Bad Impressions, Fourth Edition
On September 11, 2000, I posted on this site my first impressions of D&D 3rd Edition. Now, 8 years and change later, I thought I would post my impressions of D&D 4th Edition. These are not first impressions, however; these are based on my having played the game for several months now. They may very well incite a riot. Line forms on the right.
Ed. You may also wish to read this article for further thoughts about 4th Edition.
As you will be able to tell shortly, I do not think very highly of this game system. D&D is undoubtedly the world's most popular RPG, but I believe that's true in spite of, and not because of, its core system; further, I believe this has always been the case. Each of 2nd Edition, 3rd Edition and now 4th Edition have fixed things that were "broken" with the previous edition, but in so doing they managed to break other things. In this case, D&D has been made more accessible to gamers who are more familiar with MMOs, but in so doing the system has become less focused on role-playing, and more focused on combat mechanics and "powers."
It is of course possible to role-play quite excellently with this system, but then this has always been the case with any system. You can role-play with a deck of cards, or a Yahztee game, or with a pile of branches and a cardboard box. Skilled role-players will be able to overcome the limitations of any system. However, it is equally true in my opinion that a system can encourage and even improve role-play. I think FATE does this. I think Omni does this. I think Unknown Armies does this. As much as I hate it, I think to a degree Storyteller does this. I do not think that the 4th Edition ruleset does this. I think it encourages monotony and repetition in the same button-mashing way that WOW does.
The core rules do not facilitate or encourage role-playing
I think it was designed to do this, and at that it succeeds. I think it was also designed to be an excellent role-playing game, though, and at this it fails. No matter how much DM advice is offered, the core rules do not facilitate or encourage role-playing for players. These flaws can be overcome and worked around, but if you play RAW (Rules As Written) you are in for a struggle.
I defend my assertions with the following more specific observations based on actual gameplay over the past few months:
- Multiclassing sucks. It's not even worth doing. You can never be a true fighter/wizard, you can only be a fighter who can cast a spell, or a wizard who can pick up a sword. It feels like this system was designed to remove multi-classing, and they added this in at the last minute to toss a bone to the people who really wanted to do it.
- The system is no less complex than it ever was. Every combat round goes something like "I got a 13 plus 5 plus 3 plus 2 plus 1 plus this..." It's nonsense addition. To an extent D&D was always like this, but it seems to happen moreso now than ever. And yes, as with anything, a skilled group of role-players can have their character sheets in perfect order with everything added up beforehand, but in actual practice that never happens; something always gets missed, and there's always another +1 floating out there that you forgot to add in. This focus on addition leads to a subtraction of role-playing.
- Conditions are so numerous it is hard to keep track of them all, especially since so many powers cause 1-round long conditions and "save ends" conditions on mobs. We have ceramic tiles we stack beneath miniatures to represent conditions, and it gets ridiculous when there are three or four conditions on one guy. If we didn't use the tiles? There'd be no way to reliably remember which of the 15 miniatures on the board had which conditions applied to them that particular round. It's a constant juggling act.
The system is so balanced that it has lost some of the thrill
- The system is so balanced that it has lost some of the thrill. Every encounter, if balanced perfectly, takes an hour. Every. Single. Time. Further, because of the way the numbers are balanced, there's very little risk of death, which is a problem in a game where combat and grinding through dungeons is the focus. Sure, sure, I believe that it's possible for a DM to kill some characters now and again, and sure, they can occasionally get a string of bad rolls and die, but most of the time, 99% of the time, you'll get down to about half your hit points and 25% of your powers and then the last guy will fall. There's no sense of risk. If you play the cards in the right order, you always narrowly succeed any balanced encounter. In previous editions, there were flaws and imbalances all over the place, but that unpredictability - while occasionally unfair - made things more fun.
- Stupid arbitrary nonsensical MMO style restrictions for the sake of perfect balance. For example, armor. Paladins can wear plate but fighters and clerics can't. Um. Sure. OK. Whatever. Or powers. There was always a reason wizards ran out of spells - they forgot them. But let's take rogues - the rogue can use Deft Strike and Piercing Strike at will, but after the rogue does one Trick Strike, he can't do another one that day. Why? Does the rogue forget how to stab? Does he get too tired to stab? Maybe he's bored with that one? The ranger can only do Split the Tree once per day. Does she suddenly forget how to shoot two arrows at once? Why? No reason. That's just the way the system works. Daily powers "take a significant toll on your physical and mental processes." Right. "You're reaching into the deepest reserves of energy to pull off an amazing exploit." Nonsense. It's silly reasoning to support an attempt to perfectly balance every class the same way.
- False choice. You do the same thing in the same sequence in almost every combat. 1. Use encounter powers. 2. Use at will powers unless you are in trouble, then 3. Use daily powers. There's no reason not to do them in this order. Your encounter powers might as well get used right away to thin the ranks, and the daily powers need to get saved for when you need them. Worse, many powers have nearly the exact same effects even though they have different names and descriptions, providing a false impression of more variety.
Put tab A into slot B because it fits
Take my paladin. In any given round, my paladin can use the following at will: Holy Strike, which has a +7 to hit and does 1d10+4 radiant damage plus my wisdom modifier (+2) in additional damage, or I can do Enfeebling Strike, which has a +9 to hit and does 1d10+6 damage and gives the creature -2 to attack. Are there differences? Yes. One does radiant damage (extra damage to some creatures), and one has a slightly better chance to hit (+2) and debuffs the enemy for -2 for a round. Are these significant differences? No. In most combats, both of my at-will powers have pretty much the same practical effect. I do the same exact damage (1d10+6 vs 1d10+4+2) and I have a +2 better to hit with Enfeebling Strike. Fighting undead? Use Holy Strike. Not fighting undead? Use Enfeebling Strike, over and over and over. This is not choice or variety; it's a game mechanic. Put tab A into slot B because it fits; doing anything else is mathematically stupid.
Counter-argument: "You took the wrong powers." Rebuttal: "If there are wrong power combinations to choose, then the system is broken even worse, and there's even less variety truly offered. If there's only one or two correct builds then don't pretend to give me 100 choices where there are really only a handful."
Counter-argument 2: "There will be better powers offered in future books." Rebuttal: "I won't be buying those books. I wanted a cool game, not a template upon which cool things could be built in the future."
An argument could also be made that the inclusion of these powers for every class makes the game more dynamic by giving every class flashy cool things to do in every round, like the wizard always could. The flaw in the thinking there is the presumption that fighters, rogues, clerics and others never did anything interesting before. When you didn't have specific power cards to call upon, you had to think creatively. The rogue would sneak around for a backstab and set up traps while the fighter swung from the chandelier and the ranger tried to split the rope with a carefully aimed shot. And while the system allows stunting like that, in practice nobody does it because the mathematics for the specific cool powers are more certain. You are subtly encouraged not to think outside of the box because the box is so comfortable and predictable. Connect the dots. Press the hotkeys. Rinse and repeat.
- Related to the above: the death of the basic melee attack. The character sheet has a slot for it, but you never use it. Why use a basic attack when the at-will power has a slightly better to-hit and damage? You never swing a sword at someone; you always do a Super At-Will Strike of some sort.
- Feats are either wholly useless, or only add in situational modifiers. Almost every member of my group is considering taking Improved Initiative at level 6 because there are no other enticing options. I have Raven Queen's Blessing as a paladin which lets me heal someone whenever I drop an enemy to 0 or less. The problem with that? As the tank, I almost never strike the killing blow - it's always the ranger, rogue or warlock doing that since they do way more damage than me. So I have a thematically appropriate feat that I am thinking of swapping out because I have never used it, in fact never been able to use it. Many of the feats add something like +1 to damage for specific types of attacks, but in a game where the strikers can do 30-40 damage in one hit, +1 damage is meaningless.
There is no substantial change; just the appearance of change
- By far, the worst part of the system for me is the treadmill feel of it all - this again has always been present in D&D but feels worse now. You and your group are always fighting things perfectly balanced for your group, so this means that all that changes is the numbers go up at each level. You get a little harder to hit, and the monsters scale to have an equivalently better chance to hit you. You get more hit points, they do a little bit more damage. Etc. If level 1 guy has 15 hit points and level 10 guy has 150 hit points, it's the same exact thing if the level 1 foe does 5 damage per hit and the level 10 foe can do 50 damage in a hit. Your Will save went up? Too bad the monster's chance to overcome that Will save also went up by an equivalent amount. There is no substantial change; just the appearance of change, and a few more encounter powers and daily powers to throw around.
All of the above are no doubt meant to make the game more balanced, accessible and fair, and I will admit that they do just that. They might even make D&D a better game. But they do not make it a better role-playing game. Maybe a board game, maybe a card game, maybe a war game. But not a role-playing game. These features do not encourage role-playing, free-thinking and creativity. They don't stifle it, but they don't help it along either. And to that extent, D&D 4th Edition is not a step forward for RPGs. At best, it's a step to the side, into an adjacent dimension.
All that said, I allow that two things are possible. First, that my group - despite playing Rules As Written - has managed to completely screw up the rules. I find this unlikely. But hey, it's possible. Second, that the game changes significantly when you hit level 6 or 7 or 8 or 10 or 20, and suddenly gets awesome. I find this unlikely as well, but in the event that it is the case, I would argue that this is unacceptable for Wheel of Time reasons. Meaning, people keep telling me that if you can make it through the first few books, the series suddenly gets really good. From where I stand, it's not worth the slog to get to the good stuff, when there's good stuff to be found elsewhere.
I hear good things about Pathfinder. Maybe I'll give that a shot next.
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"I hear good things about Pathfinder. Maybe I'll give that a shot next." Same here. Bought the campaign guide, been looking through the current beta core rules, bought a bunch of the Adventure Paths. Would love to see a followup article on your comments about that.
Aww, I liked "Eye of the World" and "The Great Hunt". ;)
Since 4th ed came out, I've only played enough that my character has gotten to level 2, so all the insight I have is based off of reading the PHB.
Your group needs a warlord. They'll start using basic attacks then. Also, warlords are a neat idea that could only be roleplayed before, but now have rules that actually provide an advantage during combat.
I think I buy the explanation that daily powers require too much from a person to do more than once a day. The hidden catch is that they are that difficult for someone of that level. Yeah, a level 1 ranger can do Split the Tree only once a day, but a level 3 ranger can do Thundertusk Boar Strike every 5 minutes. To an observer, they would probably look the same. Two levels is a significant amount of practice on using powers, so while you still can't use Split the Tree more than once a day, you're doing similar things more often. Also, as you increase in level, you are switching out the powers to be bigger and better.
All that said, I do feel like there isn't a whole lot of choice once you actually have a character. I blame the provided "builds" for each character class. Nearly all of the powers are geared towards one or the other, so I feel penalized if I take one that's not for the style I chose. Ranger actually has it pretty good since most powers work for both two melee weapons or ranged weapons.
In reaction to this, I've been making characters of "wrong" race/class combinations. Halfling paladins and dragonborn rogues look like they work pretty well, though I haven't actually played one yet.
Ultimately, I think to avoid having our characters all look the same, we're going to have to work harder at roleplaying.
You get a rousing round of applause from me Aeon! I've played the game a few times now and I have the very same criticisms.
I would add that the inclusion of magic items in the Player's book is another step towards homogony of the gaming experience. This feeds the players sense of entitlement to the items listed. I really don't think they should call them magic items -- perhaps just use the word "gear." There is nothing magical about them.
I agree entirely on your comments on magic items, Gil. I never have liked dnds mass market approach to magic items, in either edition.
But I come here to an impasse. There's no doubt that there's a whole slew of problems with just D&D as a whole. I mean, even the basic concept is incredibly flawed. But there are a lot of things I love about D&D that I really can't get anywhere else. Or haven't found yet. First, the advancement. I like that my character gets more powerful over time. I think the curve is a bit steep, but I like the idea. And I have a hard time finding it anywhere else. To me, this ultimately comes down to a question of long-term storytelling or short-term storytelling. Indie games are excellent for the latter, but often provide spectacular failures at the former, in part, I think, because of this lack of advancement. A few games, like Dogs in the Vineyard, provide some ideas in that line, ideas that I like. But, ultimately, D&D does very well with advancement. You feel proud when you go up a level, and you're excited about that cool new thing you'll be able to do. 4e just has too many cool new things. 3.x is just way too complicated and makes everything (particularly DMing) take forever.
So what I'm asking is this - does anyone have a game that keeps the strengths of D&D (doesn't have to be d20) but removes its flaws? Cause if you do, then I'll switch to that, but if you don't, then we're stuck with D&D for this kind of roleplaying. And then that makes all our complaints about it meaningless, because we ultimately still have to play it for lack of another game that so easily facilitates long-term play.
Tzuriel, try the games Scion or GURPS. Scion has three basic power levels, but the differences between them are huge and it takes a LOT of effort to go from one to the next.
GURPS is not level based at all, but allows steady character improvement and is best for long term gaming.
I remember MERPS (Middle Earth Roleplaying System) being a good system, but I don't know if you can still get it.
Can't think of other games right now.
I agree with the generalization that this edition is written for button mashing computer RPGers but view it more like the 3rd of 4 phases from there to RPGs. The second (CRPGS being the first) is D&D minis. This is the third and a real RPG, of which there are a multitude, would be the fourth. View it more as a gateway product rather than a destination.
I feel that 4th edition (and to a lesser extent, the preceding 3 and 3.5 editions) is setting D&D up to move from a table and paper game to an online model. The rulesets have become more stringent and the methods precise and exact-- the way you might expect them to be if they are to be incorporated into a computer game.
After watching what WotC has done with Magic (first screwing up and then racing to amend Magic: Online) and the new move to DDI (D&D Insider), it seems to me that the business models moving forward are significantly more focused on an online format.
I feel that I ought to chime in, though I seem to be reinforcing the current majority opinion; when D&D4 his my FLGS, we--being loyal buyers of things so that the FLGS gets to keep the lights on--picked up copies. Our hard-core online gamer loved it immediately; things made sense to him--none of the messy "story crap" seemed to get in the way (especially the bit with paladins not having to adhere to ANY sort of code of conduct). The rest of us looked at it and said "Wow, it's WoW pen-and-paper."
There's a reason that there are no D&D4 games running at my FLGS.
So, it is what it is, but it is not what I want to play. I'll work with L5R, which splits the continuous/level advancement issue rather neatly (though it is turning in a way I'm not altogether fond of, admittedly), thanks.
I've been DMing a 4th edition game for about a month now, and I've found it to be a really workable, robust system for every type of encounter I've thrown at it. The Skill Challenge mechanics especially have made a difference in the "talkie" encounters. Now, there is a reliable way of representing a charismatic (or knowledgeable or insightful) character that is a mix of free-form and mechanical systems. It has always been tough to run a character whose 'mental' stats were significantly different from the player's, but I think this fixes it. My players seem more interested in those encounters now, because they feel like they have a chance of succeeding using the skills they have chosen to train, instead of trying to guess what the DM wants them to say or do to accomplish the task.
As for criticisms of boring, cookie cutter combat encounters - I think it depends a lot on the setting. The DMG does a nice job of encouraging terrain features that add some interest to encounters, like open pits to encourage bull-rushing, scattered cover and concealment, and powers that allow for a lot of repositioning on the battlefield. I'm still getting the hang of putting all of those elements into my encounters, but when they work well they really spice things up.
I think D&D4 is a phenomenal combat system, paired with an adequate RP system.
Yeah, Looks like I was right. 4th edition sounds like everything I expected it to be. Dear god I miss the TSR days. I'd love to get my hands on a copy of the very orignal, the one where the books were bound with a staple. When Dwarf was a class option. There were a couple dozen polearms with names like
Guisarme-Guisarme-Glaive that nobody used because polearms are for sissies, no morons questioned the existance of Ring or Splint mail. when your fighter mini was a lead crusader skirmisher and your troll
was a zulu footman several scales higher. MMMM.
The drift toward CRPG and MMORPG style play is ironic in consideration of WotC's poor record with online content, including the "digital something initiative" and "Gleemax" attempts.
"No matter how much DM advice is offered, the core rules do not facilitate or encourage role-playing for players."
Completely agree; although my group is going to stick with 4E until we reach mid-teens (paragon) levels at a minimum. From my perspective, the role playing has not changed much - we just ignore so-called "Skill Challenges" and role play those situations as appropriate. As far as combat is concerned; I think 4E's implementation is the most elegant of all the editions. It's just a shame that the RAW features so little support for immersion and roleplaying. Who knows... maybe WotC is holding back and will release an "Advanced Role Playing" supplement. /wink
Ok just to try and provide counter-point a little bit:
1.) Multi-Classing is something different. Why is that a bad thing? Why is it a bad thing to let the rogue be more unique and himself? 3rd Edition had people hopping all over the place for classes that didn't even make a damn bit of sense. now you have an edition of D&D that says, "play to 30 in one class and enjoy yourself" I fail to see how this "sucks" It's no longer "I'm good at Baseball and Football" Its "I'm a football player who happens to play baseball" The focus has shifted.
2.) You had me sort of nodding till the last part. Subtracts from role-playing? When in the history of games is the combat section the most pivotal "role-playing" part of the game? If you're trying to discuss matters with an NPC mid-combat you're more than likely NOT adding up random modifiers. And if You ARE adding up random modifiers more than likely you aren't concerned about RPing and more about killing foozle.
