" there is to try a new setting. By assuming there is an ancient human empire, they've ramped up the work for those campaigns that don't want to include an ancient human empire (for instance), which is part of the game's way of saying "Just play with an ancient human empire, man, it won't kill ya!"

That's a finished product: you've got a place for dungeons and legends to come from.

Vs. 3e, where it was entirely up to you why these things existed.

The Math could have actually helped the tinkers a lot if it was the only thing that was changed, because one unified list of 30 levels where, say, you're getting class powers at every even level and feats at every odd level, doesn't eat up much page space, giving you more room for options that tinkers can pick and choose and customize from.


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## Intense_Interest (Jun 10, 2008)

> 4e says "You like dark heroes, right? Here's tieflings! They have an ancient empire and a conflict with the dragonborn!"
> 
> 3e says "D&D has, in the past, given you half-orcs. Here's how they look now, in Stereotypical D&D Land. Do whatever you want with 'em, whatever you've been doing for 30 years, or some of this new hotness we've got going on, or whatever."




Thats a pretty broad-brush assessment that fits more into your personal bias than as part of an objective observation.

First, the Implied Setting you note is not a problem, considering that gods and planes are a bigger piece of the landscape for homebrews-

Tieflings have Angst because they are spawn of demons.  Half-Orcs have Angst because they are spawn of savages.  The former has even more of an icky connotation that leads into more Sturm and Drang.



> Narrative content in an RPG is not independent of mechanical systems.




That is largely a factor of Genre.  Swords and Sorcery has Tropes X, Y, and Z that is entirely different than Superhero Tropes T, U, V, and W.  Even GURPS has this, just separated into its distinct books.

Narrative Content, from what I believe, is not things like "Kolbolds are Weak and Tricksy", which the two ways going about this (exception based or system based) both serve.  

Narrative Content is actually things such as Absolute spell stats, Wealth-by-Level charts, Flat Diplomacy skill DCs, and 3-easy-then-1-hard-encounter-then-you-rest system assumptions.  Having decoupled "Ritual" systems that involve behind-the-screen assessments like a Succubas charm, you actually give more room for a DM to create the Narrative Content than before.

Yet even then the actual story-telling is a sum of the input of all participants.  A game-table decides that swashbuckling is the answer, we have swashbuckling.



> Point the first, I'm not talking, nor do I care, about the quality you personally found in 3e's attempt to do what 3e attempted to do.




I don't believe you can talk about the achievements and goals of a system without taking quality into account.



> I'm putting forth a really very mundane proposition, there. That 3e was more of a toolkit than 4e is, because 4e isn't concerned as much about you modding your home game to accommodate all sorts of weirdness, largely because the team found that those rules cluttered up the main books while adding very little to most games.




I agree in part.

*4E isn't built to accommodate reams of house-rules and alterations within a 300-page book.  
*4E instead creates a modular game engine to which new or different alterations could then be added or subtracted.
*4E, by virtue of the subscription method for content, will sell you those alterations in books

The reason this is true is because the Eberron book-style- races classes, Items, feats, Powers, all contained within a binding connected by theme- was an ample success for WotC, and they desire to continue to drive a profit.

4E is more modular than 3E because many of the add ons previously were like adding a new leaky bucket under the hole of the other one.

In this way, 4E is a Linux system, because the alterations are skins and method (Ubuntu, Gentoo et al) that end-users commonly only change slightly to match their needs once taken.  3E, on the other hand, is UNIX with its base-level coding and hard script assumptions that have to be made by the end-user from start to match the desires.  How many "chuck Grapple" house-rules are there?  Part-Dragon Races/Classes/PrCs/Items?



> I'm confused as to how the idea of 4e being "more ready to go right away" than 3e, and 3e being more "tinker-intensive" than 4e, is somehow inaccurate. That's kind of the bleedin' POINT of the link in hong's initial post: 4e is the Wii.




"The Wii" is a crypto-slam meme on 4E for being "Casual", which is a lame pejorative trying to play up into a "Supercool Hardcore" image of the user.

hong is not the prophet of people who enjoy 4E and can even be disagreed with at times.



> In no possible way does this mean that 4e somehow cannot handle people's house rules and minor tweaks. The sky is blue, of course it can. That doesn't really change the intended focus of the edition: you're not supposed to HAVE to house rule it (while 3e basically MADE you house rule it, even if you didn't really want to -- oddly enough, just like every other D&D edition, as far as I can tell).




A bad system is still bad, no matter what its goals are.  He may love you and buy you flowers, but a black eye is a black eye.

Which leads me to:



			
				Darth Shoju said:
			
		

> This leads me to the other portion of your theory, that people who like 3e and want to stick with it are frustrated because 4e will replace it. Others are suggesting that 4e is so different that it should have been called something other than D&D. If this had been done, and all of those people who were frustrated with 3e bought that game instead, would it have kept that edition in print? Would everyone have gotten what they wanted? Or, if 4e by a different name had been so popular, would any company be able to profit enough by sticking with 3e?
> 
> I'm not sure what the answer to those questions is. We've got Paizo looking at keeping 3e alive as Pathfinder, but that isn't a true equivalent to my hypothetical situation, as Pathfinder doesn't have the brand name recognition and Paizo doesn't have the resources of WoTC.
> 
> ...




and also to



> The thing is, if WotC basically did Pathfinder and called it 4e, they might've been able to solve the problems without a massive overhaul and abandoning the 3e gearheads. And if they released a more streamlined 4e as a new minis game (for instance), they might've had their cake and ate it, too.




Two games by one company that share genre?  You'd be abandoning the Market Leader status in the RPG community for nothing.

Most of the 3E grognard crowd that ascribe to any printed game being the bringer of milk and honey for all their needs is a reactionary response supported by a self-selected group on the internet.  You see the same thing in Pro-Ana Livejournal groups and other forms of risk appeasement communities.

Pathfinder should be some metaphorical Thinspiration, but it'll be about a year or so before you can be able to find a real assessment of what the difference in player groups has lead to.



> That solution doesn't mandate that you get rid of the Great Wheel or that you introduce an ancient human empire that has fallen or that you remove the option to disarm from combat.




All of those had reasons that played into the core genre tropes and objective playability issues.

Great Wheel was hitting bellow the Mendoza line (.200) in actual playabiltiy and usability.
Everyone Speaks Human is a core genre trope.
Disarm is an all-or-nothing ability in action economy and therefore should be constrained to a power (encounter imo) that should be released later.

Yes KM, there are some strong liabilities in 4E design (Underfoot, the class named "Ranger", Half-Elf, no Dim aura from Bright source), but the core mechanics and game engine contribute to a very well designed system greased by the blood of Sacred Cows.


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## hong (Jun 10, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> Ask any newly potty trained toddler: doing it yourself has its own rewards.




Ah. By this definition, clearly RIFTS is the best system out there for rules tweaking DMs. I am glad to have that cleared up, as I had never been aware of this before.


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## sinecure (Jun 10, 2008)

hong said:
			
		

> Ah. By this definition, clearly RIFTS is the best system out there for rules tweaking DMs. I am glad to have that cleared up, as I had never been aware of this before.



RIFTS is one of the better systems still on the market.  It may be the only old school system still putting out books.  At least we have plenty of 2nd edition books still on bookshelves in hobby shops or newcomers wouldn't know D&D was originally a roleplaying game at one time.

You're thread seems to make a point of how horrible 3E was when it comes to simplicity.  What will be the mocked element of 4th when the designers come out against it in a few years?  You should return to 2nd.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jun 10, 2008)

pemerton said:
			
		

> For the reasons I've given, I think this may be harder to do well in 4e than in earlier editions, because the emphasis is no longer on mechanical balance (this is already given to you), but on the integration of mechanics and theme, which may be harder to successfully pull off.
> 
> Of course, it may not be.



When I created monsters in 3E, I usually tried to find a "theme" for them.

I remember running a 3E/Arcana Evolved game focusing on... spiders and crystals. I created a template to fit the crystal theme and slapped it on classed NPCs, and created a spider mixing multiple creatures MM spider creatures. I don't think there is any difference between 3E and 4E, except that I don't have to advance monster HD and distribute skill points, or add class levels to my creatures, or have to use a template. I can just slap on the abilities I want, and let the mechanical details be informed on the monster guidelines and comparing to existing powers. 

---

And what are the worries around the implied setting? There isn't even a "Golden Wyvern Adept" feat anymore! The only thing that is remaining are some vague background infos to races and the gods, and the new cosmology. Which is approximately as intrusive as the Great Wheel (but I like the new one more). Ignoring that when I build my own world is very easy. Though I probably won't, since I came to like the PoL world...


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## hong (Jun 10, 2008)

sinecure said:
			
		

> RIFTS is one of the better systems still on the market.  It may be the only old school system still putting out books.  At least we have plenty of 2nd edition books still on bookshelves in hobby shops or newcomers wouldn't know D&D was originally a roleplaying game at one time.




Which shows the power of a compelling setting, not of an elegant rule framework.



> You're thread seems to make a point of how horrible 3E was when it comes to simplicity.  What will be the mocked element of 4th when the designers come out against it in a few years?  You should return to 2nd.




Come talk to me in 5 years time, which is my estimate for when splatbook bloat will make the framework start to implode.


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## pemerton (Jun 10, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:
			
		

> When I created monsters in 3E, I usually tried to find a "theme" for them.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I don't think there is any difference between 3E and 4E, except that I don't have to advance monster HD and distribute skill points, or add class levels to my creatures, or have to use a template. I can just slap on the abilities I want, and let the mechanical details be informed on the monster guidelines and comparing to existing powers.



I was just thinking that, whereas in 3E the question is "What sort of powers would a spider have?" whereas in 4e the question is "What sort of powers will express the spideriness (or other thematic concern) of the situation?"

I suspect that the first of these questions is easier to answer (by looking up a biology textbook) than the second (which requires less biology and something closer to a rather specialised type of creative writing). But as I said, I may be wrong about this.


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## pemerton (Jun 10, 2008)

sinecure said:
			
		

> RIFTS is one of the better systems still on the market.  It may be the only old school system still putting out books.



Rolemaster Classic (ie reformatted RM2) and RMSS/RMFRP are both still on the market. So are Runequest and Classic Traveller, as far as I know. Chivalry and Sorcery was still on sale several years ago, but I don't know about now. My FLGS has a copy of Tunnels & Trolls (5th ed) on the shelf, but I don't think the game is actually in print anymore.



			
				sinecure said:
			
		

> At least we have plenty of 2nd edition books still on bookshelves in hobby shops or newcomers wouldn't know D&D was originally a roleplaying game at one time.



The implication that 4e is not a roleplaying game is just bizarre.


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## ProfessorCirno (Jun 10, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:
			
		

> The question is what happens in play. And if you haven't played the game, you can't really judge it (I suppose, pemerton can neither). But if you read the powers and think about how they can interact, what it means if I slide an enemy into a flanking position, if I daze a Dragon before he becomes bloodied, what happens if shifty Kobold meets Figher with Combat Superiority, you will see a lot of potential for interesting interaction. It is an emergent complexity, but that isn't bad.




I HAVE played it 

Or at least, I've played the Keep on the Shadowfell and tinkered around with it a bit.

And I stand by what I say.  The powers felt samey and boring to me.  Perhaps it's because I've simply never been strongly into wargames and the massive amount of tokens and little things to remember when in combat.  But frankly, in my experience, parties don't plan their tactics out long in advance.  They almost always tend to go with the "Let's start combat and make things up as we go."

Oh, and to the person that mentioned Half-Orcs: I cannot for the life of me understand why they can be cut for "Nasty backround implications" but half elves are still around.  Are all half elves suddenly the product of happy monogamous relations between humans and elves who always have consentual sex in the missionary position these days?  Last I checked their backrounds were likely to be just as "nasty" as the half-orcs.


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## Intense_Interest (Jun 10, 2008)

ProfessorCirno said:
			
		

> I HAVE played it
> Oh, and to the person that mentioned Half-Orcs: I cannot for the life of me understand why they can be cut for "Nasty backround implications" but half elves are still around.  Are all half elves suddenly the product of happy monogamous relations between humans and elves who always have consentual sex in the missionary position these days?  Last I checked their backrounds were likely to be just as "nasty" as the half-orcs.




It was my response, sooo

1- Elves are pretty and not members of a Chaotic Evil race.
2- I agree that Half Elves should be scrapped anyway and have for years.


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## sinecure (Jun 10, 2008)

pemerton said:
			
		

> Rolemaster Classic (ie reformatted RM2) and RMSS/RMFRP are both still on the market. So are Runequest and Classic Traveller, as far as I know. Chivalry and Sorcery was still on sale several years ago, but I don't know about now. My FLGS has a copy of Tunnels & Trolls (5th ed) on the shelf, but I don't think the game is actually in print anymore.



Thanks.  I'd like to play T&T 5th edition.  I've always heard that game was pretty fun even if its focus was more gonzo  fantasy than high adventure.  (the real definition high adventure, not the current one meaning uber-magic)

I'll look for Chivalry and Sorcery too.  Do you know who publishes that?  I seem to recall Columbia Games still puts out Harn.



> The implication that 4e is not a roleplaying game is just bizarre.



That's odd.  What I find bizarre is the fact people are calling DDM 4.0 a roleplaying game just because it's labeled so on the cover.

Didn't you get to see Keep on the Shadowfell?  It's a collection of 24 DDM scenarios.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jun 10, 2008)

ProfessorCirno said:
			
		

> I HAVE played it
> 
> Or at least, I've played the Keep on the Shadowfell and tinkered around with it a bit.
> 
> And I stand by what I say.  The powers felt samey and boring to me.



1) Then I concede that it might be true for you (and not only you).. So far, it hasn't been true for me (and not only me.)



> Perhaps it's because I've simply never been strongly into wargames and the massive amount of tokens and little things to remember when in combat.  But frankly, in my experience, parties don't plan their tactics out long in advance.  They almost always tend to go with the "Let's start combat and make things up as we go."



2) I don't know if this is how it was always with my group any more, but I know the past experience with the Paizo and Dungeon Adventure Paths has removed any notion of not planning tactics out gone. If you don't optimize tactics and character build in these modules, you'll lose. (If you don't lose, you're probably using generous point buy values or rolls, or have a DM that will cut you some slack). 4E won't become less then 3E, but I find the tactics seem to emerge more naturally...


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## Testament (Jun 10, 2008)

sinecure said:
			
		

> That's odd.  What I find bizarre is the fact people are calling DDM 4.0 a roleplaying game just because it's labeled so on the cover.




ISWYDT...[/rollseyes]

This is always a line of argument that I fail to see any meaning in.    Last time I checked, even the supposedly deep and story based WW games can be played as high-action "rargh, kill" type urban dungeon bashes with MP5s and trenchcoats standing in for magic swords and armour.  And do I even need to mention Werewolf: The Apocalypse, which even had its own inbuilt Detect Evil, sorry, _Wyrm_, power?  And I say this as a huge W:TA fan.

The role-playing content of any given game is in the hands of the players, not the books.



> Didn't you get to see Keep on the Shadowfell?  It's a collection of 24 DDM scenarios.




And 20 or so years ago, before DDM existed, that would have been declared a great piece of event based adventure.  Or haven't you ever read Against the Giants, Tomb of Horrors or any of the vaunted 'classics' like that, which had about as much roleplaying encounters in them as a game of checkers?


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## sinecure (Jun 10, 2008)

Testament said:
			
		

> The role-playing content of any given game is in the hands of the players, not the books.



The fact that the designers of 4E actually believe this fallacy is why it is such a horribly designed roleplaying game.  Rules don't matter to roleplaying, huh?  Let's just label Chess, Poker, and Monopoly roleplaying games too.  The rules don't matter, right?



> And 20 or so years ago, before DDM existed, that would have been declared a great piece of event based adventure.  Or haven't you ever read Against the Giants, Tomb of Horrors or any of the vaunted 'classics' like that, which had about as much roleplaying encounters in them as a game of checkers?



Have you read Tomb of Horrors?  There are what? 2, 3 combats in it?  And each of those vastly overpowering the PCs.  If you fight something in that module, not only are you doing it wrong, you're going to die.

And G1-3 were all about strategy, not tactics.  Play kick in the door in any of those and you'd get your butt handed to you.  

If 4th edition plans on basing its status on the quality of its adventures, then people may start seeing D&D games as a devolution over time.  

The fact that folks cannot see a few pages of interesting town design with some Q&A added to 2 dozen DDM encounters is a testament to 4E's hype.  Take a step back and look at those pages.  There is nothing on them that doesn't directly relate to DDM.


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## Intense_Interest (Jun 10, 2008)

sinecure said:
			
		

> The fact that the designers of 4E actually believe this fallacy is why it is such a horribly designed roleplaying game.  Rules don't matter to roleplaying, huh?  Let's just label Chess, Poker, and Monopoly roleplaying games too.  The rules don't matter, right?




Reductio ad Absurdum.  RPGs have accumulation of narrative and participatory interaction between players.  The rules are there to adjudicate the "Hit You Nah Huh Yah Huh".

The past 3 years of my experience with RPGs and the 3E system as a whole was nigh-diceless Spycraft campaigns.    The rules didn't make those games, we did.



> Have you read Tomb of Horrors? There are what? 2, 3 combats in it? And each of those vastly overpowering the PCs. If you fight something in that module, not only are you doing it wrong, you're going to die.
> 
> And G1-3 were all about strategy, not tactics. Play kick in the door in any of those and you'd get your butt handed to you.




Nothing stopping the DM or Adventure from creating over-whelming encounters.  4E hasn't broken into your house and installed a watching device.


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## hong (Jun 10, 2008)

sinecure said:
			
		

> The fact that the designers of 4E actually believe this fallacy is why it is such a horribly designed roleplaying game.  Rules don't matter to roleplaying, huh?  Let's just label Chess, Poker, and Monopoly roleplaying games too.  The rules don't matter, right?




There sure are a lot of people in the 4E Rules forum arguing over whether the rules for roleplaying are broken.



> Have you read Tomb of Horrors?  There are what? 2, 3 combats in it?  And each of those vastly overpowering the PCs.  If you fight something in that module, not only are you doing it wrong, you're going to die.
> 
> And G1-3 were all about strategy, not tactics.  Play kick in the door in any of those and you'd get your butt handed to you.




The point is that all of those modules were ultimately about killing monsters and taking their stuff. Whether you do it the hard way or the easy way is irrelevant. There is precisely as much "roleplaying" in G1-2-3 and ToH as in KotS -- unless, of course, you happen to define "roleplaying" as killing monsters and taking their stuff the easy way.


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## Testament (Jun 10, 2008)

sinecure said:
			
		

> The fact that the designers of 4E actually believe this fallacy is why it is such a horribly designed roleplaying game.  Rules don't matter to roleplaying, huh?  Let's just label Chess, Poker, and Monopoly roleplaying games too.  The rules don't matter, right?




Now you're just being obnoxious with this reductionism; you know exactly what I meant.  So I ask you, was first edition a Roleplaying game?  What about 2nd or any of its countless permutations.  3rd edition?  Why or why not?



> If 4th edition plans on basing its status on the quality of its adventures, then people may start seeing D&D games as a devolution over time.
> 
> The fact that folks cannot see a few pages of interesting town design with some Q&A added to 2 dozen DDM encounters is a testament to 4E's hype.  Take a step back and look at those pages.  There is nothing on them that doesn't directly relate to DDM.




What I see are some well designed encounters, with a series of events linking them.  I see the DDM integrated component as something inevitable, given that WotC is owned by the same company that turned a series of half-hour toy commercials into a cherished pop culture item.  And that's even ignoring the fact that they've sold about 50 grillion units of the damn things and they've covered a lot of bases in the critters available, so it makes sense from both a design and a commercial standpoint.

So the adventure also contains a shill for another product.  Big freaking whoop.

As for the implied superiority of earlier adventures there, given the way 4th plays and the wide reports of TPKs in KotSf, I'd say its about strategy too rather than kick in the door.  And I still say that the best feature of ToH is as a how-not-to guide to adventure design, and a shining example of everything bad about the so called old-school style.


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## sinecure (Jun 10, 2008)

Intense_Interest said:
			
		

> Reductio ad Absurdum.  RPGs have accumulation of narrative and participatory interaction between players.  The rules are there to adjudicate the "Hit You Nah Huh Yah Huh".



Yep, reductio ad absurdum.  That's the latin name for the argument type I used to point out the illogic of yours.  And by the way, it's not a narrative until it's repeated after the interactions are completed.  Narratives are by definition retellings.

Now, are you seriously assuming a referee isn't assisted by rules to roleplay the world?  That's a huge job to remember for consistency if you choose not to use rules whatsoever.



> The past 3 years of my experience with RPGs and the 3E system as a whole was nigh-diceless Spycraft campaigns.    The rules didn't make those games, we did.



So you had no interactions with the world, only PCs?  Or did you just make it all up as you went along to hell with any logical consistency?



> Nothing stopping the DM or Adventure from creating over-whelming encounters.  4E hasn't broken into your house and installed a watching device.



I didn't say it did.  I'm saying, based on their first adventure, they are making very, very poor adventure modules.



			
				Hong said:
			
		

> There sure are a lot of people in the 4E Rules forum arguing over whether the rules for roleplaying are broken.



As there's not, I'll just say it's because they don't care about roleplaying one way or the other.  I think folks are into the minis games and kind of oblivious as to how it requires one to think out of character.  (the opposite of roleplaying fyi)



> The point is that all of those modules were ultimately about killing monsters and taking their stuff. <snip>



Actually, the weren't.  And more importantly, neither is D&D.  Let's just call this Major Fallacy #2.  Another one en vogue at the moment.  D&D is about being a hero.



			
				Testament said:
			
		

> Now you're just being obnoxious with this reductionism; you know exactly what I meant. So I ask you, was first edition a Roleplaying game? What about 2nd or any of its countless permutations. 3rd edition? Why or why not?



Not trying to be obnoxious, just trying to get my point across.  I don't know what you meant if you actually believe RPG rules have no role in regards to roleplaying.  That's Major Fallacy #1 again.  (known in indie circles as system doesn't matter)  And yes, all the editions of D&D are roleplaying games.  It just so happens 4e places the least priority in its rules on roleplay.



> What I see are some well designed encounters, with a series of events linking them. I see the DDM integrated component as something inevitable, given that WotC is owned by the same company that turned a series of half-hour toy commercials into a cherished pop culture item. And that's even ignoring the fact that they've sold about 50 grillion units of the damn things and they've covered a lot of bases in the critters available, so it makes sense from both a design and a commercial standpoint.



I am 100% on board as a commercial endeavor.  Miniatures simply make more profit.  As to what makes a good roleplaying game, DDM repeatedly removes one from behaving in character throughout play.  (Not good for an RPG)

And honestly, what is this adventure doing making encounters for DMs?  It's like it is telling them to railroad the PCs.  Modules are fluid.  You can't predict who will be where during design, before play even begins.  Old designs didn't fall into this trap.  As if the world doesn't change depending on the PCs actions.  Sheesh.



> So the adventure also contains a shill for another product. Big freaking whoop.



Again, this ain't a problem for me.  It's the product that has problems when used in an incorrect manner.



> As for the implied superiority of earlier adventures there, given the way 4th plays and the wide reports of TPKs in KotSf, I'd say its about strategy too rather than kick in the door. And I still say that the best feature of ToH is as a how-not-to guide to adventure design, and a shining example of everything bad about the so called old-school style.



If strategy can be minimized when to take an "extended rest" (and let's face it, this edition is all about minimization), then there is strategy in that adventure.  

Tomb of Horrors is also widely regarded as one of the shining examples of adventure design for high level play.  That high level adventures have turned into the worst designs as of late bodes poorly for the hobby.  You really should take a look at it again.  Only the best players will be able to beat it.  I'm afraid your opinion may be clouding your judgement, but as it is so central to the core philosophy of D&D, I can't understand how you could hate it and yet enjoy this game.


----------



## Fenes (Jun 10, 2008)

sinecure said:
			
		

> I'm saying, based on their first adventure, they are making very, very poor adventure modules.
> 
> _editing_




I don't expect any adventure modules I can use from any edition. I never found an D&D adventure that fit my playstyle in 2E, nor in 3E. Too much combat in all of them, and not enough social situations.
I usually consider them "collections of encounters I can use for the combat scenes in my own adventures after serious modifications are done".


----------



## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jun 10, 2008)

sinecure said:
			
		

> The fact that the designers of 4E actually believe this fallacy is why it is such a horribly designed roleplaying game.  Rules don't matter to roleplaying, huh?  Let's just label Chess, Poker, and Monopoly roleplaying games too.  The rules don't matter, right?



Rules matter. But not always in the way people think they do.

Monopoly is not a role-playing game because my characters ability do not depend on "who" I play. Be a car or a shoe, you're still doing all the same stuff. More-over, there is nothing in the game assumptions about talking about what a character might do or inter-acting with the world. There are no NPCs to interact with. 

4E provides 4 general combat roles. This alone means there is a role-playing element. Furthermore, it gives these "color" by assigning power sources to different classes. And even than it goes beyond that (Ranger and Rogue are both Martial, and both Striker). 
This is the purely combat-part of the roles. Some might not want to count them for "role-playing", despite them defining a role you have to play in the game. 

Furthermore, the mechanics associate non-combat abilities to these classes. Rogues have Thievery and Stealth. Fighters have Athletics and Intimidate. Warlords have History and Insight. Clerics have Religion and Heal. Wizards have Arcana. 

This is stuff not related directly to combat. They have totally out-of-combat purposes, and they describe a characters abilities in terms going beyond something like "the money I have" and "the magic items the streets I own" in Monopoly. 

Even further, the whole game is supposedly motivated by a story. You are not just entering the game board and fighting some enemies. There is a story behind the reason. Depending on your personal preference, the story may be as shallow as "We were offered 200 gold pieces if we eliminate those Kobolds" or as elaborate as "In an effort to impress the Lord of Sharn, we attempt to take down a band of Kobolds. The Kobolds are only in this region because an orc-tribe has settled in their former homes and have driven them out. The tribe is worshipping Gruumsh, and the Kobolds fear a terrible ritual the Orcs are trying to complete. If the PCs manage to talk with the Kobolds, they might even learn about this and warn the Lord about it, and can stop it."

Sure, I could play 4E like a board-game, though I would ignore about as much rules material for that as I would have to play 3E as a board-game, or Shadowrun as a board-game.

---

So, in short, the idea that 4E is something else then a role-playing game is ridiculous. Anyone that seriously claims this must be misinformed, suffers from bad judgment, or has an agenda that makes him claim this despite any evidence to the contrary. Or, he has a very narrow definition of what a role-playing game is that I probably shouldn't bother addressing him.


----------



## Fenes (Jun 10, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:
			
		

> So, in short, the idea that 4E is something else then a role-playing game is ridiculous. Anyone that seriously claims this must be misinformed, suffers from bad judgment, or has an agenda that makes him claim this despite any evidence to the contrary. Or, he has a very narrow definition of what a role-playing game is that I probably shouldn't bother addressing him.




And don't forget that a number of fans of certain other RPG systems are convinced that no edition of D&D is or was a roleplaying game anyway.


