271: Red Box Renaissance

[Archon]

Part of me thinks they are less concerned about getting the grognards back as they are about getting the grognards' *kids*. Figure the average 10-year old who picked up D&D in 1983 is now 37 and probably has kids in the right age range to start with Red Box. A whole generation of kids, younger than the current 4e crowd, with parents with warm, nostalgic feelings towards classic D&D.

 

[kissmahairyass]

Mike Mearls ruined our blind edition hatred!

LMAO! Some of your readers don't know satire when they see it!

 

[Norm Morrison IV]

I think a hard thing to understand for a lot of people is that many 'grognards' are not opposed to new systems as much as they are the change of focus. 4e does what it tries to do extremely well; and this is why the adherents to it are somewhat vehemently upset about a need to change.
And ultimatly. changes will not attract any older gamers or their children unless they change that focus, or unless they make versions of the game with different foci.

OD&D, in my estimation, was a game focused on exploration as it's primary goal, in that the classes and roles were balanced in utlity based on this. It didn't matter if the low level mage was less useful in combat, he could detect for magic or read languages, which were just as important to that game style.

AD&D's main focus for game balance moved out a little further, to more adventure balance with some campaign balance added in. For example, Assassins and Thieves had more skills based on being in town, and many equalizers were in the rules about later growth, such as stronghold building.

and this has moved until 4E. where the balance is in the encounter, as one can see by Gildan's conversation above dealing with what makes the fighter and the wizard different, or Machvergil's writing on why he likes this game.

It's not that one focus is better than the others. It's just that they are each designed for different game styles.

 

[rddj623]

Being a newcomer to tabletop gaming myself, it was really neat to read some of the reasons why there is a kerfuffle over 4th Edition as opposed to older versions. It was also nice to read about a person in charge of a huge "empire" who still was not only willing, but wanted to listen to the "common people". It's nice to see him doing what I think would be honoring of the foundations of D&D. Imagination is key, and it truly seems like that is where he's coming from and where he's leading.

 

[d20philia]

It's a long comments thread, so I apologize if any of these points have been made already.

I don't like that the Essentials line is removing options for Fighters.

I certainly hope the new Essentials line doesn't become the dominant direction WoTC takes the D&D franchise in, because I hate with a fiery passion and fury attempts to simplify things that don't really need simplified by removing options.

[em]The Essentials line isn't [strong]removing[/strong] anything[/em] (well, except for the attack roll for [em]Magic Missile[/em]). It's [em]adding[/em] new versions of fighters and other classes that give players choices [em]other than[/em] the normal-until-now spread of at-will/encounter/daily powers. It's doing the same thing for the most iconic classes that [em]Player's Handbook 3[/em] did for psionic classes. It's [em]adding[/em] options, not removing them.

Admittedly, the no-dailies type of fighter will be the first fighter that a new player sees if s/he gets into the game via the Essentials line, but s/he can then easily pick up the [em]Player's Handbook[/em] or [em]Martial Power[/em] to play with an AWED build. Obviously, a player who starts with the Essentials Red Box or [em]Heroes of the Fallen Lands[/em] might not [em]know[/em] about all the options in the [em]Player's Handbook[/em]. But by the same token, a player who starts playing tomorrow with the [em]Player's Handbook[/em] won't necessarily know about the alternatives in [em]Heroes of the Fallen Lands[/em]. Everybody starts somewhere. Nothing in the Essentials line says, "Don't play those other builds." The red box and the two Essentials player (race/class) books are designed as [em]entry points[/em] into the game, not restrictions on current or future games.

4th Ed. Classes felt so goddamn samey that the whole party could've played fighters, and it would've made little difference.

I've been playing D&D since the full-color 1978 boxed set (with the pastel blue rulebook inside). I did not play much 2E, but DMed 3.5e from 2003-2008 and switched over to 4e upon its release. I've been DMing the same 4e campaign for the last two years. I've played and DMed for a lot of different characters in a lot of different classes, and in my view the so-called "sameyness" of 4e classes is an illusion. Until the release of [em]Player's Handbook 3[/em], all 4e classes did have the same "slots" to fill, from a mechanical point of view, but that doesn't make them identical. A party full of fighters has no effective artillery; sure, you could give one or two of them bows, but (for example) a fighter with a longbow is nowhere near as effective as a ranger with a longbow. A party full of fighters has to pick off the horde of minions (mooks) one at a time (or maybe two, with Cleave or with the tempest fighter build), while a good wizard will eliminate several minions with a single well-placed attack. At the very least, having a spread of classes in the party increases your tactical options in combat, never mind the difference it makes outside of combat when the characters interact with the world around them.