3.) Sort of agree, I've seen some crazy conditions out there, the only time its crazy is when you have all the marks running around.
4.) I don't know who's running your game, but they apparently don't know how to challenge you. As i've played in MANY fights where the party almost got wiped but succeeded due to some lucky dice rolling and ingenuity on the players parts. That to me is how encounters should go, hard fought and challenging. If your party is cleaning up house on a "standard" balance of monsters, then your GM should react accordingly and bump it up. Hell at least its not like 3e's terrifingly bad CR ratings.
5.) I stopped caring what you had to say here "Stupid arbitrary nonsensical MMO style restrictions for the sake of perfect balance" If this were following any sort of "MMO" stylings the Fighter WOULD have access to plate. Since he's considered a Defender/Tank/whatever. So his defense should be sky high. Clerics not wearing plate makes sense in a priest sort of fashion, not the righteous smiting warrior priest that _should_ have belonged to the Paladin in the first place. So really, they fixed it more than anything... As far as the dailys and their powers go, ::shrug:: its either way out of scope and verisimilitude for some or not at all. None of my players have complained.
6.) Again you may have had an argument until you hit this part "like the wizard always could." Are we talking about 3e D&D here? Where the wizard would run out of spells and magically transform into the "back-up crossbow guy"? As for the rest of it, I'm not sure the system is in any way shape or form suggesting not to think out of the box. That's just a matter of perception i suppose, one i disagree with. All I need to do is point out the Fighter in 3E and the newer Fighter. At level 1 what does a fighter do in 3e? Outside of feats, he sort of just charges things... And thats about it. That's some options you used to have there.
7.) I had built a Warforged fighter based around Charging. Charging is nothing but the basic attack. And it gets _Very_ good when focused on.
8.) The basic PHB feats are about on par as they were before. They only removed the pointless skill feats that no one in their right mind took if they wanted to be useful. While I do agree with the fact that there are far too many "+1" feats out there as I think bonuses should work on even numbers not odd.
9.) "But they do not make it a better role-playing game. " I'm not sure what you really wanted here. There's nothing in the rules anywhere that say "don't ever throw a really hard enemy at the players, or really crappy ones either." on the other end of the spectrum if the game isn't "balanced" in some fashion how is it fun? I mean the role-playing part of the game is up to the player, you yourself even say this early on ". You can role-play with a deck of cards, or a Yahztee game, or with a pile of branches and a cardboard box." So shouldnt the game itself be focused on providing a fun and stable playing environment?
Anyway those are my thoughts. Thanks for reading, if you did.
"3rd Edition had people hopping all over the place for classes..."
at least they had the option, if they wanted to
"...that didn't even make a damn bit of sense"
is entirely subjective and subject to referee discretion (Warshaper, anyone?)
Lack of class flexibility is probably the main reason I'm not buying into 4e. (The £1000 of unused 3.5e material I have sitting on my shelves is mere detail). It's not unknown for characters or NPCs to have 5, 6, 7 classes in my campaign world, and it works just fine. Some people knee-jerk at this because they have some kind of multiclassing hang-up. The thing to remember is that classes are just an abstraction - what matters is the output character and their abilities and characteristics, the number of classes they took to get there is just irrelevant book-keeping as far as roleplay is concerned.
Thanks for replying, Eric. Some re-replies:
1.) Multi-classing now offers far fewer viable options for people to explore the role they want to explore. In my mind that means they have less opportunity to be creative. You can be the shoe or the iron or the dog; you can't be a half-shoe half-dog. To me that's not just different, it's bad. Older editions certainly had classes and races, but they felt more open. Removing the ability to viably multi-class in any way you wanted severely cuts back on the options you have. I think that's bad.
2.) My point is that you spend so much time doing mathematics that - in my experience - you don't have time to sit there and come up with creative role-playing-like maneuvers. Combat should have been streamlined. The d20 system is simple enough that it *could* be a really fast system. But in practice there's so much adding of different +1s that it doesn't move as fast as it wants to. And since you spend more time counting, you spend less time doing other things. I think this is just how the brain works. When you're doing mental math you're not able to do mental creativity too.
5.) What I am trying to say here is that decisions were made on a game balance/systemic level to create more game mechanic balance, even though - in my eyes - many of those decisions fly in the face of game world logic and the traditions laid down over 30 years of RPGs. Fighters suddenly can't wear plate because... someone needed the numbers to balance better.
6.) When you have no "special powers" you have a blank slate to describe your maneuvers. In all my years playing D&D (Basic, AD&D, 2nd Ed, 3rd Ed, 3.5e) I never encountered a situation where the guy playing the fighter would just roll d20s and yawn. The fighters were always very good at coming up with tactics on the fly, precisely because they did NOT have little cards telling them what they could do. In 4e, instead of having a blank slate to work with, you get handed these little power cards that give you 2 things you can do At Will. And since those things have very specific game mechanics attached to them, you're a fool not to just do those two things over and over and over. This balances very well numerically but since you no longer have the blank creative slate to work with, the result is more number crunching and less role playing. In my experience.
9.) The difference is that a deck of cards, a cardboard box, and a Yahtzee game do not call themselves RPGs. A game that sells itself as being an RPG should be an RPG, and encourage and support role-playing. D&D4e to me feels as much an RPG as WOW is, which is to say that the trappings of it are there, but the actual role-playing is generally not.
This is 4e in my mind, and nothing will change my opinion.
This is what 4e should have been...because though it wouldn't have been an RPG, at least it might have been a good game.
Whats this buisness about Fighters not being able to have plate mail? Surely this is some cruel joke.
So... you're saying Talisman is better than HeroQuest?
I challenge you to a duel!
I thought we'd do a Duel of Wits, but since I still don't have a copy of Dogs in the Vineyard, it'll have to be fish-slapping.
LOLOL!!! I had soooo many of the Talisman expansion thingys. Maybe all of them (Talsiman Adventure, Talisman City, Talisman Dungeon, Talisman Timescape, Talisman Cornerstore, Talisman Fishmonger, Talisman Men's Haberdashery) . There was no webernet when I was in to that game, so I have no idea if I had them all. I guess I could look now, but I have this mountain of GURPS books to leaf through....
I think the only reason I liked Talisman more was that it didn't try to be something it wasn't. That was the point of the link comparison. It was a cheesy boardgame with a bunch of cheesy expansions and it did exactly what it said on the tin. HeroQuest on the other hand; Zargon? Are you fisting me or what? ZARGON? Get off the bus and back in line. It really badly wanted to give the illusion that is was *almost* a roleplaying game.
I'm down for fish slapping though. I have a frozen grouper in the freezer.
[looking in the fridge....opening cupboards, avoiding falling cookware]
Crap, all I have is a can of tuna...
I do NOT want to get hit with a Can Of Tuna. You win my friend.
He has to open the can to, um, actually "slap the fish". ;-D
Thanks for the visuals on the box set / board games. Man how I miss my old gaming group.
Well in that case, I want it even less. The only thing I can think of worse than being smashed in the jaw with a can of tuna is being smacked upside the cheek with the contents. What onomatapoeia covers that particular action? (and does a Can Of Tuna trump a Can Of Whoopass? Either way, please don't open either on me)
How about being smacked upside the jaw with a can of tuna, and upon impact of the the tuna hitting your face having the contents splatter your face. I belive a appropriate onomatapoeia would be
wa-KANG-SPlortch.
I have to say, I'm a bit embarrassed that THAT is what I'm adding to discussions in gamegrene...
From the comments of your 3e review:
This is what happens when big business takes over. 3.5 is overwhelming proof of that. I supposed 4E will come out in 2006!
Long live Castles and Crusades!
"[In previous editions of D&D] The fighters were always very good at coming up with tactics on the fly, precisely because they did NOT have little cards telling them what they could do."
And all those tactics mechanically boiled down to "I hit it with my sword". You can still do exactly that in 4E, but now you have additionally options to do mechanically interesting fun things. I swear, it's like pre-4E D&D was a dinner composed of a hamburger on a plate. 4E is the *same* hamburger, but there's also fries, a salad, and a cookie (with a glass of Coke next to the plate, too), and people scream "Now I can't eat a hamburger any more!!!!!". It makes no sense. If you don't like 4E, fine, but don't invent "problems" that don't exist.
Here's my opinion - and I'm sorry if it's a trifle brusque..
"Roleplayers" loved to talk about the virtue of creativity and wonder and similar things in their games. However, they failed utterly to make them accessible to 90% of the population, preferring instead to crow about how much better they were than those people. And 4E is when those chickens finally come home to roost, and the world turns its back on those asses and gets on to being fun for the rest of the world.
Fighters and thieves swinging from chandeliers? That'd be a Climb check, then, with damage and stun if you fail.. if a DM's being like that - as the vast majority were - then of course people will stop being creative. Do you want the DM not to be like that? Then you need to write that as a rule in the book. Otherwise, it's just your group, and no matter how great your group are, compared to the D&D market they are small potatoes.
My comments are based on my experience. My experience has shown me that when you give people free reign, they are more creative, and when you give them two at-will powers, they use the two at-will powers over and over.
"It's just a shame that the RAW features so little support for immersion and roleplaying."
In my experience over the last 30 years, systems that "support and facilitate" roleplaying rarely actually accomplish that goal. Instead they generally just lead to min-maxing and power gaming, not roleplaying. The roleplaying rules I've seen in games ranging from Champions to WoD have no more enabled roleplaying then the basic rules I've seen in convention LARPS or basic D&D. Very simply, roleplaying is completely independent of any rules designed to encourage it.
You can get far more roleplaying out of simply asking these basic questions:
What is your character's basic background?
What are your characters goals
What are your characters likes, dislikes, desires and fears
What are some quirks and mannerisms of your character?
That's all that you really need for roleplaying. Giving bennies or experience or having mechanics for social combat really don't do anything at all to promote roleplaying. the best thing to promote roleplaying is a commitment to characterization and roleplaying on the part of the players and GM.
"Or powers. There was always a reason wizards ran out of spells - they forgot them. But let's take rogues - the rogue can use Deft Strike and Piercing Strike at will, but after the rogue does one Trick Strike, he can't do another one that day. Why? Does the rogue forget how to stab? Does he get too tired to stab? Maybe he's bored with that one? The ranger can only do Split the Tree once per day. Does she suddenly forget how to shoot two arrows at once? Why? No reason. That's just the way the system works."
Just an idea on this for you: it doesn't make sense because that's not the goal. The goal is drama. It is storytelling convention that people pull out the big guns only rarely. Heck, that's actually true in real life as well. People do not always put for 100% possible effort. In an RPG, there's no reason not to: you don't get tired, you just want to win. This models that you save the big effort for the big moment. It saves dramatic attack moves from getting boring and old. Perhaps not realistic in mechanic, but perhaps produces more realistic results in the end. ;)
-"Just an idea on this for you: it doesn't make sense because that's not the goal. The goal is drama. It is storytelling convention that people pull out the big guns only rarely. Heck, that's actually true in real life as well. People do not always put for 100% possible effort. In an RPG, there's no reason not to: you don't get tired, you just want to win. This models that you save the big effort for the big moment. It saves dramatic attack moves from getting boring and old. Perhaps not realistic in mechanic, but perhaps produces more realistic results in the end. ;)"
You're essentially argueing that WoTC get to tell me how many big moments there are in my campaign (at least, on a per day basis). All this defense of 4e smacks of apologist behavior. I'm not claiming any of the people posting here are "fanboys" per se...but wow. Listen to your own arguements. When I read them (and I have no vested interest whatsoever or one way or the other; I don't play d20 games anymore) all I hear is some fans of the system (and more power to you...if you like it use it) apologizing for and making excuses for a game that seems to be straight out wack.
From where I sit, I don't want some damn rulebook telling me which big guns I have, or how many times I get to use them. If they cost points or something, then fine. That would put some choice in my arena. But they don't. They just say "twice a day" or "once per day". Which is lame. Furthermore...if I need a bloody *card* telling me what I can do, then I shouldn't be gaming; I should be reading a book. Or watching a good film (not a movie, a film). Or talking with people about things anywhere that people might be gathered. Something, dammit ANYTHING to get some creativity flowing through my starved brain.
-"And all those tactics mechanically boiled down to "I hit it with my sword". You can still do exactly that in 4E, but now you have additionally options to do mechanically interesting fun things. I swear, it's like pre-4E D&D was a dinner composed of a hamburger on a plate. 4E is the *same* hamburger, but there's also fries, a salad, and a cookie (with a glass of Coke next to the plate, too), and people scream "Now I can't eat a hamburger any more!!!!!". It makes no sense. If you don't like 4E, fine, but don't invent "problems" that don't exist."
Actually, it seems to be to me that it's more like; "I used to be able to have half a taco and the bun from this burger. Or better yet, as long as I have all this ground beef and bread around, I think tonight I'll have sloppy joes or some kind of casserole. Scratch that! I'm going to wear the lettuce on my head, pin the tomato to my left breast, strap the bun halves on my hands, smear the cheese on my pants and stick the patty in my shorts and run around claiming to be the Sherrif of Burgertown." Now it's this; "hmm...WoTC made me a burger and gave me yam fries and a coke. I hate yam fries and coke. I wanted a salad and a coffee. Good thing I only have to eat this once a day". Or, to put it more simply, it seems like the diffence between real home cooked food where the people in the kitchen can collaborate on something together and get out of it exactly what they wanted (most of the time) as opposed to buying ready prepared meals and sticking them in the microwave.
-"Roleplayers" loved to talk about the virtue of creativity and wonder and similar things in their games. However, they failed utterly to make them accessible to 90% of the population, preferring instead to crow about how much better they were than those people. And 4E is when those chickens finally come home to roost, and the world turns its back on those asses and gets on to being fun for the rest of the world.
Fighters and thieves swinging from chandeliers? That'd be a Climb check, then, with damage and stun if you fail.. if a DM's being like that - as the vast majority were - then of course people will stop being creative. Do you want the DM not to be like that? Then you need to write that as a rule in the book. Otherwise, it's just your group, and no matter how great your group are, compared to the D&D market they are small potatoes."
And this...well this just made me laugh. You've made everyone that doesn't like this systems point for them. Kudos. I don't remember anyone crowing about how much better than someone else they were, but I do remember making someone make a Jump then a Climb roll when they leapt for a chandelier. And when they failed, I do remember them taking damage. And when I was "being like that", I remember the player of that character very clearly thinking it was absolutely the coolest failed roll he had ever made.
If we need a rule in a book telling us *not* to be realistic in some situations to give player choice consequence that carries over to the character...well tie me up and beat me with a sock full of pennies. This thing called "D&D" is dead. And you my friend...well I may not recall crowing about being better than you, but I do recall not wanting people like you in my group. If the 10% of people that played D&D in the past are asses, and the 90% that didn't are now gamers...I was right that day I walked in to the game store and saw all these people playing some kind of Magic card game and thought to myself "damn...it's all downhill from here". it just took longer than I thought it would.
Enjoy your pseudoRPG, 4e fans. Whether you realize it or not...you all just failed your saving throws.
"My comments are based on my experience. My experience has shown me that when you give people free reign, they are more creative, and when you give them two at-will powers, they use the two at-will powers over and over."
Previous editions had one at-will power: "I hit it". 4E gives you three, then. Not only that but the DMG encourages creative actions from the player. I've said repeatedly over numerous "negative reviews" (aka rants of "I just don't like it and neither should you!"), there are reasons to ding 4E, but these listed are not them.
"Enjoy your pseudoRPG, 4e fans. Whether you realize it or not...you all just failed your saving throws."
Enjoy your sour grapes while the rest of us continue having fun playing D&D 4E a great example of an RPG amongst my strong collection of other RPGs, including all editions of D&D, lots of indie stuff, and tons in between.
"It makes no sense. If you don't like 4E, fine, but don't invent "problems" that don't exist."
The problem does exist.
The problem is that 4E is written to encourage you to interact with the rules -- that is the mechanism that drives the game. I believe it is better to interact with the game environment and use the rules to help adjudicate about the choices that are made in game.
There is one group that I play with that would not understand the statement I just made. They live so much in the rules that the rules are the game. It is the experience. They are there to play a game and there is nothing better or worse about their opinion. When they talk about "roleplaying" it is understood to mean "non-combat excursions" that rely on the use of dice outside of the initiative sequence.
This falls to the natural level of immersion that the "gamer" is looking for. 4E presents the players with pre-patterned and pre-balanced event abilities that they can invoke either at-willl, per-encounter, or daily.
If you want to "roleplay" however, there are too many restrictions, too many layers, between the player and the narrative. Because there is a always a dice roll to interfere with what you are attempting. Even the structure of the game forces your character into paralysis for long stretches of action because it is not "their turn." There is no "doing" anything. It is not sour grapes to point out that a set of rules does not work on some levels. It is an observation.
"You're essentially argueing that WoTC get to tell me how many big moments there are in my campaign (at least, on a per day basis). All this defense of 4e smacks of apologist behavior. I'm not claiming any of the people posting here are "fanboys" per se...but wow. Listen to your own arguements. When I read them (and I have no vested interest whatsoever or one way or the other; I don't play d20 games anymore) all I hear is some fans of the system (and more power to you...if you like it use it) apologizing for and making excuses for a game that seems to be straight out wack."