----------



## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jun 10, 2008)

Fenes said:
			
		

> And don't forget that a number of fans of certain other RPG systems are convinced that no edition of D&D is or was a roleplaying game anyway.



Yes. Heck, even I might have been lead to believe that at the beginning of my role-playing game career, before I encountered D&D personally.

Roleplaying is a lot more then some Elitist like to make of it. 
"Social interactions" with NPC is not even everything there is. Sometimes, role-playing is just inter-party banter.
Role-playing can be your Fighter screaming "Why won't you just die!" to an enemy monster before power-attacking(3E)/brutal striking(4E) your enemy.


----------



## Majoru Oakheart (Jun 10, 2008)

sinecure said:
			
		

> The fact that the designers of 4E actually believe this fallacy is why it is such a horribly designed roleplaying game.  Rules don't matter to roleplaying, huh?  Let's just label Chess, Poker, and Monopoly roleplaying games too.  The rules don't matter, right?



They didn't matter to the people running 1st or 2nd Ed.  Can your character repair a house?  I don't know...make an Int check, the rules don't say.  In fact, most of the best moments I had in these editions were precisely BECAUSE the rules didn't tell us everything our characters could do, we got to make up some of it that wasn't that important.



			
				sinecure said:
			
		

> Have you read Tomb of Horrors?  There are what? 2, 3 combats in it?  And each of those vastly overpowering the PCs.  If you fight something in that module, not only are you doing it wrong, you're going to die.



Tomb of Horrors is a bad example.  It was pretty much written as "Do exactly what I think you should do or die immediately if you can't figure it out).  Not exactly a fun time.



			
				sinecure said:
			
		

> And G1-3 were all about strategy, not tactics.  Play kick in the door in any of those and you'd get your butt handed to you.



Exactly.  The tactics were entirely missing.  So, for most people who played them it ended up being like this:

"We go down the hallway."
"There are 3 giants in the next room.  They see you, roll for initiative"
*insert many rounds of rolling to hit and damage with no tactics at all*
"Alright, we search their bodies then head down another hallway"
And repeat.

Monsters in 1st and 2nd Ed were generally very weak.  Most parties were able to beat them quite a few levels below when they were meant to be faced.  Especially if you had a group who could abuse the rules well like mine did.  Within a round, we'd have convinced our DM that one of our level 1 illusion spells or a cantrip could keep one of the giants completely out of the fight while we fought the other 2.



			
				sinecure said:
			
		

> If 4th edition plans on basing its status on the quality of its adventures, then people may start seeing D&D games as a devolution over time.



Depends on how you look at it.  I rather enjoy wandering through hallways killing giants.  I have lots of fun with it.



			
				sinecure said:
			
		

> The fact that folks cannot see a few pages of interesting town design with some Q&A added to 2 dozen DDM encounters is a testament to 4E's hype.  Take a step back and look at those pages.  There is nothing on them that doesn't directly relate to DDM.



Here's the meat of it.  When we played 2nd Ed, there was all this flowery storyline.  There were hundreds and hundreds of pages of books that would tell us what gravity worked like on a Spelljamming ship, what the ground felt like on the 432nd layer of the Abyss, and what Kobolds like to eat for breakfast.

When we'd actually play the game, however, the DM would come up with a problem for us to solve, we'd then have to kill some monsters in order to achieve that goal.  I'd say less than 1% of the stuff in any of those books actually came up during a session ever(except as fun things to joke about outside of the game).

D&D adventures have, pretty much since the beginning been a series of combats tied together by a common plot(the giants are attacking people...put an end to it, there are evil people in a temple...go figure out what they are up to, slavers are kidnapping people...stop them, etc).  However, they weren't explicitly spelled out like that.  They'd give you a long background as to WHY the slavers were taking people, what their camp looked like, the unique symbol on the leader's sword and so on.  The stat blocks for the monsters were always only a couple of lines, so they APPEARED to be a small portion of the adventure.  Until the adventure saw play.  Then, they pretty much all ended up the same way: "You approach the camp and someone spots you and sounds an alarm.  Roll for initiative."

I've played in a lot of D&D campaigns in a lot of editions.  I can tell you that when you strip the flowery text and pretense away, they all end up one of 2 ways: Aimlessly reacting to whatever the players do OR a series of battles connected by a plot.  The battles would take 80% of the time spent playing the game and the plot would be 20% and largely involved trying to get to monsters to have another battle.

3e and 4e both pretty much realized that and are now writing down more information and more detail on the part of the game that people spend the most time in.  If you are going to spend 80% of your time in battles, they might as well have interesting options instead of rolling attack and damage rolls over and over until the enemies were dead.  Why should the DM need to make up the terrain, the effects of the terrain on combat, the starting locations of all the enemies, the tactics of all the enemies?  All of that adds a barrier to entry as a DM.

I could tell you that we got so bored of battles in 2nd Ed that our DM used to just point at people in a clockwise direction and they were simply supposed to answer how much damage they did(he told us the ACs of enemies).  We didn't move around, we didn't vary our tactics, it was simply who ran out of hitpoints first.  Except for the Wizard, he got to take 10 minutes figuring out if his Web spell was sticking people and how many he got and how hard it was for them to get out.


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## hong (Jun 10, 2008)

sinecure said:
			
		

> As there's not, I'll just say it's because they don't care about roleplaying one way or the other.




http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=229919
http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=230233



> I think folks are into the minis games and kind of oblivious as to how it requires one to think out of character.  (the opposite of roleplaying fyi)




Nonsense. Thinking out of character is central to certain definitions of roleplaying. And I like peanut butter.



> Actually, the weren't.




In operational terms, yes, they most certainly were.



> And more importantly, neither is D&D.  Let's just call this Major Fallacy #2.  Another one en vogue at the moment.  D&D is about being a hero.




... which generally tends to mean killing monsters and taking their stuff, especially when you come to published modules.



> Tomb of Horrors is also widely regarded as one of the shining examples of adventure design for high level play.




To be precise, it is widely regarded as one of the shining examples of _bad_ adventure design.



> That high level adventures have turned into the worst designs as of late bodes poorly for the hobby.  You really should take a look at it again.  Only the best players will be able to beat it.  I'm afraid your opinion may be clouding your judgement, but as it is so central to the core philosophy of D&D, I can't understand how you could hate it and yet enjoy this game.




See, if you didn't think of roleplaying solely in terms of "beating the dungeon", life would be much simpler.


----------



## sinecure (Jun 10, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:
			
		

> Rules matter. But not always in the way people think they do.
> <snip>
> So, in short, the idea that 4E is something else then a role-playing game is ridiculous. Anyone that seriously claims this must be misinformed, suffers from bad judgment, or has an agenda that makes him claim this despite any evidence to the contrary. Or, he has a very narrow definition of what a role-playing game is that I probably shouldn't bother addressing him.



Let me back off from my D&D is not a RPG cheese.  It's a RPG, just one putting a very low priority on RP in comparison to others.  I still believe the majority of play in KotS is DDM scenarios loosely interlinked by some town and character description.  As you go back in time this has not been the case.


----------



## Testament (Jun 10, 2008)

sinecure said:
			
		

> Actually, the weren't.  And more importantly, neither is D&D.  Let's just call this Major Fallacy #2.  Another one en vogue at the moment.  D&D is about being a hero.




Ah, so killing the EVIL monsters and taking their stuff.  Gotcha.



> Not trying to be obnoxious, just trying to get my point across.  I don't know what you meant if you actually believe RPG rules have no role in regards to roleplaying.  That's Major Fallacy #1 again.  (known in indie circles as system doesn't matter)  And yes, all the editions of D&D are roleplaying games.  It just so happens 4e places the least priority in its rules on roleplay.




Does roleplay need rules?  How does a system encourage roleplaying in terms of character interaction?  Creating rules for it, more often than not, just leads back to the hideous argument about rules DISCOURAGING roleplaying (Diplomacy skill, I'm looking at you again...)



> I am 100% on board as a commercial endeavor.  Miniatures simply make more profit.  As to what makes a good roleplaying game, DDM repeatedly removes one from behaving in character throughout play.  (Not good for an RPG)




You have got to be kidding me.  Dice or any kind of physical object at that point as an action resolution mechanic at that point are badwrongfun are they, since they remove you from behaving in character?  See, I can be a reductionist too.



> And honestly, what is this adventure doing making encounters for DMs?  It's like it is telling them to railroad the PCs.  Modules are fluid.  You can't predict who will be where during design, before play even begins.  Old designs didn't fall into this trap.  As if the world doesn't change depending on the PCs actions.  Sheesh.




That's why there's a GM last time I checked, to change the flow and course of things.  And if an adventure isn't supposed to provide encounters, then what is it supposed to do?  Last time I checked, a dungeon of any kind is an adventure flowchart designed for the exclusive purpose of funelling players into the required area/events.



> Tomb of Horrors is also widely regarded as one of the shining examples of adventure design for high level play.  That high level adventures have turned into the worst designs as of late bodes poorly for the hobby.  You really should take a look at it again.  Only the best players will be able to beat it.  I'm afraid your opinion may be clouding your judgement, but as it is so central to the core philosophy of D&D, I can't understand how you could hate it and yet enjoy this game.




I have taken a look at it, indeed I ran it under 1E rules (thank god I know some old gamers who own the relevant books) and made my players sign a waiver not to be angry at me or hurt me when they got killed again.

In terms of design its a good example of using non-combat challenges, and that's about it.  I fail to see how its central to the core philosophy of D&D though, when in terms of implementation of that design its a steaming pile of highly radioactive, sarin-gas emitting feces.  Indeed, the prospect of it EVER being central scares me and makes me glad I started with 3E.  The sheer arbitrary nature of the encounters offends me in so many ways as both a player and a GM that I'm bewildered as to how anyone could possibly think it ever was a good adventure.  You chose B in this situation out of A-Q?  You're dead.  You stood on tile 4 of 287?  Dead, and so is he.


----------



## Mallus (Jun 10, 2008)

sinecure said:
			
		

> Let me back off from my D&D is not a RPG cheese.



Good move.



> It's a RPG, just one putting a very low priority on RP in comparison to others.



1) Which ones, and are any of them earlier editions of D&D, because my first thought was "Pendragon?"

2) What's your (concise) definition of RP? 



> As you go back in time this has not been the case.



Right... some modules were a series of loosely-linked deathtrap puzzles solved by something I'll charitable label as "AD&D Tournament-Module Logic".


----------



## Heselbine (Jun 10, 2008)

sinecure said:
			
		

> Let me back off from my D&D is not a RPG cheese.  It's a RPG, just one putting a very low priority on RP in comparison to others.  I still believe the majority of play in KotS is DDM scenarios loosely interlinked by some town and character description.  As you go back in time this has not been the case.



 Let's have a look at some historically important D&D scenarios. I'll concentrate on the ones I'm familiar with, because...those are the ones I'm familiar with.

1st edition: T1/Village of Hommlet. A bit of a wander around a village as a prelude to a small dungeon. Reasonable opportunities for role-playing in the village. Very little plot. Dungeon a bit lacking in interest, lots of straightforward fights.

2nd edition: the introductory adventure from the Forgotten Realms boxed set. A bit of a wander around a village as a prelude to a small dungeon. If anything, fewer opportunities for role-playing in the village. Virtually no plot, and what there was made no sense. Dungeon a bit more interesting, but difficult to avoid a TPK if you followed it as written.

3rd edition: Sunless Citadel. Virtually nothing before the dungeon. Straight into the killing-monsters-and-getting-their-stuff. A pretty good dungeon, in many ways, a fair bit of variation. And Meepo! Which is about all the role-playing that the module gives you.

4th edition: KotS. Introductory action, followed by a bit of a wander around a village as a prelude to a variety of encounters. Some plot development. Several different locations. Lots of tactical variation in the fights. But still, let's face it, not a great deal of role-playing.

What does this tell us? Pretty much that the ethos of the game has been the same over the four editions. It's always been kill-the-monsters-take-their-stuff with some story elements and roleplaying thrown in. If you want deep immersive role-play D&D has never been your game. I'm very surprised by comments suggesting 4e is different in this regard.


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## sinecure (Jun 10, 2008)

Majoru Oakheart said:
			
		

> Major SNIP



It sounds like you have had a fun time playing D&D.  I'm glad the game offered you the fun you have had, but I'm doubly glad it offered my friends and I the kinds of fun we had.  4E simply fails in most respects for us.  I'll take your experiences as a given and just say they have not been like that for us.  We spend only about 20% in combat.  The rest is a mix of character play, planning, and exploration.  I don't mean any disrespect here, but we call what you describe in your meat response "beginner play".  We spend a lot of time figuring out how to win - whatever that challenge may be.  Sometimes it is combat, some times problem solving, sometimes roleplaying intelligently, sometimes just making the right decisions.

4e has compiled nearly all of these elements into single and complex skill roles.  Let me tell you, they are vastly unsatisfactory.  And that they don't include such challenges in their adventures just tells me they have no desire for the game to be more than combat scenario after combat scenario.  It's like they've taken Orc & Pie as a legitimate adventure design philosophy.  Tell you what.  If you want, I can set aside some time and collect a list of things I can think of they deliberately left out.  

Again, I'm not trying to diss your play here.  We just do things differently in 2e.



			
				hong said:
			
		

> http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=229919
> http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=230233



Dude, I apologize.  I thought, you're Hong, I bet he's being Hong.  (joshing me)



> Nonsense. Thinking out of character is central to certain definitions of roleplaying. And I like peanut butter.



Non sequitur?  Would this be the definition of roleplaying derivative from the acting school wherein the best actors DO NOT act in character, but deliberately unlike their character?  



> In operational terms, yes, they most certainly were.
> 
> ... which generally tends to mean killing monsters and taking their stuff, especially when you come to published modules.



_Operationally_, we are on very different paths.  _Operationally_, D&D used to support multiple different ways of doing things.  Now they seem to be focused on one which seems to fit you nicely, but many others rather poorly.



> To be precise, it is widely regarded as one of the shining examples of _bad_ adventure design.
> 
> See, if you didn't think of roleplaying solely in terms of "beating the dungeon", life would be much simpler.



Again, we seem to be on very different sides of the coin.  ToH is a contentious design philosophy in D&D.  The original is just too tough.  Gygax did that time and again.  He'd put out adventures for highly seasoned vets as the first adventure after making a new RPG.  See Dangerous Journeys and Necropolis for example.  It's another great tomb and trap adventure that puts new players way out of their depth.  

But to beat either you need to change the way you play.  

Let me state, I like playing kick in the door occasionally.  I like that 2E offers this option to me.  I like even more that I can play all kinds of ways using the same rules during the same session.  I prefer less monotone play.


----------



## RabidBob (Jun 10, 2008)

WizarDru said:
			
		

> After playing 3e/3.5e weekly for, what, 8 years now?  We STILL have to go check the books for stuff like grapples, coup de graces, dispels and other such wonky stuff.  It's not hard, but it's counter-intuitive to rules mastery.  4e seems to alleviate that, so we'll go with it.
> 
> For me, an RPG's best utility is to provide a framework without getting in the way.  4e appears to do that for me more than previous games.  I had fun in AD&D.  I had fun in Basic.  I had fun in GURPS.  I had fun in Talislanta.  I had fun in 3.X.  And I expect to have fun in 4e.




This is the most sensible thing I've read all week.  Anywhere.  +1 Internets for you sir.


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## hong (Jun 10, 2008)

sinecure said:
			
		

> Non sequitur?  Would this be the definition of roleplaying derivative from the acting school wherein the best actors DO NOT act in character, but deliberately unlike their character?




No, it means that the character's actions are informed by such things as: what does the group want; what genre are we playing in; what can I do to move the storyline forward; and so on. Things which are pertinent to the player, but not the character.



> _Operationally_, we are on very different paths.  _Operationally_, D&D used to support multiple different ways of doing things.  Now they seem to be focused on one which seems to fit you nicely, but many others rather poorly.




4E provides just as much, if not more, support for doing things out of combat as previous editions. The only thing it doesn't support is deliberately choosing to suck. To which I say, if you want to suck, you can always not roll the dice.


----------



## sinecure (Jun 10, 2008)

Testament said:
			
		

> Ah, so killing the EVIL monsters and taking their stuff.  Gotcha.



Funny.  Why be so diminutive about D&D.  It's a great game.  You don't have to discount it.  The philosophy your repeating came from a community of people who bitterly hate the game.  Would you be so dismissive about life by saying it's only about staying alive?  



> Does roleplay need rules?



Nope, the DM needs rules to make a persistently believable world.  The players don't need rules at all.



> How does a system encourage roleplaying in terms of character interaction?



The ones I like simply get out of the way and are best thought of as "the way the world works" instead of mechanics.  Others are metagamey and tend to be situational setups.  For instance, many indie games are single situations for players to solve in their own way.  Other kinds of roleplaying games, like Model U.N., have different ends, but preset goals for all or particular individuals.

As you know, a combat system isn't required for an RPG.  It's just needed for ones where combat might happen.  The current 4e rules are poorly designed for use as an RPG-combat system because they require one to stop roleplaying to play it.  That it also happens to be the majority of the rules of 4E bodes ill for the game as a whole.



> Creating rules for it, more often than not, just leads back to the hideous argument about rules DISCOURAGING roleplaying (Diplomacy skill, I'm looking at you again...)



Read my examples above again.  Diplomacy isn't required for D&D, it's a 3.x thing and sucky IMO.  A basic character reaction roll modified by a DM judging your performance works a ton better for my games.  (yes, you need to trust your DM)



> You have got to be kidding me.  Dice or any kind of physical object at that point as an action resolution mechanic at that point are badwrongfun are they, since they remove you from behaving in character?  See, I can be a reductionist too.



Dude, players rolling dice are making a choice in character to attempt something.  The actual random result of the dice is for the DM.  If dice aren't cool for you, then the DM can roll for you.  (or LARPS which don't use player seen conflict resolution)



> That's why there's a GM last time I checked, to change the flow and course of things.  And if an adventure isn't supposed to provide encounters, then what is it supposed to do?  Last time I checked, a dungeon of any kind is an adventure flowchart designed for the exclusive purpose of funnelling players into the required area/events.



Only the railroading dungeon designs which have become popular in the last 10 years or so.  Most traditional dungeons are intertwining mazes of tricks, traps, monsters, and treasure.  And the goals are decided upon by the players to give them more freedom.  This isn't an edition problem though.  Just lousy adventure design by Wizards.  Goodman does fairly well if you're looking to buy.



> I have taken a look at it, indeed I ran it under 1E rules (thank god I know some old gamers who own the relevant books) and made my players sign a waiver not to be angry at me or hurt me when they got killed again.
> 
> In terms of design its a good example of using non-combat challenges, and that's about it.  I fail to see how its central to the core philosophy of D&D though, when in terms of implementation of that design its a steaming pile of highly radioactive, sarin-gas emitting feces.  Indeed, the prospect of it EVER being central scares me and makes me glad I started with 3E.  The sheer arbitrary nature of the encounters offends me in so many ways as both a player and a GM that I'm bewildered as to how anyone could possibly think it ever was a good adventure.  You chose B in this situation out of A-Q?  You're dead.  You stood on tile 4 of 287?  Dead, and so is he.



It's a good example of what is D&D because it forces players to think outside of the box to win.  They can't kick in the door and expect an adventure to be suitably easy to beat with a couple of swings.  Heck, the game gets extraordinarily dull if you play that way IMO.  It's just hack and slash.  It's all the dozens of ways each of those trap-like situations could be solved.  Or sidestepped.  Or utilized to remove another trap.  Or reveal through design a clue about another encounter.  It's a difficult read if you aren't thinking how to beat it or that each is like a riddle in it's way with more than one answer.   It's better to see veterans attempt it.  If you just read it without seeing the challenges or how they can be beaten, it looks like an arbitrary meatgrinder.  Which it's not.  It can be beat with 1st level PCs.  (though you really can't resort to violence then)

It really was poor timing to publish so early though.  Too hard of a riddle-like adventure too early.  

But they've brought riddles back in 4e.  That's good!



			
				Mallus said:
			
		

> 1) Which ones, and are any of them earlier editions of D&D, because my first thought was "Pendragon?"
> 
> 2) What's your (concise) definition of RP?



1. By which ones I mean pretty much all of the ones ever published under the name roleplaying game.  But to be honest I don't include computer games calling themselves RPGs.  You're call really.  To me it's more of an RPG than any of those.
2. Never really thought about it.  A game that has roleplaying as its #1 priority?  That would work for me.  Though I think D&D traditionally has teambuilding as it's #1 priority, but as such brings it about by placing folks in-character in situations where they have to work as a team or lose.  I think winning and losing is a big part of it where normal roleplaying games don't really need that.  IMO winning and losing is one of the things at D&D's heart.


----------



## hong (Jun 10, 2008)

sinecure said:
			
		

> Funny.  Why be so diminutive about D&D.  It's a great game.  You don't have to discount it.  The philosophy your repeating came from a community of people who bitterly hate the game.  Would you be so dismissive about life by saying it's only about staying alive?




You make killing monsters and taking their stuff sound like it's a negative thing.


----------



## Charwoman Gene (Jun 10, 2008)

*Keyboard before head*


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## Kheti sa-Menik (Jun 10, 2008)

Majoru Oakheart said:
			
		

> <snip>
> 
> 4e seems to be an attempt to find a happy medium between 2e(full of holes in the rules and rather boring to run combats in but very easy to run and understand) and 3e(lots of interesting options, but there is a rule for EVERYTHING and you needed to know them all to be good at the game)




4e has not found that happy medium. Instead, it is a game that could be mistaken for a video game, where everyone has KEWL POWERZ and there are no consequences for anything (being turned to stone by a medua only lasts until combat is over, please.), everything has to be cool every single level, everyone has to do something heroic every round.  There's no ramp up in power, you start off powerfully.  There's no coherence in the world around the PCs.

4e has destroyed D&D.  It's not popular to say that but it is true.  The designers took a great legacy and destroyed it.  Kudos to them for garnering high sales for raping (yes raping) a once great game.


----------



## Majoru Oakheart (Jun 10, 2008)

sinecure said:
			
		

> We spend only about 20% in combat.  The rest is a mix of character play, planning, and exploration.  I don't mean any disrespect here, but we call what you describe in your meat response "beginner play".  We spend a lot of time figuring out how to win - whatever that challenge may be.  Sometimes it is combat, some times problem solving, sometimes roleplaying intelligently, sometimes just making the right decisions.



"Beginner play"?  I find it difficult not to take offense to that.  You are saying "You play like we did before we knew what we were doing...no offense."  I've played sessions where we spend 2 hours trying to figure out a puzzle.  I've played sessions where we argued endlessly about what color we should paint the hall of our museum that we had built to our greatness.  We've argued the moral ramification of changing time in order to benefit us.  We've even spend 30 minutes figuring out whether it is wiser to go left or right.  We've had 2 hour arguments on what alignments let us do.

It's not like we weren't role playing.  I used to enjoy going on tirades about how my character hated water.  After the 5th or 6th time, the other players were tired of hearing it and just wanted me to open the door so they could see what was in the next room.



			
				sinecure said:
			
		

> 4e has compiled nearly all of these elements into single and complex skill roles.  Let me tell you, they are vastly unsatisfactory.  And that they don't include such challenges in their adventures just tells me they have no desire for the game to be more than combat scenario after combat scenario.  It's like they've taken Orc & Pie as a legitimate adventure design philosophy.  Tell you what.  If you want, I can set aside some time and collect a list of things I can think of they deliberately left out.
> 
> Again, I'm not trying to diss your play here.  We just do things differently in 2e.



I admit, there needs to be a balance between rules and role playing.  We found that the further away from the rules we got the more it became random, unfair, and no fun:

PC 1: "I step into the room."
DM: "You step into the room, 30 disintegrate rays fire from the wall and kill you.  Everyone else hears a voice say 'Do not step on the tiles or you will die'.  The tiles fill the room and the object you need is at the back of the room."
PC 2: "Umm, I put down a blanket on the floor and step on to it.  That way I won't be touching the tiles."
DM: "Nice try, the magic still knows you are touching the tiles.  You die too."
PC 3: "I'm a rogue, haven't I seen traps like this before?  Isn't there a way I could disable the magic powering this?"
DM: "No, you only get to tell me what you do and I'll tell you if you get disintegrated."

is just no fun.  It's a guessing game: Did you do what the DM or adventure wanted?  If so, you pass.  If you, personally, are not an expert on riddles, traps, how the spells work in the book, and the personality of your DM then you should expect to fail...no matter what the skills of your character are.

It encouraged out of character thinking a LOT.  Most of the puzzles were based around coming up with the right spell to solve the problem.  Which required an encyclopedic knowledge of the spells in the game.  You didn't know that disintegrate got rid of Walls of Force?  Too bad, that was the only way passed this room.  You didn't know that War Wizards of Cormyr wore purple?  Well, you certainly aren't going to figure out this puzzle.  It was more about testing the PLAYERS than it was about testing the characters.

The above scenario ALSO is perfect allowable in 4e.  You can play that entire scene out using 4e rules, the same way you could with 1e rules.  



			
				sinecure said:
			
		

> _Operationally_, we are on very different paths.  _Operationally_, D&D used to support multiple different ways of doing things.  Now they seem to be focused on one which seems to fit you nicely, but many others rather poorly.



I'm not sure what you mean.  The Temple of Elemental Evil supported multiple ways of doing things...as long as they involved entering a temple and killing the people inside.  The Labyrinth of Madness allowed multiple ways of doing things...as long as you solved the problems in exactly the way the adventure wanted you to in the exact order it wanted you to.

The thing about adventures being open is they risk becoming unfocused.  I can tell you that spending 4 hours wandering around a town talking to farmers about the weather...is not fun.  Not for me or almost any person I've ever met.  It IS technically role playing though.  Same thing with spending 4 hours at a bar drinking(I've role played that session before, I know).

You want to give the players a chance to shine and do some exciting things.  So you need to make stuff happen.  You need to encourage the PCs to go on an adventure.  And you need to encourage them to go on an interesting one, not one where they help people rescue cats out of trees.

And most people are NOT good at making things up on the fly, it requires an exceptional person to do it well.  So you plan things in advance.  Those plans pretty much mean finding ways to keep the players focused on what you've planned.  The more things you expect them to do, the more planning you need to do in advance...in case they do those things.  Most people don't have time to plan too much in advance, so they limit the possibilities.  Plus, there are generally only a couple of plausible options to begin with.  The rest are very unlikely to happen, so why plan for them.  And when players decide to take the strange, never planned for option it normally ends up making the game no fun and grinds it to a halt.



			
				sinecure said:
			
		

> Again, we seem to be on very different sides of the coin.  ToH is a contentious design philosophy in D&D.  The original is just too tough.  Gygax did that time and again.  He'd put out adventures for highly seasoned vets as the first adventure after making a new RPG.  See Dangerous Journeys and Necropolis for example.  It's another great tomb and trap adventure that puts new players way out of their depth.