Oh yeah, a hybrid of 3.5 and 4 would've been interesting.

This exists, and it's called "the D&D Essentials line." Seriously. The new fighter (slayer), cleric (warpriest), and wizard (mage) builds, at least, are basically the look-and-feel of 3.5e classes operating within 4e mechanics.

i found 4E to be dull, repetitive, unable to create more then the most basic story due to a lack of fluff

I've been running a D&D 4e campaign continuously for the last two years. The fact that the players keep coming back to the table and that podcasts of our sessions get 5-star reviews in the iTunes Store suggests that 4e certainly can be something other than "dull, repetitive, unable to create more then [sic] the most basic story." I think that probably qualifies as more than "the most basic story." Story depends on the DM and the players, not on the rulebooks. Not that rulebooks can't help, and WotC has tried very hard to increase the amount of fluff in recent products; compare [em]Monster Manual 3[/em] to [em]Monster Manual[/em] to see this in action, or open up the character creation book in the new red box. The core books are already chock full of the crunch, and a lot of the world-making fluff comes in the supplemental books, such as the planar/environment books and anything ending in [em]-omicon.[/em] It is true that WotC resisted created a "default" setting for 4e, preferring to give "examples" instead. However, this has shifted, and the Nentir Vale setting is getting a lot of attention and even a gazetteer in 2011.

I hope Essentials represents a genuine adjustment of the way WotC's R&D department is looking at the game, and not just a temporary marketing move for the next few months.

The fact that WotC intends to keep the Essentials products in stock regardless of whether other books, tile sets, etc. go out of print supports the idea that Essentials embodies the long-term vision ... or at least as long-term as anything can be in the tabletop RPG industry these days.

I hate the lore and lack of information to create a world with. The lack of information as to why things happen. Thats what makes me want to stab WOTC.

This criticism was probably valid in August 2008, when 4e consisted only of the three core books and a few articles on D&D Insider. But no longer. WotC started out 4e with the idea that they didn't want to restrict DMs' options by setting out a particular default campaign setting, beyond things like the basic tone, a suggested pantheon of gods, and so on. Since then, however, WotC has given us three campaign settings (Forgotten Realms, Eberron, and Dark Sun), as well as three books about the planes/cosmos, a book full of undead fluff, a book full of Underdark fluff, two dragon books, one demon book, plus more story material in [em]Monster Manual 3[/em], two city books ([em]Hammerfast[/em] and [em]Vor Rukoth[/em]), and so on. WotC is also planning more products (at least a gazetteer, a monster book, and a novels line) that explore the Nentir Vale (introduced in the first [em]DMG[/em], by the way) in more detail, never mind a quasi-independent Ravenloft game/campaign setting, coming in 2011, and the Essentials player books are supposed to give more attention to story than the existing [em]PH[/em]s have given (I say "supposed to," because I haven't seen those books yet personally).

I haven't picked up anything in 4Ee because I don't know anybody else that picked up anything 4e. If it isn't old(or New World of Darkness) then nobody's running it, because they don't know anybody else that has any books. It's a poor man's stalemate.

Did you know that you can [link="http://www.wizards.com/dnd/TryDnD.aspx" target="_blank"]Download some quickstart 4e rules for free from the WotC web site? You can also download [em]The Keep on the Shadowfell[/em], which includes a module (not the greatest in the world, admittedly) to use with the quickstart rules, and [em]Khyber's Harvest[/em], the Free RPG Day 2009 module. If you have an Internet connection and a PDF reader, you can try 4e with no outlay of money at all. Well, except for dice, but chances are you have those already.

4E is easily the best D&D has ever been in terms of overall fun factor and it's sad to me how much nostalgia keeps people from seeing that.

Lets hope more of the classical D&D gaming style works its way in. 4E is the most enjoyable version of the game since 1e IMO. It has its problems but so did 1e.

As someone who has played D&D since a friend introduced me to the Holmes basic rulebook (pastel blue cover) in 1978, I agree with Michael Mifsud. 4e feels [em]to me[/em] more like 1e than 3.5e ever did. This is a personal, subjective experience, of course. Your mileage may vary. But I'm just saying that "nostalgia" cuts both ways. WotC is obviously trying to capitalize on nostalgia for the 1970s-80s D&D experience with the packaging and promotion of Essentials, while the mechanics seem aimed at those who are nostalgic for the 2000s (I feel funny using "nostalgia" and "2000s" in the same sentence, but there it is.)