Dude, you are way off base. I have read parts of 4E, but I have never played it and don't consider myself a "fan." I didn't write an angry screed at the original post. I just saw one thing he wrote of which I had a different interpretation. Can we overreact less?
I mean, once per day is really so weird? The author mentions that it made sense for 1E Magic-Users, but he doesn't explain how somehow it made sense for Monks to self-heal once per day or Druids to shapechange 3 times per day or Monks and Paladins to have PER WEEK abilities. Hell, why did 1E Clerics even have to prepare spells like MUs? It was all feeble rationales. That's not really the point.
It's a game. Time limits on abilities are done for balance. It has the side benefit of modeling dramatic stories and, to a lesser degree, reality. Personally, I thought that one critique of 4E was weak. Sue me.
"Previous editions had one at-will power: "I hit it". 4E gives you three, then. Not only that but the DMG encourages creative actions from the player. I've said repeatedly over numerous "negative reviews" (aka rants of "I just don't like it and neither should you!"), there are reasons to ding 4E, but these listed are not them."
Let me make my point clearer with an analogy.
Let's say that Dungeons & Dragons is a blank sheet of paper.
Some games (including early versions of D&D) gave the fighter the blank sheet of paper, upon which that player could draw any possible shape he wanted.
4th Edition is a sheet of paper, then, with a square and a circle drawn on it.
While the player is still free, in a sense, to draw on the paper, there is now an inclination - based on the fact that the paper contains two shapes - to point at one of the two shapes and say "that's the one I want to do."
My point being that when you have no predetermined options, you are forced to be more creative. When you are given a few options, you are (I think) less creative because the choices offered feel as if they are the only options. It's far too easy to say now "I use NAME OF AT-WILL POWER" and just read off the little card. It's become a board game. Monopoly. Roll the dice, move your guy X squares, draw a card and read off what happens.
This isn't just fighters, mind; Wizards used to have many more spells to choose from. I found it much more creative and fulfilling when my wizard would have gone through his magic missile, fireball, and lightning bolt and had to decide how to use Light and Web and Feather Fall in the big combat because that's all he had left. It was inspirational. You had to think on your feet and make crap up and role-play and convince the DM that your crazy insane idea was sound.
Now, that doesn't happen. Every fight it's the same thing. Use spell A, use spell B, use At-will spell C or D depending on context. Rinse, repeat. There is far less creative problem-solving - and I think that means far less role-playing, in the way that I define it. Now, as I've said before, a good role-playing group CAN overcome this. But I think the default rules-as-written do not support that level of role-playing. They encourage and reward, through their perfectly balanced game mechanics, simply reading off the little card description over and over.
The DMG can encourage creative actions all it wants - the PHB is the core rulebook, and it's the one everyone at the table has a copy of.
What is all this talk of cards! I know many people talk about using powers on cards, but it's not as if that's the default. There is a character sheet included in the game. There are no cards included in the game.
"What is all this talk of cards! I know many people talk about using powers on cards, but it's not as if that's the default. There is a character sheet included in the game. There are no cards included in the game."
I use the term cards to mean not only physical representations but the presentation of the powers in the PHB, which is cardlike. As self-contained little blocks of rules they are essentially the same thing as actual Magic: The Gathering cards, or Monopoly cards, right down to the clever little description at the start of each one. All they lack is custom artwork for each power, and I'm sure that's coming.
I've just finished reading the Players and DMG.
I've found this 4th Edition to be table top war game. There is no role playing aspect at all. You can roleplay with it but the game really is a board game now. I've played games like this in the past. There was this game called Phoenix Command. It was all pure combat mechanics, a war game. You set up the terrain and start combat. After combat you get XP and on to the next combat. This game was modern warfare board game and D&D 4th edition feels a lot like it now.
I think if you love battle type board games you will love 4E D&D. If you are mainly a roleplayer you will hate 4E D&D. I say this because combat takes about an hour and doesn't leave much time for roleplaying. Older editions of D&D allowed for meeting some orc and few rolls of the dice you on you way into the next encounter for roleplaying. For example a group of Orc raiders are attacking a carriage on the road. You spend 5 minutes game time killing or chasing off the orcs and the roleplaying begins as you find the princess on the run from an evil wizard she was to be married too. Now the fun begins.
Now with 4E D&D you pretty much have to avoid combat if you don't want to spend the night rolling dice.
That's my impression from reading it. I'm going to give it shot though and DM my group a few sessions with it and see what I can do. I'm tossing out the XP though. I'll tell the players when they level up as suggested in the book. I did like that. I think this way I might be able to have some easier quicker combat situations that fit story. Not all combat has to be balanced. Sometimes the heroes just win easily and sometime they are chased off. I'll have to wait and see. I can see in my group 1 player is eager, one is on the fence and the other is complaining how they crippled wizards.
-"Enjoy your sour grapes while the rest of us continue having fun playing D&D 4E a great example of an RPG amongst my strong collection of other RPGs, including all editions of D&D, lots of indie stuff, and tons in between."
Friend, I don't have any sour grapes. Your tone leads me to believe that you are upset that not everyone (and especially old school gamers like myself and some around here) wants to milk the teat of lameness that D&D has become. Unfortuneatly, not everyone in this world will agree with you.
I've had successful, fun, interactive roleplaying campaigns for over 20 years with various rules systems...including everything up to 3.5 D&D because that's when I stopped liking it...and will continue to have fun with this hobby despite the fact that D&D finally and completely s**t the bed. Please do continue to have fun playing the 4th edition of what went from being an amazing game to a lacklustre game. I will do the same with my group, albeit with a vastly different set of rules to allow us to adjudicate our chandeleir swinging.
I find the real problem with 4e is one that has been there during every edition of D&D that I've had the pleasure of playing, and I believe with the previous ones to boot. Its problem is its source material, its mood, its world, its context. Frequent visitors to this site know that I have a very obvious personal bias, but I like to comfort myself in it by believing that it's grounded in sound premises. D&D has been and always will be a specifically high fantasy roleplaying game. Now, theoretically, high fantasy can work as roleplaying game setting, but due to it's nature it needs to be fairly rules light. You see, the thing that makes high fantasy poison for most game designers is one of it's biggest strengths as a genre of fiction (and the primary reason why I can't stand it): anything can happen. It's Deus ex Machina as ruler of the world. Need something to get the characters out of the corner you as author have painted them in? A magic spell instantly dries the paint and makes that corner the same color for good measure! Obviously this creates some fairly obvious balancing issues, particularly with magic users. The wizard is most often the deus ex machina of the stories, which creates issues when one player plays God and the others play ordinary humans (albeit with special powers). No one wants to take the wizard's power away, so we just raise everybody elses powers up. But that rarely works, and D&D 4e has this problem all over. So how does a rogue of rudimentary skills through enough daggers in six seconds (with enough time to move 20+ feet) with enough skill as to only cut 1-4 enemies forheads so as to make blood go into their eyes and blind them? And why doesn't it hit anybody behind them? And if his aim is that good how come he doesn't just sink the daggers into their throats and be done with it? I don't know about you, but this borders on the ridiculous for me, and I have a tendency for dramatic flair to boot. It all devolves into an inane power struggle rather like the cold war (Wizards are powerful, but Rogues need to be too, and Warlocks, and Fighters, and every other damn imaginable fantasy character come up with by man!), where we just load on weapon after weapon, half of which won't get used and all of which are way too powerful to be taken seriously let alone feasibly use on the field of battle. And if the power is too powerful, it's crippled with restrictions and prerequisites to the point that it's dramatic power, what made it cool in the first place, is stripped. The point I'm making here is that D&D has the wrong approach for this setting. There are too many rules, which rules are great for certain settings, but not this one. D&D is the sad bastard child of war games and high fantasy, too rule sets that don't work at all (I think it was rape) and should never have been combined, and have only gotten worse as time progressed. The whole point behind high fantasy is that there are no rules that anything can happen. And the whole point behind war games is to make everything perfectly balanced, so as to make it challenging when two people go at it, and encourage strategic thinking. Various incarnations of D&D have had to place one higher than the other, but they've never been able to go together. 4e tried to do just that, but ultimately chose the war games path, following after the popular WoW. So, if you want great combat, D&D might just be the thing for you. But if you're looking for old school high fantasy, you'll probably have to go at it alone.
Tara and I often watch movies and try to decide what class or level people are (either d20 modern, or D&D). What we've noticed is exactly what Tzuriel points out. There's a vast disparity in levels and class make up to most of these groups. At the table they would miserably fail as roleplaying groups. But on screen or in a novel they are amazing. (Well, unless we're talking about fantasy...which I plain do NOT read).
I think if a rules system (any rules system, but D&D in paricular) did what they set out to do rather than what they end up doing everything would be okay. All the best fantasy campaigns I've ever run were ones where I set a list of available races and classes (even for NPCs) and then stuck to it. If you try to use everything all at once you get Forgotten Realms (or worse...Eberron. Despite it's charms it's a terrible setting...in my humble opinion).
To continue the "card" analogy; if you use any cards at your disposal to build your deck you're not roleplaying. You're trying to win. If you're trying to "win" then you are the antithesis of a "real gamer" in my opinion. And that seems to me to be who this new incarnation of D&D was made for. There's nothing wrong with that! I posted the Talisman and HeroQuest images for that specific reason. I've had LOADS of fun playing those games! but neither myself nor any members of my group *ever* called it roleplaying; because we new the difference.
(as one aside; I almost feel like I'm defending Ice T in the Soulja Boy vs. Ice T debacle...which is making me feel old but is a terribly useful analogy in this conversation)
(as another; you can always tell when tzuriel is excited or agitated because he stops putting spaces between paragraphs. You go buddy! Tell 'em!)
1) Scott, you should now defend your Eberron smear.
2) Everyone, please try and use words that represent exactly what you mean... I've seen several generalizations here I dislike and which cloud the argument. The latest of which is Scott's :"If you're trying to "win" then you are the antithesis of a "real gamer" in my opinion". There are many types of gamers, Scott. From board gamers to war gamers to video gamers, and many of them like to win. I'm guessing you meant to say "role players"?
3) Tzuriel, I wholly disagree with your statement that "high fantasy means that everything can happen". Look at Lord of the Rings, look at Song of Ice and Fire, look at Deathgate Cycle. Not everything can happen; Deus Ex Machina is the mark of poorly-written fantasy, not high fantasy. Well written fantasy has internal logic, has verisimilitude, is consistent. Else it is chaotic, it is silly and it is poor. (It is the difference between Black Adder and Monty Python - one stretches disbelief, the other throws it to the wind. Both are funny, but very different).
That's where the rules come in- they make the possible knowable. If the system is well done, they are themselves consistent and logical. I the argument should be whether or not the D&D rules (of whichever edition) achieve that or not.
I don't consider Lord of the Rings high fantasy, zip. In fact, especially compared to D&D, it is very low fantasy. The most spectacular spell Gandalf brought about was lighting a campfire (unless you count his Staff Flashlight of Death). In high fantasy you have wizards moving whole cities for the hell of it. And I haven't had the pleasure of reading Song of Ice and Fire or Deathgate Cycle, but I suspect that Ice and Fire at least is along these same lines. My point is, and I admit I wasn't being as specific as I should have, which is a bad tendency of mine, D&D attempts to model bad high fantasy. It specifically wants to put ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN! on the front of every book. Read the introduction. This idea drips from every word. Hence is becomes chaotic, silly and poor. Which is great if you're playing Risus, cause it's supposed to be. But D&D takes itself very seriously and has so many rules it's ridiculous for a setting that is specifically not supposed to have rules!
I know this is my personal bias coming in, but well written fantasy is never "high fantasy." No good story can be told on the idea that anything can happen, because it removes conflict. This is the thing that plagues fantasy the most and is why I haven't read it in quite some time. There are some excellent fantasy novels, but most of the genre is full of this anything can happen crap. And it's horrible! It ruins a good genre! There's a reason that fantasy is generally considered wierdo territory, even among avid (good) book readers.
So if it makes things better for you, replace all the "high" in high fantasy with "bad." They are, alas, the same to me.
I think we all agree, zip and Scott, on one thing - good storytelling needs rules. By this I don't mean a rulebook. Plently of great stories don't have rulebooks. I mean limits. Like Scott said, limiting races, classes, whatever. And like zip said, internal logic. The key word here being logic. D&D wants to give you fantasy without such rules, yet with them. Here, you don't get to have your cake and eat it too. And so D&D is split between two things that are wholly incompatable. Like I said, a bastard child, and the parents are fighting for custody.
What I will give you, Tzuriel, is that the logic supplied by the rules of D&D and the one that it seems we are to follow in-game are not always one and the same. I would, however, like some examples of what you call high (bad) fantasy, where "everything can happen". On first blush, it would seem Harry Potter would fit, but as I only read a couple of the books, I might be mistaken. I'm also not sure about The Wheel of Time. Most of the books help quite the integrity, but here and there you have stuff that is "way out there".
I would also like such examples from D&D, if possible.
The very concept of magic is guilty here. Magic, at least modern magic, is quite simply a means to do anything. Harry Potter is in some ways guilty of this, though you could defend it by claiming that they have a limited selection of spells activated by magic words. And that you have to have a wand in order to cast a spell, both of which leave a lot of questions unanswered. Wheel of Time could be considered guilty of this, though there are limits, especially to male casting. Their main problem is that they are arbitrary and not usually explained before hand. And, please, fans of either of these series understand that I'm not bashing your books. I enjoyed them too. This is simply flaws in their approach to magic.
But I'll be honest with you, zip. Of the fantasy I've read, most possible deus ex machina situations are resolved not by main characters with wands but by gods and such, who it seems reasonable have a much higher "cap" on power than mere mortals. But this still gives us a significant question. Just what can't those gods do, or those in their employ? The answer is usually nothing. This is very different from (good) fiction set in our world, because, no matter how much I pray to Jesus, he's not going to erase, say, those evil Russian terrorists from existence. You don't know if He exists, and so you can't rely on him. Magic destroys this. It at least helps in, say, the Wheel of Time, when you know that anytime Rand uses magic things could, and do, go seriously wrong.
As for D&D, I will quote from page 6 of the current Handbook, the third paragraph: "...you have the freedom to create anything you can imagine, with an unlimited special effects budget and the technology to make anything happen." And farther on, same page, second column, second paragraph: "It's a storytelling game where the only limit is your imagination...you can attempt anything you can think of." And page seven, first column, third paragraph: "...anything you can imagine, your character might experience as the game unfolds." And same page, second column, third paragraph: "At some point, all adventurers rely on magic in one form or another...even nonmagical adventurers perform deeds no mere mortal could dream of doing without magic". And we'll skip ahead to page 156, where the Wizard class begins, and quote from the first paragraph, "Wizards tap the true power that permeates the cosmos, research esoteric rituals that can alter time and space, and hurl balls of fire that incinerate massed foes."
All the great fantasy novels had limits, places where the author wouldn't go, because that ruins the story. Things like leaving the dead dead (without some kind of huge price at least, and here I'm not talking about gold, but lives or something equivalent), not messing with time, etc. And what does D&D do? Well, if you die, no sweat you can just come back. A long time ago I disallowed that raise dead stuff, and we've all been better for it. If I were to allow it back in, it would at least be a life for a life. None of this diamond stuff. The idea behind magic is that anything is possible, that you are warping reality to your will. Now, I don't mind magic. In fact, I love it, it's great fun. But only if done correctly. Great magic systems are like those found in the Alvin Maker series by Orson Scott Card, where you can only work with what you've got, or the one in Mage: The Awakening, where even someone else looking at you can really foul things up. It puts limits on it. D&D doesn't want those limits, but it can't live without them. It needs them, for balance.
Perhaps the most telling quote is found on the introduction to Chapter 2: Making Characters: "Your character is a combination of the fantastic hero in your mind's eye and the different game rules that describe what he or she can do." This is where you see the two halves duking it out most clearly. They want your character to be anything you imagine, but they want to make damn sure it stays balanced no matter what. So your character can't be anything you imagine. My first character was a half-elf sorcerer. He was either the grandson or great grandson of a white dragon that was terrorizing his elven heritage. However, he wasn't sure he liked elves because they treated him badly as a small child. He left them and wandered around the woods until he was picked up by a Ranger who taught him how to survive. Later he left and became an adventurer, blah, blah, blah. See I took them up on their promise that he could be anything and made him into just that (he was also destined to become uber-powerful and save his kingdom!). But the game wouldn't let that fit. He needed Ranger training. But he was a sorcerer, and I wanted him to be a good sorcerer with spells and such (and I was too new to understand multiclassing). So he had only sorcerer skills on paper. In the end, what I'd imagined and what came to pass were very different, because I was trying to make something fit where it didn't belong. D&D encourages that. And that's its main problem. It's not broken, but it severely limits itself without even a setting to really speak of. There's just better ways to interpret it, ones that don't encourage this "do anything" mentality that is so dangerous to good stories. Ultimately, D&D is trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Either one or both will have to be broken in order to make it work.
Magic is part of the setting. It can't be simply bolted on to a campaign and retain verisimilitude. Good fantasy is about the examination of the intersection between the natural order and something that sits beyond it -- commonly known as the super-natural. If the super-natural sweeps away the natural then the interaction is lost. In these cases the supernatural magical world simply replaces the natural. This is what D&D does with their setting material.