Of course it is too hard.  It was designed to kill everyone who went through it.  Gary has admitted this on a number of occasions.  It was an adventure he could use to smack around mouthy players.  Whenever they had their characters brag about how good they were or whenever they acquired too many magic items or too much gold, he'd drop hints about the ToH.  They'd go their to "prove themselves" then die and have to roll up a new character so that the player learned that they were never unbeatable.

Of course, this was all in the name of "good roleplaying".  It had nothing to do with Gary's out of character desire to "control" his players.



			
				sinecure said:
			
		

> But to beat either you need to change the way you play.



Yeah, that's kind of the point:  

Player: "I'm role playing a character who is brash and impatient.  He is the first to run headfirst into a room heedless of the consequences."  
DM: "You run into the room and die.  I'd suggest not role playing your character in the future if you want to survive.  Either that or role play only the characters I want you to play."



			
				sinecure said:
			
		

> Let me state, I like playing kick in the door occasionally.  I like that 2E offers this option to me.  I like even more that I can play all kinds of ways using the same rules during the same session.  I prefer less monotone play.



As I mention above, nothing at all stops me from playing a 1st Ed mod exactly as written in 4e.  Nothing contained in the rules stops it at all.  The philosophy on adventure writing, what is fair to the players and what makes for a fun time has changed.  However, you can use 4e to write your own adventures that are just as unfair, filled with unstoppable traps and interesting role playing situation and so on as the 1st and 2nd Edition mods were.

Yes, the rules now suggest that it's better to give your players some rolls to figure something out and to use traps that they have a chance of disarming and so on.  None of this STILL precludes doing ToH as written in 4e nor does it make 2e any better at doing it.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jun 10, 2008)

sinecure said:
			
		

> It's just hack and slash. .



[off-topic]
I think, in a way, 3E to some extend, and even more so 4E, D&D combat has become more then "hack and slash". Hack and Slash is like "roll attack, deal damage, repeat for each player and monster". But 3E and 4E added a lot more to it - 3E used combat maneuvers (trip, disarm, sunder), 4E uses powers (and some combat maneuvers, like charge and bullrush). All of them keep the pure combat part interesting and varied.

At least for those that like tactical combat and ... "tactical problem-solving" vs. solving puzzles and riddles vs. moral dilemmas and "social" NPC interaction. 
[/off-topic]


----------



## sinecure (Jun 10, 2008)

Heselbine said:
			
		

> 1st edition: T1/Village of Hommlet. A bit of a wander around a village as a prelude to a small dungeon. Reasonable opportunities for role-playing in the village. Very little plot. Dungeon a bit lacking in interest, lots of straightforward fights.



H1 is a great module.  I'm glad you picked it.  There are dozens of little hiding plots for multiple NPCs making the town reusable as most will not be found by the PCs during their initial stay there.  There is NO plot other than the goal of attacking the dungeon if the players want to run through it as a one-shot.  (this is a good thing, plots designed for PCs have no place in the game) Dungeon also has multiple parts unlikely to be discovered in the PCs first foray.  Many interesting bits commented upon for potential tie in to the game world/further adventures elsewhere.  A variety of monsters to fight or interact with and even save from captivity.



> 2nd edition: the introductory adventure from the Forgotten Realms boxed set. A bit of a wander around a village as a prelude to a small dungeon. If anything, fewer opportunities for role-playing in the village. Virtually no plot, and what there was made no sense. Dungeon a bit more interesting, but difficult to avoid a TPK if you followed it as written.



Don't have this on hand, but I think I have a glimmer of it in memory.  Still, major bonus points for no railroading plots.



> 3rd edition: Sunless Citadel. Virtually nothing before the dungeon. Straight into the killing-monsters-and-getting-their-stuff. A pretty good dungeon, in many ways, a fair bit of variation. And Meepo! Which is about all the role-playing that the module gives you.



Yep, this is just a dungeon and one Melan showed to be highly railroady in length.  I think this is one of those that used room connections as a way to simulate story arcing.  you know, rising action, climax, exposition.  That stuff.  I agree it is low on roleplay.  That folks so desperately wanted it that they made Meepo a star is proof it could use more characterization of the NPCs.  Not all that bad, but the dungeon map definitely needed to be redesigned.



> 4th edition: KotS. Introductory action, followed by a bit of a wander around a village as a prelude to a variety of encounters. Some plot development. Several different locations. Lots of tactical variation in the fights. But still, let's face it, not a great deal of role-playing.



The early stuff is about all it has going for it.  It doesn't do a bad job of description of the town and NPCs.  Stats are forgotten for them too.  No interesting elements to tie in for further development though.  No NPC plots I saw that could lead to other adventure.  Pretty much a base of operations for dull detail before the fighting.

Ignoring the railroad of out of town combats on the road and in the wilds (in which wilderness play is absolutely missing I should point out - ooh, and urban from the town, where were the rumors? Dynamics of the town?)  We find ourselves in the least interesting dungeon I've seen in awhile without being a complete railroad. (Barrow of the Forgotten King, I'm looking at you!)  The areas are boxes for DDM play where the only things of import included are monsters, some extraordinarily dull traps, and a riddle.

If I get back home I'll do a quick run through of the whole thing and see if I can get to 10 elements of the entire adventure that aren't Orc & Pie and list them out for you.



> What does this tell us? Pretty much that the ethos of the game has been the same over the four editions. It's always been kill-the-monsters-take-their-stuff with some story elements and roleplaying thrown in. If you want deep immersive role-play D&D has never been your game. I'm very surprised by comments suggesting 4e is different in this regard.



Again, why despise your own game?  If you didn't know before, it is great and is far more than killing things and taking their stuff to offer.  I mean, why belittle one's own game?  That's so odd to me.  This foolishness wasn't thought up by D&Der's  That it's been taken up by them only makes me sadder for the community.



			
				Hong said:
			
		

> No, it means that the character's actions are informed by such things as: what does the group want; what genre are we playing in; what can I do to move the storyline forward; and so on. Things which are pertinent to the player, but not the character.



This stuff takes place outside of playing in character, no?  Or can equally be accomplished when in character.  Of course, I don't think rules are really needed for this except only to aid the GM when asked to changed things so the world works in a different manner.  



> 4E provides just as much, if not more, support for doing things out of combat as previous editions. The only thing it doesn't support is deliberately choosing to suck. To which I say, if you want to suck, you can always not roll the dice



The fact that one could always roll a die to decide anything in the game has not changed.  The fact that the dice used to illustrate the feel of the game have been reduced to single and complex skill rolls means all that world design is gone.  Everything that made the imaginary space more than a series of coin flips.  

Would you honestly still play if combat were optionally changed to complex skill checks across the board?  Optional combat systems are possible of course.  How does that sound?  You can call everything that came before in the game whatever you wish, but your games' fondest treasures for you have not been sacrificed to the gods of clarity, simplicity and FuN!


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## hong (Jun 10, 2008)

sinecure said:
			
		

> Again, why despise your own game?




I am not the one despising the game.


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## Majoru Oakheart (Jun 10, 2008)

Kheti sa-Menik said:
			
		

> 4e has not found that happy medium. Instead, it is a game that could be mistaken for a video game, where everyone has KEWL POWERZ and there are no consequences for anything (being turned to stone by a medua only lasts until combat is over, please.), everything has to be cool every single level, everyone has to do something heroic every round.  There's no ramp up in power, you start off powerfully.  There's no coherence in the world around the PCs.



Sorry, I miss where any of this is a bad thing.  How does the game become mistaken for a video game?  Did you suddenly pick up controllers and get pretty graphics that I'm unaware of(although, I love the art in the books)?  Or are you talking about the ability to do things like cast fireballs and turn invisible like you can do in WoW and D&D Online?  And...1st Edition D&D.

As for the rest?  You want to play a weakling with no powers who dies easily and doesn't have anything useful to do each round.  Feel free, but that seems like a pretty crappy game.  That pretty much describes me in real life exactly.

My least favorite part of the game is rolling up a new character because I died due to one bad die roll and then having the adventure grind to a halt as the rest of the players have to go back to town in order to find my new character and spend a while getting to know him and role play him entering the party before we can continue on with the adventure.

No coherence in the world around them?  This one I'm intrigued about.  What do you mean exactly?  The world around them is described by the DM.  It is as coherent as he makes it.  That's his job.  I've had DMs in 2e who made worlds that made no sense at all because they were all based on his incorrect assumptions on how things in real life worked.



			
				Kheti sa-Menik said:
			
		

> 4e has destroyed D&D.  It's not popular to say that but it is true.  The designers took a great legacy and destroyed it.  Kudos to them for garnering high sales for raping (yes raping) a once great game.



I'd go with "true in your opinion".  Besides, let me get this straight.  If they make a game and more people like it(and therefore more sales) that means it must be a worse game?

Then I must find a way to make a game SO bad that I could become a billionaire by selling it.  Maybe one of those video games I keep hearing about.  Everything I hear about them makes them sound so horrible.  Maybe that's why they make so many times more money than D&D does.


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## vagabundo (Jun 10, 2008)

Kheti sa-Menik said:
			
		

> 4e has not found that happy medium. Instead, it is a game that could be mistaken for a video game, where everyone has KEWL POWERZ and there are no consequences for anything (being turned to stone by a medua only lasts until combat is over, please.), everything has to be cool every single level, everyone has to do something heroic every round.  There's no ramp up in power, you start off powerfully.  There's no coherence in the world around the PCs.
> 
> 4e has destroyed D&D.  It's not popular to say that but it is true.  The designers took a great legacy and destroyed it.  Kudos to them for garnering high sales for raping (yes raping) a once great game.





Hyperbole much??

Seriously,  4e is a great game, only DND nerds like ourselves could pick out the differences. 4e went in  in a slightly different direction from 3e, both are valid offshoots from 1e/2e's roots, to say it is destroyed is total hyperbole. Although, you could just say you like 3e more..


----------



## hong (Jun 10, 2008)

sinecure said:
			
		

> This stuff takes place outside of playing in character, no?  Or can equally be accomplished when in character.  Of course, I don't think rules are really needed for this except only to aid the GM when asked to changed things so the world works in a different manner.




Now you're just rambling. 



> The fact that one could always roll a die to decide anything in the game has not changed.  The fact that the dice used to illustrate the feel of the game have been reduced to single and complex skill rolls means all that world design is gone.  Everything that made the imaginary space more than a series of coin flips.




Ah, right. IOW, all mechanics are equivalent. I remember someone else tried to make that argument.



> Would you honestly still play if combat were optionally changed to complex skill checks across the board?




Tell me again how this relates to the noncombat interaction system in 4E.



> Optional combat systems are possible of course.  How does that sound?  You can call everything that came before in the game whatever you wish, but your games' fondest treasures for you have not been sacrificed to the gods of clarity, simplicity and FuN!




Pro tip: it's a good idea not to post while drunk.


----------



## sinecure (Jun 10, 2008)

Majoru Oakheart said:
			
		

> "Beginner play"? I find it difficult not to take offense to that. <snip>



Then I apologize. 



> I admit, there needs to be a balance between rules and role playing. We found that the further away from the rules we got the more it became random, unfair, and no fun:
> <snipped example>
> is just no fun. It's a guessing game: Did you do what the DM or adventure wanted? If so, you pass. If you, personally, are not an expert on riddles, traps, how the spells work in the book, and the personality of your DM then you should expect to fail...no matter what the skills of your character are.



I have to say the example isn't very fair.  Death trap with no rhyme or reason is a rather unpopular playstyle.  I'm not saying that's what we do.  But yes, we do have rules to enable use to play in the direction we are interested in.  If we want to hunt the great Kazeeker bird, we can. Finding clues, hunting down those who claim to have seen it, taking notes on it's behavior, the wild accounts of its powers.  That stuff doesn't lend itself to a skill system.  It works best (for us) by accumulating in character knowledge through in character actions.  That the DM may or may not have rules to assist him in keeping that play consistent is his business.  But yes, as a DM I certainly say it makes the game.  Without such, it can become rather dull.  Especially when core systems are built in to short circuit such.



> It encouraged out of character thinking a LOT. Most of the puzzles were based around coming up with the right spell to solve the problem. Which required an encyclopedic knowledge of the spells in the game. You didn't know that disintegrate got rid of Walls of Force? Too bad, that was the only way passed this room. You didn't know that War Wizards of Cormyr wore purple? Well, you certainly aren't going to figure out this puzzle. It was more about testing the PLAYERS than it was about testing the characters.



That's a lot of D&D.  Testing the players.  Or it wouldn't really be a game would it?  Testing players by forcing them OOC though is something I disagree with.  This can be solved by being up front with ones DM ahead of time.



> The above scenario ALSO is perfect allowable in 4e. You can play that entire scene out using 4e rules, the same way you could with 1e rules.



That's not exactly a scenario in my book.  That's potential mob kill, go back and find another way.  What I suggested cannot be done in 4E nor can really any in depth wilderness exploration.  It's Unfun. 



> I'm not sure what you mean. The Temple of Elemental Evil supported multiple ways of doing things...as long as they involved entering a temple and killing the people inside. The Labyrinth of Madness allowed multiple ways of doing things...as long as you solved the problems in exactly the way the adventure wanted you to in the exact order it wanted you to.



LoM is a pile of dung, pardon my French.  ToEE isn't all that great either, but it has no requirement it be played as you say.  You could just as easily ingratiate yourself and attempt to take it over assuming one of the head clerics positions or ingratiating yourself with one of the monster groups.  Then use the whole as a base of operations, power center for enacting more of your groups' goals.  Really, it didn't need to be kill everything room by room.  (check out Contxt's storyhour for a well run campaign of ToEE. On the DMs side at least)



> The thing about adventures being open is they risk becoming unfocused. I can tell you that spending 4 hours wandering around a town talking to farmers about the weather...is not fun. Not for me or almost any person I've ever met. It IS technically role playing though. Same thing with spending 4 hours at a bar drinking(I've role played that session before, I know).



All adventures are unfocused.  Focus is a PC group decision.



> You want to give the players a chance to shine and do some exciting things. So you need to make stuff happen. You need to encourage the PCs to go on an adventure. And you need to encourage them to go on an interesting one, not one where they help people rescue cats out of trees.



Not me, baby.  Dude, if you and your buddies want to spend the afternoon in imagination land rescuing cats from trees... I'm there for ya.  I'm not here to tell you what's fun.  I'm here for you to tell me.



> And most people are NOT good at making things up on the fly, it requires an exceptional person to do it well. So you plan things in advance. Those plans pretty much mean finding ways to keep the players focused on what you've planned. The more things you expect them to do, the more planning you need to do in advance...in case they do those things. Most people don't have time to plan too much in advance, so they limit the possibilities. Plus, there are generally only a couple of plausible options to begin with. The rest are very unlikely to happen, so why plan for them. And when players decide to take the strange, never planned for option it normally ends up making the game no fun and grinds it to a halt.



Yikes.  Let's just say I can't disagree with you more.  Yes, preparation is a hallmark of any good DM, but so is rolling with the changes.  You have to be able to think outside the box just like the Players.  Or your going to get left behind.  I'm not saying make up a dungeon on the fly made of feather because that's what the players want.  Grow from something you already have.  But if they change _focus_, change with them.



> Of course it is too hard. It was designed to kill everyone who went through it. Gary has admitted this on a number of occasions. It was an adventure he could use to smack around mouthy players. Whenever they had their characters brag about how good they were or whenever they acquired too many magic items or too much gold, he'd drop hints about the ToH. They'd go their to "prove themselves" then die and have to roll up a new character so that the player learned that they were never unbeatable.
> 
> Of course, this was all in the name of "good roleplaying". It had nothing to do with Gary's out of character desire to "control" his players.



That sounds possible.  It still doesn't make it a bad adventure.  It only makes it more like one best designed for Call of Cthulhu adventures.  The kind you never expect to come back from.  

Except CoC adventures are full of train rides (some literally) and nowhere near as good.



> Yeah, that's kind of the point:
> 
> Player: "I'm role playing a character who is brash and impatient. He is the first to run headfirst into a room heedless of the consequences."
> DM: "You run into the room and die. I'd suggest not role playing your character in the future if you want to survive. Either that or role play only the characters I want you to play."



Better yet. In character, turn around and say, "This sucks, let's never come back here" and go do some other thing you've got on your PC group agenda.  It's not like anyone is forcing you to be in any one spot.  And if so, if it's not from repercussions of what your characters did, just tell the GM he sucks and walk out for real.



> As I mention above, nothing at all stops me from playing a 1st Ed mod exactly as written in 4e. Nothing contained in the rules stops it at all. The philosophy on adventure writing, what is fair to the players and what makes for a fun time has changed. However, you can use 4e to write your own adventures that are just as unfair, filled with unstoppable traps and interesting role playing situation and so on as the 1st and 2nd Edition mods were.



Again, didn't say you couldn't.  Only that the current ones have been pretty sucky.  Last few years for 3rd.  Now in 4th even moreso.


----------



## Cadfan (Jun 10, 2008)

I find it entertaining that 4e, which is probably the most tactically rich RPG out there as far as combat goes, is also lambasted as being overly simple.  The simplifications of 4e mostly relate to areas where complexity is useless, or even counterproductive.  Take an obvious example like Turn Undead.  In 3e, this was a bunch of work.  In 4e, you make an attack roll.  There are a LOT of things like this in the game, where multiple rolls have been reduced to just one.

The reason I find that so valuable is simple- its a question of where I want the game to focus.  

3e had a certain inevitable focus on mechanics, since a lot of them were a bit complex.  Want to knock someone prone?  You needed an unarmed melee touch attack, you got attacked by an attack of opportunity (unless you had the feat that made you immune, which you probably did because almost no one tripped if they didn't), if you hit your target you got the chance to make a strength check opposed by their strength or dexterity (their choice) modified by a + or -4 for every size difference between the two of you.  If you succeeded, they fell prone.  And of course you probably have a feat that lets you take a free attack once your foe is tripped.

In 4e, you use your per encounter power that hits someone in the face so hard they fall over.  Make an attack roll.  Did it hit?  If so, do damage, and your target is prone.

So much easier.  So much better for casuals.  But notice!  Its EXACTLY as tactically rewarding!  Absolutely nothing of what I value in D&D was lost.  And by making something interesting like Trip happen quickly, it means that more interesting things like that can happen per fight without bogging down the game.  Simplicity of mechanism can produce depth of interaction.

Meanwhile the noncombat systems are just as good as 3e, and do just as many of the things which matter to adventurers as 3e, plus a few more.  The things which were omitted, like professions, are better handled through roleplaying than stats anyways, in my opinion.  I don't predict the slightest hitch in how I handle matters outside of combat.


----------



## Doug McCrae (Jun 10, 2008)

sinecure said:
			
		

> We spend only about 20% in combat.



And you use 2e? Wouldn't it be better if you weren't bored for at least 20% of the time? This is the genius of d20. They realised combat can be a fun part of the game too.

The rest of the time when you're coming up with cunning plans, investigating, going shopping, having arguments about morality or whatever floats your boat, the nominal game rules don't really matter. You may as well be playing T&T or Palladium Fantasy or Earthdawn or BD&D. All it affects is the number and shape of dice you roll for perception checks and the like.

4e has an interesting system for integrating those skill-type rolls with more freeform roleplaying but it isn't required. The DM decides if a situation is no roll, single roll or an extended skill challenge.


----------



## Majoru Oakheart (Jun 10, 2008)

sinecure said:
			
		

> Nope, the DM needs rules to make a persistently believable world.  The players don't need rules at all.



A persistently believable world isn't required to play a character.  It has nothing to do with role playing.  I can play a character who exists in a world where the laws of physics change every second and still be roleplaying.



			
				sinecure said:
			
		

> The ones I like simply get out of the way and are best thought of as "the way the world works" instead of mechanics.  Others are metagamey and tend to be situational setups.



Yeah, one encourages situations like that are no fun at all for the sake of being "just the way the world works", the other can create fun situations that would never happen randomly.

However, both are still roleplaying.  One is just called "simulation".  The idea being that you want to world to work as it does it real life:  No bias towards any one person or situation happening.  People are just as likely to wake up and then get hit by a bus while crossing the street as they are to go on a fantastic adventure to save the princess.

The other one steers the game towards more interesting outcomes while still allowing choice and acting opportunities.



			
				sinecure said:
			
		

> The current 4e rules are poorly designed for use as an RPG-combat system because they require one to stop roleplaying to play it.  That it also happens to be the majority of the rules of 4E bodes ill for the game as a whole.



They don't require you to stop roleplaying to play the combat rules.  They require you to stop simulating.  There's a difference.

Roleplaying is: "My character hates Orcs so he will attack the Orc this round.  I like axes so I will use one of those.  My character has the ability to hit two creatures at once with a power, so I'll use that one because my character would want to take as many of them down as possible."  It is decision making based on the character you are playing.

Simulation is: "My arm is capable of moving in a bunch of different directions.  I should be able to do a backhanded slash, an overhand slash, a parry and so on.  The rules should model this process exactly so that if I do something physically possible, the rules should give me a good answer as to what happens in a 'realistic' fashion."



			
				sinecure said:
			
		

> Only the railroading dungeon designs which have become popular in the last 10 years or so.  Most traditional dungeons are intertwining mazes of tricks, traps, monsters, and treasure.  And the goals are decided upon by the players to give them more freedom.  This isn't an edition problem though.  Just lousy adventure design by Wizards.  Goodman does fairly well if you're looking to buy.



Frankly, I've ran mods where the goals were decided upon by the players.  Nothing happened at all:

DM: "Alright, you are traveling through a town called Hommlet.  It is a small town, not too many people.  Maybe 300."
Players: "Ok, we find an inn to sleep for the night and drink."
DM: "You go to an inn, there are few people in there.  You guys order drink and spend the night chatting.  It becomes late, you all go to sleep?"
Players: "Yep, we go to sleep.  Nothing happens overnight?"
DM: "Nope.  You wake up in the morning refreshed.  What do you do?"
Players: "We eat breakfast, then if nothing interesting happens, we'll leave town.  It's a pretty boring place."
DM: "Well, you haven't really talked to anyone in town and you've only been here less than a day."
Players: "Yep, but there doesn't appear to be any princesses for us to rescue, demons to fight and so on.  We're adventurers.  We look for adventure to find us."
DM: "Alright...you leave town and....I'll have to find another adventure to run."

I'll take "railroady" adventures over that any day.


----------



## hamishspence (Jun 10, 2008)

*moral dilemmas*

Are always going exist. You could play a party of unaligned chracters and still have them arguing over what is the "Right" thing to do. Or even evil characters will have things they are not prepared to do.

Roleplaying: doesn't need mechanics to roleplay, needs mechanics to determine what is and what isn't out of the question. If your speechs are impressive, DM might impose circumstance bonuses, but should not be huge, otherwise the game becomes Who Is The Best Actor. On the other side of the coin, a player whose character is diplomatic may themselves get a bit tongue tied or inarticulate when speaking in character: using mechanics prevents such a player from being badly penalized.

balance: important, at least in the sence that each player should have equal "say" in the adventure. When one player takes 20 min to play out his turn and another takes 1 min, resentments may appear.

complexity: thats what Ilike least about 4th ed, the simplification of many monsters, still, if the monster is able to do cool things, it matters less that they cannot do a wide range of such things.


----------



## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jun 10, 2008)

For the record: "Killing monsters and taking their stuff" is not a bad concept for a game. Not even for a role-playing game. So, if anyone says that this is the essence of D&D, that doesn't mean it's badmouthing or hating the game. 

(But it's - for better or worse - not a concept unique to D&D. Duke Nukem and also uses this concept. WoW does. Shadowrun does.)


----------



## Doug McCrae (Jun 10, 2008)

sinecure said:
			
		

> Nope, the DM needs rules to make a persistently believable world.



Why's that? Why can't he just use his own knowledge and beliefs about what's plausible?


----------



## sinecure (Jun 10, 2008)

hong said:
			
		

> Now you're just rambling.



I think you just don't like my answer to your questions.  Making considerations of what will make a good or a bad game while playing ones character isn't a bad way to play.  It still doesn't require rules for the behavioral nuances going into when roleplay is enjoyed and when it isn't.  Knowing not to act like a jerk shouldn't take much OOC knowledge when acting IC.



> Ah, right. IOW, all mechanics are equivalent. I remember someone else tried to make that argument.
> 
> Tell me again how this relates to the noncombat interaction system in 4E.



Everything that wasn't combat besides 1. skills, 2. rituals, 3. overland speed, and the new addition 4. quests, has been removed from the game.  Skill now cover pretty much everything.  There is no "optional group of rules we each can pick from for our own games".  There is one choice for everything.  If there were one choice only for D&D combat, and that choice was complex d20 checks, would you honestly find yourself accepting?  This brave new world is dull.



> Pro tip: it's a good idea not to post while drunk.



But the colors are more colory this way.


----------



## sinecure (Jun 10, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:
			
		

> [off-topic]
> I think, in a way, 3E to some extend, and even more so 4E, D&D combat has become more then "hack and slash". Hack and Slash is like "roll attack, deal damage, repeat for each player and monster". But 3E and 4E added a lot more to it - 3E used combat maneuvers (trip, disarm, sunder), 4E uses powers (and some combat maneuvers, like charge and bullrush). All of them keep the pure combat part interesting and varied.
> 
> At least for those that like tactical combat and ... "tactical problem-solving" vs. solving puzzles and riddles vs. moral dilemmas and "social" NPC interaction.
> [/off-topic]



I very much agree with the above.  4E is all about tactical combat.  And as a minis game, it's combat system is very good.  But as a "be your character" combat system, it fails.  

D&D's previous combat system was boring.  It worked very well to force people into thinking of other ways to win fights.  And that's what really made it shine.  (yes, that it sucked so bad)

Make something that actually allows one to stay in character, think more strategically, AND has the tactical options of 4E and you've got something.  As of now, this is system will largely appeal only to those who like DDM.  That's kind of been my point.
[/off topic?]



			
				Doug McCrae said:
			
		

> And you use 2e? Wouldn't it be better if you weren't bored for at least 20% of the time? This is the genius of d20. They realised combat can be a fun part of the game too.



Um, because the 2E provides rules for the other 80% of the game?  Have you bothered to read the rest of what I posted?  And 2E combat is fun, but I'll admit it needs to be houseruled. As is it doesn't work all that well.



> The rest of the time when you're coming up with cunning plans, investigating, going shopping, having arguments about morality or whatever floats your boat, the nominal game rules don't really matter. You may as well be playing T&T or Palladium Fantasy or Earthdawn or BD&D. All it affects is the number and shape of dice you roll for perception checks and the like.
> 
> 4e has an interesting system for integrating those skill-type rolls with more freeform roleplaying but it isn't required. The DM decides if a situation is no roll, single roll or an extended skill challenge.



Well, this answers it.  You haven't.  This really is why I think most players going smilingly to 4E like Cadfan above are pretty much ignorant about what roleplaying means two steps beyond combat.  

In what world can one live where the only interesting details, the 1000's of little extras that will be added to 4E, are only combat-related.  I know, I know. More rituals will be added to.  Man, listen, there is no such thing as an interesting world played with the TWERPS system.  It's frictionless.  Pointless.  And it feels absolutely pointless during play.  That nothing in a game requires complexity outside of combat?  