Part of me thinks they are less concerned about getting the grognards back as they are about getting the grognards' *kids*. Figure the average 10-year old who picked up D&D in 1983 is now 37 and probably has kids in the right age range to start with Red Box. A whole generation of kids, younger than the current 4e crowd, with parents with warm, nostalgic feelings towards classic D&D.

Let's test that theory. I started playing D&D at age 11 in 1978. I'm now 43. I have a 12-year-old son and a 6-year-old son. The 12-year-old just worked through the character creation adventure in the 2010 Red Box last week, and went with me to Red Box Game Day. My anecdotal evidence confirms your theory. Except that I've been DMing 4e continuously for the last two years ... does that blow the curve?

Oh, and Mike Mearls killed the radio star. That's what I heard.

 

[Archon]

It's a long comments thread, so I apologize if any of these points have been made already.

Thanks for taking the time to provide such a measured and thought-out response to many of the threads in this discussion. Everything you wrote above about Essentials accords with my understanding of the game as well.

As I noted on RPG.net yesterday, I like the direction I'm seeing 4.0 move: Better integration of game and setting and more opportunity for classic styles of play.

 

[Gildan Bladeborn]

It's a long comments thread, so I apologize if any of these points have been made already.

I don't like that the Essentials line is removing options for Fighters.

I certainly hope the new Essentials line doesn't become the dominant direction WoTC takes the D&D franchise in, because I hate with a fiery passion and fury attempts to simplify things that don't really need simplified by removing options.

[em]The Essentials line isn't [strong]removing[/strong] anything[/em] (well, except for the attack roll for [em]Magic Missile[/em]). It's [em]adding[/em] new versions of fighters and other classes that give players choices [em]other than[/em] the normal-until-now spread of at-will/encounter/daily powers. It's doing the same thing for the most iconic classes that [em]Player's Handbook 3[/em] did for psionic classes. It's [em]adding[/em] options, not removing them.

Admittedly, the no-dailies type of fighter will be the first fighter that a new player sees if s/he gets into the game via the Essentials line, but s/he can then easily pick up the [em]Player's Handbook[/em] or [em]Martial Power[/em] to play with an AWED build. Obviously, a player who starts with the Essentials Red Box or [em]Heroes of the Fallen Lands[/em] might not [em]know[/em] about all the options in the [em]Player's Handbook[/em]. But by the same token, a player who starts playing tomorrow with the [em]Player's Handbook[/em] won't necessarily know about the alternatives in [em]Heroes of the Fallen Lands[/em]. Everybody starts somewhere. Nothing in the Essentials line says, "Don't play those other builds." The red box and the two Essentials player (race/class) books are designed as [em]entry points[/em] into the game, not restrictions on current or future games.

I'm well aware that Essentials isn't "removing options" from 4th Edition itself and is simply alternate rules for character creation and advancement, but the characters it lets you create are character that have less options. By itself that isn't worrying, as I don't have to use those "boring" versions if I don't want to - my concern is the possibility that an increased focus on producing material for the Essentials line may at some point supplant or otherwise diminish the frequency of new material released for normal 4th Edition characters.

I'm cynical enough to easily envision a future where Essentials just becomes the new 4th Edition, leaving the folks who liked the regular version of 4th Edition to cling to their old source books like drowning men, bemoaning the fate of their beautiful D&D. That's a future I'd kind of like to avoid, because I crave new supplements (and the gradual power creep they bring) and it would totally suck if they stopped making them for the version of 4th Edition I am able to perceive as something other than a lame attempt to appeal to people who don't actually like 4th Edition by undoing the changes they made to classes that desperately needed them.

 

[Ajar]

Indeed, Gildan. I think the distinction between 4E and Essentials 4E can be distilled down to this:

1) 4E was aimed at recruiting new players to the game, kids who grew up on video games.

2) Essentials is aimed at re-recruiting lapsed players, and at recruiting the children of lapsed players.

There are some problems with trying to pretend that the two approaches can coexist within a single edition of the game. For example, Essentials class builds can't take multiclass power-swap feats, since they have no attack powers to swap, and there are certainly no hybrid versions of the Essentials builds. In 4E, having a class that doesn't follow the power structure simply makes no sense. Even the psionic classes can be hybrids since the power point structure is a simple mirror of the encounter attack power structure. Consequently, Essentials stands a good chance of alienating a chunk of the existing 4E player base.