The entire character generation process is a gluttonous indulgence of powers and abilities. Rather than carefully crafting a few strange and wonderful abilities that a player can use as a window to explore a natural world that has moments of unnatural horror, fantastic realms, and bizarre encounters the creators of D&D aim the game at the lowest common denominator. Powers that can be examined, questioned, feared and ultimately embraced or denounced are replaced by a deluge of self-congratulatory super powers that are not connected to the story and easily, effortlessly, and mindlessly accessible to everyone and everything. They squeeze all true magic from the setting. You can't make characters in D&D. You buy a set of abilities from a slick outlet mall in the shape of hard-cover books. And look at how the deluge of new hard-cover shopping malls are popping up on your gaming store shelves. Go out and buy the latest fashions! If you want to buy a character then D&D has some of the snaziest and most up-to-date, well balanced characters a good source book can get you. If you want to make a character ... get a different game.
Gil, I find it interesting that you mentioned "super powers". Do you find that superhero games also suffer from this?
"Let's say that Dungeons & Dragons is a blank sheet of paper.
Some games (including early versions of D&D) gave the fighter the blank sheet of paper, upon which that player could draw any possible shape he wanted.
4th Edition is a sheet of paper, then, with a square and a circle drawn on it."
i would venture to say it's more like:
"4th Edition is the sheet of paper with a dotted outline of the shape representing the class you want to play. WotC says for you to follow the dotted lines, create the shape, and DO NOT DEVIATE...that way lies game-breakery. now go click a rock until you get enough Ore to carry back to a town that is really just a fake 'front' of buildings where you deposit your gold into a coin-slot to get x, where x is something that fits into a weapon-slot or magic item-slot on your paper 'hero' outline."
alternately, previous editions were Painting, 4th edition is paint-by-numbers.
Typically I like the way Superhero games are structured (my experience includes Mutants & Masterminds, Villains & Vigilantes, HeroQuest, TMNT, and probably a couple more I don't remember). Character creation tends to flow from the character concept stage that is tied to the origin and then powers are added. There is a real flexibility in choosing the powers that you want and tailoring them with a benefit and weakness mechanism. It is a shame that more fantasy, horror, and sci-fi games don't give the players this level of trust.
On the down-side, this does not tie the character to the setting. In a fantasy game a Ranger is tied to the setting because there are others like them out there. There are other elves, dwarves, and gnomes. In a super-hero game the player character is unique.
The balance that should be struck in my opinion is to allow players to collect any skills that they want, but make those skills available in the narrative. Therefore if they want to learn to track, spending time with hunters or joining the Outrunner's Guild are acceptible choices. This is also problematic because the player is part of a group. In some groups it is difficult to spend appropriate time on the unique path of a single character. I have always found it extremely "lazy" of D&D to suggest that just because a character has acquired gold and killed monsters that they automagically receive the skills that they have pre-selected from the many books of wonderous power. In this kind of scenario there is no impetus to explore the game world in search of skills, magical weapons, knowledge, or anything else. Everything can be bought. I can buy my level in anything. I can buy my magic items. I can buy my feats. 21st century consumerism infects the very core of D&D. True immersion into another time and place means that we should try to escape the confines of a very narrow, and very modern sensibility. Gaming sessions that accept this methodology can have success measured in very simple terms - XP and GP.
Superhero games usually work towards preserving peace and overcoming the machinations of the villains. Solving the episode and increasing your reputation are the pivotal issues. There is a level of altruism and maturity built into the structure of a Superhero game that is absent in the worst iterations of the fantasy genre.
Side Note: One part of the game that I have always enjoyed with my players is the levelling up of characters. I require them to return to a mentor or find a school where we will role-play through the lessons they receive over a period of many weeks. Typically they will acquire new special skills (in 3.x they have feats which would be ideal for this -- I'm running a 1st-2nd Edition kind of game so they just get a new special ability). I can introduce them to new plot points that are relevant only to them. To achieve this you must be able to isolate the player for an hour or so and this only works if you have relatively long gaming sessions where there are times when lunch/dinner must be made or other errands that create a natural disruption. More recently I have found that we will do the level-up and "park" the training until such an opportunity arises -- even if it isn't for a session or two. I'd highly recommend the levelling process for any long-term sustained campaign.
-"1) Scott, you should now defend your Eberron smear.
2) Everyone, please try and use words that represent exactly what you mean... I've seen several generalizations here I dislike and which cloud the argument. The latest of which is Scott's :"If you're trying to "win" then you are the antithesis of a "real gamer" in my opinion". There are many types of gamers, Scott. From board gamers to war gamers to video gamers, and many of them like to win. I'm guessing you meant to say "role players"?"
I've tried and tried and tried...but whenever I think of anything in the Eberron setting I see cartoons. Poorly drawn, semi-manga cartoons with bad bad hair and out of proportion bodies. And all the backdrops (cities, etc) look like someting from the crappy Batman cartoon or Gargoyles. I've read alot of the material for the setting and I just can't shake the poorly drawn cartooniness. I'm sure it's mechanically sound, I'm sure for someone that doesn't suffer from what it does to me it can be a greatsetting; but I just can't bear it. To me it was the final nail in the coffin. It tried to be too many things all at once. It's steampunklowhighgrittyshinyflashygrimsciencefantasy. I know this is my own hang up, but after all of the time I've spent trying to get over it I decided just to accept the fact that no matter *how much* I really really really wanted to like this setting I wasn't going to and that I should start slamming it on the webernet.
As for using accurate words...since we are talking about roleplaying I assumed everyone would know that was the type of "gamer" I was talking about. I'm not sure that any further clarification is required as even the one person that took exception to my choice of words seems to know what I meant (tips hat at zip and looks warily at the Can Of Tuna).
I think this super power analogy that has popped up is bang on. I can't speak for Gil, but I don't think that supers games share the same inherrent problem. *Most* supers games are based at least loosely on comic book logic and rationale. The people with the greatest powers are either villains or morally upright heroes. Often, the heroes see their powers to be just as much a curse as a blessing for the way that they endanger all the people around them merely by their pressence. The villains on the other hand aren't bound by this and don't worry about it...but they *do* have those heroes to contend with; and when it comes to heroes vs. villains the gloves generally come off (at least, right up until someone might die. Then the heroes generally put the gloves at least partially back on). It doesn't make it more realistic, but anyone playing a supers game for "realism" is either a great fool or doesn't understand the genre. The only realism present in comics is an "in context" realism that exists only in the pages of whatever title you happen to be readin (or, in all of Earth-616 in the case of the Marvel Universe at it's peak, retcons aside).
D&D does not have this built in set of checks and balances. Unless you count alignment, which I do not. By making the abilities of the classes more and more "magic" (or perhaps that should say Magic: The Whatever) and "supers" seeming, any dramatic tension, built in story telling potential, or any of that other good stuff that proper gamers (er, roleplayers) look for is bled off and left to seep down the drain.
That's just one serious old school comic nerds take on that part of the conversation though. I've got 427 issues of the Uncanny X-Men (minus the 4 years they were in reprints) right here in the next room that says I'm right.
1) While I'm entirely clear on what makes you feel as you do about Eberron, you are, of course, entitled to your own opinion. Myself, I like Eberron after reading several of the sourcebooks (and a few short stories) and running a couple of adventures.
2) I find the superheroes angle interesting. Wouldn't you guys say that D&D is somewhat of a "medieval superhero comic"? If not, why not? Would it be interesting to try and make it into one? How would one go about doing that.
More specifically, Scott, I'm not certain why you say that D&d is lacking checks and balances that exist in the super-heroic genre. Aren't there powerful villains in D&D? Aren't there weak innocents that are endangered? Is the fact that all the exceptional stuff is marked "magic" detrimental somehow?
Please understand that I'm not arguing with you, just trying to create a discussion.
Gil, I'm still trying to find an elegant way to introduce training to a campaign. I think it's an excellent idea.
I've stated from the start that it's only my opinion. ;P
D&D looks at first like it's a medieval super hero comic. Then you get a little deeper and see that it's either 1) a very bad comic, or 2) not a comic at all, but a parody. I'm not speaking about every campaign out there mind you. Just the typical ones that none of the fine folks around here would be caught dead playing in or running. I think it would be very interesting to see a medieval comic style done right though. That would kick so many asses.
Checks and balances; in comics, they are real and the heroes know they are real. In many "typical" D&D campaigns, the characters may be aware of those checks & balances you mentioned, but often I find that the players are not (or are willing to turn a blind eye in favor of GP or level advancement). They find ways to justify or rationalize atrocious behaviour towards the innocents, ways to treat the villain as though he's a CR rather than a nemesis worthy of equal amounts of respect and fear. And yes, the fact that the exceptional stuff is marked 'magic" is detrimental to me. I never liked Dr. Strange that much for the same reason.
Super heroism requires a certain amount of civic responsibility. Not all heroes follow this paradigm, but *in my opinion* all the best ones do (within that particular genre). I've yet to see the same level of passion for self sacrifice and altruism in even the very best roleplaying groups that I've witnessed. I don't really know why that is...maybe it's something in the tights? That would explain Robin Hood, and why he's so damn friendly to those poor folks...and why most adventurers are not.
I know that this is based on my bias against fantasy as a whole, and most recently d20 and D&D in specific. However, the further I get from both those things, the more I see that I didn`t ever like it that much in the first place. That either lessens the value of my opinion, or increases it since I am now fully and completely outside of the goldfish bowl. I am not bold enough to suggest one or the other though.
I've never set out to define the Superhero genre. I studied the heroic cycle in school, but wondered at the time as to how our superheroes fit into the pattern. I think they break or expand the mold in a few ways. My first musings:
1. Chinese cinema seems to me to be a medieval superhero genre.
2. One of the things that defines the superhero genre is the wide gap in ability between the commoner and the hero. There is some kind of tension between the "hoi-poloi" and the heroes.
3. Either as outcasts or part of the establishment the heroes uphold some beliefs that are bigger than them. In some way they are fighting to uphold the society (even if they are on the fringe of it.)
4. Like the ancient heroes, there can typically be a creation/birth story that is fantastical.
5. There is often a period of trial for the hero to overcome. This trial tempers the hero.
6. The super-villain is a foil to the hero. The villain does not attack the hero directly. The hero seeks out the villain to confront them.
In this crude attempt to define the genre I would think that D&D could become a candidate if there was some kind of altruism fostered in the characters, and they were given a greater gap between themselves and the rest of society. D&D is patterned after the "American Dream" model where all characters begin as lowly serfs and rise to be corporate giants.
I love the idea of putting a Superhero paradigm on a medieval fantasy setting. A league of Extraordinary Gentlemen kind of thing -- only better.
"Gil, I'm still trying to find an elegant way to introduce training to a campaign. I think it's an excellent idea."
Why don't you make a powerful NPC with ability that doesn't exist anywhere else in the rules. Let the PC's see him/her use the power and see if they take the bait.
Otherwise you could have a teacher approach the PC's and say that he is looking for an apprentice to pass on his knowledge to. Make the teacher cool and you could be up and running with it.
Just a thought...
1. Chinese cinema seems to me to be a medieval superhero genre.
I don't know much about it, but from what I *have* seen you've got a good point.
2. One of the things that defines the superhero genre is the wide gap in ability between the commoner and the hero. There is some kind of tension between the "hoi-poloi" and the heroes.
True true. A recently found example in my studying of GURPS rules is that a common person is a 25 point character. "Hero material" (like starting PCs) are 100, full fledged heros are 150...but a super character would be 300-400 (interstingly enough, one of the "Unattached" from Lensman would be 1000 points! True paragons of virtue that only use their colossal powers when absolutley necessary> Almost like Paladins in space...but done *right*)
3. Either as outcasts or part of the establishment the heroes uphold some beliefs that are bigger than them. In some way they are fighting to uphold the society (even if they are on the fringe of it.)
Very true...in many cases they are fighting to save/protect a society that either doesn't want them, doesn't understand them, or fears them as much as they fear the villains. Yet...they keep risking themselves for the normals. That is something that most medieval RPG heroes would *never* do.
4. Like the ancient heroes, there can typically be a creation/birth story that is fantastical.
And usually involves cosmic rays or radiation of some form. I love that about all the heroes from the 70s/80s when nuclear hysteria was at it's peak.
5. There is often a period of trial for the hero to overcome. This trial tempers the hero.
Or breaks him and he becomes a villain for a while before "seeing the light" (Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver come to mind)
6. The super-villain is a foil to the hero. The villain does not attack the hero directly. The hero seeks out the villain to confront them.
Except the Juggernaut. Other than Marko though, you're right. They try their best to avoid the heroes because they know they'll be foiled if the heroes show up. Unless the entire scheme is a trap laid by a coalition of supervillains that is destined to fail as their own distrust of each other will allow the heroes to excape and prevail.
This is a great topic guys...we should start it in another thread. I know enough trivial useless things about comic books that we could really make this work. Medieval supers campaigns...who'da thunk it.
"Let's say that Dungeons & Dragons is a blank sheet of paper."
A good analogy! Let me use it properly. 3E Fighters get a pencil that's rather dull and that's it - sure, good artists can make great sketches with it. Some people just kind of make stick figures. With 4E you get that same pencil, plus a paint brush & paint, a charcoal stick, and an ink pen. People then complain because they are forced to use those implements, when if they just really want to sketch with pencil, you still can.
" It's far too easy to say now "I use NAME OF AT-WILL POWER" and just read off the little card."
In 3E all fighters types could do was say "I HIT IT". For uncreative types, at least they have a few more buttons to push in 4E.
"That's my impression from reading it. I'm going to give it shot though and DM my group a few sessions with it and see what I can do."
Good, play it. It plays much better than it reads (much like Savage Worlds) - and play it several times. The first couple times people just see the new fun options in combat and forget about their character, but that goes away once people get used to the rules. It can be played just like a wargame, just like previous versions of D&D. It is not an abstract, narrativist system like Sorceror or Wushu or Truth & Justice, so it's not going to have rules for your love of the princess being able to defend against a sword strike. It is not GURPS or Hero, and does not try to be a physical simulation of a world. It leaves non-combat RPing out of the mechanics and in the hands of the DM & players. But many of the powers do create great opportunities for RPing within combat.
I still don't think anyone actually *needs* powers to give them good roleplaying within combat.
I also think that the analogies are getting a little arcane here. Let's be brutaly simple and honest about it; if you need the rule book to tell you that you could this, you could do that, or you could do something else...then you're doing it wrong. That's why it seems to people that the fighters option in other versions of the game was "I HIT IT". You looked *in the book* and that's all you saw. So it it looked plain vanilla to you, and the new version looks like neopolitan or something (oh sweet beard of gygax, here I go with the anaolgies again).
The way we always played it was to look at the blank sheet of paper and say "I'll be a whirling dervish with a scimitar in one hand and a scarf in the other". Then someone else would say, "I want to be as big as a house and clad in steel!" And the next potential Fighter would say "not me, I'm going to be thin as a rail and fight with a rapier." And so on....
I understand that with this current iteration of the rules you can still do that. What aeon is getting at is that the RAW don't encourage it. They encouraage you to use your "powers" and stick to the script that WoTC is following.
The main reason it's like that now, and wasn't before? Simple in my mind:
They don't *want* too much creativity on the part of the players of their game because that lessens the amount of product they can shift. You can't be a whirling gypsy with a scimitar and a scarf because *they haven't made a prepainted randomly packaged mini that looks like that*. Wizards will *tell you* when that charcter is okay to play, because thay'll release a book about it, and a new minis line will follow. If you want to make that character *right now* then you still can, have at you. But the rules don't encourage or support it. If you are playing *against* the system by looking for ways to wiggle in between the very small cracks they have left in it, then why are you using that system? It's like buying pants then turning them into shorts...JUST BUY SHORTS! (crap, that was an analogy)
To put it another way, I once read a book called Keeper of the Isis Light. It was a childrens book (and I was a child). It was amazing sci fi (and part of an amazing series). I picked it up the other day and flipped through it. It was drivvle. It lead me to it's conclusions rather than letting me make my own. It seemed to be *telling* me how to feel rather than just letting me feel. It took me by the hand and showed me around and pointed out places of interest (re: places that *it* felt were intersting).
Oh wait...I forgot that I was trying to stay away from analogies...
As perhaps the best indication of what 4th Edition has done...
Due to a complicated schedule, I have bowed out of my gaming group - at least for now. When I left, of course my character departed the party. They spent several long minutes trying to decide how the new group was going to account for the loss of their sole defender, when the party now possessed a leader, three strikers, and a controller.
In any previous edition of D&D that I can think of, the loss of a fighter or paladin from a group -- which then consisted of two arcane spellcasters, a rogue, a ranger and a cleric -- would not be a huge cause for concern. From a role-playing perspective, the group could simply continue on and alter a few tactical decisions. From a combat perspective they could still easily hold their own.
In 4th Edition, that party is severely affected by the loss of a their tank - akin to the loss of a tank in WOW, which suddenly causes a group's entire combat plan to change significantly.
Yes, the GM can work around it by balancing encounters differently -- but with the Rules As Written, and further As Intended, the entire game is thrown out of balance now. The perfectly balanced encounters are no longer balanced. The party tactics no longer work. All because their paladin left the group.
I think it's horrible from a role-playing perspective that they now have to scramble to either add an NPC defender, add a new player who is forced to play a defender, or change one of their characters to a defender class, in order to restore balance.