Can anyone hear me that might just for a glimmer understand that a roleplaying game might require more detailed rules for, oh let's say, everything beyond combat!?  

I get. I get.  I get.  No one needs rules for roleplaying.  Guess what?  No one needs crazy 1000's of options for combat either.  But those you want don't you?  Can you maybe shake off the glamour of the current new edition to see at least that point?  That maybe some of us actually enjoy playing a world with more rules than a coin flip?

BTW, I noticed that arrows are gone from the PHB.  Ammunition isn't tracked.  Neither is food, I bet too.  At least they kept coins, but that's treasure.  Somehow I bet many will house rule those away too.  And Encumbrance.  In the books, but not on the Character Sheets.  Important?  Drowning or Suffocation?  I personally couldn't find those in the books either.  

It's not like a want rules for everything.  3E made a real cock up of that.  But the idea that I need absolutely no rules but a skill check is just as brash.  

Again, the next PHB I hope they release a whole new set of options for play.  No non-combat rules w/o a skill list.  New combat system.  New magic system.  All optional and swappable for what they've published so far.  That would be nice.


----------



## pemerton (Jun 10, 2008)

sinecure said:
			
		

> That's odd.  What I find bizarre is the fact people are calling DDM 4.0 a roleplaying game just because it's labeled so on the cover.



I'm calling it an RPG because it is a pretty sophisticated set of rules to support roleplaying. I won't repeat my posts upthread about the relationship between theme and powers, but I think it's pretty interesting.



			
				sinecure said:
			
		

> Didn't you get to see Keep on the Shadowfell?  It's a collection of 24 DDM scenarios.



No, but the rather lukewarm review on RPG.net sounded fairly plausible to me. WoTC seems to have trouble with modules.

On the other hand, I've just been reading The Ghost Tower of Inverness, and that module, IMO, is hardly a thing of roleplaying beauty. The scenario is nonsense, there is virtually no thematic content, and the puzzles are (to me) fairly uninteresting. White Plume Mountain suffers from similar problems, although not to the same extent.



			
				sinecure said:
			
		

> Have you read Tomb of Horrors?  There are what? 2, 3 combats in it?  And each of those vastly overpowering the PCs.  If you fight something in that module, not only are you doing it wrong, you're going to die.



That's actually not true. The mummy and the 4-armed gargoyle are pretty tame. Furthermore, the only way to win the module is to fight the demilich at the end.



			
				sinecure said:
			
		

> Tomb of Horrors is also widely regarded as one of the shining examples of adventure design for high level play.
> 
> <nip>
> 
> Only the best players will be able to beat it.



By whom? I personally regard it as a pretty pointless trudge. My players and I have had a lot more fun with various variants of the D-series modules.

I should add: I also don't immediately see the connection between being a good roleplayer and "beating" the module. You need to tell me more about what winning consists in before I can see the difference between this and a wargame or a boardgame.



			
				sinecure said:
			
		

> Nope, the DM needs rules to make a persistently believable world.  The players don't need rules at all.



That's one approach to RPGing. The only game I know that really tried to implement it was 1st ed AD&D. 4e adopts an opposite approach (that resembles such games as HeroWars and The Dying Earth). Do you also classify them as non-RPGs?



			
				sinecure said:
			
		

> The current 4e rules are poorly designed for use as an RPG-combat system because they require one to stop roleplaying to play it.



Again, I find this odd, because to me the rules look like they promise to integrate combat and RPing (with respect both to tactical choices and thematic choices) to an extent that hitherto I have only seen Rolemaster do (perhaps TRoS is another example, but I am less familiar with it).



			
				Intense_Interest said:
			
		

> The rules are there to adjudicate the "Hit You Nah Huh Yah Huh".



While I'm in the process of disagreeing with people, can I register my disagreement with this as well? What I think is great about 4e compared to earlier editions of D&D is precisely its integration of mechanics with roleplaying.


----------



## Steely Dan (Jun 10, 2008)

sinecure said:
			
		

> 4E is all about tactical combat.  But as a "be your character" combat system, it fails.
> 
> 
> Make something that actually allows one to stay in character





Everyone knows that _actual _ role-playing transcends any game system.

As I've said, I witnessed a guy role-playing in _Monopoly_…


----------



## hong (Jun 10, 2008)

sinecure said:
			
		

> I think you just don't like my answer to your questions.




No, no. You're just rambling.



> Making considerations of what will make a good or a bad game while playing ones character isn't a bad way to play.




Exactly. Which makes your statement

think out of character. (the opposite of roleplaying fyi)​
arrant nonsense.



> It still doesn't require rules for the behavioral nuances going into when roleplay is enjoyed and when it isn't.  Knowing not to act like a jerk shouldn't take much OOC knowledge when acting IC.




The point is, a system that takes advantage of the divide between player and character knowledge can facilitate roleplaying to a much greater degree than one that refuses to make that distinction. Of course, this does require giving up the notion that there is no distinction to be made, which might be difficult.



> Everything that wasn't combat besides 1. skills, 2. rituals, 3. overland speed, and the new addition 4. quests, has been removed from the game.




So... everything that isn't combat has been removed from the game, except for the stuff that isn't combat. My, that was enlightening.



> Skill now cover pretty much everything.




Not to mention rituals. And utility powers. And overland speed, just to complete the set. This is a great deal more than any other version of D&D ever managed.



> There is no "optional group of rules we each can pick from for our own games".  There is one choice for everything.  If there were one choice only for D&D combat,




Hello in there. There is precisely one choice for D&D combat, and that is the attack roll.



> and that choice was complex d20 checks, would you honestly find yourself accepting?  This brave new world is dull.




I see that you have managed to conflate baroque design with depth in play. Fascinating.



> But the colors are more colory this way.




Indeed.


----------



## Doug McCrae (Jun 10, 2008)

sinecure, I can see why you describe frequent combat in 2e as 'beginner play'. You're right it's a broken play style, because combat is so tactically uninteresting for non-casters, but it takes players a while to realise this. It's the lesson rpgers learned from 1974->2000, hack n'slash = bad. 

d20 changed all that. By making combat interesting for everyone it made a new style of play possible. One is no longer forced into 20% combat, one can have 50%, or 80%. Or 20%, because d20 doesn't prevent it. It's now a matter of taste because the system supports more styles of play.

This is why d20 > 2e.

The only argument I can see in its favour is if a high combat % is not to your taste but your fellow players don't share that taste, so you want a system that forces them into a certain style of play.


----------



## Doug McCrae (Jun 10, 2008)

All rpgs contain boardgames. The difference between d20 and 2e is that d20 contains a good boardgame and 2e contains a bad one.


----------



## sinecure (Jun 10, 2008)

Majoru Oakheart said:
			
		

> A persistently believable world isn't required to play a character.  It has nothing to do with role playing.  I can play a character who exists in a world where the laws of physics change every second and still be roleplaying.



Hey, we all roleplayed growing up without a DM.  The fact that we can actually change an imaginary world because someone plays one for us is the bonus of RPGs.



> Yeah, one encourages situations like that are no fun at all for the sake of being "just the way the world works", the other can create fun situations that would never happen randomly.



Sorry, your DM chooses to play the world dully.  Realism isn't necessarily dull.  It has greater depth than any other style as we all share knowledge IC from everything we've learned in our own OOC lives too.  That's the benefit.  



> However, both are still roleplaying.  One is just called "simulation".  The idea being that you want to world to work as it does it real life:  No bias towards any one person or situation happening.  People are just as likely to wake up and then get hit by a bus while crossing the street as they are to go on a fantastic adventure to save the princess.
> 
> The other one steers the game towards more interesting outcomes while still allowing choice and acting opportunities.



Actually it can happen a bunch of ways.  You could say you only want to focus on a particular situation and play that out.  Even a very minute one like a practice setup in Chess.  Or you could do it the way most people do and decide as a player group what you want to do IC.  Or you could let the DM railroad you as he "can't play anything, but the designed encounters" (which is normally false).  Or you can chose not to work together at all and all go your own way.  Those last two are "unfun" in my book.  But I'm not going to design a game where you cannot do them if you wish.



> They don't require you to stop roleplaying to play the combat rules.  They require you to stop simulating.  There's a difference.



The 4E rules specifically require you to stop think like your another person and start playing the game as a push button, highly limited option, no influence to think outside the box, simulation.  And if you don't think DDM is a simulation, what on earth do you think wargames were created for?



> Roleplaying is: "My character hates Orcs so he will attack the Orc this round.  I like axes so I will use one of those.  My character has the ability to hit two creatures at once with a power, so I'll use that one because my character would want to take as many of them down as possible."  It is decision making based on the character you are playing.



Yeah.  Except when you can't.  Like, I grab his skull and gnaw on it!  "What power is that?"  None.  So guess what?  The chance of it working is nil.  And if it can work, why do you need all those powers to begin with?  You're not thinking in character.  You're thinking in combat maneuvers akin to any other wargame.  Chess.



> Simulation is: "My arm is capable of moving in a bunch of different directions.  I should be able to do a backhanded slash, an overhand slash, a parry and so on.  The rules should model this process exactly so that if I do something physically possible, the rules should give me a good answer as to what happens in a 'realistic' fashion."



The rules should give a DM a good idea. The player finds out through play.  You can do this in 2nd Edition if you want.  We call it improvisation.  Your description and desires have more effect on whether you succeed or fail than the rules in this case.



> Frankly, I've ran mods where the goals were decided upon by the players.  Nothing happened at all:
> 
> DM: "Alright, you are traveling through a town called Hommlet.  It is a small town, not too many people.  Maybe 300."
> Players: "Ok, we find an inn to sleep for the night and drink."
> ...



Wow. That does suck.  Maybe you could make an interesting world next time?  You know?  The kind where things actually happen?  Like the kind that were in old school modules?  I'm just saying.  If your world has nothing going on in it.  And your group has nothing going on for it.  I'm not surprised nothing went on.  That's hardly a reason to take freedom and responsibility for fun away from the players.




			
				Doug McCrae said:
			
		

> Why's that? Why can't he just use his own knowledge and beliefs about what's plausible?



Go back and read my other posts.  I've said that a DM doesn't need rules. But they really help in keeping consistency.




			
				pemerton said:
			
		

> I should add: I also don't immediately see the connection between being a good roleplayer and "beating" the module. You need to tell me more about what winning consists in before I can see the difference between this and a wargame or a boardgame.



Let me put narrow my answer.  As a D&D roleplayer achieving ones goals is the definition of a good roleplayer.  One who wins.  When playing a module this means beating it.

*Hamishspence & Steely Dan*
Major Fallacy #1 strikes twice more!  It's like a plague around here.  People really should think for themselves.


----------



## Mallus (Jun 10, 2008)

sinecure said:
			
		

> tactical combat.  And as a minis game, it's combat system is very good.  But as a "be your character" combat system, it fails.



What would a 'be your character system' entail, rules-wise?  



> And that's what really made it shine.  (yes, that it sucked so bad)



So rules are only good when they're bad. That's an original position, I'll give you that. 



> Um, because the 2E provides rules for the other 80% of the game?



Could you cite examples? I DM'ed 2nd edition for close to a decade and I have no idea what you're talking about.



> This really is why I think most players going smilingly to 4E like Cadfan above are pretty much ignorant about what roleplaying means two steps beyond combat.



Sin, in your earlier response to me you admitted that you haven't given any though to your _own_ definition of roleplaying, so how can accuse another poster of being ignorant of roleplaying when you haven't  defined _what it is_ yourself? 



> Can anyone hear me that might just for a glimmer understand that a roleplaying game might require more detailed rules for, oh let's say, everything beyond combat!?



Where is this cornucopia of world-simming rules found in 2e again?



> BTW, I noticed that arrows are gone from the PHB.  Ammunition isn't tracked.  Neither is food, I bet too.



So bean-counting is crucial to your definition of heroic?


----------



## Mallus (Jun 10, 2008)

Doug McCrae said:
			
		

> All rpgs contain boardgames. The difference between d20 and 2e is that d20 contains a good boardgame and 2e contains a bad one.



Nicely put!


----------



## Mallus (Jun 10, 2008)

sinecure said:
			
		

> As a D&D roleplayer achieving ones goals is the definition of a good roleplayer.  One who wins.  When playing a module this means beating it.



Unless one's goal is, say, something like 'create/play a character that entertains the people you game with', in which case beating the module ceases to be a requirement (but comic timing becomes a must).

"Killing a tarrasque is easy, comedy is hard".


----------



## sinecure (Jun 10, 2008)

hong said:
			
		

> Exactly. Which makes your statement
> 
> think out of character. (the opposite of roleplaying fyi)​
> arrant nonsense.



I'll only concede this on two points: where a player doesn't lose their selfhood to the character and to know when they are acting well.


> The point is, a system that takes advantage of the divide between player and character knowledge can facilitate roleplaying to a much greater degree than one that refuses to make that distinction. Of course, this does require giving up the notion that there is no distinction to be made, which might be difficult.



Have any proof for this?  In my experience separating character from player knowledge can be an extraordinary trial when things start getting complex.  If the game doesn't strive for equivalence between the two, it's already leaving players in the lurch.  I doubt I need to tell you about why most of the games coming out of the indie community are less about roleplaying that not.  That they consistently pull players out of character to better their games, to their detriment, makes me dubious of your claims.  What proof have you got?



> So... everything that isn't combat has been removed from the game, except for the stuff that isn't combat. My, that was enlightening.
> 
> Not to mention rituals. And utility powers. And overland speed, just to complete the set. This is a great deal more than any other version of D&D ever managed.



Now you're just lying to yourself.  Have you read previous editions of the D&D?  Before 3rd?


> Hello in there. There is precisely one choice for D&D combat, and that is the attack roll.



Damn it your right.  100's of powers for combat.  Absolutely no variation in implementation.  How's that for baroque design with autistic tendencies?  All pegs must fit the round hole.  Wonderful design you have there.  It's a wonder they thought to add saves to area attacks.

BTW, think for all those 100s of powers and feats they have for combat they might add some for non-combat?  You know, just for fun?  You mention utility powers.  Do you really equate these with the new non-combat play? 



> I see that you have managed to conflate baroque design with depth in play. Fascinating.



I see you're still stumped for why TWERPS hasn't taken the roleplaying world by storm.

It'll be a sad day for you when the powers in those books are no longer enough to satisfy.  I await the additive system of "non-combat" powers.



Indeed.[/QUOTE]


----------



## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jun 10, 2008)

Some people think "role-playing is what happens between combat". 
If that was true, why did D&D evolve from war-gaming? Why are there basically no RPGs void of combat rules?

My definition goes more like this:
"Role-Playing Games have something happening between combats". 

There is a reason why D&D - the first role-playing game ever - did not evolve from book clubs or a writers guild meeting, but from war-gamers. The combat part is important. But the role-playing part makes the combat more then an exercise in number-crunching. It provides us with a theme and a motivation. 
We fight the Orcs not because it's fun fighting Orcs (though it is, on the meta-game level), but because we're hoping to rescue the captured children and end their terror regime on the local village. The reason why my character fights Orcs is because they killed his family. And he fights them with a sword instead of magic because a soldier found him in the middle of a pillaged village and adopted him. 

But some people still believe that you could do away with the "combat" part and claim that this would make you somehow a "superior" role-player. That's not true. It is a role-playing game. If you take away the role-playing, it's just a game (maybe a board game, a card game, or a dice game). If you take away the game, it's nothing more then telling a story.
Some people accuse D&D or other players that they don't embrace the role-playing in role-playing games. I'll accuse them of not embracing the game in role-playing games. 

And I claim that D&D - in all editions - tried to embrace both aspects. And 3E and 4E so far look like the best implementations.


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## sinecure (Jun 10, 2008)

Doug McCrae said:
			
		

> sinecure, I can see why you describe frequent combat in 2e as 'beginner play'. You're right it's a broken play style, because combat is so tactically uninteresting for non-casters, but it takes players a while to realise this. It's the lesson rpgers learned from 1974->2000, hack n'slash = bad.



Your sympathy appears false to me and it's not appreciated.  Combat in 2e is infinitely more interesting that 4th.  You have at best 14 options in combat.  We have whatever we care to imagine.  Sucks for you huh?



> d20 changed all that. By making combat interesting for everyone it made a new style of play possible. One is no longer forced into 20% combat, one can have 50%, or 80%. Or 20%, because d20 doesn't prevent it. It's now a matter of taste because the system supports more styles of play.
> 
> This is why d20 > 2e.
> 
> The only argument I can see in its favour is if a high combat % is not to your taste but your fellow players don't share that taste, so you want a system that forces them into a certain style of play.



I'm pretty much of the mind that d20 was the end of D&D.  It wasn't D&D and neither is what we have now.  It's just shamelessness using the brand to get money for what the designers have fooled themselves into believing is better.  2e does not force one into a style of play.  Nor does 4th edition support more.  Have you been paying attention to their design intentions?  They want a MORE focused game by their own terms.  They want less ability to play the game multiple ways.  Or do you believe they will do as I suggested and release multiple options for the system?  Multiple magic systems? Multiple combat systems?  Skills and no skills.  Feats and no feats?  Add back all varieties of ways you could portray the world before they decided to dismiss them out of hand.



> All rpgs contain boardgames. The difference between d20 and 2e is that d20 contains a good boardgame and 2e contains a bad one.



You have very strange ideas.  Even I don't believe DDM 3rd or 4th or d20 Chainmail (or the original) are boardgames.


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## WizarDru (Jun 10, 2008)

Mallus said:
			
		

> So bean-counting is crucial to your definition of heroic?




My group calls these 'torch issues' after Wulf Ratbane's story hour....items that are generally beneath notice in all but a few situations, because the payback for effort involved is usually nil and generally meaningless to the game/plot/story overall.  

I have never, not in 30 years of playing, ever had a player run out of ammunition for their bow/sling/etc.  Sure, they might only have 3 of those +3 arrows...but the rest?  Rations were the same thing.  Everyone knows to buy enough to last, so the only time they might significant is if you take them all away (such as in the Slavers series) and then you still don't really benefit from tracking them other than in a binary fashion.

A large part of the appeal of 4e to me is that it removes many such torch issues and makes the choices that are made more meaningful.  Alignment's simplification, for example, is a big win with me.  It's still there, but far less invasive.  I can see how that might not appeal to some folks, but to me it maximizes the time we spend gaming with interesting choices, not accounting practices.


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## sinecure (Jun 10, 2008)

Mallus said:
			
		

> What would a 'be your character system' entail, rules-wise?



D&D pretty much has it.  A few abstract descriptions to understand where one stand demographically.  A few things to own.  And a description created the player that the GM uses to construct the characters abilities behind the scenes.  Classes do this nicely with broad strokes, but custom designs aren't exactly unusual.



> Could you cite examples? I DM'ed 2nd edition for close to a decade and I have no idea what you're talking about.



I cut the bean counting comment out, but you seem to think they have nothing to do with heroism.  What does?  Killing things?  If that's it, you've already cut yourself off at the knees.

2nd includes rules for a ton of different things.   Just look at all option in the three main books and in the additional books.  They don't include feats and powers in the Castles Book.  Or repetitiously dull magic items in the magic encyclopaedias.  2E is jam packed full of actual stuff that makes sense.  In 4e they decided to allow damage rolls in the game to keep the dice industry.  Can you imagine?  Damage rolls were too ungainly a mechanic for these people?  Surely you have some sympathy for the game?  Are we really to believe that every relationship in the D&D world is a 1:1 direct 1-20 roll?  I think people have just given up on making a vibrant world.  Have trying to heave 3e's great mass up so long they've just given up on anything other than "the one true roll".  It's absurd.  



> Sin, in your earlier response to me you admitted that you haven't given any though to your _own_ definition of roleplaying, so how can accuse another poster of being ignorant of roleplaying when you haven't  defined _what it is_ yourself?



I think I got carried away there.  It's just hard to understand how folks can see 1000 variations on combat maneuvers as a good thing and "what roleplaying is" and then use this ungainly abstracted mechanic for everything else.


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## Storm Raven (Jun 10, 2008)

sinecure said:
			
		

> Wow. That does suck.  Maybe you could make an interesting world next time?  You know?  The kind where things actually happen?  Like the kind that were in old school modules?




Umm, Hommlet _is_ an old school module, published in about 1982 or so.

I've been looking at it (actually, at the T1-8 supermodule) to convert to kick off my new 3.5 campaign, and I've really noticed how sparse the module is in terms of NPC development -  most don't even have  names other than "carpenter" or "goodwife" or any information about what they might know about things of interest to adventurers or clues to lead the PCs to some sort of adventure, although there is a lot about how they don't get along with their neighbors "the elderly widower" and "the husky farmer".


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## Storm Raven (Jun 10, 2008)

Double post.


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## Mallus (Jun 10, 2008)

sinecure said:
			
		

> Combat in 2e is infinitely more interesting that 4th.  You have at best 14 options in combat.  We have whatever we care to imagine.  Sucks for you huh?



Speaking of fallacies... why _can't_ a 4e player imagine up and use new combat options to their hearts content, exactly? All they need is the DM's consent. Which is the same as in 2e (I remember, I was there...).



> 2e does not force one into a style of play.



Neither does 3e. Want evidence? Go read some of the Story Hour section here and _then_ tell me 3e creates/imposes a uniform play style.



> You have very strange ideas.  Even I don't believe DDM 3rd or 4th or d20 Chainmail (or the original) are boardgames.



He said _contain_ boardgames, not _are_ boardgames. There's a difference. An example: the last adventure I wrote/ran _contained_ parodies of T.S. Eliot's poetry but was not, itself, a T.S. Eliot poem. Simple, natch?


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## Mallus (Jun 10, 2008)

sinecure said:
			
		

> D&D pretty much has it.  A few abstract descriptions to understand where one stand demographically.  A few things to own.  And a description created the player that the GM uses to construct the characters abilities behind the scenes.



How does 4e _not_ do this, again?



> I cut the bean counting comment out, but you seem to think they have nothing to do with heroism.



Yes. Insignificant details are insignificant.



> What does?  Killing things?



Ask Achilles that question. Or Conan. But Achilles first. 



> If that's it, you've already cut yourself off at the knees.



Hey, I'll do the talking for me!



> 2nd includes rules for a ton of different things. Just look at all option in the three main books and in the additional books.  They don't include feats and powers in the Castles Book.  Or repetitiously dull magic items in the magic encyclopaedias.



You're kidding, right? You're comparing the *three* 4e rule books to the entire 2e catalog? What does this demonstrate, besides 'several hundred > three'? 



> 2E is jam packed full of actual stuff that makes sense.



Name some. A few. I dare you. And, for the record, no edition of D&D was ever jam packed with sense. 



> I think I got carried away there.



No worries. It happens. 



> It's just hard to understand how folks can see 1000 variations on combat maneuvers as a good thing and "what roleplaying is"...



People are saying that 1000 cool combat options are cool combat options. They are not saying they represent 'what roleplaying is'. Speaking of, how's that definition coming along??


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 10, 2008)

I find keeping track of arrows, rations and money to be tedious and pointless. It's better handled by a more abstract mechanic imo, if it's handled at all. However I'm definitely in a minority, polls on ENWorld show that most players do seem to like it. 

Nerds.


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## Mallus (Jun 10, 2008)

WizarDru said:
			
		

> ...but to me it maximizes the time we spend gaming with interesting choices, not accounting practices.



Same here. As they proud DM of a newly 13th level 3.5 party with 4 primary spellcasters, I'm getting a lot of practice accounting each and every session. And I don't like it, sir. Not one bit.


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## The Little Raven (Jun 10, 2008)

sinecure said:
			
		

> Combat in 2e is infinitely more interesting that 4th.  You have at best 14 options in combat.  We have whatever we care to imagine.  Sucks for you huh?




This is so wrong as to be laughable.

In 2nd Edition, as a fighter, my mechanical options for combat are move, use item, and attack. Sure, I can describe my attacks as whatever I want, using florid prose to make it sound interesting. Roleplaying is used to compensate for a lack of mechanical options. The single action I can perform is the only effective thing my character can do in 60 seconds.

In 4th Edition, as a fighter, my mechanical options for combat are move, use item, attack, and any of the other options I have chosen to take on, such as powers and feats. I can describe my attacks as whatever I want, using florid proise to make it sound interesting. Roleplaying is used to support a selection of mechanical options. The several actions I can perform are the only effective things my character can do in 6 seconds.

In short, 2nd Edition combat is horribly boring in comparison to 4th Edition combat.



> I'm pretty much of the mind that d20 was the end of D&D.




Then discussion with you is pointless since you've already arrived at a foregone conclusion which strangles that discussion.


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## I'm A Banana (Jun 10, 2008)

To dredge up a few things...



			
				II said:
			
		

> KM said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Its not really a broad-brush assessment. Its two specific examples where the basic philosophy of the game diverges. It also contains no obvious quality statements: I am not saying any one method is inherently better than any other, merely pointing out that they are different methods, examples of differing philosophies, and that each of these paths makes certain choices about how to achieve their goals, and that these choices are going to alienate someone.

The above seems extraordinarily obvious to me. So if its not, stop trying to claim that I am personally biased, and actually contradict the evidence. This will lead to a generally productive conversation. Me repeating the obvious doesn't seem like its really doing that.



> First, the Implied Setting you note is not a problem, considering that gods and planes are a bigger piece of the landscape for homebrews-
> 
> Tieflings have Angst because they are spawn of demons. Half-Orcs have Angst because they are spawn of savages. The former has even more of an icky connotation that leads into more Sturm and Drang.



This is completely unrelated. I don't really care if you personally find it a problem or if you personally find something icky. This isn't, I'd hope, two people just screaming their preferences at each other. I'm trying to get at some of the real, cogent differences between the editions, and there is much more depth there than "3e sucked, 4e rocks!", or the inverse.



> KM said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



...no, it is largely a factor of what an RPG is -- a union of narrative content and mechanical systems, each of which informs the other. 



> Narrative Content is actually things such as Absolute spell stats, Wealth-by-Level charts, Flat Diplomacy skill DCs, and 3-easy-then-1-hard-encounter-then-you-rest system assumptions. Having decoupled "Ritual" systems that involve behind-the-screen assessments like a Succubas charm, you actually give more room for a DM to create the Narrative Content than before.



The idea that less rules = more narrative is deeply flawed, and, in any case, ignores the true relationship between the rules and narrative in an RPG. 



> I don't believe you can talk about the achievements and goals of a system without taking quality into account.



The plumage don't enter into it. The goals are largely independent about how you personally feel about the ickiness of half-orcs. The question is about the _functions_ of half-orcs. 

Not only that, but quality is INSANELY more subjective (and thus more useless for productive conversation here) than the stated or obvious goals of the game.



> "The Wii" is a crypto-slam meme on 4E for being "Casual", which is a lame pejorative trying to play up into a "Supercool Hardcore" image of the user.



No?

Like I've said upthread, I like my Wii. I like 4e. This isn't about slamming anything, from my side. "Casual" isn't a bad thing. Its a description that seems accurate, not any sort of loaded term.



> A bad system is still bad, no matter what its goals are. He may love you and buy you flowers, but a black eye is a black eye.