In 3.5e or anything that came before, you could feasibly run a game with all rogues, or all sorcerers, or all clerics, and get away with it. The monsters weren't balanced to prevent that. The encounters weren't balanced to prevent that. The classes weren't balanced to prevent that. There was nothing stopping you from being whatever you wanted to be, in whatever combination you wanted to be.
Now there is.
>In 4th Edition, that party is severely affected by the loss of a their tank - akin to the loss of a tank in WOW, which suddenly causes a group's entire combat plan to change significantly.
Actually the reverse is true, in 3e and earlier you were fucked if you didn't have a Cleric, now you can build a party out of anything and have it work. I suspect the problem lies with your group and not the system.
...except that:
So, maybe not.
Well, gherkin, I think this guy's point still stands, because you need a healer of some sort, especially at lower levels. Whether it's a cleric custom made for healing or a druid who still does enough to keep the party on their feet, both can be put under the label "healer." To me, this is a problem of both systems. They require the extra members and really don't encourage changes to that system. In truth, 3.x was worse with this than 4th, but both are horrible at it. D&D has always been a formulaic game in a non-formulaic setting - that's the crux of its problem.
I ran 3.0 campaigns for years, and no one ever once made a Cleric. Not once.
4e is well balanced. Balanced... balanced for what? A knife is balanced -- some to throw, some to cut, and some to attack with the point. 4e is balanced to engage an encounter within the ruleset. The rules can be distilled down to this -- characters can attack armor class, will, reflex, or fortitude. They can attack with mass effects and some characters can cause healing surges or give defences. So what is my problem with all of this?
If I want to spend some time immersed in a fantasy world I want to confront an angry troglodyte who bursts out of the clearing. Short and squat he lunges at me with a makeshift spear. I respond by turning up the hill, keeping my shield low and looking for an opening in the mass of mangy black hair. I don't want to attack his armor class; or his will; or his reflex. I want to bash his face and crush his throat. Ultimately I want to confront the difference between his humanity and mine. I want to engage the story and understand my decisions in an alternate context. Sure, the rules can help smooth over the rough patches, but the game should happen on a visceral level.
I can't abide a story that is steeped in a capitalist agenda and patterned to predictable escalation of confrontations. The game is so without consequence, without relevance, without spirit, and without context, that it is devoid of any opportunity for good role-playing unless it is forced upon the system. Patterned, cookie-cutter, heroes are not my idea of "fantasy." For those that don't want to immerse in the story, good luck with 4e. I'll play it to assess the better parts of the mechanic, but I wholly reject it as a medium for the kind of roleplaying that I want to do.
Don't give me crap about being able to role-play with any system -- not when I have to dismantle the system to make it work the way that I want. If I have to break your system and re-assemble it, then I'm going to find something better suited to my needs. 4e is less open to interpretation, less flexible to manipulation, and less interesting.
I'm going to be very politically incorrect here but ... if you have more "buttons" to mash (read the post a few up from this one) then you have expressed the gap succinctly. I don't want any buttons to mash. I want to do actions in the game world. I don't need more mechanism! They add nothing to the story -- they add to the rules. I come from a diametrically different viewpoint. My game happens between the rules. 4e is so full that there is little space for my game left.
Well, yes, the need to have some kind of miraculous healing on hand in order to make the game 'work' is an annoyance in all versions of D&D (and however you want to rationalise them, 'healing surges' feel miraculous to me).
My (only) point was that in 3rd edition there is a good deal of flexibility in how you equip a party with that healing capability.
Like Scott Free, I also have refereed and played in parties that had no cleric, as such.....
"I'm going to be very politically incorrect here but ... if you have more "buttons" to mash (read the post a few up from this one) then you have expressed the gap succinctly. I don't want any buttons to mash. I want to do actions in the game world. I don't need more mechanism! They add nothing to the story -- they add to the rules. I come from a diametrically different viewpoint. My game happens between the rules. 4e is so full that there is little space for my game left."
Which is fair. I've played very rules-light systems (Truth and Justice most recently) and found that I like a strong Game in my Role-Playing Game. I'm not after amateur theatre. I've tried total free-form games, but they just lack structure to be interesting. I'd rather write a story. But likewise, I don't like simulation-like systems. The game should be fun, and simulation games aren't terribly fun for me anymore. Honestly, "realistic" fantasy games should all end up "and the monster eats you, painfully".
4E is great at what it does, and is a fantastic reimagining of D&D, with a focus on making the game parts more fun and interesting, while staying firmly out of the roleplaying aspects, rules-wise. I'm having fun with it, as is my group. However, we still like other games and systems. Savage Worlds, Exalted, ORE, Truth & Justice, and nWoD to name a few.
Some of the opinions expressed here have been just fine and dandy - 4E isn't for everybody, and isn't the end-all, be-all in games. But the original little rant was goofy, silly, and pathetic.
"Some of the opinions expressed here have been just fine and dandy - 4E isn't for everybody, and isn't the end-all, be-all in games. But the original little rant was goofy, silly, and pathetic."
Oh come now. That's like McCain saying he doesn't care about any washed up old terrorist and then talking about Ayers in the next breath. Party foul.
In support of Scott Free's experience: I came home to my old gaming group after a long hiatus and made a cleric in a 3.0 - 3.5 campaign. It was our first cleric in twenty years of D&D-ing. And I don't think anyone has made one since.
An observation:
Something I've noticed in the whole 3e vs 4e debate on this and other boards is that most people arguing pro-4e use different language to those who argue on the side of 3e (or earlier) versions. I could claim that, generally speaking, the pro-3e camp seems to argue their side in a more mature and articulate fashion than those who are pro-4e - present company excepted, of course - but accusations of bias are sure to fly, and maybe rightly so. And differences in the average age of the two camps might account for that observation, if there is any truth in it.
Be that as it may, there's one descriptive term in particular that comes up again and again in the pro-4e discourse. It's a word that the pro-3e camp tends not to use.
The word is 'fun'.
So far, I don't believe I've read a single post on any board, or a single negative review of 4e, that has tried to claim that 3e is 'more fun' than 4e. (By all means go ahead and find some to prove me wrong!) Try googling '3rd edition more fun'. Then change it to '4th edition more fun'. See what pops up.
Now this is interesting. When 3rd edition launched, I don't remember that 'more fun' was its key selling point. After all, if you wanted 'fun', you'd go fire up your console, maybe play Super Mario Bros or whatever. Tabletop RPG was supposed to be a more serious, more intense experience.
Here's the Chambers Dictionary definition of 'fun':
fun noun 1 enjoyment; merriment. 2 a source of amusement or entertainment. adj, colloq intended for amusement, enjoyment, etc. for fun as a joke; for amusement. in fun as a joke; not seriously. make fun of or poke fun at someone or something to laugh at them or it, especially unkindly; to tease or ridicule them or it. ETYMOLOGY: 17c, from earlier fon to make a fool of.
OK, now I won't deny that 'fun' can mean 'enjoyment' or 'entertainment', but it's a bit of a light, fluffy word with overtones of amusement and jollity. 'Fun' is the root of 'funny' - something that makes you laugh. 'Fun' is not a word I would use to describe my own 3.5e campaign. And if any of my players used it to describe my campaign, I'd feel I wasn't doing my job properly.
Now I daresay it's perfectly possible to run a challenging campaign that's full of emotional depth and exploration of difficult themes using the 4e ruleset. But this isn't what I'm hearing from the people that think it's a great game. What I'm hearing, again and again, is that it's advantage over 3e is 'more fun'. To those of us who don't see an RPG night as an occasion to 'goof around' this is a poor advertisment.
That's a really good point LG. I do get a whole raft load of enjoyment out of my roleplaying...even a bit of "fun". But it's not the point. That's not really why we play. It's an exciting point because one of the old guard players from years ago when we used to play WFRP was in town and at my house tonight and we started talking about this after I read your post.
We came to this consensus; although we have all had fun in various campaigns I have ran over the years, it was always "fun after the fact". We have fun knocking off to the pub for pints after a session and talking about it. We have fun emailing each other back and forth about details and events in campaigns. However at the table, we're all business.
I guess that was buddies point when he said that it's now accessible to the other 90% of the population. And it still just proves the point the rest of us are making; it's not even the same hobby anymore at this point. So many times the topic has ended up at, "when does D&D stop being D&D?" in various RPG related conversations over the years. I always thought that the answer (whatever it happened to be) was related to setting or tone or content in any given campaign.
Now I know the answer. I feel like I just heard that tree fall in the forest; and the sound it made was a death rattle.
That is a really good point 'Gherkin. Hmm... I'm going to ponder that one.
Wow. You just argued that 3.5 is better than 4E because it is less fun.
You want "fun after the fact" - 4E is for people who want fun during the fact, as well as after the fact.
We are crazy, crazy (38-50 year old) kids in my group wanting a game to be fun *and* challenging.
Wow. You just argued that 3.5 is better than 4E because it is less fun
I did nothing of the sort. I suggest you try reading my post again.
I, also, have fun while gaming. We have alot of "fun" after the fact by talking about it, and that's when the laughing and joking and loud noises come into things. Frivolity doesn't ahve a place at our table most of the time.
But, while at the table, we take things alot more seriously than most gamers. We find seriousness to be fun. I don't find tactics, strategy, rules, charts, numbers, or math fun. I don't find D&D fun anymore either. I don't even find the core system that lurks somewhere under layers and layers of implied setting fun anymore either for that matter.
What I find fun, and what the Gilbertron finds fun are obviously different things; which is why I won't budge that 4e is bollocks. I don't care how old you are; fun is fun is fun. And we don't have fun playing D&D. Plain and simple. It's not an arguement, it's a statement of fact. So are your statements, which is why I don't try to refute them.
Another point of fact; Gamegrene, as the tagline used to say, is for gamers that are sick of the typical. 4e as a rules system is pretty typical looking in my point of view so you may be in the wrong place to try and change minds. Please stick around and continue talking with us (maybe tell us about your campaign and how not-typical it is), but you're probably barking up the wrong tree to get us to accept something we don't want to swallow.
"Another point of fact; Gamegrene, as the tagline used to say, is for gamers that are sick of the typical. 4e as a rules system is pretty typical looking in my point of view so you may be in the wrong place to try and change minds. Please stick around and continue talking with us (maybe tell us about your campaign and how not-typical it is), but you're probably barking up the wrong tree to get us to accept something we don't want to swallow."
First, 4E has some interesting "advances" in gaming. It also borrows heavily from other games, quite openly, and to good effect. It is not typical.
Second, I'm all about being sick of the typical. I have a fine roster of games sitting on my (real and virtual) bookshelf, and love new games. So to hear someone say 4E is typical, when it is obviously not, just confuses me.
Third, you, at least, made me go look at Gamegrene as a whole, which I hadn't done yet - looks like some good thoughts behind the concept (although the About page is a bit confused), so I'll probably lurk around reading some other posts - be afraid! ;)
So, if I DO play RPGs to have fun, does it mean that I will enjoy a 4E campaign?
Also, I got completely confused by the "sheet of paper" metaphors, so I'm glad they're gone.
OT: For what it's worth, the tagline remains the same, and is viewable in the window title of the main page. It disappeared from the design merely because it was visual fluff. (And, confused "about" page? Eh?)
I'm glad to hear you'll stick around Mr. Gilbertron. One of the few things I like more than talking about roleplaying is disagreeing about roleplaying with people that can back up what they have to say...which you seem to be able to do admirably. As I've always stated, conflict is bliss.
"Also, I got completely confused by the "sheet of paper" metaphors, so I'm glad they're gone."
Ah, you'll not escape so easily. Muahaha...
Here's what I meant by that.
Let's say I hand you a blank sheet of paper and say "draw your character." You have complete freedom to draw anything you want. You can draw a face, you can draw a profile, you can draw a head of lettuce and say it's an analogy.
Now let's say I give you a piece of paper, but that paper has a big circle drawn in the middle. You still have freedom, and theoretically you could ignore the circle, but I am willing to bet that you are now going to be more likely to draw a face inside that circle, or else in some way let yourself be limited by the circle.
The point is that in previous editions of D&D, classes like the fighter were more like the blank sheet of paper. Without specific constraints on what they could do from round to round, they were more open to coming up with imaginative maneuvers and plans. In 4th Edition, the inclusion of at-will and encounter powers for all classes is akin to drawing that circle on the paper. Yes, theoretically people can still come up with their own imaginative maneuvers, but they are going to be more inclined to simply use the at-wills and encounter powers over and over, because those powers are a suggestion of the RIGHT THING to do in any given round.
I feel that both sides have said enough concerning whether 4e is any good or not. What I'd like to discuss is this typicality notion, particularly where it applies to 4e.
I think Scott's right. 4e is very typical and here's why. First, we need to define what is meant by typical. Oxford describes it as, "1-having the distinctive qualities of a particular type of person or thing, serving as a representative specimen; 2-characteristic." So it becomes clear that in order to figure whether typical is 4e or not, we need to define the typicality that everyone here is so very sick of. I think I'll list them:
-Roleplaying games that clearly lack the roleplaying.
-Unnecessary emphasis on combat.
-Emphasis of mathematics over creativity.
-Rehashes of old systems instead of new ideas and games (this one is biased, but keep in mind this applies to GURPS and others as well as D&D)
-Systems that don't work with and display a clear disconnect from their subject material.
-Stupid frickin minis. (lol this is more of a joke than anything)
-Lack of balance and supplements that continually make things more and more powerful.
-Time wasted trying to wade through an archaic mathematics systems instead of an interesting creation process.
There's probably more but I have to go to work. I find 4e guilty as charged of all of these.
-There is no impetus to roleplay provided by the game, no reason to really give it a go considering the system and all the fancy baubles you have when fighting.
-4e is a combat system, plain and simple.
-It's very well balanced (for now) but very cookie-cutter and lacks if not disallows creativity.
-It is the 4th edition of D&D.
-If you've been reading my posts on this, you know my stance here. D&D has become a mathematics system, not a translation of the high fantasy world. It really has very little to do with it's subject material.
-And those stupid minis.
-This is a traditional problem with D&D. In 3.5 it was ridiculous. Why play a weak paladin when you could be a...ninja! I'll be fair here and admit that we don't know if this will become an issue with 4e or not, due to the lack of supplements at this time, but, if experience proves true, it will be.
-Character creation for D&D is unnecessarily complicated and takes far too long with far too little to show for it. And DM prep...countless civilizations have died during the time I have wasted trying to make what I wanted happen and IT JUST WOULDN'T WORK!
To be fair to D&D, despite what I've said about it recently, it's only typical if the group allows it to be. It's just a shame that, like aeon's paper analogy, it hems people in to predetermined thought patterns and implied setting through it's presentation and mecahnical style. I used to wave the d20 flag too; if a group wants it to be good and creative and non-typical it will be. My own personal experience skewed the other way eventually, but that's hardly the systems fault.
However, that defense being made, anyone that gets into gaming with 4e will not see that and won't have past experiences with older versions of the rules (or completely seperate games entirely) to base their experience on. They have no frame of reference and so what is presented to them *is* what gaming *is*. It's just like the people that think Killswitch Engage is metal, having never really listened to Slayer. I consider them to be the unlucky, but they all seem to love what they are doing. At a certain point what we perceived as being our own will be annexed by someone else and made into what they wanted all along.
It's the sociological extension of the topic that I find to be woefully typical, not so much the system itself. Setting is another topic, but I've also always waved the flag that setting and system are mutually exclusive. I hate implied setting, but with enough work one can ignore it. I'm just too busy these days to do that level of work, so I've opted for a different approach...an approach that can't inculde anything "D&D". As they used to say on the webernet...your mileage may vary.
-Roleplaying games that clearly lack the roleplaying."
4E has at least as much role-playing "stuff" in it as previous editions, and if you count the DMG, actually has a lot of words of wisdom for the DM on how to make the game personal for the characters. While it definitely isn't a game focused on "pure" role-playing (like Truth & Justice or Fate/Fudge or Wushu, for instance) it does a solid job. I agree though that it doesn't standout as a heavy RP game, and probably can be called typical there.
-Unnecessary emphasis on combat.
It has an emphasis on combat, yup, but definitely not unnecessary. The combat is, however, creative and new from a mechanics standpoint.
-Emphasis of mathematics over creativity.
Nah - it goes out of its way to keep the math simple. In fact one of it's atypical design goals was to keep it down to a bare minimum. Very simple addition of small numbers. One of the reasons they got rid of "ability damage" was because of all the recalculation required when changing abilities.
-Rehashes of old systems instead of new ideas and games (this one is biased, but keep in mind this applies to GURPS and others as well as D&D)
4E went well beyond a normal iteration of D&D - it got rid of numerous "sacred cows", and put in some really brilliant concepts into the system. Healing Surges, the Powers framework, Rituals, a new take on magic items, really nifty artifacts, and streamlining encounter generation.
-Systems that don't work with and display a clear disconnect from their subject material.
Not 4E at all - It does fantasy adventuring fantastically well. In fact, it's the first edition of D&D to capture some classic fantasy genre images.
-Stupid frickin minis. (lol this is more of a joke than anything)
This one I can understand - the emphasis on minis is there, and a smallish chunk of gameplay is lost if you don't use a grid.
-Lack of balance and supplements that continually make things more and more powerful.
Great balance in 4E, and if the first set of supplements is any sign, much less power creep then previous editions.
-This is a traditional problem with D&D. In 3.5 it was ridiculous. Why play a weak paladin when you could be a...ninja! I'll be fair here and admit that we don't know if this will become an issue with 4e or not, due to the lack of supplements at this time, but, if experience proves true, it will be.
So far all character choices are interesting, fun, and effective. Some people complain that in 4E you can't make an ineffective character ... but ... yeah ... some people can never be satisfied. My wife played a paladin in a little test game I ran (she play a fighter in our longer term campaign) and she was surprised by how different it was from the fighter even though they are both "defenders" and how much fun it was.
-Character creation for D&D is unnecessarily complicated and takes far too long with far too little to show for it. And DM prep...countless civilizations have died during the time I have wasted trying to make what I wanted happen and IT JUST WOULDN'T WORK!
4E character creation is really nice - it's quite simple. It can be overwhelming to sit down in front of the book and make a character the first time. But once you know it, or having someone that knows it around to help, it is really a quick process.
The point is that in previous editions of D&D, classes like the fighter were more like the blank sheet of paper. Without specific constraints on what they could do from round to round, they were more open to coming up with imaginative maneuvers and plans. In 4th Edition, the inclusion of at-will and encounter powers for all classes is akin to drawing that circle on the paper. Yes, theoretically people can still come up with their own imaginative maneuvers, but they are going to be more inclined to simply use the at-wills and encounter powers over and over, because those powers are a suggestion of the RIGHT THING to do in any given round.
I can see your concern, but it is a fear not born out in any of the 3 groups I've played 4E in, nor in any of the groups I've read actual play about.
Again, my analogy is that pre4E gives you a blank piece of paper and a pencil, and 4E gives you the same, plus paint and paintbrush, ink, and charcoal.
I'm glad to hear you'll stick around Mr. Gilbertron. One of the few things I like more than talking about roleplaying is disagreeing about roleplaying with people that can back up what they have to say...which you seem to be able to do admirably. As I've always stated, conflict is bliss.
Thanks! Sorry if I come off a bit strong and fanboy-ish. The truth is 4E has plenty of fair complaints about it, but I get *so* angry when I see people trot out the ridiculous ones time and time again. "4E is just a MMORPG" or "in 4E everyone has magic!" *sigh*
-Emphasis of mathematics over creativity.
Nah - it goes out of its way to keep the math simple. In fact one of it's atypical design goals was to keep it down to a bare minimum. Very simple addition of small numbers. One of the reasons they got rid of "ability damage" was because of all the recalculation required when changing abilities.
Simple math does not preclude emphasis on math. There is lots and lots of addition and subtraction. It's incredibly easy to overlook an extra +2 that only applies until the end of someone's next turn because there are so many of them to add in. In short, the math is both simple and emphasized.
-Rehashes of old systems instead of new ideas and games
4E went well beyond a normal iteration of D&D - it got rid of numerous "sacred cows", and put in some really brilliant concepts into the system. Healing Surges, the Powers framework, Rituals, a new take on magic items, really nifty artifacts, and streamlining encounter generation.
I daresay that if we include World of Warcraft in the category of old systems (which I believe we can), then much of what you cite as "brilliant" is really rehashing what computer games have been doing. Healing Surges, Powers, the way in which magic items are now an expectation (to the point that they're in the PHB), and even the rote, mechanical, overly balanced encounter generation... none of that is really novel. It's mechanical and it's the net result of D&D filtered through WOW and spat back onto the page. It works, it's balanced, and it may be fun, but none of it is very role-playing focused. And that is my gripe with it. It's not a role-playing game any more. It's a game where you can play roles if you want to. Those are different things.
D&D4e is as much a role-playing game as World of Warcraft or Diablo II. You can role-play in both of those games, but the baseline system doesn't do anything to encourage it.
So, if I DO play RPGs to have fun, does it mean that I will enjoy a 4E campaign?
Zip, naturally you should play whatever system gives you the greatest enjoyment. I wasn't suggesting otherwise to anybody.
But specifically, the word 'fun' conjures feelings of something frivolous, amusing and lighthearted (at least, it does to me, and the dictionary definition leans in that direction also).
If frivolous, lighthearted amusement (i.e. 'fun') is what gives you the greatest enjoyment, then by all means seek it out.
People who praise 4e tend to make the claim that it's 'more fun' than 3e. Whether this claim is true is for you to find out. I'm just pointing out that this is what they are saying.
I also occasionally enjoy frivolous, lighthearted amusement in various forms, and I won't deny that sometimes 'fun' things happen in my campaign. But you see, my campaign is fun enough already - I wouldn't want the balance to swing too far towards the 'fun' axis at the expense of other forms of stimulation. So when I hear people saying that 4e is 'more fun' it makes me think of a pie chart in which the big pink slice labelled 'fun' expands at the expense of the 'scary as hell' slice or the 'mentally challenging' slice or the 'righteous anger' slice or the 'satisfying achievement of goals long sought-after' slice, or.....well, you get the picture. This word, 'fun' - it just doesn't do it for me. If someone tells me that such and such a film is a 'fun' film, this make me think 'catch it later on TV'.
By now, all the regulars here should know that my reasons for sticking with 3.5e run deeper than that. OK, so 'more fun' is a bit of a turn-off for me descriptively, but that alone wouldn't put me off buying into 4e. I was only pointing out that not everyone is excited by the prospect of a game that's described as 'more fun'.
I wasn't even saying that 3.5e is 'better' than 4e. It's better for my own purposes, but I'm not everyone.
I really shouldn't have read past the article....
"This isn't just fighters, mind; Wizards used to have many more spells to choose from. I found it much more creative and fulfilling when my wizard would have gone through his magic missile, fireball, and lightning bolt and had to decide how to use Light and Web and Feather Fall in the big combat because that's all he had left. It was inspirational. You had to think on your feet and make crap up and role-play and convince the DM that your crazy insane idea was sound."
If you want to play "BS the DM", why have mechanics in the first place?
"The point is that in previous editions of D&D, classes like the fighter were more like the blank sheet of paper. Without specific constraints on what they could do from round to round, they were more open to coming up with imaginative maneuvers and plans. In 4th Edition, the inclusion of at-will and encounter powers for all classes is akin to drawing that circle on the paper. Yes, theoretically people can still come up with their own imaginative maneuvers, but they are going to be more inclined to simply use the at-wills and encounter powers over and over, because those powers are a suggestion of the RIGHT THING to do in any given round."
I understand what you're saying about 4th edition, but I've got no idea what the previous "drawings" look like. Could you give a concrete example of creative tactics a pre-4e fighter might have used and the mechanics which were used to play it out?
Then could you explain why Page 42 (4e DMG) could not be used to allow the 4e fighter to attempt the same creative tactic?
"If you want to play "BS the DM", why have mechanics in the first place?"
I did not mean to imply that you are bullshitting the DM. I meant to suggest that you had to use your spells creatively. BSing the GM is trying to argue that your spell can do something it cannot. Being creative is using your resources to solve the problem at hand.
In 4th Edition I don't need to be creative. I'm going to spam Ray of Frost.
The point is not that the system does not allow for creativity. I have argued all along that good role-players can rise above any system. The argument is that the core rules as written do not encourage creativity. They encourage using at will powers and encounter powers. They do not encourage free wide-open thought; they encourage doing one or two very specific things in any given round.
Role-playing is often compared to the way children role-play amongst each other. To put this into that perspective, in my mind most RPGs (or at least the best ones) are the ones that say "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Whereas 4th Edition asks "Do you want to be a fireman or a doctor when you grow up?" They're both good choices, and the question itself does not necessarily preclude the child choosing to be a veterinarian or an astronaut. However, the wording of the question suggests to the child that they should choose between the two options offered.
"I understand what you're saying about 4th edition, but I've got no idea what the previous "drawings" look like. Could you give a concrete example of creative tactics a pre-4e fighter might have used and the mechanics which were used to play it out?"
There's an orc in a room guarding a pie.
The 3rd edition 1st level fighter opens the door and sees the orc. He knows he can attack it - that's what this game is all about - but he's free to interpret that attack. He can charge the orc and push it back into the pie. He can move in quickly and engage the orc. He can throw his sword at the orc. He can do a little dance. He can be creative. And the DM can be creative in describing the orc's reaction.
The 4th edition 1st level fighter opens the door and sees the orc. He can do ANY of the above actions, and more. HOWEVER, he's also staring at some little power cards (or powers listed on his sheet). One says Daily Brute Strike. One says Encounter Steel Serpent Strike. One says At-Will Reaping Strike. While our fighter can be completely creative, the rules are suggesting to him that he not be creative; instead, they are suggesting he pick one of his three power cards and use that. Most likely, the fighter is going to use his Encounter power, Steel Serpent Strike. The fighter stabs viciously at the orc's knee or foot to slow him down. No matter how tough he is, he's going to favor that leg for a time.
Later in the dungeon, our fighters meet a kobold guarding a cherry tart. The 3rd edition fighter again has to be creative in describing his assault, using tactics, etc., and the DM has to be equally creative in describing the result. The 4th edition fighter stabs viciously at the kobold's knee or foot to slow him down. No matter how tough he is, he's going to favor that leg for a time.
Later still, the fighters meet a bugbear guarding a cheesecake. The 3rd edition fighter again has to be creative in describing his assault, using tactics, etc., and the DM has to be equally creative in describing the result. The 4th edition fighter stabs viciously at the bugbear's knee or foot to slow him down. No matter how tough he is, he's going to favor that leg for a time.
3rd Edition, and previous editions, and indeed most RPGs, are a blank canvas. They require creativity. 4th Edition is paint-by numbers. And it's always the same numbers, and the same descriptions, and the same effects.
Yes, you can paint outside the lines. Yes, you can ignore the numbers. But the rules don't encourage that. They encourage following the rules. They encourage using the powers. Press F3 to use your At-Will power. Press F3 again. And again. And again. Loot monster, move on to next one. Press F3. Etc.
"Then could you explain why Page 42 (4e DMG) could not be used to allow the 4e fighter to attempt the same creative tactic?"
It could. In practice it has not been used precisely because players didn't bother attempting the creative tactics. Because the at-wills and encounters worked so well. This is from my own experience and from playtests I've watched and read about.
Again, to reiterate - the issue is not that you cannot be creative. The issue is that the core rules as written do not encourage that creativity. They passively encourage coloring within the lines. Within the context of the game, good role-players can rise above. They can describe creatively, they can laugh and sing and dance and gambol about the rules. But that's not the way the rules are written, and one page in the DMG allowing creative maneuvering does not eliminate the 100 pages of powers in the PHB that passively encourage the opposite behavior.
LOL...poor aeon. The entire tack that this conversation has taken is actually a very good example of what 4e has done to D&D. If you zoom out to a macroscopic view of this entire "encounter", a series of foes is coming through a revolving door and aeon is pushing F3 over and over and over again. What's more, it's so perfectly balanced that it's just going to creep up in CRs and no one ever triumphs or fails.
The only one that turned out not to be a generic revolving door encounter was Gilbertron, who is obviously either an important NPC or a new player who had his character very skillfully added in to the party by a crafty GM who disguised his entrance to the group under the guise of a possible foe. That sure as hell beat us meeting him in a tavern.
A Gamegrene thread as a microcosm of a 4e D&D encounter...I'm cracking up over here.
The only one that turned out not to be a generic revolving door encounter was Gilbertron, who is obviously either an important NPC or a new player who had his character very skillfully added in to the party by a crafty GM who disguised his entrance to the group under the guise of a possible foe. That sure as hell beat us meeting him in a tavern.
Shhh. Don't let me know I'm a sockpuppet, it'll ruin my sense of free will!
That sounds like fun...so I absolutely won't be doing it. I'm anti-fun.
LOL Scott. We should form the anti-fun league! Gherkin can be our grand leader! All hail gherkin!
I'm going to here provide a personal example to help aeon. I played a 4e game (gasp!). I was a cleric, which I was actually excited about because I was a cleric...but I was still cool. It was amazing! I'll admit I was infatuated with 4e at first, mainly because you could be a cleric...and cool and because prep time was, apparently, much abbreviated. So, I played this cleric in a zombie infestation campaign. Needless to say, I was pretty badass. I was mowing down zombies like Jesus, man! But, this being a zombie infestation, there were lots of zombies. And they just kept coming. I'll interrupt here to say this was a group that was not for roleplaying in it's various forms. One member liked it but had no idea how to do it and the rest didn't care for it. So I knew there wasn't gonna be any and didn't sweat it. In fact I even stuck around killing zombies when I should have left because I wanted more experience (this is not my usual behavior at the table). Anyway, the zombies kept coming and the GM got worried, realizing that if we were to last any longer than a session, he might have to throw us a rope. What was the rope he threw? Why, he doubled our daily and encounter powers. In any other game, even with a group of gamists, not simulationists, the solution would've been remarkably different, something like finding a magic sword that slew zombies with a single touch, or being saved by a stranger with cool abilities, or suddenly finding the zombies weren't coming anymore and having a mystery on our hands, or any number of other things. The point is 4e encourages that sort of gameplay, it encourages us to use the powers, not to be creative. Because, after all, if you just attack, no matter how amazingly you described it, all you do is hit the monster with normal damage. But if you use this special power, you get extra stuff. Now why wouldn't you do that? In earlier editions, all attacks were on the same par, with maybe a +2 being awarded for a particularly clever or well-described strike. You weren't encouraged there to be creative either, but, unlike 4e, it was hands off. In 4e however, there is an active deterrent to being creative in describing it, because everyone knows what Serpent Steel Strike or whatever looks like. Keep in mind that we decided to stay longer and fight zombies for experience after he threw us the rope, not before.
4e presents us with an interesting conflict between being creative and being able to do more stuff. Should such a conflict exist? I don't think so. I think they should be one and the same. But in 4e they are not. They grow increasingly mutually exclusive.
One more note about this particular game. We no longer felt the need to describe out attacks, or to insist the GM did so. We just went on with the game. Granted, he was dealing with literally scores of minis, but even so, there was very little description. There was definitely some tactics and lots of rolling but very little roleplay. In many ways this was because of the group, but a system should encourage a group to step beyond their boundaries, to roleplay, even uncomfortable moments, especially uncomfortable moments. 4e is a comfort system. It's "fun", it's comfortable, but it's not challenging, it's not creative, it's not something that forces you to grow as a roleplayer and that challenges you to tell stories equal to the caliber of the game itself. And therefore it is an inferior game.
For the record, I think 3.x was also infested with this problem, though to much lesser extent than 4e. 4e is everything 3.x wanted to be when it grew up.
4e gives blocks of prose for abilities that are inconsistent with the mechanic of the game. Taken literally the only way to stab someone in the foot is with the "Holy Whatever Oedipus Strike" while all other "attacks" are generic. A "cleave" can allow you to slice through one opponent and into another, yet you must soften opponents with numerous sword blows before the last one miraculously slices through them and into another -- not exactly consistent. The only way to ensure interesting events that are supported through the mechanics is to use feats, skills, and special powers. This is my re-telling of the argument that has already been put forward by a number of people.
There is a very interesting feature of 4e that bears examination. Minions are defeated with a single blow. While they may have exceptionally high skill and dangerous powers if you hit them they die. Although it is highly contrived I find that it supports the story on one hand (by making the "Boss" a more elusive target) yet on the other hand it forces a video game mentality onto the narrative. What do you guys think of this rule?
Personally, Gil, the minion rule is actually not bad. First, no minions are "highly skilled." They're really just cannon fodder. It reminds me of an alternate WoD rule, where you can send "minions" into combat with only 4 health to spice things up. But that's about all they do. If done right, it doesn't enforce the gamer mentality. The rule itself is, I think, a good one when used sparingly. However, paired with 4e, it does enforce the gamer mentality on top of what is already there.
Now to return to our discussions of typicality.
Please understand that, for me, if my argument applies to all D&D, well it's supposed to. Every edition is plagued with these problems and 4e is just the logical extremes of the inherent flaws of the game itself.
-Roleplaying games without the roleplaying.
4e having as much of an emphasis on roleplaying as previous editions of D&D only emphasizes my point - that all D&D is typical and subpar. However, we are agreed on the typicality here so I won't go any farther.
-Unnecessary emphasis on combat.
The emphasis here is extremely unnecessary. If you look in the DMG, there are two chapters devoted to "encounters." They are Combat Encounters and Non-Combat Encounters. By this at least, it is implied that have of your encounters should be combat. If you look throughout the rest of the book however, you'll find the amount of pages devoted to combat encounters to far outnumber those devoted to non-combat encounters (with fluff and all left out of both). If you then include the time spent on combat in the PHB (nearly the whole book) and the MM, then you see what I mean. Nearly the entire game is devoted to combat. Granted, 4e spent more time on non-combat than 3.x, but that's saying very little, especially since I think they're all fundamentally flawed. They want you to have combat encounters broken up with the occasional roleplaying non-combat encounter, or skill non-combat encounter or whatever. There is very much an unnecessary emphasis on combat, and one that quickly grows old.
-Emphasis of mathematics over creativity.
Aeon's already made my point here (thanks!) so I'll just reinforce the idea. When I go into first grade math hour, the math is very simple. Sometimes you're just barely learning to count. Sometimes you're getting into addition and subtraction. No matter what, by our standards, the math is very basic, because it should be. However, just because the math is simple doesn't mean mathematics is not emphasized during math hour. It's very emphasized - it is, after all, called math hour. However, if you prefer, you can read this point as "Emphasis of mechanics over creativity." That was the original intent that got skewed in the path from brain to fingers and is a problem endemic in all D&D.