Once again, I don't care what you think is a bad system. Quality isn't at all a useful distinction between 3e and 4e because it is such a subjective, loaded distinction. Rather, there are things that are descriptive that it seems can be largely agreed on regardless of your quality assessment. One is that 4e is more of an out-of-the-box game than 3e, which suffered from a need to tinker. The choices that went into that weren't made because the designers were dumb chimps who didn't know what they were doing. The choices were made in pursuit of the goal, and one place where 3e and 4e diverge (ever so slightly, but still significantly) is on the goal of "encouraging people to make their own game." 3e forced it to a certain degree, 4e just lets it happen on the sidelines.



> Most of the 3E grognard crowd that ascribe to any printed game being the bringer of milk and honey for all their needs is a reactionary response supported by a self-selected group on the internet. You see the same thing in Pro-Ana Livejournal groups and other forms of risk appeasement communities.



You've passed the limits of basic constructive conversation at this point, and I really don't feel the need to respond to bizarre comparisons of 3e fans to people who encourage eating disorders.

Talk to me when you're done pointlessly villifying people.


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## DonTadow (Jun 10, 2008)

I wouldn't take the casual notion as a slam too much, it is what it is.  Read the tone of the books, its not written to people who have any idea of what role playing is, its written for new players, players who just pick it up and want to play.  this is cool, but that reason alone is why I can't call this edition a traditional dungeons an ddragons. 

D and D has never been for the casual gamer.  It's bee nfor the person who wants to spend a bit of extra time doing something. It's a hobby for just about everyone. It certainly isn't a game where you pick it up, put it down and come back 23 days later.  

The reason why some like 4e is why some players hate it. There's no detail in it, its meant for quick battles to satify some wierd urge (I've never wanted to role play for just 2 hours).  The inclusions are put their to satify types of MMO players as opposed to make a solid cohesion of elements (dragonkind and tiefling parties... right....).  someone tells me the battles are quicker, I tell them that their turn is coming quicker, the battles take the same time, what they seemed to do was make a dummy version to play, strip out any complexity and have you have at it.  It's akin to when I used to give my little brother the unplugged Nintendo Controller. 

So will bringing in a lot ofp eople with no real care for old school dungeons and dragons kill dungeons and dragons.  I think it will kill the concept of detailed games and campaigns.  YOu're going to get a flurry of players who want to pick it up and kill mobs and quest, then will get too bored with the pacing and move on to the next mmo... i mean rpg.  Then talk about how wow is better. 

4e ends up selling a lot, making other companies follow suit, and the idea of character customization will become a think we tell our grand children about.  Bottom line you won't get a lot of long term players because it will not longer be a hobby but a fad.


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## Scribble (Jun 10, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> 3e wasn't trying to be the PS3 or even the Xbox 360. It was more like it was trying to be a home computer, like a Linux PC: something that worked well that you could tinker with endlessly. It was, at best, trying to be _quintessential_ D&D. Take all the bits from the past, and reassemble it in a way that made it work like it was always kind of supposed to from the beginning.




Partialy agree, but dissagree in a way. 

3e was tough to tinker with endlessly because it was a Jenga game. Change one piece and the whole thing is in danger of collapsing.

Add onto that they also seemed to do their best at hiding their code, so your Linux comparison is WAY off base in my opinion... You could clearly see they had a pattern to things, but it wasn't always easy to figure it out. Ohhhhh NOW you tell em that undead is supposed to ALWAYS be imune to x attacks, etc... OH NOW you tell me that classes all have a different TYPE of BAB progression which factors into their balancing act... 

3e tried to do 2 things.

1. Standardize the rules so that the endless rules arguments/ confusion would be answered. 

2. Allow for options that people complained D&D lacked 

The problem was they did so by trying to basically think up EVERY option you could want and apply a rule to it. This lead to not nessearily rules complexity, but overbearingness.

It wasn't particularily HARD to learn to play 3e... it just took a lot of memorization. 



> 4e doesn't want to be quintessential D&D, at all. It doesn't want to be a ruleset that you take and play with as you like. Not even a little. It wants you to play, not tinker.




I whole heartedly dissagree with this statement.

They give you the work. They say, here is how we designed monsters. Here are the way you set up their attacks their defenses... Their powers. here's the damage they will do by level based on the attacks. Here's everything you need to tinker away and make your own game without having to worry about breaking it because you missed the hidden pattern.

It sets up the game so you can play it (which most people I'd say want to do) but also makes toying with it a snap.

3e basically said, hey instead of making your own stuff, just copy ours and change it a bit. You won't be able to figure out the patterns and you'll mess stuff up if you don't. (check out the section on making new races or classes... this is pretty much what it says!)



> In pursuit of that goal, it becomes not just simpler, but _simplistic_. The comparison to the Wii is apt, though we're still lacking the Development Kit for 4e. It's not a ruleset that lets you do what you want, its a ruleset that gives you what it thinks you want. And, given WotC's famous ability for market research, its probably right, more often than not.




Again I dissagree. 

The 4e rules take into account the kinds of things they found people tend to actually USE at the game table. 

In addiiton to that, however, they also give you the tools needed to handle things that are not as common. 

It allows you to have options, but doesn't become overbearing in order to do so.

It's not simplistic. It's just clear cut.



> 3e wasn't the PS3, or the Xbox 360. 3e was a hacker's computer. 4e is kind of like the Wii, but the comparison looses some momentum in that the Wii isn't replacing anyone's computer, while 4e is replacing 3e (at least for WotC, if not for everyone).




To follow your computer theme... 3e was like Windows or Mac OS... It's made to be what it is. You CAN change it, but doing so without knowing a LOT about the system (with that info only being given to a select few, or those with the time/ability to reverse engineer it) has a LOT of potential hazzards.


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## The Little Raven (Jun 10, 2008)

> 3e wasn't the PS3, or the Xbox 360. 3e was a hacker's computer. 4e is kind of like the Wii, but the comparison looses some momentum in that the Wii isn't replacing anyone's computer, while 4e is replacing 3e (at least for WotC, if not for everyone).




I'd say the 3e and 4e are game engines, not hardware.

3e's engine was one that amateur programmers had to reverse engineer in order to figure out exactly how things work... and it wasn't always easy.

4e's engine is one that comes with at least some of the source code.


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## I'm A Banana (Jun 10, 2008)

> The problem was they did so by trying to basically think up EVERY option you could want and apply a rule to it. This lead to not nessearily rules complexity, but overbearingness.




Yeah, the execution fell flat in some areas. But the goal was a strong one, and its one that has a lot of supporters. "A rule for everything, and everything with a rule" is going to alienate some, and serve others, just like "Only the rules we think you need" is going to alienate some.



> It sets up the game so you can play it (which most people I'd say want to do) but also makes toying with it a snap.




Creating monsters isn't the whole game. They don't reveal why some races get +2 to two ability scores that reflect the same defense, but others don't. They don't tell you what damage codes balance out the Immobilized status or Thunder damage. They don't tell you how to set up rules for underwater combat, or how to use NPC's as PC's, or monsters as PC's, or what age your PC starts at, or what job he had before he was an Adventurer, or, if he worships an evil monstrous god, what enemies he can fight and what abilities he can take, or if he's not a divine-powered PC, what choosing a god even means....

3e expressly told you a lot of that out of the starting gate. They also told you how to make monsters (it was just a more involved process).



> The 4e rules take into account the kinds of things they found people tend to actually USE at the game table.




But if you're one of those people desperately seeking an aquatic campaign, or one of those who likes having Beholders as PC's, or one of those who likes playing Mundanes who become heroes rather than heroes who become bigger heroes....

They probably know what most poeple want, but they don't know what everyone wants.

3e's solution to that problem was to give you as much as you could possibly need and have you choose to use what you wanted or needed at the time...a toolkit.

4e is not nearly as concerned with those who want to play the game differently (though, as I've said many times, its a continuum, not a binary choice).



> It's not simplistic. It's just clear cut.




Simplistic is a value statement. I think everyone using the same basic forumla for powers (at-will/encounter/daily) is simplistic because it doesn't give me the complexity that I desire and that is fun for me.

In that respect, I'm one of those outliers that 4e isn't concerned with. They don't care as much if I'm not having fun with that set up, because MOST people will be having fun.

3e did kind of care, because they gave me new systems for resource management all the freakin' time, so I could play a Warlock or a Fighter if I wanted something straightforward or a Barbarian if I wanted a per-encounter mechanic, or a Wizard if I wanted a pool of per-day abilities, or...whatever.

Regardless of how effective that really was, they supported these outlying playstyles better.



> To follow your computer theme... 3e was like Windows or Mac OS... It's made to be what it is. You CAN change it, but doing so without knowing a LOT about the system (with that info only being given to a select few, or those with the time/ability to reverse engineer it) has a LOT of potential hazzards.




I was measuring intent, not execution. 3e wanted to be Open Source D&D, to be a toolkit to tinker with and develop new things with. 4e, like a girl, just wants ta have fun.


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 10, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> rules for underwater combat



DMG page 45.


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## The Little Raven (Jun 10, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> rules for underwater combat




They're in there.



> or how to use NPC's as PC's




What exactly is this supposed to mean?



> or what age your PC starts at




That's something for you to determine. They tell you when everyone reaches adulthood, which is all that really matters. From there, you can pick how old your character is, whether you want to be the fresh-faced boy hero, or the old man who took up the calling late in life.



> or what job he had before he was an Adventurer




That's a part of character background, which is covered in the first chapter of the PHB.



> if he worships an evil monstrous god




That's a part of character background, which is covered in the first chapter of the PHB. More detailed descriptions of the evil gods are covered in the DMG.



> what enemies he can fight




That's for the situation to determine. Since not everything has an alignment, enemies can come from almost anywhere now, whether you're good or evil.



> and what abilities he can take,




That's covered under classes. Alignment has no effect on that, nor does the deity of choice (except as far as Channel Divinity feats are concerned). Thematic changes to classes (such as evil paladins) are discussed in the DMG.



> or if he's not a divine-powered PC, what choosing a god even means....




That's a part of character background, which is covered in the first chapter of the PHB.


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## I'm A Banana (Jun 10, 2008)

> DMG page 45.




I knew that, too! Guess I just got carried away. Good thing my argument doesn't rest on that.


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## Mallus (Jun 10, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> 3e's solution to that problem was to give you as much as you could possibly need and have you choose to use what you wanted or needed at the time...a toolkit.



And 3e's core problem (a bit of pun, eh?) was that the tools in it's toolkit invariably became difficult to use no matter what tried to build with them.


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## Cadfan (Jun 10, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> Creating monsters isn't the whole game. *They don't reveal why some races get +2 to two ability scores that reflect the same defense, but others don't. They don't tell you what damage codes balance out the Immobilized status or Thunder damage.* They don't tell you how to set up rules for underwater combat, or how to use NPC's as PC's, *or monsters as PC's,* or what age your PC starts at, or what job he had before he was an Adventurer, or, if he worships an evil monstrous god, what enemies he can fight and what abilities he can take, or if he's not a divine-powered PC, what choosing a god even means....
> 
> 3e expressly told you a lot of that out of the starting gate. *They also told you how to make monsters (it was just a more involved process).*



They told you, but the answers they told you were _lies..._


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## I'm A Banana (Jun 10, 2008)

> That's something for you to determine.




And 3e gave you instructions for determining it, thus making 3e support this more than 4e does.



> That's a part of character background, which is covered in the first chapter of the PHB. More detailed descriptions of the evil gods are covered in the DMG.




Still no feats for 'em...whereas in 3e, the evil gods had domains right in the PHB, thus making 3e more supportive of this than 4e.



> That's for the situation to determine. Since not everything has an alignment, enemies can come from almost anywhere now, whether you're good or evil.




But nothing specifically Good to equal the specific Evil of the devils or demons. 3e had LG angels and the like, thus making 3e more supportive of this than 4e.



> That's covered under classes. Alignment has no effect on that, nor does the deity of choice (except as far as Channel Divinity feats are concerned). Thematic changes to classes (such as evil paladins) are discussed in the DMG.




But nothing specifically evil like the [EVIL] spells in the 3e PH, thus making 3e more supportive of this than 4e.

And I'm not saying that 4e should, would, or could support this as well or better than 3e did, I'm just saying _choices were made_ and that some people obviously _disagree with those choices_, and perhaps that disagreement is simply on principle in some cases.

Again, I'm having this strange feeling like I'm describing something blatantly obvious. 4e out of the box ignores some things 3e supported out of the box, this being evidence for 3e being more of a toolkit than 4e is. Some people want 3e's toolkit feel more than they want 4e's ready-to-play game. 

Also, the sky is blue, and fish swim in water and fire is hot.


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## Kishin (Jun 10, 2008)

hong said:
			
		

> Peter Seebach says it better than me:
> 
> 4E and the Wii




And this guy does what exactly? At least when we posting Cory Doctorow bashing 4E, that was someone whose voice actually has some sort of internet cultural significance.

Somehow he construed pretty much everyone, even its detractors, has construed has argued as being very tactical and 'wargame-y' as being more 'casual'? I'm not sure what I think of this. It inevitably carries with it more than its fair share of elitism

Incidentally, if 4E was the Wii, it'd be using minor gimmicks in an attempt to obfuscate the fact that it's been retreading the same tired product for over a decade, with terrible visual presentation.

But, my feelings for Nintendo have little to do with RPGs and D&D...


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## I'm A Banana (Jun 10, 2008)

> And this guy does what exactly? At least when we posting Cory Doctorow bashing 4E, that was someone whose voice actually has some sort of internet cultural significance.




What's making me feel wierd is that I didn't see it as bashing 4e at all...nor have I seen Cory Doctorow bashing 4e at all (I mean, there was the outcry when it looked like the new STL would have a poison pill, but that wasn't about 4e really)....

Are some 4e fans so paranoid that they see haters 'round every corner?

The cigar is just a cigar, man.


----------



## The Little Raven (Jun 10, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> And 3e gave you instructions for determining it, thus making 3e support this more than 4e does.




I find sentences or a paragraph that describes how a race matures, when it reaches full maturity, and when it gives in to old age to be better support than "Starting Age: 15 + 1d4."



> Still no feats for 'em...whereas in 3e, the evil gods had domains right in the PHB, thus making 3e more supportive of this than 4e.




I'll concede that 3e had more support for making evil characters right out of the core books.



> But nothing specifically Good to equal the specific Evil of the devils or demons. 3e had LG angels and the like, thus making 3e more supportive of this than 4e.




More supportive of what, exactly? Having more Good aligned monsters in the MM? Does making more monsters Unaligned instead of Good or Evil suddenly mean it's harder to run a campaign with evil characters, because there aren't as many "Always Good" monsters, despite more monster being universally useful as encounters in either good or evil campaigns?



> But nothing specifically evil like the [EVIL] spells in the 3e PH, thus making 3e more supportive of this than 4e.




Supportive of what? Alignment as a hard and fast game mechanic? Does that really even matter? If the fact that there's no [EVIL] spells means it's less supportive of evil games, then the fact that there's no [GOOD] spells must mean it's less supportive of good games.



> And I'm not saying that 4e should, would, or could support this as well or better than 3e did, I'm just saying _choices were made_ and that some people obviously _disagree with those choices_, and perhaps that disagreement is simply on principle in some cases.




I'm not disputing that. I'm disputing claims that you made, by saying "4e does not support these specific things," which it actually does. However, you came in after that claim and try to qualify it with specific 3e mechanics that it's not replicating, which is not what you stated in your original assertion. You're fixated on mechanics for things, not simply support.


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## Scribble (Jun 10, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> Yeah, the execution fell flat in some areas. But the goal was a strong one, and its one that has a lot of supporters. "A rule for everything, and everything with a rule" is going to alienate some, and serve others, just like "Only the rules we think you need" is going to alienate some.




Therein lies the elegance, as that's not what's happening at all!

In fact I'd say it's almost opposite of what's actually happening.

3e says here are all the rules we think you need in an adventure game setting boiled down to various different bonuses and penalties. Oops you thought of something else you need? Add it in... but wait... every other aspect of the game is linked to that rule, so make sure you change all that too otherwise the system as a whole will suffer.

4e gives you this: These are the rules people most comonly use in an adventure game system. However, should you find there are OTHER rules not covered here, the system is designed to handle their inclusion.





> Creating monsters isn't the whole game.




And they give you more then monster design info. 



> They don't reveal why some races get +2 to two ability scores that reflect the same defense, but others don't.







> They don't tell you what damage codes balance out the Immobilized status or Thunder damage.




Not sure what you mean by this? 



> They don't tell you how to set up rules for underwater combat,




Well, as others have said they do... Neither did 3e though. 3.5 did, but original not so much.



> or how to use NPC's as PC's,




Again not sure what you mean by this. 



> or monsters as PC's,




They give you many playable races. They recomend against it, but give you the option. 

3e took a while to even consider the idea, and then when they did it was a flunky system. 



> or what age your PC starts at, or what job he had before he was an Adventurer,




I'd rather not have rules for that...



> or, if he worships an evil monstrous god, what enemies he can fight and what abilities he can take, or if he's not a divine-powered PC, what choosing a god even means....




Ok I'll give you that they seem to have taken a stance on PCs should approach the game as the heros. (or at least the anti-heros...)



> 3e expressly told you a lot of that out of the starting gate. They also told you how to make monsters (it was just a more involved process).




No they did not on the monsters. In 3.5 they did, but not the whole story.



> But if you're one of those people desperately seeking an aquatic campaign, or one of those who likes having Beholders as PC's, or one of those who likes playing Mundanes who become heroes rather than heroes who become bigger heroes....




Aquatic campaign you have the basic framework. And the basics of varying it up. It's much easier then say if I wanted a weird campaign in 3e. No/low magic? Oh oh, how do we heal now. Ok we use the heal skill? Oh wait, but who spends points on that when they need to spend it in other areas... and wait no magic so how do we fight certain monsters...  It could be done sure... but it took a lot of work. Changing 4e seems much easier.



> They probably know what most poeple want, but they don't know what everyone wants.




Show me the man who does and I'll bet his name is god.



> 3e's solution to that problem was to give you as much as you could possibly need and have you choose to use what you wanted or needed at the time...a toolkit.




3e solution was to think up as much as they thought you needed and make it work together. But we've been through this already. 



> 4e is not nearly as concerned with those who want to play the game differently (though, as I've said many times, its a continuum, not a binary choice).




They make a game designed to be played, and allow it to be flexible enough to be changed by teh ones who want to change it.




> Simplistic is a value statement. I think everyone using the same basic forumla for powers (at-will/encounter/daily) is simplistic because it doesn't give me the complexity that I desire and that is fun for me.




I view it thusly:

3e: 2 = (4 + 4) /4

4e: 1 + 1 = 2

If you want to call that simplistic? Sure, why not.



> In that respect, I'm one of those outliers that 4e isn't concerned with. They don't care as much if I'm not having fun with that set up, because MOST people will be having fun.




Sure, that's true of any game. I'd personally say 4e cares more because they're trying to give the most people the most fun while still leaving the system open for tohers to make what they want of it.



> 3e did kind of care, because they gave me new systems for resource management all the freakin' time, so I could play a Warlock or a Fighter if I wanted something straightforward or a Barbarian if I wanted a per-encounter mechanic, or a Wizard if I wanted a pool of per-day abilities, or...whatever.




Which muisked up the system.



> I was measuring intent, not execution. 3e wanted to be Open Source D&D, to be a toolkit to tinker with and develop new things with. 4e, like a girl, just wants ta have fun.




Again I dissagree. it was WAY to hidden to be truly open source.


----------



## I'm A Banana (Jun 10, 2008)

Mourn said:
			
		

> I'm disputing claims that you made, by saying "4e does not support these specific things," which it actually does.




No, I said that 4e was weaker at supporting these specific things than 3e, in response to the assertion that 4e is actually more of a toolbox than I'm giving it credit for (specifically that it makes it easy to tinker with). 4e certainly can be tinkered with, but 3e was, on the whole, more open to tinkering, specifically because it supported a broader range of possible play styles, in order to fully embrace as many outlying players as it could, thus reflecting its nature as "quintessential" D&D in a way that 4e has no interested in being.



			
				Mourn said:
			
		

> You're fixated on mechanics for things, not simply support.




Of course, that isn't really what I'm talking about, regardless of how accurate it is or is not. The discussion is about, AFAIK, divergent points between 4e and 3e in the basic design and philosophy of the game. It is my contention that one of these is that 3e was designed more to be an inclusive toolbox than 4e is, because 4e is designed more to be playable out of the box than 3e was.

If you don't disagree with that, then we don't have a whole lot of relevant conversation to have.

If you DO disagree with that, I'm presenting several handfuls of laundry lists of things that 4e doesn't have interest in giving me rules for that 3e did have an interest in giving me rules for. In fact, I'll even set this off in order to emphasize it.

   
Because the move from toolkit to ready-to-play is a continuum, not a binary solution, I don't really have to show that 4e isn't interested at all in being a toolkit, nor do I have to show that 3e did a good job of accomplishing rules for being a good toolkit. All I have to show is that 3e was interested in giving me more diversity than 4e is, at the launch. Heck, if we can even agree on one thing that 3e tried to give players at the beginning that 4e does not even try to give, I have shown the intent.

Chaotic Neutral Half-Orc Druids.

4e doesn't want this at launch. 3e did. This shows that in at least this area, 3e was more concerned with supporting fans of this thing than 4e is. Why did 3e want it? Because some people liked to play with it, and 3e wanted to give people the tools to run the D&D they liked. Why doesn't 4e care about those people? Because there probably aren't very many of them, and other considerations [ickiness, wild shape complexity, alignment simplifying] took precedence over the fact that some minority liked them, partially because those other considerations might be able to win them over despite their affection for the discarded thing.

Is it worth it? Depends on how important those things (or any of the other things that 3e gave you that 4e does not) are to you. If they are important, you're going to feel angry and abandoned because suddenly it will get much harder to play that, because the world's most popular RPG won't be supporting that out of the gate, if ever. 
   

Replace Chaotic Neutral Half-Orc Druids with anything, anything from the vast galaxy of things that 4e has chosen to ditch in favor of its own design goals. Whatever your opinion on 4e, I'm not sure you can cogently argue that 4e has ditched nothing. 

Replace it with "Evil Campaigns."

Replace it with "Monster PC's."

Replace it with "Firearms."

Anything, anything at all that 3e had at launch that 4e lacks at launch. No matter what it is. All there needs to be is ONE THING, and 3e instantly becomes more diverse in comparison.

Everything else is just getting lost in the analogies and specificities. 

I personally believe that WotC could have entertained the idea of supporting the outlying campaigns better at launch, if they had decided to. But they didn't. They had bigger fish to fry this time around, and I don't really blame them for it. I like 4e, but that doesn't mean that 4e is as good a toolkit as 3e is (though it might be Good Enough, and that's really the only threshold that really counts).


----------



## Scribble (Jun 10, 2008)

You have two seperate arguments going here.

1. That 3e was inherently more suited to tinkering then 4e.

and 

2. That 3e supported more "styles" of play then 4e straight out of the box.

As for 1, I still dissagree. Just because the game had more instances of concrete "this is how this thing woprks in this game" rules in it does not imply it is easier to tinker with.

It means it has more things cluttering up the rules system. It also has a directly opposite reaction. it makes tinkering with things HARDER because it changes everything else. 

2. I can somewhat give you. I can understand someone being upset because their style of play is not directly supported. Thats life though. Ultimately, however, I think that it allows the game to concentrate on being a better game, instead of diluting itself into too many difefrent areas all at once. Thus, once they DO come out with the various fringe styles, those styles will ultimately be better as well.

Until then, since it's easier to tinker with the new system, putting them in place on your own isn't that difficult.


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## Intense_Interest (Jun 10, 2008)

Scribble said:
			
		

> You have two seperate arguments going here.
> 
> 1. That 3e was inherently more suited to tinkering then 4e.
> 
> ...




Neither of which are about how "casual" one game system is, so I'm pretty sure the thread has run its course and deserves a new topic.



> If you DO disagree with that, I'm presenting several handfuls of laundry lists of things that 4e doesn't have interest in giving me rules for that 3e did have an interest in giving me rules for. In fact, I'll even set this off in order to emphasize it.




3E gave you a haberdashery of usually idiosyncratic rules that didn't mesh, and called out for splat-books for the truly divergent styles of game (Storm and Sea, Desert and Sun, Cold and More Cold).

4E wants to sell you a capable and modular game system, and then sell you what you want to add onto it.


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## I'm A Banana (Jun 10, 2008)

> You have two seperate arguments going here.
> 
> 1. That 3e was inherently more suited to tinkering then 4e.
> 
> ...




They're actually very closely related arguments, I think, because a system that supports a larger variety of campaigns is going to be inherently more suited to tinkering, because it gives you more to tinker with.

I'm not about to say that 3e did a perfect job of delivering on that ideal of being a tinkerer's choice (the Jenga comparison, I think, is pretty apt). I'm not debating the quality of the rules, just their existence. But diversity goes hand in hand with the ability to change the game to suit your desires, by giving you more rules to choose from. I can play a game of 3e right out of the basket of purely aquatic races in an undersea land with guns and katana, or I can take one of those elements and combine it with the Medieval Baseline, or I whatever...that's a lot of freedom to tinker.

4e, because it lacks those options, also lacks the ability to play with those options and combine them in different ways, making it, in my view, less suited to tinkering (regardless of how hard 3e was to get "right").


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## I'm A Banana (Jun 10, 2008)

> Neither of which are about how "casual" one game system is, so I'm pretty sure the thread has run its course and deserves a new topic.




Actually, they're BOTH about how "casual" 4e is in comparison.

Because the more tinkering a system requires, the less casual it can be.

Thus, 4e, in comparison, seems very casual indeed.



> 3E gave you a haberdashery of usually idiosyncratic rules that didn't mesh, and called out for splat-books for the truly divergent styles of game (Storm and Sea, Desert and Sun, Cold and More Cold).
> 
> 4E wants to sell you a capable and modular game system, and then sell you what you want to add onto it.




"3e drowns puppies and 4e gives me free ice cream and sex" is useless to talk about their very real differences.


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## Scribble (Jun 11, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> They're actually very closely related arguments, I think, because a system that supports a larger variety of campaigns is going to be inherently more suited to tinkering, because it gives you more to tinker with.




They're related. The reason I pointed it out was because you seemed to merge the two at times.

I dissagree with the argument, however. More rules doesn't mean the system is easier to tinker with. Again I say it's just the opposite.

More examples of concrete rules implies :this is how it is done. 

Advice on how to create rules based on an underlying principle gives more ability to tinker and modify.

Complexity does not = more room to work.



> I'm not about to say that 3e did a perfect job of delivering on that ideal of being a tinkerer's choice (the Jenga comparison, I think, is pretty apt). I'm not debating the quality of the rules, just their existence. But diversity goes hand in hand with the ability to change the game to suit your desires, by giving you more rules to choose from. I can play a game of 3e right out of the basket of purely aquatic races in an undersea land with guns and katana, or I can take one of those elements and combine it with the Medieval Baseline, or I whatever...that's a lot of freedom to tinker.




Maybe we have a different idea on what "tinkering" is? 