-Rehashes of old systems
Whether it "changed" a few things or no, it's still D&D. It's still what was started back in 1978 and what got old about 2002. It's not something new and exciting. However, I'll throw in the towel here because many games have this problem and still manage to not be typical IMHO. This would be games like World of Darkness and GURPS, etc.
-Systems that don't work with and show a clear disconnect from their subject material.
This is very 4e. However, I've made this point in earlier posts about high fantasy and D&D, so I invite the curious to go back and look at those posts for my argument here. However, I will say that capturing one or two iconic fantasy images does nothing for killing off many others (just cause it's got dragons in it doesn't make it good fantasy).
-Lack of balance and supplements that continually make things more and more powerful.
Playing a ninja was quite a unique experience when compared to a rogue, but still unnecessary. The classes are interesting and effective, it's true, but they're all there is. Any class based system is broken, period.
-Time wasted trying to wade through an archaic mathematics systems instead of an interesting creation process.
This is mostly my personal gripe, but it still rings true. Character creation should be fun, should involve the whole group and should give the GM fodder for story. In D&D's defense, the big standard games don't really do this at all. I usually have to shove it in myself by making my players sit down and describe who they are, answer questions and form a group from each other. The big games, from D&D to GURPS to WoD, don't do this, which is a shame. WoD, however, in it's defense, does do this for advancement, so there's some hope. But mostly only indie games make character creation a truly involved CREATIVE process, as it should be. And GM prep should also be more expedient, allowing the GM to spend as little time as possible playing with numbers and as much time as possible imagining the story and where it will go next.
So, if we're kind, we have a system that fails on this "typicality scale" by 6 out of 7. That makes it quite typical and explains why I'm quite sick of it.
lol we need to make a lot more articles complaining about 4e and get more people on the site. We now know how to recruit members! Say Wizards worships the devil! Say it! Write an article about it!
Minions:
That's something I don't actually have any beef with. I stopped keeping track of low level enemies hit points while using the d20 system about 4 years ago. One or two good hits and that was that for them. I still had PCs roll for damage, and I still knew a rough estimate of the enemies total HP...but I didn't keep track of each and every one. It wasted too much of my time and i wanted to get back to the cinematic action and...of course...the roleplaying that brought us all together in the first place.
Mechanics:
Tzuriel said something that made me really think; there are two kinds of encounters in the DMG...combat and non-combat. I think that one of the inherent problems in my opinion is that anything non-combat is still viewed as an "encounter". I know that from a system designers standpoint that this is really the only way to look at it so that it can be broken down to numbers and have some kind of mechanic applied for adjudicating success or failure. But still...from a campaign designers standpoint it really dehumanizes the entire thing. It takes the piss right out of a really witty or brilliantly planned out scene to apply some math and just call it an encounter. One set of numbers triumphs over another set of numbers after a random element (dice) is added for the sake of making sure it all appears not to be predetermined.
All elements of human tension and emotion are strangled then pasteurized out as soon as too many mechanics are added to the situation. Playing your character should count for something, even when it comes to determining success. Last night I had to negotiate with a very angry guest at one of the properties that I manage regarding the parking he *didn't* inform us he would need for the very large SUV he showed up driving. When all was said and done he gave me a fancy pen and shook my hand and was in a good mood. I didn't feel triumphant for passing a roll, I felt triumphant for overcoming the situation by elements inherent in my character itself.
Really, this is my beef with most RPGs. Even my new found passion for GURPS is marred by it, albeit to a much lesser extent. At least therein it feels like the players have some degree of control over the outcome, though I'm not sure why it feels that way. It just feels like the process is democratized more, with success or failure riding more in the hands of the players than the numbers on the sheet and the dice. D&D on the other hand has three basic things that can happen; physical combat, skill combat, and social combat. As one Gamegrene alumni (dwhoward) once said "roleplaying should take place in town". Ugh.
I wonder how *he* feels about 4e?
4e gives blocks of prose for abilities that are inconsistent with the mechanic of the game.
Man what? That's not how a Cleave functions, the mechanics and description are closely tied, and generally the uses of powers creates very interesting situations.
I'm finding it all comes down to "if you don't try with a game, you won't have fun with it"
I dare y'all to tell me what your favorite system is and I'll go right out and run a sucky game with it.
Minions are definitely gimmicky but are also neat from a power fantasy standpoint, from a prose standpoint, and from a tactical standpoint.
Finally, if you don't like D&D, that's fine. 4E is still D&D (in spite of what many other whiners whine about), so criticizing that it is still D&D is moronic. It's like complaining that Return of the Jedi was worse than the previous two movies because it had light sabers, jedi, space ships, and that Darth guy in it.
I have nothing bad to say about 4e because I have not played it. I've been playing Pathfinder's Beta version for a number of weeks now. I do this not out of preference, but because I want to support Open Gaming. I encourage anyone with a shelf of paid-for OGL material collecting dust to have a look.
Ooh, what an involved discussion!
1) Aeon, I DID get your initial metaphor regarding the blank page. What I didn't get are all the extensions it got (How is having a specific, preset, power like having a brush?)
2) Tzuriel, I think the sad situation you described with regards to the DM's solution could have happened in almost any other system. Had it been 3rd Edition, he might have allowed extra uses of Rage (for bararians), more copies of spells (for casters), or doubled the effects of all healing potions - essentially forcing the mechanics into the narrative, leaving you with a sour aftertaste. I don't think you can pin this on D&D4.
3) Scott, a large part of the resentment I hear to the presence of mechanics in non-combat encounters (to use a D&D term) stems, in my opinion, from the old discussion of "How much mechanics do I want in my roleplaying scenes?". Everyone is entitled to their own preferences and I don't think having mechanics that simulate skill- or social challenges is categorically bad. Would you always want a player to sing at the table when his character is performing on stage? Would you necessarily flunk a con man character's ruse if her player can't bluff her way out of a wet paper bag?
In addition, do you (or anyone else, for that matter) say the same about similar mechanics in other games? (Burning Wheel's Duel of Wits or NWoD's derangement check come to mind).
4) Aeon, while I wouldn't say mixing traditional D&D elements with WoW features is extremely creative, I would also certainly not dismiss it as typical. Putting together older things in new arrangements is part of the creative process, isn't it?
5) More generally, before one can label a game as "typical", one must define what typical is. While Tzuriel started that, we should ask if his definition is, for lack of a better word, definitive. Why is "having a disconnect with the setting" typical, for example? Moreover, I think this is a broader topic that deserves its own thread. I'd also suggest submitting other games to this "review": How would Shadowrun (Nth edition) stand up to this test? How would Spirit of the Century? Ninja Burger? Mutants & Masterminds? Paranoia? CoC?
1) Aeon, I DID get your initial metaphor regarding the blank page. What I didn't get are all the extensions it got (How is having a specific, preset, power like having a brush?)
Different metaphor:
You're in a garage. There's a piece of wood on the table. On the wall are a bunch of tools. In a box are a bunch of nuts, bolts, screws, etc. You can do whatever you want with that wood.
But if I put a hammer and a nail in your hand, there's a strong likelihood you're going to pound in a nail.
When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
When you have a choice, everything looks like lots of different things.
When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
I agree. Although you have it turned around. pre-4E you have just a hammer, 4E you have a full toolbox of tools.
-"3) Scott, a large part of the resentment I hear to the presence of mechanics in non-combat encounters (to use a D&D term) stems, in my opinion, from the old discussion of "How much mechanics do I want in my roleplaying scenes?". Everyone is entitled to their own preferences and I don't think having mechanics that simulate skill- or social challenges is categorically bad. Would you always want a player to sing at the table when his character is performing on stage? Would you necessarily flunk a con man character's ruse if her player can't bluff her way out of a wet paper bag?"
Not at all zip. Unless they were a *really* good singer. LOL. I wouldn't say that I resent non-combat mechanics per se. I resent having *too many* non-combat mechanics. I also resent any game designer that doesn't take the time to make sure it's clearly stated that the mechanics for social or skill interaction should back up good roleplaying or description...not replace it. At that point, I say remove it and get back in the dungeon.
I agree. Although you have it turned around. pre-4E you have just a hammer, 4E you have a full toolbox of tools.
I think you have the same toolbox in each case but in 4E the tools are glued to your hands.
4e gives blocks of prose for abilities that are inconsistent with the mechanic of the game.
"Man what? That's not how a Cleave functions, the mechanics and description are closely tied, and generally the uses of powers creates very interesting situations."
Sorry, I don't think what I meant came across very clearly.
Cleave is a rule add-on. The rules are complete without the feat in the game at all. The add-on allows you to something that is additional to the rules. All of this is great and I think, from a design point of view, that this is a wonderful way to build a game. It keeps the core mechanic simple and allows for customization. When you kill an opponent with a melee blow you are allowed to make a melee attack against a different foe. The idea is that your single blow cleaves through one opponent (rending them) and strikes another.
The problems:
1- It sounds like a situational phenomenon, so why can't anyone attempt a cleave; what is the special training that you need to do that? A strong well trained warrior cannot reproduce this feat without specific training. This seems inconsistent.
2- After pounding away on a 200 HP creature repeatedly with my axe the final blow slices through them and in to another opponent. That is inconsistent with the experience of my first 15 attacks.
3- I am allowed three attacks a round. Unless of course I kill each opponent and then I am allowed six attacks a round. This is inconsistent with my level of skill.
4- It is possible that I can occasionally drop an opponent with a blow and use the follow-through to attack someone else. It is not possible that the follow-through of an attack that misses a displaced creature, sails over an opponents head, or is otherwise unimpeded can be directed at another opponent. This is inconsistent.
5- Every time I kill an opponent it is with a strike that slices through an opponent and threatens another. I am no longer able to kill an opponent with a thrust, or a curt chop, or a downward strike, or an upward strike. No, every mortal blow that I deal slices clear of my vanquished foe and spontaneously leaps towards another target. This is inconsistent.
I understand why the feat is there. Your character can do monumental and legendary things. They (WOTC) create ways for these things to happen through feats, not through the mechanic of the game. There is no creative extreme success mechanism built into the game to allow amazing things to happen because that would give the players too much choice, too much credit, and too much freedom. D&D is sliding down a path that accomodates the rules-lawyer and the power-gamer. It is becoming their game. It is a social game and I don't mind playing the game with the arbiters and tacticians, so long as there is room for the other people that come to the table. If I like to visualize the game, imagine the story unfold in my head, gaps of logic interfere with my enjoyment of the game.
- Yes, lets leave this wounded creature for Feldspar the Cleaving Dwarf because if he kills it -- in fact, every time he kills something, he fights better.
- Maybe he's a secret kind of Necromancer who peddles death-energy for power?
- Don't be stupid Gilgamesh, it is just a feat.
One makes sense from within the game, the other from outside it. This is what I mean by inconsistent.
- Why can't cleave by a special kind of attack that aims at two opponents (with penalties to attack)?
- Why can't it only happen on a natural roll of "7"?
They can have exciting events in the game without warping it for narrativists?
Can I make up a new word for the kind of gamer that I am?
Worships? More like IS the Devil.
(Cleave explanation snipped.
Ah - I see, you're thinking of 3E cleave, the new cleave is this:
Cleave Fighter Attack 1
You hit one enemy, then cleave into another.
At-Will ✦ Martial, Weapon
Standard Action Melee weapon
Target: One creature
Attack: Strength vs. AC
Hit: 1[W] + Strength modifier damage, and an enemy adjacent
to you takes damage equal to your Strength modifier.
Increase damage to 2[W] + Strength modifier at 21st level.
Basically, you line up two people and hit them both (or miss them both).
There is no creative extreme success mechanism built into the game to allow amazing things to happen because that would give the players too much choice, too much credit, and too much freedom. D&D is sliding down a path that accomodates the rules-lawyer and the power-gamer. It is becoming their game. It is a social game and I don't mind playing the game with the arbiters and tacticians, so long as there is room for the other people that come to the table. If I like to visualize the game, imagine the story unfold in my head, gaps of logic interfere with my enjoyment of the game.
What kind of mechanism are you thinking? D&D *was* sliding down that path unchecked, 4E seems to have stopped the slide (for now). There's a fair amount of wiggle room for more descriptive, creative play. Although I wish they would have made the action point mechanics more interesting. For my first 4E campaign I'm grafting on some Aspects from Fate and Action Dice from Spycraft, to make things a bit more player controllable.
"(Cleave explanation snipped.
...
You hit one enemy, then cleave into another.
...
Target: One creature
...
Basically, you line up two people and hit them both (or miss them both). "
????
I don't get it. You line up two or target one, which is it?
Sorry, sometimes they jumble up in my head -- I recently starting playing 3.5, 4E, Pathfinder, and Mutants & Masterminds.
The 4E version makes less sense than the 3E because it allows you to:
-damage an opponent that you may have little chance of hitting otherwise.
-always succeed at damaging the second target when you hit the first.
It is better than 3E by making the cleave an action that is deliberately announced rather than a contingent effect.
What kind of mechanism are you thinking?
If I exceed the roll I need to perform an action by a lot, maybe I could spend those excess points on making fantastic things happen based on the description I had previously used when setting up my roll. This way every attack is not something fantastic, but allows for every attack to become something fantastic.
I apologize for injecting denseness into the thread, I am not anywhere near any 4E books and don't want to pay shipping for the priviledge.
I recall the 3.5E Cleave only sort-of but I thought RAW required only an afterthought for the second target as was mentioned. A clever fighter would probably look further out of course but I usually played a clown, so I don't have the direct experience.
That said, I seem to recall if you wanted to attack with the intention to drive back an opponent, you'd be doing a Bull Rush, which would be a whole different mechanical consideration (AoO!?!), but if you got lucky you could call it a Cleave and all would be good. The rules could really step all over roleplaying a fighting style that way.
Gazgurk:
How about a simulacrum of Original D&D?
http://www.swordsandwizardry.com/
Here's a simulacrum of Basic/Expert D&D:
http://www.goblinoidgames.com/labyrinthlord.htm
You can download both in PDF form for free.
Tzuriel:
Try Castles & Crusades. It's a rules-light re-envisioning of 1E using D20 mechanics.
http://www.trolllord.com/
I think this could shed some light on the idea that more character rules can lead to fewer player choices.
Quick Primer for Old School Gaming
http://www.lulu.com/content/3019374
You can download it in PDF form for free.
Aeon, you pinpoint my way of though, and I'm so glad. As a member of the French Community in Quebec, it is so hard to value our own point in WotC forums about the 4th edition when you don't master english dialect.
Personnally, I'm afraid that next version (probably 5.0) will loose the way DnD was in 2nd, then 3rd anf finally 3.5 edition. I have plenty of other RP-like games that I enjoy (White Wolf... second version please, Shadowrun, Live Medieval Game), but they are not as great for medieval fantasy campaign.
Know that if you post a comment on WotC about 4th edition ruin DnD, i'm right behind you, as well as most of my friends and players.
"I believe it is better to interact with the game environment and use the rules to help adjudicate about the choices that are made in game."
Good one! As succinct a summation of why we have RP/G rules as I've read in 33 years! Bravo!
Bwang the Red
"There is a very interesting feature of 4e that bears examination. Minions are defeated with a single blow. While they may have exceptionally high skill and dangerous powers if you hit them they die. Although it is highly contrived I find that it supports the story on one hand (by making the "Boss" a more elusive target) yet on the other hand it forces a video game mentality onto the narrative. What do you guys think of this rule?"
I've used variations of it since '77 and campaigned for similar ones in all 'horde' rules. I saw 3.0 Swarms as a good take and applaud the other versions that Ive encountered, particularly the 'background effect' in a spy game (James Bond? I forget) I once played at a Con. 3 levels of bad guys, the boss being the long drawn out fight with sidekicks and 'named' villains being easier. The poor nametagless minion verbally defeated by Austin Power's dad being a bit weak for the lowest tier. The greatest advantage is that such give a lot of satisfaction to players by putting up a good fight before bowing off stage. I will always remember the climactic face off in a martial arts game where the 3 lesser characters dealt with the sea of Scorpion monks while the heroine went toe to toe with her evil twin. When she lost, the 'sea' overwhelmed us in classic fashion and set the stage for the next scene. 4.0 handles this as well as most, but has the advantage of actually allowing for it.
Having grown up (started with 2e in 1999 and moved to 3e in 2000) with 3rd edition, this is what feels like "real DnD" to me (although I respect 2e as my "roots", I wouldn't play with it anymore, just like I have fond memories of my old k6 computer but wouldn't think of using it now).
And I remember the devs saying the built 3e to be "like a computer code", so that it's logical and you can easily expand on it (it's easier to create rules in a logical and framework) but 4e? They kept the "computer code" aspect but removed the logic, it's like they took the worst of all DnD editions and current days computer games so as to attract to the most people possible.
Maybe i've just grown to used to the d20 system, but 4E just seems inferior and too arbitrary to be fun.
But my main gripe is: In my mind, when playing a computer "RPG" game, we should go "wow, this is like Dungeon and Dragons!". But in reality, playing Dungeon and Dragons you go "Wow, this is like WoW!".