> 4e, because it lacks those options, also lacks the ability to play with those options and combine them in different ways, making it, in my view, less suited to tinkering (regardless of how hard 3e was to get "right").




4e lacks concrete rules for those options, but gives you the ability to easily create them when needed.

Getting it right is part of tinkering. What's the point in a system allowing you to modify it if the modifications ultimately don't work anyway?

Sure again, I'll give you 3e put more examples of concrete rules options right out of the box. But they HAD to because it was so difficult to modify the system. 

4e doesn't have to, because it's easy enough to modify to suit your tastes if you're the type that needs them.


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## Intense_Interest (Jun 11, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> Actually, they're BOTH about how "casual" 4e is in comparison.
> 
> Because the more tinkering a system requires, the less casual it can be.
> 
> Thus, 4e, in comparison, seems very casual indeed.




"Casual" is a slam meant to make the user seem "Supercool Hardcore".  Chess isn't a "casual" game at Master levels even though the greatest tinkering in the past three-hundred years is the advent of the pawns-double-advance-from-start rule.  Monopoly has an accepted amount of tinkering with the rules (Free Parking) yet doesn't have the same depth of play.  Tinkering is a separate distinction from how serious you can treat the game play.



> "3e drowns puppies and 4e gives me free ice cream and sex" is useless to talk about their very real differences.




Ad Hominem, great.

Why don't you respond to the fact that the 3E splat books and 4E modular systems are a parallel development?

Eberron is a MagicTech world, FR is a High Level Simulationist one, Storm and Sea is used if you want to do more than shift around a coastline and Sand and Sun if you want to do more than roll Endurance checks.  Where ARE the spells that let you guide by stars in the PHB?  Or the domain for a cleric that worships the Desert?

3E gives you underwater rules (so does 4E) and then piles Freedom of Movement, divergent damage tables, and unclear magical effects (is a fireball still hot?  How about lightning bolt) on top.


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## The Little Raven (Jun 11, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> Because the more tinkering a system *requires*, the less casual it can be.




A system that requires tinkering is a poorly executed one. A system that promotes tinkering is a cleverly executed one.


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## Kishin (Jun 11, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> What's making me feel wierd is that I didn't see it as bashing 4e at all...nor have I seen Cory Doctorow bashing 4e at all (I mean, there was the outcry when it looked like the new STL would have a poison pill, but that wasn't about 4e really)....
> 
> Are some 4e fans so paranoid that they see haters 'round every corner?
> 
> The cigar is just a cigar, man.




I was generalizing, for that I apologize. It was the STL controversy, and perhaps I should have been more specific. I wass assuming a shared familiarity with the actual article that may have been absent.

Also, the cigar is a cigar, but what is the Washington Monument?

And yes, 'casual' reeks of elitism when used on the internet, at least to me. Maybe I should blame the time I spent playing WoW for this.


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## ProfessorCirno (Jun 11, 2008)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the casual-ness of 4e one of it's big _selling points?_  I know I've seen advertisements and promotions saying things like "Fourth edition isn't as 'needlessly complex' as previous editions!" or "4e is much easier to just pick up and play!"

If calling 4e casual is an insult, then WotC has some serious masochism issues.

Also, *HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH*.

"3e was a mess, whereas 4e is perfect right from the start and is set up wonderfully."
"Oh right, 3e kills babies and 4e gives ice cream and rainbows."
"AD HOMINEM!"

No, it doesn't quite work that way.


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## pemerton (Jun 11, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:
			
		

> Some people think "role-playing is what happens between combat".
> If that was true, why did D&D evolve from war-gaming? Why are there basically no RPGs void of combat rules?



I'll offer a slightly different reason from the one you gave in the rest of your pace: the narrative representation of combat is (for whatever reason, in our time and place in human history) one of the most viscerally engaging ways of representing human conflict.


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## pemerton (Jun 11, 2008)

sinecure said:
			
		

> The 4E rules specifically require you to stop think like your another person and start playing the game as a push button, highly limited option, no influence to think outside the box, simulation.



Is this claim based on play experience, reading of the rules, or rumour?

I haven't played 4e. I am in the process of reading the rules. And I have followed all the rumours. So far nothing about I have read or heard gives me any reason to think that what you are saying is true.

Playing out my attack powers in 4e looks like it should be just as expressive of my PC as working out an extended contest in HeroWars - both require making mechanically optimal choices, and the build of my character will have designed so that making and implementing those choices expresses the themes that I think are important for my character.

Which reminds me - do you include HeroWars, The Dying Earth, TRoS, etc - that is, some of the games that 4e seems to me to most resemble - in your list of non-RPGs?



			
				sinecure said:
			
		

> 100's of powers for combat.  Absolutely no variation in implementation.



What? The powers use different stats, have different consequences, require different actions to use, intereact in complex ways. This is what makes 4e combat thematically expressive in a way that earlier editions of D&D never have been.



			
				sinecure said:
			
		

> BTW, think for all those 100s of powers and feats they have for combat they might add some for non-combat?  You know, just for fun?  You mention utility powers.  Do you really equate these with the new non-combat play?



Utility powers do factor into skill challenges. So do skills.



			
				sinecure said:
			
		

> Except when you can't.  Like, I grab his skull and gnaw on it!  "What power is that?"  None.  So guess what?  The chance of it working is nil.  And if it can work, why do you need all those powers to begin with?  You're not thinking in character.  You're thinking in combat maneuvers akin to any other wargame.  Chess.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> You can do this in 2nd Edition if you want.  We call it improvisation.



This is bizarre. No edition of D&D gives rules for gnawing on a foe's skull. 4e has rules for improvised attacks (PHB pp 215, 219), but such attacks are never optimal (no proficiency bonus, d4 damage). HeroWars has the capacity to handle skull-gnawing as a viable attack option, because of the abstract character of contest resolution in that game, and also the fact that (more than many other games) it allows non-physical considerations (such as the spritual or emotional importance of skull-gnawing) to factor into the resolution of combat. 2nd ed AD&D does not have any of the mechanical features of HeroWars that make this approach feasible. If you are playing an AD&D game in which it is ever optimal, in combat, for a PC to gnaw on a foe's skull you're using a lot of house rules. And if you want your PCs to gnaw on skulls even though it's suboptimal in combat, then 4e allows it as well as any other version of D&D via the above-mentioned rules for improvised attacks.



			
				sinecure said:
			
		

> 2nd includes rules for a ton of different things.   Just look at all option in the three main books and in the additional books.  They don't include feats and powers in the Castles Book.  Or repetitiously dull magic items in the magic encyclopaedias.  2E is jam packed full of actual stuff that makes sense.



Look, if you were talking about RQ or RM and saying that 4e lacks the same degree of support for out-of-combat play, I might have a bit of sympathy. I am a long-time Rolemaster GM who is becoming increasingly attracted to the 4e way of handling this stuff (via skill challenges) but I certainly see the attraction and intricate beauty of well-designed simulationist action resolution.

But 2nd ed AD&D? The game's mechanics are an inchorenent shambles, both for combat and non-combat action resolution. And it's not saved by that Castles book, which (IMO) adds very little to the 1st ed DMG read in conjunction with a couple of medieval history texts. You may as well say that AD&D has great rules because I can watch Life on Earth and work out new tricks for my pet Carnivorous Ape to perform.



			
				sinecure said:
			
		

> As a D&D roleplayer achieving ones goals is the definition of a good roleplayer.  One who wins.  When playing a module this means beating it.



The most interesting D&D modules I have seen for many years are some of the Penumbra modules for 3E;  I am hoping to run these adventures sometime fairly soon, either in HARP or 4e.

Most of them are designed so that they do not railroad the PCs into taking one approach or another, and they leave it open for the players to decide who they will treat as the villains, and who as their allies (this is very unusual in a D&D module). In this sort of module, what does it mean to "beat it"? And if (as I suspect) "beating it" makes no sense, what does that do to your criteria for good roleplaying?


----------



## Kishin (Jun 11, 2008)

Ugh, ignore. Lag induced double post.


----------



## Kishin (Jun 11, 2008)

ProfessorCirno said:
			
		

> Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the casual-ness of 4e one of it's big _selling points?_  I know I've seen advertisements and promotions saying things like "Fourth edition isn't as 'needlessly complex' as previous editions!" or "4e is much easier to just pick up and play!"
> 
> If calling 4e casual is an insult, then WotC has some serious masochism issues.
> 
> ...




Casual and streamlined are differentiated in my mind, its just the way my thought process works. Your mileage may vary.

Also, has anyone pointed out to you how insulting you tend to come off?


----------



## pemerton (Jun 11, 2008)

DonTadow said:
			
		

> The reason why some like 4e is why some players hate it. There's no detail in it, its meant for quick battles to satify some wierd urge (I've never wanted to role play for just 2 hours).



What is this claim based on? 4e's PHB has more detail than the 1st ed PHB - more detail on equipment, on powers, on races, on classes (both flavour and mechanics), on alignment, on action resolution, on the scope of possible PC activity.



			
				DonTadow said:
			
		

> I think it will kill the concept of detailed games and campaigns.



Given that it discusses the idea of a campaign on p 9 of the PHB (which is the 5th page of text after the table of contents) I don't know what you base this assertion on.



			
				DonTadow said:
			
		

> the idea of character customization will become a think we tell our grand children about.



Have you actually read the PHB? And for that matter, have you read the 1st ed AD&D PHB, in which the only scope for character customisation (outside of Magic-Users and their subclasses) is choosing weapon proficiencies and purchasing equipment. (And in the case of Magic-Users, the offical rule is that the "customisation" is to be determined by random dice roll, not player choice.)



			
				DonTadow said:
			
		

> Read the tone of the books, its not written to people who have any idea of what role playing is, its written for new players, players who just pick it up and want to play.  this is cool, but that reason alone is why I can't call this edition a traditional dungeons an ddragons.



Read the sidebar on p 28 of the DMG, discussing player use of director's stance, and tell me how that is not a more sophisticated discussion of roleplaying than virtually anything published for AD&D.


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## ProfessorCirno (Jun 11, 2008)

Kishin said:
			
		

> Casual and streamlined are differentiated in my mind, its just the way my thought process works. Your mileage may vary.
> 
> Also, has anyone pointed out to you how insulting you tend to come off?




Nope, you're the first 

I've seen pro-4e posters around here use "casual" a lot in a good way.  And I don't see the obsession with "casual" being bad, unless you're really dedicated to being an internet cool guy.

As for me being insulting, assuming you're referring to the ad hominem thing, that's exactly what happened though.  Person one makes a horrible scarecrow and blatently insults 3e.  Person two calls them out.  Person one cries offense.


----------



## Brennin Magalus (Jun 11, 2008)

Fenes said:
			
		

> And don't forget that a number of fans of certain other RPG systems are convinced that no edition of D&D is or was a roleplaying game anyway.




Chartmaster?


----------



## Brennin Magalus (Jun 11, 2008)

Intense_Interest said:
			
		

> hong is not the prophet of people who enjoy 4E...




He's not?



			
				Intense_Interest said:
			
		

> ...and can even be disagreed with at times.




We still haven't heard from the last guy who posted that.


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## Intense_Interest (Jun 11, 2008)

ProfessorCirno said:
			
		

> Also, *HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH*.
> 
> "3e was a mess, whereas 4e is perfect right from the start and is set up wonderfully."
> "Oh right, 3e kills babies and 4e gives ice cream and rainbows."
> ...




*3E was a mess- objective measure

*"You are saying that 3E kills babies"- non-objective measure, inferred intention of poster, against the rules.

*Pointing out the rule breaking by pointing it out as an agreed-upon logical fallacy.

*Gleefully dragging down a discussion into a Cheer Leading non-discussion.

You have been direct-quoting or inferred quoting me for a month now, itching for a fight.  This makes you a troll.  Go away.


----------



## ProfessorCirno (Jun 11, 2008)

Intense_Interest said:
			
		

> *3E was a mess- objective measure
> 
> *"You are saying that 3E kills babies"- non-objective measure, inferred intention of poster, against the rules.
> 
> ...




First off, _I don't even know who you are_.  I only remember people with pictures next to or below their names.  And Lizard.  I'm not out to get you.

Secondly, you weren't aiming at making a subjective statement.  You were using an ad hominem attack - that 3e is a mess - against someone who's not even trying to make it a "4e is bad, 3e is awesome" thread.  Someone is trying to have a reasonable debate with you, and you continuously call them a troll for _disagreeing with you_ followed by an equally continuous bashing of 3e when _that's not even the point of the debate_.

And to top it all off, after insulting 3e and providing nothing to debate, you go off and claim that Midget is the one doing the ad hominem attacks.  I'm not cheering Midget on, I'm laughing at your attempts are debate while inwardly cringing.


----------



## I'm A Banana (Jun 11, 2008)

Scribble said:
			
		

> More rules doesn't mean the system is easier to tinker with. Again I say it's just the opposite.




I agree that more rules doesn't mean that the system is easier to tinker with.

It's not about the quantity of the rules at all.

It's about what those rules cover.

The 4e rules at launch don't cover running, say, Chaotic Neutral Half-Orc Druids. The 3e rules did.

That means that no one using only the 4e launch rules will be able to use that, while someone using the 3e launch rules could.

This increases the "tinkerability" because, at the very least, it adds a feature that you can then subtract. If you say "There are no Chaotic Neutral Half-Orc Druids," then you make a declaration about the world, because you're still allowing CE half-orc druids, or CN gnome druids, or CN half-orc aristocrats. Similarly, if you just ditch one of those elements ("No CN alignment, no half-orcs, or no druids") you have changed your game. Each of those elements is something you can tinker with.

At the very basic level, every rule or option is something that you can do one of two things with: allow or reject. More options = more decisions to allow or reject being possible = more "tinkering" by allowing or disallowing different options. 4e has fewer options, thus fewer decisions to make, thus less tinkering.



			
				Scribble said:
			
		

> 4e lacks concrete rules for those options, but gives you the ability to easily create them when needed.




Okay, sure, but by giving people rules for these options, they give people the opportunity to accept or reject the rules themselves as well as each part of the rule. That allows more rules customization, which is synonymous, in my usage, with "tinkering." 

"Tinkering" is modifying the existing set. If there is less in the existing set to modify, then you can't tinker as much. You can always add brand new stuff, but that's not a virtue to everyone, and its actually a flaw to many, because it is always easier to cut something down than to build something up (and thus it is easier to ignore a rule you don't use than it is to invent a good rule for something you need but the game doesn't provide). 

A lack of rules isn't an inherently freeing or desirable thing, or else we'd all be playing Rock Paper Scissors for task resolution and deciding what happens next purely based on narrative contrivance. That's no more desirable than an impenetrable codex of legalesque gibberish that falls like a Jenga tower when you move a block around. 4e certainly doesn't embrace either one of those ethos.



			
				II said:
			
		

> "Casual" is a slam meant to make the user seem "Supercool Hardcore".




Repeating something that's wrong doesn't make it any more right. 

I don't know of any other way to refute this that I haven't used already. No, you are incorrect, it is not. Casual is a descriptive term, not a value judgment.



			
				II said:
			
		

> Why don't you respond to the fact that the 3E splat books and 4E modular systems are a parallel development?




Probably because I can't respond to something that hasn't been presented in the discussion yet?

So if you'd like, I can respond now?



			
				II said:
			
		

> 3E gives you underwater rules (so does 4E) and then piles Freedom of Movement, divergent damage tables, and unclear magical effects (is a fireball still hot? How about lightning bolt) on top.




Look, I understand that you feel like 3e made you watch while it drowned a whole sackful of kittens and that you're really happy that 4e is giving you a million dollars and a night in a hotel with Tricia Helfer. I just don't care about what you feel like. I care (a little) about what each game actually does, and when you can talk about that without crying about your sackful of kittens and telling me how much you love your future marriage to Trish, maybe I will begin to care (a little) about what you feel like.



			
				Kishin said:
			
		

> And yes, 'casual' reeks of elitism when used on the internet, at least to me. Maybe I should blame the time I spent playing WoW for this.




Hm...the internet just got a little bit sadder now that I realize "casual" is frequently an elitist put-down.

Tonight I will say my little evil prayers to the Old Ones that I never, ever, ever reach a point where my head is so far up my rear that I think that those who don't put their heads up their rear are somehow beneath me.

No, "Casual" is a description, when I'm using it here, at least. It is, actually, a mostly positive one -- I like my Wii. I like 4e. I enjoy getting people into things that they don't have to obsess over to have fun with. 4e is definately a step in that direction of being "casual," and I like it for that.

I think all the hair-splitting between "casual" and "easy to learn" and "straightforward" and "highly efficient" is semantic nonsense for the most part. If you don't believe me, get a thesaurus and/or an English Literature degree. 



			
				II said:
			
		

> *3E was a mess- objective measure




Wrong.



			
				II said:
			
		

> *"You are saying that 3E kills babies"- non-objective measure, inferred intention of poster, against the rules.




I don't care if you think 3e is a mess or if you think 3e gave you AIDS, or, for that matter, if you think 3e is the second coming of Gygax. The plumage don't enter into it. 



> *Pointing out the rule breaking by pointing it out as an agreed-upon logical fallacy.




I'm still wildly unclear about where this rule breaking is going on. I'm just telling you that "4e roolz 3e droolz" gets no one anywhere and I'm probably telling you that because it is probably my #2 pet peeve here at ENWorld, tied with its inverse "3e roolz and 4e droolz" and following closely behind people not posting more pictures of sexy folks.

I'm also probably telling you that so you can perhaps understand why you're really wrong when you think that someone calling 4e "casual" is an insult.

And thus you can perhaps come to understand that some people don't like 4e for entirely valid and substantial reasons.

But heck, here I am trying to let facts get in the way of a message board conversation, I'm sure that's gotta be against the rules of the Internet, if not ENWorld. 



			
				II said:
			
		

> *Gleefully dragging down a discussion into a Cheer Leading non-discussion.




"3e is a mess, while 4e is awesome!" will do that every time 'round here...



			
				II said:
			
		

> You have been direct-quoting or inferred quoting me for a month now, itching for a fight. This makes you a troll. Go away.




If you think he's hopeless, use your ignore list.

I think you've still got hope, or you would've been on it at the first mention of 3e killing your parents and griding them into chili that it made you eat.


----------



## Treebore (Jun 11, 2008)

I don't get it. 4E may be all new and cool, etc... but it has a bunch of problems that will need to be worked out, rules created, etc... so why do people want to buy it?

Is it simply because its the new gadget on the market?

I don't know, makes much more sense to me to stick with the gadget you have taken all of the bugs out of and have it operating exactly the way you want it to work.

Why go to 4e, at least right away, and have to fight your way through all the hidden problems all over again, write up house rules to fix them, etc... seems much better to just stay with what already works.


----------



## hong (Jun 11, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> At the very basic level, every rule or option is something that you can do one of two things with: allow or reject. More options = more decisions to allow or reject being possible = more "tinkering" by allowing or disallowing different options. 4e has fewer options, thus fewer decisions to make, thus less tinkering.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




Humpty Dumpty did this better than you.


----------



## pemerton (Jun 11, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> They don't tell you how to set up rules for underwater combat, or how to use NPC's as PC's, or monsters as PC's, or what age your PC starts at, or what job he had before he was an Adventurer, or, if he worships an evil monstrous god, what enemies he can fight and what abilities he can take, or if he's not a divine-powered PC, what choosing a god even means....



For what it's worth, a typical starting age is suggested on PHB p 30 (18 to 25 for humans), the issue of prior jobs is discussed on p 24, and the significance of worship on p 20 (and under the god descriptions that follow).

A question, however: how does a game become _more_ flexible and _more_ of a toolbox by _mandating_ via a dice roll the starting age of a PC?



			
				Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> But if you're one of those people desperately seeking an aquatic campaign, or one of those who likes having Beholders as PC's



No version of AD&D supported Beholders as PCs. 3E offered an approximation to it. The particular mechanic that tries to achieve this is widely (though not universally) regarded as unsuccessful.



			
				Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> 3e's solution to that problem was to give you as much as you could possibly need and have you choose to use what you wanted or needed at the time...a toolkit.
> 
> 4e is not nearly as concerned with those who want to play the game differently (though, as I've said many times, its a continuum, not a binary choice).



I just don't see it. Yes, 3E tells me how to play a CN Half-Orc Druid. 4e tells me how to play a Good Tiefling Warlock. Tropes come and go, but they don't really tell us much about whether or not a game is a toolbox, a serious game, a casual game, or whatever.



			
				Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> 3e did kind of care, because they gave me new systems for resource management all the freakin' time, so I could play a Warlock or a Fighter if I wanted something straightforward or a Barbarian if I wanted a per-encounter mechanic, or a Wizard if I wanted a pool of per-day abilities, or...whatever.



Now this is a more important point. 3E did deploy a wide range of character build and action resolution mechanics in the very same game. The question is, did it succeed? Or is it like a supposedly universal points-based system in which everyone knows that 100 points of Spartans can't actually take on 100 points of Space Rangers and hope to win?

Play experience shows that 3E did not (on the whole, for most players most of the time) succeed in this respect.  Instead, the per-day mechanics (which govern healing and firepower) dominate, and those players whose PCs are hostage to different mechanics become subordinated to the dominant mechanics.

3E is not the only game to suffer from this problem. I know from long experience that it happens in Rolemaster also, with its PPs per day spell recovery rules.

Even if 4e does end up with a 15-minute day (and I am mildly optimistic that it won't) it still won't be as problematic as 3E, because at least it will be a democratic 15-minute day - it won't be one group of players having their play subordinated to those who chose a different (and dominant) resource management mechanic.

If you are one of those who are in the minority, and did not find that one particular resource management mechanic emerged as dominant, than I could see why you might dislike that aspect of the 4e rules changes.



			
				Brennin Magalus said:
			
		

> Chartmaster?



I was wondering if someone else had thought of it. For those who really do like rules tinkering and a very flexible system that supports a wide range of PCs and campaign tropes, try Rolemaster. It's a great game with two editions currently in print. Plus there's HARP, which is sort of RM lite, from the same company. And there's HARP lite, which is a free download from their website.

As a long time RM player, I do find the notion of 3E as a tinkerer's paradise a bit odd, because when I look at it through Rolemaster eyes I see a lot of stuff that would not be very easy to tinker with while maintaining game balance.


----------



## pemerton (Jun 11, 2008)

ProfessorCirno said:
			
		

> Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the casual-ness of 4e one of it's big _selling points?_



No. It's elegance and simplicity of entry are its selling points.

In this respect it is (perhaps) like Runequest - an incredibly elegant system, that is very simple to enter (though fairly rich to explore and master). But inferring from this, to casualness, would be a non-sequitur in the case of Runequest, and I'm having trouble seeing why it's not a non-sequitur in the case of 4e.



			
				Treebore said:
			
		

> I don't get it. 4E may be all new and cool, etc... but it has a bunch of problems that will need to be worked out, rules created, etc... so why do people want to buy it?
> 
> Is it simply because its the new gadget on the market?



For some of us, at least, because it's a manifestly better designed game than 3E.

I think part of the reason D&D player's have the expectation that a game can't be played without houseruling is because (i) D&D does not have a history of especially strong, coherent mechanical design. and (ii) D&D does not have a history of being especially upfront about the sort of play experience one might get from using the rules as written. The two are in fact related, because if (i) is true it becomes hard to know what one might say in order to render (ii) false - incoherent mechanics won't produce a consistent play experience.

4e has strong coherent design and is upfront about the sort of play it is intended to support. If you want the sort of play experience that you might normally expect to get from Chivalry and Sorcery, 4e is telling you upfront to go and try that other game because 4e won't deliver it. 

Now this doesn't stop individual players trying to drift 4e into something more like Chivalry and Sorcery. Some of the complaints about 4e, however, seem to take the form of "It's shallow/casual because I don't _have_ to drift it before I can play it." 

Runequest, Rolemaster, Tunnels & Trolls - all can have bits added on, all can be tinkered with both mechanically and thematically. But all can be played straight out of the box and will deliver what they promise. Now D&D can too - 4e looks like the first version of D&D since Red Box Basic that can be played out of the box without some sort of house ruling and drifting being required. Welcome back, D&D, to the world of good game design.


----------



## Intense_Interest (Jun 11, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> The 4e rules at launch don't cover running, say, Chaotic Neutral Half-Orc Druids. The 3e rules did.
> 
> That means that no one using only the 4e launch rules will be able to use that, while someone using the 3e launch rules could.
> 
> ...




I don't see the inherent difference in "tinkerability" between a feature you house-rule in that works within a system and a feature you house-rule out that doesn't work for your game.  Further, if a system is more able to add things it is a better system to "tinker" with, which is the essential design philosophy of 4E.

Add to this the Jenga-nature of the previous rule set- Wealth by Level was tied into Magic Items which was tied into CR scaling that was a reflection of the Monster System that filtered into Monsters as PCs (in a sense) means that the tinkering within the system was more taste-based than actually reformative.

Meanwhile, you can strip all magic items out of 4E by handing out the engine assumed plusses and refusing to tailor encounters around Magic Item X.



> Okay, sure, but by giving people rules for these options, they give people the opportunity to accept or reject the rules themselves as well as each part of the rule. That allows more rules customization, which is synonymous, in my usage, with "tinkering."
> 
> "Tinkering" is modifying the existing set. If there is less in the existing set to modify, then you can't tinker as much. You can always add brand new stuff, but that's not a virtue to everyone, and its actually a flaw to many, because it is always easier to cut something down than to build something up (and thus it is easier to ignore a rule you don't use than it is to invent a good rule for something you need but the game doesn't provide).




Ignoring Wealth-by-Level charts created a degenerative game, for example.  I would argue that there is no inherent difference between Adding, Subtracting, or Altering rules; as long as the system can support the change.

In a rhetorical example, jackbooting the W/E/D/U by level chart for a single new class (exception based design) and constraining that class with an entirely-Daily power selection to create a Vance Caster.  Is this altering the Power/Level chart, subtracting it, or adding a new class?

Second, an added suite of powers that re-introduce CN and LN foes, powers, and classes (maybe from _Law and Chaos: Moorecockian Tapdance_) is no more an amount of "tinkering" than subtracting alignment altogether would be.

Sidenote, I think we've gone deep into the Semantic hole.



> Look, I understand that you feel like 3e made you watch while it drowned a whole sackful of kittens and that you're really happy that 4e is giving you a million dollars and a night in a hotel with Tricia Helfer. I just don't care about what you feel like. I care (a little) about what each game actually does, and when you can talk about that without crying about your sackful of kittens and telling me how much you love your future marriage to Trish, maybe I will begin to care (a little) about what you feel like.




There's your rule breaking: _but be careful about ascribing motives to the actions of others or telling others how they "should" think._ You are not only telling me what kind of feelings I am having, but how pejoratively minor in scope they are to you.



> No, "Casual" is a description, when I'm using it here, at least. It is, actually, a mostly positive one -- I like my Wii. I like 4e. I enjoy getting people into things that they don't have to obsess over to have fun with. 4e is definately a step in that direction of being "casual," and I like it for that.
> 
> I think all the hair-splitting between "casual" and "easy to learn" and "straightforward" and "highly efficient" is semantic nonsense for the most part. If you don't believe me, get a thesaurus and/or an English Literature degree.




You are simplifying to a definition without regarding the negative associations that should have already been apparent, unless you fail to see the demeaning nature of calling a person "casual".

"Well designed" "Straightforward" and "highly efficient" is a judgment about the game system- Chess, for example.  "Casual" is a judgment about the players, calling them the Lowest Common Denominator and unwilling to make the leap into a Hardcore game.



> And thus you can perhaps come to understand that some people don't like 4e for entirely valid and substantial reasons.




The substantial reasons I have seen and agree with is that it'll cost more money and Angels aren't Good.  Yet a collection of valid data-points does not come to an absolute sum of a value-comparison.

Hell, I think there shouldn't have been Usually-Good Angels in the MM, instead putting them into the _Book of Vile Darkness: ruleset for Evil PCs_.  That agrees with one reason while contradicting another- that doesn't mean that I condemn 4E.



> *Why go to 4e*, at least right away, and have to fight your way through all the hidden problems all over again, write up house rules to fix them, etc... seems much better to just stay with what already works.




This assumption only works if you find that 3E can be made into a worthwhile game of Fantasy Roleplaying.  Personally, I used the d20 engine to play Spycraft for the past 3 years.  Value judgement, yes, but it answers your question.


----------



## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jun 11, 2008)

Treebore said:
			
		

> I don't get it. 4E may be all new and cool, etc... but it has a bunch of problems that will need to be worked out, rules created, etc... so why do people want to buy it?



When reading your post, I get the impression you believe that 4E is somehow broken or has fundamental issues. 

I've read through the books, played a play-test scenario (a full adventuring session), created a few monsters and PCs by now, and a friend of mine is already converting his Savage Tides / Pathfinder campaign to 4E. I have not seen any issues, and in fact only a lot of things I prefer over 3E. 

If I look at these boards, there seem to be two issues I found noteworthy:
1 The explanation of the skill challenge system doesn't work well. Something seems to be missing or incomplete. 
2 One Ranger power might turn out to be broken against Solo monsters.

I already have an idea how to address 1, and am waiting to see 2 in actual play.

But I have no ideas how I can fix the power balance between Fighters and Wizards in 3E. Or how I can remove the alignment system from the existing spell system. Or how I can remove the wealth by level guidelines.


----------



## sinecure (Jun 11, 2008)

Here's a list of some of the worst things about the new edition.  I thought I'd put together a list for anyone too blind to see through the shiny wrapping.

Repeatedly forcing mechanics on players which stop them from roleplaying: 
powers - you can't do these unless you've got 'em. So don't bother trying.
marked condition - when has this happened to you in real life? 
action points - You just get to go twice because we like you.
milestones - I can move twice in a round now again because of what?  And my magic items work again why?

No suffocation rules?  

PC classes with actual mechanical differances.  There is only 1 class all use.  

Only 5 ways for any attack to work: melee, ranged, burst, blast, or wall.  That's not limiting, right?

Rituals - These have nothing to do with level.  These are based upon setting.  You could give everyone every one of these rituals at 1st level.  It doesn't change anything.  It only changes setting.

3E uber healing is now maximized.  Everyone is full HP every day, magic healing or no.  Fighting has virtually no consequences.  Kill, Kill, Kill.

Regeneration is practically worthless outside of combat.  Remember how it worked before?

Movement has been nerfed.  Where is the standard 12 square move?  Out with d20, right?  If they wanted better movement, why limit themselves to 6 squares.  Maybe to fit on a DDM map?

Card game initiative.  Upkeep phase, Action phase, Resolution phase.  Think this pulls a player out of character to do?

All of wrestling, grappling, and pummeling entirely consist of being "immobilized".  Which means you simply cannot leave your square.  I hope none of your combat maniac players actually liked this kind of fighting (or you'll have to wait for the wrestler-monk class)

6 second combat rounds.  Real nice.  Your still stuck in 3e's explicit combat system massively zoomed in on every muscle flex and eyebrow arch.  But now with fewer options.  I didn't think it was possible.

Bye bye colossal creatures. They just don't sell well enough as minis. And anything smaller than Tiny too.  Still think they aren't limiting the game based on the DDM game and minis lines?  Minis are their big money maker.

Saving Throws are nerfed.  Almost everything you used to choose whether or not to save against, unknowing sometimes whether it was bad or good, are now all attacks on your PC.  Absolute worst change so far.  And worst of all?  Most don't even understand why.

Anything that is bad that can happen to you is a "condition".  Basically, there is little to no variation in what spells, I mean "powers", can do to you.  Everything has an identical effect on your character.  All petrification the same.  All polymorphs the same.  All poisons, all spells, all damages "typed".  Only diseases are still unique as far as I can tell.

Removal of etherealness, astral body, and incorporeality for "insubstantial".  I guess people felt this was an unnecessary complication that hurt the game.  The Gods of Simplicity kill yet again.

The 18 hour day.  All 6 hour extended rests require 12 hours in between.  How's that for rule lawyering folks into living outside the 24 hour day solar cycle?  Maybe we should make worlds which turn every 18 hours cause "that's how the rules extrapolate".  Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Magic Items as equipment.  Way to go.  It's not like treasure is a reward or anything.

And they made them totally bland.  Something that could potentially shake the bowels of the earth now just one of a 100 different kinds of screwdriver.  For instance, Ring of True Seeing?  Now misnomered as it lets you See Invisibility and ignore Concealment.  Concealment?  Maybe they forgot what True Seeing actually is?  Or maybe they threw half of what it used to be see through under a bus?  The gods kill again.

Residuum. So the default playstyle is everyone gets whatever magic item they want pretty much whenever they want?  Only limited by level, course. Stand back! Monty Haulism has been written into the rules.

Identifying magic - not even a 1st level spell anymore.  Now every single PC auto-identifies 1 power / 5 minute resting period on any magic item.  In other words, you could do this in your sleep.

Adventuring Gear list?  Nerfed. Where'd it go? Standard Adventurer's kit?  Nice idea, but the skill of purchasing items for their multiple abilities in the dungeon?  Gone.  Not that anyone in 3e was encouraged to pick soap as a means of making a trap.

Carrying, Lifting, Dragging.  a.k.a. "Encumbrance".  Practically invisible.  It's like they are trying to hide it.  Yet, they include 3 bolded terms: Normal load, Heavy load, and Max Drag load.  These aren't on the character sheet.  Here's the utterly useless rules: normal = normal.  The other two means your Slowed.  Everyone hated Encumbrance anyways,  right?  Burn it from D&D!  The new edition is about Options!

Multi-Classing.  Have you seen this?  Maybe they should have called it something else?  Like Spell Stealing or something.

Feats.  As in 3e, a game for the min-maxers to play with.  Totally pointless when you can do this without having the players actually knowing what perks they have mechanically. Just tell them the description.  These 100s of little tweaks drive statblock creators bonkers.  And allow players to force broken abilities on their DMs. They only include these things to feed the min-maxers and sell them their books.

Skills.  Here we actually find the last vestiges for what passed as "the rules of the game".  Shrunk down to the size of a nickel, these guys don't even realize that this is the real RPG. Dump skills from the players sheets and just use whatever real rules actually work for.  Some here aren't half bad, but over half of everything is missing too.  Leave these in and your players will be mentally stuck thinking they can only do one skill or another.  And their imaginations will dry up into ones as tunnel visioned as the designers.

I can't even go on to the Classes.  Let's just call these what they are: Card Decks.  Wizards has completely removed the RP from RPGs.  Now they only have to worry about preset, designer allowed options that they can keep a handle on.  Like Magic the Gathering, they just balance every card in the series with each other card in it.  The idea of using one's imagination?  To think outside the box?  Yeah, that's really encouraged here isn't it?  It's not that you can't try to do anything you want, it's the rules make you think you can't.  "I can't use that power, it's not on my sheet".

Forget the rest, I'm tired. And I'm not even done with the first book.


----------



## Intense_Interest (Jun 11, 2008)

sinecure said:
			
		

> No suffocation rules?




Page 159


----------



## pemerton (Jun 11, 2008)

sinecure said:
			
		

> Repeatedly forcing mechanics on players which stop them from roleplaying:
> powers - you can't do these unless you've got 'em. So don't bother trying.
> marked condition - when has this happened to you in real life?
> action points - You just get to go twice because we like you.
> ...



OK, so you don't like games with metagame mechanics yielding player control over the narration. (And, by the way, you still haven't told me whether you regard games that are metagame heavy, like HeroWars and The Dying Earth, as RPGs.)



			
				sinecure said:
			
		

> PC classes with actual mechanical differances.  There is only 1 class all use.



Ah, so Rolemaster and Runequest are not RPGs either (or at least not very good ones) because they have always had unified XP tables, unified skill lists, unified rules for magic use, etc.

And, by the way, there is a pretty signficant mechanical difference between Sleep and Force Orb (just to pick two 1st level Wizard powers).



			
				sinecure said:
			
		

> Residuum. So the default playstyle is everyone gets whatever magic item they want pretty much whenever they want?  Only limited by level, course. Stand back! Monty Haulism has been written into the rules.
> 
> Identifying magic - not even a 1st level spell anymore.  Now every single PC auto-identifies 1 power / 5 minute resting period on any magic item.  In other words, you could do this in your sleep.



OK, so you also prefer a game in which one of the main rewards of play - earning loot - is thwarted by the unidentifiability or unobtainability of that loot.

The 1st ed DMG is much better design, obviously, devoting page after page to magic items that the rules tell you not to let the PCs have, or not to let them use if they do get hold of them. 



			
				sinecure said:
			
		

> Basically, there is little to no variation in what spells, I mean "powers", can do to you.  Everything has an identical effect on your character.  All petrification the same.  All polymorphs the same.  All poisons, all spells, all damages "typed".  Only diseases are still unique as far as I can tell.



In AD&D nearly all poisons are the same (dead) and all petrification is the same (turned to stone - it's kind of definitional in this case). But not all 4e conditions have an identical effect - that's just nonsense.



			
				sinecure said:
			
		

> Rituals - These have nothing to do with level.  These are based upon setting.  You could give everyone every one of these rituals at 1st level.  It doesn't change anything.  It only changes setting.



I don't understand, for two reasons: you can't perform a Ritual of higher than your level (unless it's on a scroll, as is traditional for D&D); the difference between 1st level PCs having Raise Dead and Teleport or not is nothing to do with setting and all about play experience.



			
				sinecure said:
			
		

> 3E uber healing is now maximized.  Everyone is full HP every day, magic healing or no.  Fighting has virtually no consequences.  Kill, Kill, Kill.



This is one of the more bizarre items on your list. The amount of loving mechanical detail given to the class attack powers, the class utility powers, the healing mechanics and all the related paraphenalia of combat mean that the game more than ever focuses on the thematic signficance and consequences of fighting.



			
				sinecure said:
			
		

> Movement has been nerfed.  Where is the standard 12 square move?  Out with d20, right?  If they wanted better movement, why limit themselves to 6 squares.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ...



And just think, Rolemaster has only a handful of conditions: must parry, stunned, stunned no parry and down. And it has 50' movement per round (only 5 squares on a 10' grid). And it has never had any decent multi-classing rules, only rather expensive dabbling or new base classes. It's a conspiracy!



			
				sinecure said:
			
		

> Skills.  Here we actually find the last vestiges for what passed as "the rules of the game".  Shrunk down to the size of a nickel, these guys don't even realize that this is the real RPG.



Ah, 2nd ed AD&D - I miss that pinnacle of skill-based RPGs.



			
				sinecure said:
			
		

> Adventuring Gear list?  Nerfed.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Carrying, Lifting, Dragging.  a.k.a. "Encumbrance".  Practically invisible.  It's like they are trying to hide it.



So just to be clear - what really makes a great fantasy RPG are it's equipment and transportation rules.


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## sinecure (Jun 11, 2008)

pemerton said:
			
		

> OK, so you don't like games with metagame mechanics yielding player control over the narration. (And, by the way, you still haven't told me whether you regard games that are metagame heavy, like HeroWars and The Dying Earth, as RPGs.)



I don't know those games.  Have more than a 100 people even played those?  Why should I care if they are RPGs are not?



> Ah, so Rolemaster and Runequest are not RPGs either (or at least not very good ones) because they have always had unified XP tables, unified skill lists, unified rules for magic use, etc.



BINGO



> And, by the way, there is a pretty signficant mechanical difference between Sleep and Force Orb (just to pick two 1st level Wizard powers).



And the DDM crew should be proud.  Within combat rounds they have Magic card levels of variation.  Got anything of worthwhile mechanically that isn't combat related?  I mean, stuff where they'll be adding hundreds of new options?  No?  Huh.



> OK, so you also prefer a game in which one of the main rewards of play - earning loot - is thwarted by the unidentifiability or unobtainability of that loot.



You must live in a world of absolutes.   Have you ever played D&D before?  Do you really think before 2000 no one ever gained treasure or figured out with a magic item did?  Try coming back with a real rebuke next time.



> The 1st ed DMG is much better design, obviously, devoting page after page to magic items that the rules tell you not to let the PCs have, or not to let them use if they do get hold of them.



You should read books before you quote them.  You do realize the 1E DMG had a system for distributing treasure, right?  Not some "look at these, never let your players have these" tripe.  What is wrong with you?  You're purposefully mis-characterizing over 25 years of D&D play.  Did you even like D&D before 2000?  Answer that.



> In AD&D nearly all poisons are the same (dead) and all petrification is the same (turned to stone - it's kind of definitional in this case). But not all 4e conditions have an identical effect - that's just nonsense.



Compared to D&D before the great minimization of 3E, 4th has virtually no variation.  Sorry if you actually believe a dozen or so options is somehow "freeing".



> I don't understand, for two reasons: you can't perform a Ritual of higher than your level (unless it's on a scroll, as is traditional for D&D); the difference between 1st level PCs having Raise Dead and Teleport or not is nothing to do with setting and all about play experience.



You aren't understanding me here.  These things have no need to be level-based.  Give them out for free to everyone everywhere and the game is still balanced as to combat.  So why did they include level requirements again?



> This is one of the more bizarre items on your list. The amount of loving mechanical detail given to the class attack powers, the class utility powers, the healing mechanics and all the related paraphenalia of combat mean that the game more than ever focuses on the thematic signficance and consequences of fighting.



Why should it surprise me that you think this?  Think of it as a side scrolling video game.  We fight fight fight.  Then rest before moving the side scroller to the next combat.  Rinse and repeat.  After every fight we are at full HP.  After every sleep we are at Max Power Ups.  

Let me repeat myself to be clear.  There are virtually no consequences to combat in 4E D&D.  After each one you are completely restored.  Zero penalties.  Zero relation to anything based remotely in reality.  This is videogame think for what makes combat fun.  This is the vast shortsightedness of the designers.  Combat = everything in D&D.  And they've sold this fallacy to their customers as something that "has always been that way".  Study the history of the game.  You might learn something.



> And just think, Rolemaster has only a handful of conditions: must parry, stunned, stunned no parry and down. And it has 50' movement per round (only 5 squares on a 10' grid). And it has never had any decent multi-classing rules, only rather expensive dabbling or new base classes. It's a conspiracy!



Rolemaster and is disastrous design should have been a warning to the 3e crew.  How long do we have to wait until they learn the lesson?



> Ah, 2nd ed AD&D - I miss that pinnacle of skill-based RPGs.



It isn't skill-based, that's why it actually functions better as an RPG.



> So just to be clear - what really makes a great fantasy RPG are it's equipment and transportation rules.



There you go.  Be dismissive.  Your chosen game actually fails at something and you decide those elements have no place in fantasy RPGs.  

You sound like half the guys here who buy 4e.  As if RPGs have no need of any rules beyond a combat system.  See Major Fallacy #1 again.


----------



## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jun 11, 2008)

No offense, sinecure, but I have really problem trying to get what you're doing with your game and what your preferences are, and how they relate to the rest of the role-playing world...


Maybe my message board poster understanding muscles are sore, but does _anyone_ f4nboi, hat3r, fence sitter or hong really get what sinecure expects from a role playing game? And furthermore, does anyone share similar preferences? 

Because I seem totally unable to get it. I can get all the s*mulat*on*st world builder desires, people that love Gnomes, hate Dragonboobs and Tieflings, or love the Great Wheel. But I don't get _sinecure_.


----------



## I'm A Banana (Jun 11, 2008)

Pemerton said:
			
		

> A question, however: how does a game become more flexible and more of a toolbox by mandating via a dice roll the starting age of a PC?




An RPG does, by the magic of DM authority (tinkering). The DM can say "gnomes are really nearly immortal beings; they use the elf table for determining age," and by that say something about his world and his gnomes that is unique to his game. Or to give an example 4e can't do so well, a DM could say "You can worship any god you want, but you can select amongst the domains of only the Evil gods." This, right in the rules, introduces a mystery into the campaign setting: only the powers of evil, though we can still worship good? Is good a lie? Are the evil deities really behind every good church? It says something about this setting and about this DMs game that is unique, and that he can't as easily do in 4e because 4e doesn't have the channel divinity feats for evil gods.

It goes a little something like this. There are three basic ways that a tinkering DM can shape his campaign: Adding rules, adjusting rules, and banning rules (in this, rules and options are largely synonymous). 

#1: Making new rules is hard (for, I'd assume, most people).
#2: Adjusting rules is fun (for those who like to tinker, at least)
#3: Banning a rule is easy (for, I assume, most people). 

4e, in providing less options and less "rules points" that you can adjust or ban, thus puts the tinkering weight on #1, which is the hardest to do. 4e makes certain elements of #1 easier to do than 3e did (monster design, for instance), but that doesn't fix the basic underlying fact that making new rules is harder than adjusting or nixing existing rules.

3e, in providing more rules points, and more options, allowed the tinkering weight to go to #3 most often ("I'm not using the weather rules or the random encounter rules or..."). 4e, in an effort to streamline and simplify, got rid of a lot of the rules that people most frequently banned. This means that tinkering with the campaign goes down, because ignoring a rule is easier than adding a rule, so most people won't go through the effort of adding a rule that they might need -- they'll just adjust their campaign to reflect the existing rules. If someone has need of the weather rules, they probably won't add them themselves, they'll just adjust their own games so that they don't need them.  

In other words, banning dragonborn from a game that has them is always going to be more popular than adding dragonborn to a game that does not. It's easy to tinker with dragonborn if they exist in the first place. 

Not that simply adding more rules is going to make it easier to tinker, because if the rules are interlocked and interconnected, or if they are wildly disparate subsystems where +1 means something very different in each, they will be harder to tinker with. But fewer rules doesn't make it easier to tinker, either, because creating rules is harder than messing with what's already there.



> I just don't see it. Yes, 3E tells me how to play a CN Half-Orc Druid. 4e tells me how to play a Good Tiefling Warlock. Tropes come and go, but they don't really tell us much about whether or not a game is a toolbox, a serious game, a casual game, or whatever




It's not about the trope, really. 3e told you how to play a Good Tiefling Warlock, too (or a good tielfing wizard who summoned demons, if we're sticking with core-only). A major issue for many is that 4e stopped telling you how to play a CN half-orc druid, because, apparently, those weren't as _popular_, even though it could have told you how to do that while still telling you how to play a good tiefling warlock.

It's not like they had to choose between them. They just elected to provide rules for the most popular (or projected-to-be-most-popular) things, while 3e elected to provide rules as a foundation for even blatantly unpopular things (like randomly generating weather), just in case someone needed it or wanted to use it or mess with it.



			
				pemerton said:
			
		

> The question is, did it succeed?




At this point, I'm not interested in its success, just its attempt. That's enough to say that 3e more wanted you to tinker, while 4e more wants you to play.

That's not, of course, necessarily a bad thing. But it does alienate some of the tinkerers, just as a need to tinker is going to alienate some of the...well...players.  

4e recognizes that there's probably more players than tinkerers, but that doesn't mean that 3e fans who loved the tinkering are _wrong_ to feel abandoned and affronted, and they have every right to rant about how 4e took away their toolkit. I mean, a lot of people screamed about how 3e had monks in the core, and they were ultimately vindicated, too.  4e doesn't do it as well. It doesn't really try to. It nods in that direction, but 3e WANTED that direction.

.....and now for something completely different....



			
				II said:
			
		

> There's your rule breaking: but be careful about ascribing motives to the actions of others or telling others how they "should" think. You are not only telling me what kind of feelings I am having, but how pejoratively minor in scope they are to you.




I'm mocking an opinion that has no place in this conversation. "3e was bad, 4e is good" has no place in this conversation. In fact, it actively degenerates the conversation into pointless edition wars. I'm mocking it because you should stop saying that in this conversation, hopefully demonstrating the absurdity and uselessness of it. 

I do this because I care. 

The fact that you think this is a personal attack or attributing motives is...well...at best, a misunderstanding of what those things really are.



> You are simplifying to a definition without regarding the negative associations that should have already been apparent, unless you fail to see the demeaning nature of calling a person "casual".




I absolutely do, and I think I've made that more than clear. I am not about to assume that a word that basically means "It's easy to pick up and doesn't require an obsessive interest" is somehow derogatory. Rather, I think you need to abandon the notion that "casual" is somehow inherently demeaning. 

It isn't.



> "Well designed" "Straightforward" and "highly efficient" is a judgment about the game system- Chess, for example. "Casual" is a judgment about the players, calling them the Lowest Common Denominator and unwilling to make the leap into a Hardcore game.




That sort of elitist snobbery is absolutely foreign to me and my gaming experience. "Hardcore" is not some sort of sacred land that every player should aspire to.

Have you read my posts addressing this? Because they're _right there_.


----------



## pemerton (Jun 12, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> It's not about the trope, really. 3e told you how to play a Good Tiefling Warlock, too (or a good tielfing wizard who summoned demons, if we're sticking with core-only). A major issue for many is that 4e stopped telling you how to play a CN half-orc druid, because, apparently, those weren't as _popular_, even though it could have told you how to do that while still telling you how to play a good tiefling warlock.
> 
> It's not like they had to choose between them. They just elected to provide rules for the most popular (or projected-to-be-most-popular) things, while 3e elected to provide rules as a foundation for even blatantly unpopular things (like randomly generating weather), just in case someone needed it or wanted to use it or mess with it.



I'm getting more of a feel for what you mean by "tinkering", and I think that is making me more sympathetic to your point, but I have to say I'm more inclined than you are to focus on the success than the mere attempt (and I also want to say: why don't those tinkerers join we Rolemaster players? - it's a great game that could benefit from a bigger community, and it is a more robust platform from which to tinker, IMO, than is 3E!).

I also think you're being a little uncharitable in the Half-Orc and Druid remarks. Half-Orcs, OoTS to one side, really are a little unpleasant in notion. And Druids (what with their shapechange and summoning) really are hard to get right, as 3E demonstrated over many years of trying.


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## pemerton (Jun 12, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:
			
		

> No offense, sinecure, but I have really problem trying to get what you're doing with your game and what your preferences are, and how they relate to the rest of the role-playing world...
> 
> 
> Maybe my message board poster understanding muscles are sore, but does _anyone_ f4nboi, hat3r, fence sitter or hong really get what sinecure expects from a role playing game? And furthermore, does anyone share similar preferences?
> ...



It's always hard to work these things out from messageboard posts, but I do get a sense of what Sinecure is looking for.

S/he doesn't like RM or RQ - two classic, mechanics-heavy simulationist systems.

S/he hasn't heard of HeroWars or The Dying Eath - two more-or-less contemporary, mechanics-heavy narrativist systems (both Robin Laws designed, the former with Greg Stafford also).

S/he equates an interest in combat mechanics with roleplaying shallowness, and he thinks that 2nd ed AD&D supports non-combat scenarios in part _because_ the game lacks non-combat skill mechanics.

S/he thinks that the game works best when the players don't have to interact with the mechanics at all (which are simply there to facilitate the GM's narration of a consistent world).

And s/he thinks that Tomb of Horrors is a great module.

From all this, I get a picture of Sinecure as a classic AD&D player. The purpose of play is (roughly) operational success in the adventure ("beating the module"). Action resolution is handled primarily by direct player-GM negotiation: players, speaking as their PCs, say "I do X", and the GM works out, based on the current state of the gameworld as narrated by him or her, whether or not X is likely to succeed. In this playstyle, "good play" does not mean mechanical mastery (there are virtually no mechanics to master, after all) but rather a good ability to grasp the GM's narrated gameworld, and to come up with ingame solutions to the operational challenges posed by the gameworld.

Some classic AD&D modules that are good for this sort of play are Expdeition to the Barrier Peaks, White Plume Mountain and Ghost Tower of Inverness. They suffer quite a bit from inane plot lines, however. Modules that are really intended to support the same approach to play, I think, but that do have more of a plot line include the Desert of Desolation series. (As far as classic D&D modules are concerned, I feel that Dragonlance really marks a turning point in the sort of play that modules are intended to support.)

Other ENworlders who play the game in a similar fashion, as best as I can tell from their posts and their online musings, include Philotomy Jurament (OD&D), Celebrim (I think he plays 3E in something like this way), Reynard, HowandWhy99 (who has expressly advocated the notion that in a good RPG the players should not need to know the rules in order to play, because they can just rely on the GM's narration of the gameworld), Robert Fisher (he plays Moldvay/Cook), Lanefan and (I suspect) Raven Crowking.

If I wanted to classify this style using Forge terminology, I'd say it's gamism with a very strong simulationist chassis supporting it. The gamism is not focused on a win at the encounter level, but at the adventure or even campaign level (hence the emphasis on "operational" rather than "tactical" play). The simulationism is purist-for-system, but the "system" is not really a game mechanical system (of the RM or RQ sort) but rather the presupposed constraints upon the GM's narration, which are delivered by a combination of (sparse) game mechanics and the inner logic of the gameworld.

The main action-resolution mechanic outside combat is very loosely-structured drama (ie the players and GM talk to one another) with the very occasional introduction of fortune (which, when used, is fortune at the end, not fortune in the middle). Even within combat drama is an important form of action resolution (eg what does it do to the Orc warrior when I start to gnaw on his skull? there is no dice roll to give the answer).

The most common problem with such play, in my experience, arises from the absence of any mediation or buffering by action resolution mechanics. This means that if the GM decides that what the players want their PCs to do can't work, the players have no recourse to the game rules to help them out. If they can't grasp the inner logic of the gameworld, they are in trouble. Indeed, this playstyle can easily fall victim to adversarial GMing.

Sinecure, I hope I haven't slandered you with the above characterisation. It is my best effort to make sense of your posts and thus to answer Mustrum Ridcully's question.


----------



## hong (Jun 12, 2008)

pemerton said:
			
		

> If I wanted to classify this style using Forge terminology, I'd say it's gamism with a very strong simulationist chassis supporting it. The gamism is not focused on a win at the encounter level, but at the adventure or even campaign level (hence the emphasis on "operational" rather than "tactical" play). The simulationism is purist-for-system, but the "system" is not really a game mechanical system (of the RM or RQ sort) but rather the presupposed constraints upon the GM's narration, which are delivered by a combination of (sparse) game mechanics and the inner logic of the gameworld.




Apropos of nothing, you had a great post, except for the bit where you started delving into Forgeisms.