I remember fondly when I first heard Beck and realized how heavily he had been influenced by the Beastie Boys (I still have License To Ill on vinyl from when it came out when I was in grade 4...yes, I'm old school like that). When Hello Nasty came out I remember not-so-fondly realizing that now the Beastie Boys were being influenced by Beck. For shame. Then, when To The 5 Burroughs came out, I remember thinking fondly again how good it was that they went back to their roots and abandoned Beckism.
Hopefully there will be a 5th edition that does the same thing for D&D players. It's too late for me though; I got off the D&D bus permanently after realizing (not-too-fondly) that D&D isn't fantasy. It's D&D. It's it's own genre, for whatever that's worth.
If you want a game that's not secretly a TableTop war game with no role playing or imagination, try Castles and Crusades. it's really re=awakened parts of my imagination and the fun center of my brain since I discovered it a few years ago.
Check it out at www.trolllord.com
Try the free quickstart rules one session.
just try it.
I just thought I'd add my tuppence-worth, if anybody here is still reading this thread. I registered here just to get my own point of view across.
I've really enjoyed going through all of the various arguments for and against 4E here. Thanks, everyone, for posting their thoughts. I should say at this point that Aeon's article won my support. That said, certainly I agree that those who find 4E to be a rewarding game are entitled to their opinion, and (of course) to keep playing and enjoying it. Allow me to explain my position here somewhat.
I've been a DM for my D&D group for the past 14 years, and began playing about 3 years before that. While I was DMing, my group played through 2nd ed, 3 and 3.5 in various campaigns. While it took us a few games to get the hang of 3, the consensus of opinion amongst my players was that it was a better system. We all agreed; we played it, and 3.5, for years. When I heard about 4E coming out, I was ... despite being 32 years old ... excited to the point of jumping up and down. I thought, Fantastic! What will they change THIS time?! I couldn't wait. I kept phoning up my players, talking about it. I praised what I had heard about it. Less power in magic items, and more in the actual build of the characters? This could only be good news, and I couldn't wait to see it on paper, to see how it played out.
My players and I bought the 4E books, in no small part due to my infectious enthusiasm. And we played it. All in all, we played 5 sessions (we game semi-regularly, but they're long sessions; about 12 hours, with breaks for beer, smokes, and pizza). Some aspects of 4E we really enjoyed. Despite the heavy focus on table-top maps and miniatures, we liked, on the whole, the kinds of 'tactical' movement that combat situations created. Forced movement, all the pushing and pulling that occurs, added a lot to the various combats on its own. But there were also many flaws, and before you decide at this point to hate me, please read on.
Despite my own early excitement, as well as the early interest of my players, 4E has turned us right off. Having read all of your thoughts in this thread, it is difficult to quantify *exactly* why that is. I found myself, at first, feeling guilty about not liking 4E. I thought it was my age; that I just wasn't ready for anything new. I discussed this at length with my players, over the phone and at the pub (where we spoke quietly about D&D, for fear of general social alienation and/or actual violence). We came to a few conclusions.
The main reason we don't like it is that there isn't much variety. There just isn't the same scope in this game for characters to be different (and I am speaking here of mechanics, not roleplay and background aesthetic). Try this: build a 4E fighter, for example. Take him to, oh I don't know, 10th level. Then put him to one side. Create a second 1st level fighter. Take him to 10th level and try to make him *different*. You can do it; but you won't enjoy that second character as much. Why? Because your first character had all the powers that you *really* wanted. And there isn't much alternative choice. But go ahead and buy Martial Power; that gives you a *little bit more*.
Now I know as well as anybody that 3 and 3.5 were not perfect. There were feat combinations for example, that were desirable in fighters (Power Attack, Cleave, Great Cleave etc.) and which were rarely ignored by players of fighters. But, if you wanted a really *different* fighter, you could do it, easily, and still find the character highly playable. Great 'fun', in other words.
This just isn't the case in 4E. I heard the system was simpler. Actually, it isn't. What it is, from a beginner's point of view, is much more approachable; there is a difference. One of my players has a rogue in 4E. He loves the idea of playing this sneaky, backstabbing, ruthless assassin. He's less enamoured of being restricted by how much (actually how little) he can use Tumble and his other 'powers'. Why, he asked me, are they limited?
Well, obviously, as someone else pointed out earlier here, it's for game balance. As irritating an ersatz construct as that actually is, it is - arguably - necesary when creating a rules set, for any game. There might seem to be exceptions. Ars Magica, for example, emphasises the power of the Magi - the wizards - over the other types of character. But the wizards aren't too hot in a brawl; there *is* a degree of balance there, whether intentional or not. (Play it, by the way, if you haven't already; it's definitely worth a bash.)
In answer to my friend's query about his character's limits, I just said, rather glumly, "I don't know". And this is true, because the concept of 'game balance' was hard to argue in a system that emphasises the use of certain ridiculously overpowered (albeit, OK, 1/day, 1/encounter or whatever) abilities. His next problem was with the amount of time it took him to calculate his rogue's various attacks. He kept apologising as he flicked through his notes and the PH. I told him not to worry, of course. He kept on reading, kept on apologising. I couldn't blame him; and this fellow is *smart*, in case you're thinking that bloke probably has learning difficulties'.
You're likely bored by now, or you hate me, or you are consumed by a quietly seething fusion of the two... so I won't go on too much longer.
We have decided to take a break from D&D. Our intention is to go back to it after a four or five month break. We're going to try one more 4E game, just as a check, to see whether or not we have judged it fairly. In the meantime, I am already putting together my own house rules that take some of the (good) bits of 4E, and combine it with the good bits of 3.5. I'm doing this because I know what my players want from the game, and I intend to give them that experience. If 4E does not deliver next time (armed with the newer books I still have on order, by the way), we'll undoubtedly end up using this hybrid ruleset.
4E has so far been a real disappointment to me and my players. All of my own group's arguments against it have been reflected, to various degrees, in this thread. Variety, I think, is what is missing from this game. It's not that it is so heavily focused on tabletop wargaming (which it is); it's not that it's new, and as I thought at first, exciting. It's that so many things are missing from it. This is the real clincher: it seems rushed; it seems unfinished. Why is it, exactly, that I can no longer create a certain type of Wizard character? One who, for example, specialises in divinations or illusions? Why is that? Something vital has been drained from the game (or, and I use this expression cringingly, 'from the D&D experience'). Having bought and played 4E, it is my own opinion that any pre-4E version of D&D is a better choice for a group to pick up and play. Otherwise... well, I'd choose another game entirely. Right, that's it. And thank you, by the way, if you actually read all of this! Best wishes to you all, and good luck howsoever you choose to play!
First, thanks for your comments, Darth Currant! You can stick around and continue looking all you like. This is a great site.
Second, yeah, I'm trying to move on from D&D myself. I'd like to have another game that can easily handle fantasy, and GURPS has caught my eye, but that's not important here. I think you're completely right about 4e and I'm sorry you were disappointed. I was too. But, all in all, I think many of the problems come from d20 itself. It just isn't a good system. So, largely, I bid it adieu and move on to better games.
Yes yes...well said. Do stick around.
-"This is the real clincher: it seems rushed; it seems unfinished. Why is it, exactly, that I can no longer create a certain type of Wizard character? One who, for example, specialises in divinations or illusions? Why is that?"
You mean.......sorta like a computer game? Don't worry! They'll release a patch soon to fix those bugs.
(pssst, tzuriel....GURPSGURPSGURPS)
Thank you both for your welcome. Tzuriel, I agree with you about GURPS; I used to play that and found it exceptionally rewarding (even if the players I was with hated the fact that I created a superhero, called 'Raguel the Archangel of Vengeance' (!), whose lightning powers could be described as "Emperor Palpatine x258". Essentially, he evaporated all enemies and left nothing standing for the other guys to hit).
I am not sure if d20 really is flawed; certainly I think that the 4E take on the system could be better. I do think it could do with some minor fixing though.
To Scott Free... I see what you mean. I suppose that my group and myself are a bit irritated by the slow procession of product from WotC.... in terms of 'bug fixing', as you say, it just seems to be too little too late. Even so, I intend to keep buying the WotC stuff to see if they do get it right.
Take care and all that stuff!
Buying more and more products in the hopes that a company is eventually going to get it right makes it so they never have to. If you *don't* keep buying their products they'll realize something is wrong.
Vote with your dollar.
When the final, official announcement for 4E came out I was overcome by a feeling a dread. Yes, I know that sounds melodramatic. But I have a very strong attachment to the D&D game. I've been playing since 1978 and collecting RPG books in general since then. At this point I have some 60+ feet of shelf space dedicated to RPG books and boxed sets. I have literally spent tens of thousands of dollars on RPG products. And as a poster on the dnd Usenet group comment, with 4E I was "fired as a customer".
I honestly think that the 3.5 (and OGL in general) system is the best version of the D&D rules. Not just *one* system, but a set of rules that can be fashioned into *many* gaming systems: Iron Heroes, Conan, Arcana Evolved, Grim Tales, M&M and my current favorite, Everstone: Blood Legacy. The OGL gave so much to the gaming community. It grew the industry and helped to create numerous new companies and hundreds of new gaming products. Not all were great but there was so much stuff to work with you could always mine something.
I love my hobby. And it pains me knowing that all new players of D&D will think 4E is the defacto version of the game.
I have already pre-ordered the pathfinder final version. :)
But do check out Everstone if you want a cool take on the 3.5 system. I did a video review on my YouTube channel.
Everstone....I wish that had been more thoroughly edited. As much as I wanted to love it, I couldn't go two paragraphs without being repulsed.
D20 really hasn't gone away, and the OGL is here to stay no matter what edition of D&D is floating around; it's mostly our odd hobby and it's need for New and Shiny that creates this impression that 4E has somehow negated the value of older works. Pathfinder is a step in the right direction to accepting the truth that just because D&D has a new edition, doesn't mean that 3.X is somehow dead. I love 4E, but yes, I too will be grabbing Pathfinder when its out and am already considering interesting campaign ideas.
Have you seen this? It's Free.
http://www.basicfantasy.org
Most of the arguments here seemed to be centered around combat, And I can agree with death currant that at first the system seems cumbersome. Our first fight took three times as long as it should have, so did our second. It wasn't until about the third or fourth time around that people began to get to know their sheet a little better and find their groove. Once that happened combat was quite smooth.
However, I simply can't agree that 4th or ANY system will detract from good role-play. Good players know how to keep things interesting, regardless of system. I certainly do not read off the description of my power in the book every time I use it. I describe how my character would achieve the same effect in a given situation. And GM's can work around any Mechanics Limitations; they're GM's for god’s sakes. (there are limits, to a GM's power of course but that’s based on players. For instance I refused to Let my GM put Fire-ants on an ice map- illogical) I've never been in a really good campaign that followed every-single rule all the time. That’s called the RPGA. We go there to kill things and show off our character-breaking skills. No matter the system, a good GM can create a story that Emotionally Captures the players and makes them want to come back.
The system is solid, balanced, and more flexible than one first thinks. I hated the system when I first played it. It was WOW to me, Dnd for dummies etc. My Boyfriend took his 3by5's with his powers and wrote his hotkeys from WOW on them. But every system has its merits and flaws, and yet we gamers still press on, From THACO to GURPS to White Wolf to 4th ed, we play. Because at heart, we know what gaming is about. It's about good role-play, escapism, exploring other worlds, hanging out with friends and making the GM's brain hurt. We are gamers, and we will rule the earth- once we get to level 30...
In my circle of roleplayers, we have a variety of games going on at once. We have four games we cycle through a month: a Naruto-inspired campaign using a homebrew version of OVA, a Slipstream Game using the Savage Worlds rules, a WoD game set in the universe of Carnivale, and a 4e game going through several modules. We've come to the conclusion that each game is for a different itch: WoD is there to satisfy our urges to make well-rounded and fleshed out characters without the need for combat, Naruto is a bit more like a war game or CCG in that most of our fun is in strategy and skill, Slipstream is just genre-campy fun, and 4e is our hack-and-slash night.
What you've said above isn't wrong, but it's not necessarily bad either. I've always felt that D&D wasn't meant for pure roleplaying: there was still too much of an emphasis on killing and mayhem to think that. You could do it, and I've made pure story characters from AD&D to 3.5, to varying degrees of success. In the end, however, D&D has always felt like a battle between the players and the GM: the GM scares the players by throwing nefarious creatures and unfriendly situations at them, and the players come up with ridiculous answers to the situation that the GM never intended. I doubt any of my GMs expected one of my fellow players to pick up a rowboat and slam it into a foe warforged's chest. So I suppose, in the end, we're both right. When you want to blow nuke stuff out of the water, play 4e. If you want to create a character and delve into a story, look elsewhere.
Thanks for a great post. My friends and I have been playing 4th ed for a couple of months now and we have come to virtually the same conclusions about the game. At this point we are planning on ditching 4th ed and starting up either a 2nd edition or Hackmaster campaign.
Some thoughts about what you and others have said.
For those of us who are ardent roleplayers, the 4th ed game represents a real limitation in how we play the game. Instead of making up our own actions, we instead are TOLD what our actions are going to be, how we use them, and how often. And it is very true that in the heat of battle, we will ALWAYS choose a power that gives us the best advantage in combat, even if we've used it 10 times already and it doesnt make any sense. For example, I find that my halfling rogue uses Distracting Flourish way, way too much, simply because my rogue has a very high charisma, and thus its the most damaging of my at-will abilities. Why use a basic attack or another at-will when I can be the most deadly by feinting with one hand while stabbing or shooting with the other? Of course, the fact that I can use Distracting Flourish even when the monster cant see my feint doesnt make any sense but hey its allowed and maximizes my damage. And this bothers me in a fundamental way, because Im NOT making up cool moves any more, Im just repeating the same crap over an over.
Those of us who were weaned on basic dnd, 1st and 2nd Ed really do understand this. We took a set of core rules, as imperfect as they were, and used them as a foundation to craft our own experience. The rules were there not to direct us, but to give us structure as we created our own drama, our own actions, our own reality. Sure, we had a Dungeon Master telling us what we could and couldnt do, but the best DMs worked with us, gave us a chance, no matter how slim, to pull off the great exploit, and rewarded us lavishly for taking chances and making the game fun. It seems 4th ed has taken that away from the DMs and the players, instead codifying the "fun" into rigid powers and rules. Why? Well to sell an endless stream of books and add-ons, of course.
Once TSR sold out to Wotc, the game changed in a fundamental way, even if the same authors, artists and editors were still cranking out content. The entire focus of the game shifted to the tabletop, to minatures and squares. The number of rules relating to movement, line of sight, reach, facing, etc exploded. The game became less an exercise in imagination and more an exercise in staring at a battlemat counting squares. And dont get me started with the absurdity of attacks of opportunity, or whatever they are calling it now. You want me to beleive that in the heat of battle, no matter how many foes a monster or player is facing, they have the time to take an extra attack on someone passing by or moving away?? Comon! Or that a wizard will open themselves up to an attack by casting a spell, but a fighter winding up with a big 2-handed sword doesnt? Silly.
In the end, it is the shared world that the DM and players create, and the sheer joy of making it up as you go along, that matters, not making powers and rules for every possible contingency. This is something that Wotc has forgotten, or has never learned.
Well said.
"In the end, it is the shared world that the DM and players create"- Menethenes
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To a degree. Really, it's a world that the DM creates and for which the players can *propose* the way they interact with that world. The lack of codification does not necessarily mean players are more free. That's because a lack of codified actions means that the result of PLAYER actions are allowed, forbidden, nullified, or quantified by GM fiat. While players may be free to propose more actions in 1st e, because there were few contraints, the outcomes and interpretations of any but the most basic moves were firmly in the control of the GM. That's why, those of us who can remember playing back then, would likely remember how few real tactical choices were ever actually presented by players back then, despite the freedom. We also remember the arguments.
The codification of specific tactical abilities, as depicted in the latter editions of D&D, has the effect of taking control of player actions away from the DM and placing them in the players' hands, where they should be. If 4e has made mistakes by making it so that the player actions have arbitrary limits on them that cannot be supported by the narrative, then that is a different issue.
I see your point, Nefandus, but the problem with 4e is that it saw the problem of earlier editions and went to a ridiculous extreme to fix it. Players actions should be dictated by players and by reason, not by an overly restrictive system or an overly restrictive GM. Good games have the GM and the players working together to tell a story, not facing each other down across the table. Original D&D created a power struggle between the GM and the players, something we're still trying to get away from in gaming today. However, creating a system that takes power from everybody is not the way to go. At the risk of sounding like a hippie, roleplaying needs to be egalitarian. It's not about "winning" something, it's about telling an interesting, compelling story.
Really, though, this problem goes all the way back. Dungeons and Dragons originated it, and still continues to promote it, which is one of the reasons I don't play it anymore. The whole point of D&D is to fight through a "dungeon" the DM created, and, by a combination of skill, luck and smarts, "beat" the DM's dungeon. Frankly, if that's what you want in your gaming, Warcraft is waiting for you. Go waste your time over there. Here, we can do something much better. Here, we work together to tell a story, taking advantage of the natural interest every player has in his/her character and the natural interest the GM has in his/her setting to tell a powerful, interesting story. This is the only way to overcome this conflict that has bedeviled roleplaying since its inception. What it requires is nothing less than a complete change of focus.
And, seriously, killing D&D. I'm so done with its 80 versions.
FI FO FI FUM
4TH ED IS DUMB!