Really, you can't see how using words like gamism, narrativism and simulationism obscure more than they illuminate? Because, apparently, depending on the circumstances:

- Gamists like systems that are heavy on crunch, or light on crunch

- Simulationists like a game that emphasises a living, breathing world, or one that just dives into the action

- Similarly, simulationists like a game that is heavy on crunch, or light on crunch

- Narrativists like games that have the players making the story as they go along, or has the DM doing it all

Now, maybe you could say that you provided detailed critiques and rationales justifying why the circumstances in question produce these results; therefore, the GNS schema has succeeded in making you think about games. However, many people manage to think about games without using GNS. Similarly the detailed critiques can stand by themselves; while a classification scheme that gives rise to such outcomes can hardly be said to be useful.


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## Storm Raven (Jun 12, 2008)

pemerton said:
			
		

> I also think you're being a little uncharitable in the Half-Orc and Druid remarks. Half-Orcs, OoTS to one side, really are a little unpleasant in notion. And Druids (what with their shapechange and summoning) really are hard to get right, as 3E demonstrated over many years of trying.




I don't find this a particularly strong criticism of 3e - not all half-orcs are necessarily "unpleasant in notion". Yes, the classic version has them as the product of rape, but that's not the only plausible back story. I'll just say that there are a lot of people in the real world who are into a wide variety of very odd kinky things, and lusting after an orc would pale in comparison.

Also, why should something be excluded even if it is "unpleasant in notion". Does that automatically discount something as interesting or worthwhile to include?

I also have never found druids to be particularly problematic. I never seemed to have the problems others seemed to have with shapechange crop up, and summoning was never a problem (actually, I found summoning to be a very fun element of the class).


----------



## I'm A Banana (Jun 12, 2008)

> I'm getting more of a feel for what you mean by "tinkering", and I think that is making me more sympathetic to your point, but I have to say I'm more inclined than you are to focus on the success than the mere attempt (and I also want to say: why don't those tinkerers join we Rolemaster players? - it's a great game that could benefit from a bigger community, and it is a more robust platform from which to tinker, IMO, than is 3E!).




Well, mostly I was only concerned with what they WANTED to do, not what they accomplished. I'm sure 4e has some unintended consequences of its own design scheme (the hassle of tracking conditions comes to mind) just as 3e did (what with the Jenga Tower of rules). 

As for why they're not Rolemaster players...well, when a game dominates like D&D does, sometimes you don't get a lot of diversity.

I mean, a while back, a poll was run here that basically showed that people were more interested in the D&D brand than in what 4e offered mechanically. I remember that it surprised me, since ENWorld is pretty well-informed, and I would expect them to be less about the D&D name than they are about the game, but it turns out....the D&D name is very, very strong.



> I also think you're being a little uncharitable in the Half-Orc and Druid remarks. Half-Orcs, OoTS to one side, really are a little unpleasant in notion. And Druids (what with their shapechange and summoning) really are hard to get right, as 3E demonstrated over many years of trying.




Well "CN Half Orc Druid" is a cipher for "Anything 3e did that 4e chose not to do." There are good reasons 4e doesn't choose to do it, but there were good reasons 3e DID choose to do it, and, one could argue, there are many ways to fix most of the problems without overhauling the edition to such a drastic extent (Pathfinder is seeming to argue that very thing!). 

Certainly, however, there are good reasons that 4e made the choices they did. These reasons might just not be good enough for people who enjoyed whatever they did about 3e that 4e is abandoning at launch.


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## pemerton (Jun 12, 2008)

hong said:
			
		

> Apropos of nothing, you had a great post, except for the bit where you started delving into Forgeisms.
> 
> Really, you can't see how using words like gamism, narrativism and simulationism obscure more than they illuminate? Because, apparently, depending on the circumstances:
> 
> ...



A quibble, which I think you could reasonably take as proving your point: "narrativists" who like the GM to tell the story are (in Forge terms) a species of High Concept Simulationist.

A limited defence: I readily concede that Forgist terminology doesn't capture all the useful distinctions. But it does capture some of them. In your post you use "crunch-heavy" and "crunch-light" as if that distinction is unproblematic, but it's also ambiguous (is 4e cruch light - because it has easy statblocks and very streamlined mechanics compared to 3E or AD&D - or is it crunch heavy, because it has 400+ pages of power descriptions that are needed to make it go?).

Putting the real Sinecure to one side and focusing on the Forgist labels: they predict that s/he might enjoy Tunnels and Trolls or Palladium (gamist, probably easily drifted to the preferred non-mechanical form of simulationism), would probably not enjoy Chivalry and Sorcery (too close to RM/RQ), would probably not enjoy Prince Valiant even though it's quite simple in its mechanics from what I understand.

Maybe these things could be worked out from first principles without the aid of Forge labels - but they do help me to think about what is going on, even if they're not perfect.


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## Steely Dan (Jun 12, 2008)

Storm Raven said:
			
		

> I don't find this a particularly strong criticism of 3e - not all half-orcs are necessarily "unpleasant in notion".




Yeah, the last half-orc in my current Planescape campaign, was born of a human father and orc mother who were forbidden lovers.


"Meet me behind the smithy for a snog..."


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jun 12, 2008)

2Pemerton:
Assuming your characterization was correct, it was a great help - except for the Forgismn parts. I usually consider myself more of a gamist, but this kind of "gamismn" ("Game the DM"? "Beat the Module"?) is not to my liking. 

No surprise that 4E looks fine to me then...


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## ProfessorCirno (Jun 12, 2008)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but 4e has evil necromancers making horrible sacrifices of living people to the evil gods.

What, again, makes half orcs so "icky?"

I don't want this to degenerate into an argument of ethics, but, well, the world is an ugly place.  Hell, isn't the setting supposed to be "Points of light in a land of darkness?"  It's not "Points of wacky shenanigans in a land of sunshine and mutual respect."

Edit: On "beat the module," that doesn't require combat.  Take the example of Tomb of Horrors.  If you're fighting a lot of enemies in Tomb of Horrors, something's not right.


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## pemerton (Jun 12, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:
			
		

> Assuming your characterization was correct, it was a great help - except for the Forgismn parts.



Forgeisms - the red-headed stepchildren of Enworld!

But thanks - and to Hong too - I'm glad you liked the post.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jun 12, 2008)

pemerton said:
			
		

> Forgeisms - the red-headed stepchildren of Enworld!
> 
> But thanks - and to Hong too - I'm glad you liked the post.



I am still not sure if the Forgeismns are "good" or not. Sometimes they seemed to clear issues, in other cases, they just confuse me. I guess they still need some work.


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## pemerton (Jun 12, 2008)

ProfessorCirno said:
			
		

> Correct me if I'm wrong, but 4e has evil necromancers making horrible sacrifices of living people to the evil gods.
> 
> What, again, makes half orcs so "icky?"



Well, some Half-Orcs are like Steely Dan's - the product of illicit love - and I've got nothing against that for a fantasy RPG (Half-Elves can easily be done the same way, as per Tolkien).

But where the implied backstory is rape it has (at least to me, but not only to me) an unpleasantness that is different from that of human sacrifice. This is probably for a couple of reasons: rape is a real crime in the present day, whereas human sacrifice typically is not; rape in the game raises issues of the relationship between violence and sexuality which many gaming table would prefer not to engage in (sexuality on its own can be pretty hard to handle sensibly at the gaming table).



			
				ProfessorCirno said:
			
		

> I don't want this to degenerate into an argument of ethics, but, well, the world is an ugly place.  Hell, isn't the setting supposed to be "Points of light in a land of darkness?"  It's not "Points of wacky shenanigans in a land of sunshine and mutual respect."



Sure, the world's an ugly place. But I only want some of that in my game. And I don't think that D&D, played according to the rules as written - with its shining knights, alignments, unproblematic deployment of "just war" justifications for what might otherwise look like routine murder - is the game to really explore the issue. (I'm not saying we have to go all the way to "I Kill Puppies for Satan" to make it a legitimate topic for roleplaying - just that I don't think D&D is the game for it.)



			
				ProfessorCirno said:
			
		

> On "beat the module," that doesn't require combat.



I don't think anyone suggested that it does. Sinecure didn't. And I didn't. And I don't think Mustrum Ridcully did. So as far as that is concerned, we're all on the same page.


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## Plane Sailing (Jun 12, 2008)

sinecure said:
			
		

> Here's a list of some of the worst things about the new edition.  I thought I'd put together a list for anyone too blind to see through the shiny wrapping.




Have you forgotten the ENworld rules? No insulting other board members.

That means that implying that anyone who doesn't share your views is "too blind to see through the shiny wrapping", aka stoopid, is not on.

Change your ways or you'll be taking a short holiday from the boards.


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## Majoru Oakheart (Jun 12, 2008)

ProfessorCirno said:
			
		

> Correct me if I'm wrong, but 4e has evil necromancers making horrible sacrifices of living people to the evil gods.



I believe the idea is that these people are the "bad guys".  Bad stuff is allowed to happen, but it is only allowed to happen to NPCs by NPCs.  The players are supposed to be the heroes saving people from the bad things in the world.



			
				ProfessorCirno said:
			
		

> What, again, makes half orcs so "icky?"



I believe the idea is that Orcs are horrible creatures, brought up in an evil society and pretty much born with evil instincts.  They attack villages, kill and rape innocent people, and are violent and chaotic.  They don't get along peacefully with people and therefore the chance of them having a loving relationship that created a half-orc is low in the way that most people think of them.

So, the idea is that you don't want your game to HAVE to go there.  You can run an entire family friendly game where the PCs never encounter anything unsavory that they don't have the chance to stop.  I think they don't want the DM to have to say "Yeah, Orcs went raping and pillaging and that's where you came from.  You have the blood of an evil beast inside of you."

I know this will come back to tieflings and how they are "evil" as well.  However, their story is so far removed from the PCs that it becomes just a background story:  Your ancestors, 1000 years ago made a deal with demons.  You have some demonic power, but you aren't a demon or evil.  I think you'll find more people are willing to be that character than the one that says "Your father was an evil monster who used to kill people for fun.  He raped your mother and you were the result.  People hate you for what you represent and the fact that you might be evil just because of your blood."



			
				ProfessorCirno said:
			
		

> I don't want this to degenerate into an argument of ethics, but, well, the world is an ugly place.  Hell, isn't the setting supposed to be "Points of light in a land of darkness?"  It's not "Points of wacky shenanigans in a land of sunshine and mutual respect.



The idea is that the players are supposed to represent those points of light, trying to bring light to the darkness.  You deal with darkness, you defeat darkness, but you aren't darkness yourself.


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## I'm A Banana (Jun 12, 2008)

> What, again, makes half orcs so "icky?"




Implied Rape.

Hope I'm not violating the Grandma Rule, but there it is. Orcs are the classic "raiding savages" who come out of the wilderness and burn your town to the ground and stack skulls outside of your village like the Huns. A strong population of half-orcs suggests that often, rape is part of that conquest.  Often enough to leave offspring that have a strong population in the implied setting, anyway. 

Now, take a look at, say, the Yeenoghu entry. A lot of violence, a lot of filth...even some light cannibalism (though gnolls eating humans might not be as "bad" as gnolls eating gnolls or humans eating humans). But it doesn't really combine with sex anywhere. 

You could chalk that up to the classic American paradox: we're great with blood and guts, but private parts will always make us squeamish. This is especially so with D&D, which is kind of targeted at high-school age folks, and kind of targeted at boys. 

And you could probably make a case that half-orcs weren't very popular anyway (being a slightly sub-optimal choice in most cases) so cutting them isn't going to alienate a lot of people, while it will avoid a very "icky" issue.

Of course, there are counterpoints. That not every half-orc needs to come from rape (or even most of them), that if there are half-elves, then human barbarians can be the creatures invading the forests making it slightly MORE disturbing, that it is kind of satisfying from a storytelling standpoint to be a half-breed bastard-child, that both half-orcs and half-elves existing says something interesting in the implied setting about humans, elves, and orcs....

WotC just thought the "icky" factor outweighed all of those. And, really, I can't blame them much for that.

Not that people don't have very good reasons to miss their Krusks and Imishes.



			
				MO said:
			
		

> The idea is that the players are supposed to represent those points of light, trying to bring light to the darkness. You deal with darkness, you defeat darkness, but you aren't darkness yourself.




.....just to make a counterpoint?

Tieflings. Warlocks. Evil paladins. Shadar-Kai.

"Dark Heroes" are definately in for 4e.


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## TheWinslow (Jun 12, 2008)

hong said:
			
		

> Peter Seebach says it better than me:
> 
> 4E and the Wii




Apparently 'd0med' means easier. Not all of us equate complexity with fun, and I think that article unfairly belittles those that would enjoy a more streamlined system. We are 'retards' and the gaming industry doesn't see it that way either.


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 12, 2008)

pemerton said:
			
		

> From all this, I get a picture of Sinecure as a classic AD&D player.



Agreed, I had Sinecure pegged as a Gygaxian gamist. Otoh he's also praised 2e for its wealth of rules, and criticised systems with a consistent resolution mechanic, deriding them as being like TWERPS. He seems to like subsystems.

On the Gygaxian gamism bit, simulation seems to be important but I think it's just to provide the consistent framework which any stripe of gamist must have. After all the world must make sense, it must be consistent, in the same way that the rules of chess must be consistent. In the same way that a 3e/4e battlegrid gamist needs the combat rules to be consistent if he is to use his knowledge to help him win.

So 1e AD&D looks like a world sim (or at least a dungeon and a miniscule part of a world) but it isn't really. It's a chess board.


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## sinecure (Jun 12, 2008)

pemerton said:
			
		

> Sinecure, I hope I haven't slandered you with the above characterisation. It is my best effort to make sense of your posts and thus to answer Mustrum Ridcully's question.



Just wanted to pop in and say yeah, that is pretty much me and my group as I understand it.  No offense taken. 

I've pretty much stopped coming here as there's a moratorium on badmouthing the new edition and I get that.  

As to why 2E works is because it requires a DM.  And the potential faults you listed with it are pretty much only there when you got a sucky DM.  If they are mean or unfair, they're not fit to be in the DM's chair.  It's a place of honor, right? 

The other problem is one of communication, but that is learned through time.  It's not like you leave your players hanging if they don't understand something you've been trying to make clear.  Not everything is smoke and mirrors.  

And I think it's _easier_ to understand the world when it's more like our own.  We all share a pretty big chunk of common knowledge about how the world works, so why not use that?  The whole part of "getting it" is the same as the exploration half of the game the Forgies talk about.  It's part of the game, why get rid of it?  Behaving like you're an elf is more fun in a world that knows you're an elf.

And yes, I know roleplaying isn't for everyone.  But combat system isn't a substitution.  Or an either/or proposition.  There's a good one in 2E.



			
				Doug McCrae said:
			
		

> Agreed, I had Sinecure pegged as a Gygaxian gamist. Otoh he's also praised 2e for its wealth of rules, and criticised systems with a consistent resolution mechanic, deriding them as being like TWERPS. He seems to like subsystems.
> 
> On the Gygaxian gamism bit, simulation seems to be important but I think it's just to provide the consistent framework which any stripe of gamist must have. After all the world must make sense, it must be consistent, in the same way that the rules of chess must be consistent. In the same way that a 3e/4e battlegrid gamist needs the combat rules to be consistent if he is to use his knowledge to help him win.
> 
> So 1e AD&D looks like a world sim (or at least a dungeon and a miniscule part of a world) but it isn't really. It's a chess board.



Subsystems are there to help you make a believable world.  Like I said earlier, not everything on earth relates on a direct 1-20 relationship.  It's boring.  At least they kept the damage rolls for you guys.  Think how dull a flat #'d damage score would be for weapons.

Yeah, the simulation of the world is a battlegrid thing just makes sense.    When you "go have fun stormin' the castle", do you just kick in the door and expect everything to be honky dory?  It takes some actual skill to figure out how to beat it.  If you could just go in the front door and be assured you won't die, then the castle guard is pretty dumb.  And I'd argue so was the author of the adventure.  

Can you see how slicing things up into perfectly proportioned battles gets dull pretty quick?  Especially when there's little to nothing else going on in that castle?  The whole game depends upon varying tactics to hold the players attention, so they don't notice nothing else is really that interesting.  That nothing is going on for the DM to actually PLAY.  They only run combat tactics.  That's how KotS looks to me.  Like no one will think twice about actually running headlong into the front door and slaughtering every evil monster to a man.  No one left standing. How many 4E gaming groups will win the module that way?  I disagree these are multiple playstyle rules.


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## Branduil (Jun 13, 2008)

hong said:
			
		

> Peter Seebach says it better than me:
> 
> 4E and the Wii



The funny thing is this exact thought occurred to me before I found this thread.



			
				BryonD said:
			
		

> Quick someone silence him, the truth is leaking out.
> 
> FWIW, I think he is on exactly the right track.  As I've predicted before, people will pick up this simple game and run with it.  *And many of them will then move on to the next fad in a matter of months.  And many of the ones who stay will be less inclined to buy more books because the simple is better approach will not fit with the more and more add-ons approach.*  Does that mean no one will play?  Hell no.  But give it time.
> 
> For the first time ever, a new version of D&D is not on the the cutting edge of "richly detailed".  2E was there at first.  But late in 2E it was overtaken by other games that did more and better, and the only thing had going for it was the name.  And it was slowly but steadily dying.  The new and shiny doesn't last long and and even the new players who really like it will start wondering just what this "role playing" thing can really offer once you get past the entry level.




This is actually the same theory a lot of people had when the Wii met its initial success. They're not looking quite like the nostradamuses they thought they were nowadays.


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## Fenes (Jun 13, 2008)

Complex and complicated does not mean the same. You can have a very complex game with simple rules - like chess.


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## Steely Dan (Jun 13, 2008)

Fenes said:
			
		

> Complex and complicated does not mean the same. You can have a very complex game with simple rules - like chess.




I call that elegance of design, which 4th Ed has, IMO.

For the first time in 21 years, playing every edition of this game, this is the first time I have read a new edition and not had a dozen questions about cryptically worded mechanics/spells/feats or what have you.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jun 13, 2008)

sinecure said:
			
		

> Just wanted to pop in and say yeah, that is pretty much me and my group as I understand it.  No offense taken.
> 
> I've pretty much stopped coming here as there's a moratorium on badmouthing the new edition and I get that.
> 
> ...



I don't know if it was just pemertons post, or your reaction to it, but I somehow "get" your posts a lot better now! I begin to understand your play style and what you prefer from a game now. I can't say I share everything, but that's about to be expected. 

But anyway, a hooray for "meta-talk". 

So, back to the real topic: 
Reading your post reminded me of an older, several pages long discussion pemerton, Raven Crowkring, I and a few others (sorry for forgetting your screen names, guys  ) on the shift to "per encounter" balance and what it meant to the game. 

3E began, and 4E might complete the shift from "operational" play (long-term resource management, strategic planning) to "encounter-based" play (in-encounter resource management, tactical planning). Your comments on "beating a module" and "kicking the door in" might actually be an example of this. 

With the Vancian/Daily resource scheme of AD&D and 3E, operational planning was very important. It wasn't enough to use good tactisc, you needed forward planning on how to approach a given situation. The situation was not a single combat, but the entire scenario - the castle to be stormed, the cult to be stopped, or whatever.

3E kept this, but also introduced a lot more "per encounter" tactics. The inter-combat action resolution system got a lot more complex, and it became more important to maintain. The 15 minute adventuring day is probably the "worst-case" scenario - if the scenario allows a lot of rest, operational planning is greatly simplified (we rest if we need to), and tactical thinking becomes the most important (we fight extremely dangerous foes and have to use the available resources with maximum effect in this encounter, or we won't see another one).

4E is moving even further toward the "per encounter" scheme. Strategic planning is reduced, but tactical planning is enforced. All resources available in every given encounter must be used with care and with best teamwork, or there won't be another one. Strategic planning is relegated to the question "Is this the encounter I need to put out some dailies?"

The "intellectual" complexity didn't really change, but it shifted from strategic to tactical planning. As a consequence, different play styles are better supported by different editions. 

In AD&D, "storming" the castle might have meant to find the best entrance, coming up with a tactic to not alert the guards, or take them out quickly by creating a situation where they can be put down easily (attacking at night, waiting for shift changes). 
In 4E, storming the castle might look similar, but it would also be very viable to just run up to the entrance and to fight effectively in every encounter. (There are still some risks - if you alert too many guards, you still end up with an over-powering encounter leading to the dreaded TPK, but your changes are probably still better as in a game with DM fiat. And, more importantly maybe, this approach would probably be fun, because it's actually not mindless hack & slash - you have to use your available encounter resources wisely, after all... 
One could also say that the AD&D approach meant that the game design assured that people interested in a "fun" experience would always go the planning route, since the other was just boring (possibly also deadly, but possibly not). And one could probably also say that the planning-stuff sounds a little more like role-playing then the combat tactics stuff. 

Personally, (but I am a f4nboy, I have to say this) I think both are just different kinds of roleplaying. 

Or they can be none at all. 
If my Int 8 Half-Orc Barbarian comes up with a good attack plan, is that good role-playing? If my Lawful Good Knight is constantly moving into flanking position and helping the Rogue to get his sneak attacks off, is that good role-playing? Or is both just playing the game?

(The interesting question might be: Is it true that people that prefer the "operational play" won't find "tactical play" fun, and vice versa, or is it just that in the times where operation play was standard, tactical play was less important or complex, or vice versa?)


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## IanB (Jun 14, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> and kind of targeted at boys.




I think this is changing and is a big part of why the half-orc got the boot - and I'm all for it. Nearly every group I've played with since about '96 or so has included one or more women and there has been fairly universal eye-rolling or worse about the sexism that has been inherent (if not necessarily always prominent, thankfully) in the game from the beginning.


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## I'm A Banana (Jun 14, 2008)

> I think this is changing and is a big part of why the half-orc got the boot - and I'm all for it. Nearly every group I've played with since about '96 or so has included one or more women and there has been fairly universal eye-rolling or worse about the sexism that has been inherent (if not necessarily always prominent, thankfully) in the game from the beginning.




In my experience, it was often parents (of either gender) who were uncomfortable with orcs producing half-orcs, and never the players (f either gender).

I mean, D&D, in part, draws its inspirations from history, and even in fantasy there's a lot of good ol' fashioned warfare (meaning: kill the men, rape the women, enslave the children), at least amongst the evil or barbaric peoples (of which orcs are often considered both). Every woman I've ever played with has been cool with the half-orcs. In fact, the only half-orcs I've ever seen played were played by women. So I'm not sure that is, really, a gender thing as much as it is an "inappropriate in most peoples' eyes for 13 year olds" thing.

But that's entirely speculation at this point, and WAAAAAAAAAAAY distant from the OP.


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## pemerton (Jun 16, 2008)

Mustrum Ridcully, that was an interesting post. And it brings back fond memories of a thread that was _far more_ than several pages long.


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## Fenes (Jun 16, 2008)

As a side note, my 3.0E campaign usually has one fight per day/game session (if it has any fight at all), so operational play already was not very important. Even less since we use an abstract ressource/wealth system. So, while I am not switching to 4E, it's not as if it would be such a shift for me.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jun 16, 2008)

pemerton said:
			
		

> Mustrum Ridcully, that was an interesting post. And it brings back fond memories of a thread that was _far more_ than several pages long.



It must still be in the archives or the last pages...
And it was waaaaayyyyyy toooooo looooooooong...


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## hong (Jun 16, 2008)

sinecure said:
			
		

> Can you see how slicing things up into perfectly proportioned battles gets dull pretty quick?




No, not really.


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## jensun (Jun 16, 2008)

hong said:
			
		

> No, not really.



Personally I find it helps to think of each encounter as a different scene and go from there.  I dont see myself enfocing the 5 minute rest thing at all.  

New scene, encounter powers refresh.


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## BryonD (Jun 16, 2008)

Branduil said:
			
		

> This is actually the same theory a lot of people had when the Wii met its initial success. They're not looking quite like the nostradamuses they thought they were nowadays.



Well, I think for one thing, this is an example of selective memory.  I don't recall any significant statements of that type from the customer base.  Perhaps from competitors, but that is a vastly different issue.

For another, buying new games for the Wii is very different from buying add-ons to use with the same D&D game.

For a third, you defined the issue down to a level that now anyone can claim that anything anywhere will be a success and anyone who disagrees will be disproven by saying "well, people said the same thing about the wii".  The arguement is decidedly lacking in substance.  

I'd say that still being in the very month of release and seeing a rather significant fraction of buyers express "meh" or lower responses is both not a good sign for long term sustainability and also a sharp break from the Wii model.


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## Mallus (Jun 16, 2008)

BryonD said:
			
		

> I'd say that still being in the very month of release and seeing a rather significant fraction of buyers express "meh" or lower responses is both not a good sign for long term sustainability and also a sharp break from the Wii model.



I _think_ all we've seen so far is preliminary sales data, which is very good, and anecdotal evidence in the form of messageboard chatter, which is insignificant.

As for the Wii model, my anecdotal evidence tells me most Wii buyers stop using theirs after a few weeks, which, again, hasn't had much in the way of correlation with the Wii's success.


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## WizarDru (Jun 16, 2008)

Mallus said:
			
		

> I _think_ all we've seen so far is preliminary sales data, which is very good, and anecdotal evidence in the form of messageboard chatter, which is insignificant.
> 
> As for the Wii model, my anecdotal evidence tells me most Wii buyers stop using theirs after a few weeks, which, again, hasn't had much in the way of correlation with the Wii's success.




Anecdotal evidence, as we know, is just that...anecdotal.  The Wii was supposed to be a fad and is constantly trumpeted as such by its opponents.  We're nearly two years post-release and you still can't always walk into a store and buy one.  The Wii's attachment rate (that is, the number that indicates how many games a console owner purchases after buying the console) has stayed slightly above the PS3 and below the 360...although these numbers increase and even out over time.

The Wii's overall attachment rate is roughly 5.6 games per unit, as opposed to the PS3's 5.  The 360 is averaging roughly 8 (but with a year's head start, that's not as impressive as it sounds).  Over the holidays, the Wii had a very strong season, with an 8.1 attachment rate at Gamestop.  Over the year, however, they dropped significantly.  All these numbers don't include the Wii Fit numbers, but do include SOME of the GTA numbers.

What this works out to is that SOME folks who bought the Wii tend to let is gather dust...while others keep playing it constantly.  Stated another way:  as 03/2008, the Wii had sold 148 million games (with 22 million sellers), the PS3 had sold 71 million games (with 7 million sellers) and the Xbox 360 had sold an unknown amount of games (with 28 million sellers).  The numbers don't reflect the inclusion of Wii Fit, but do include GTA IV in the million-seller categories.

What this tells is that the PS3 is having a hard-go of it.  It's got a low attachment rate AND low console sales compared to it's competitors.  The Wii has a low attachment rate, but with the most consoles sold, that shows that some gamers buy lots of games for it and some buy very few.  The 360 has the highest attach rate, showing it has a loyal fanbase...but only second place in overall sales.

So using the Wii as a model to compare 4e against is not a simple one-to-one comparison, as in many ways their situations are very, very different.


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