That might be okay if Essentials can attract more players. But I'm not sure it can. I'm not convinced that the lapsed/children-of-lapsed player market is really all that large. I think the retro styling of the Red Box will hurt Essentials in big box stores. More importantly, though, I think it's too late for WotC to court lapsed players. The ones who are just lapsed D&D players, not lapsed RPGers, are already playing Pathfinder if 4E didn't deliver what they wanted in D&D. Paizo's support in terms of things like adventure paths is excellent; I don't think Pathfinder players are going to be defecting to 4E.

I also thought that 4E was reasonably successful at the first item, although of course my experience is anecdotal. Still, I got more friends to try D&D with 4E -- and more of them liked and stuck with it -- than any previous edition of the game, or indeed any other RPG. My girlfriend has gone from having played one session of D&D in her life to trying 4E to actually running her own D&D games. Other friends have followed similar trajectories. Maybe we aren't representative of the broader market, but I'm not so sure.

If Essentials was being introduced as a basic version of the game, like the old Basic/Advanced divide that existed back in the 2E days, I think it would make more sense, although I'm not sure it would be any more successful sales-wise. Basic D&D and AD&D were two different games with different rulesets that shared some fundamental mechanics. Essentials and 4E are similar, but Mike Mearls keeps trying to convince us that the two are mechanically compatible. Unfortunately, they just aren't.

As someone who returned to buying D&D materials with 4E, though, the main thing that bothers me about Essentials is that it's being billed as "the baseline experience for the game going forward."

Since Essentials builds are incompatible with existing classes -- an Essentials fighter can't mix and match attack powers like every other fighter can -- any mechanical support for them in Dragon magazine is taking space and effort away from mechanical support for classes and builds I'm actually interested in. In that sense, Essentials is actually hurting 4E.

To me, 4.0 distilled D&D down to its purest essence -- killing monsters and taking their shit. That is the core of Dungeons and Dragons as it has been since 1E. But over the course of the editions, it grew into this gigantic world-simulator; d20 was intended to be the one system to rule them all. If you want sci-fi, play d20 Future. Horror, d20 Cthulhu. Etc. But the D&D mechanics aren't suited to all these different styles of play. 4E pruned all of that away and refocused the game on Dungeons and Dragons. And loot. In addition, it provided DM frameworks that were unprecedented in their simplicity and flexibility -- encounter balancing, trap/hazard design, monster templates, treasure parcels and skill challenges -- for handling the behind-the-scenes stuff. I still run Iron Heroes, a 3.5 variant designed by Mearls himself, but whenever it gets into crunch, I'm constantly wishing it was 4.0.

As a result, I struggle with Essentials. Essentials is an attempt to graft old-school style onto current mechanics, and the warts show. Essentials Wizards have to consult a table to determine how many spells they can memorize per day. Essentials Fighters are back to making melee basic attacks round after round after round -- which the designers of 4.0 were explicitly trying to move away from. That's problematic for balance because other "normal" 4E classes aren't expected to make melee basic attacks often, so there are feats and other class abilities that buff them. Essentials Fighters can get those perks on every attack, since they literally have no other options. Mechanically boring yet mechanically optimal strikes me as a less desirable outcome.

Pre-Essentials, "the baseline experience for the game" was the at-will/encounter/daily attack power framework. If that's really no longer the case, it's a significant problem for people who play and enjoy 4E today.

I hope WotC continues to support the pre-Essentials "baseline experience" after Essentials comes out. That would go a long way to keeping me buying books and renewing my D&D Insider subscription. If Essentials content really does become the "baseline experience," however, I'll probably drop D&DI and stick with the crunch I already have in my 4.0 books.

 

[Alex_P]

The editorial content rather eclipsed the interview. And, enh, fine, it's your site and all, but that does mean the article ends up sacrificing "insider" insight into the subject in favor of a fan perspective.

-- Alex

 

[Archon]

The editorial content rather eclipsed the interview. And, enh, fine, it's your site and all, but that does mean the article ends up sacrificing "insider" insight into the subject in favor of a fan perspective.

-- Alex

Alex - We're sensitive to that fact. We posted the complete 12 page interview here.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/writersroom/8115-Complete-Mike-Mearls-D-D-4th-Edition-Essentials-Interview

 

[Alex_P]

Alex - We're sensitive to that fact. We posted the complete 12 page interview here.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/writersroom/8115-Complete-Mike-Mearls-D-D-4th-Edition-Essentials-Interview

Cool.

 

[PxDn Ninja]

Hmm, sounds to me like WotC don't quite get the issue for some of us. The 4e ruleset wasn't too difficult to learn, nor was it aimed at existing dnd players. It was aimed at video gamers, specifically MMO players of games like WoW. The ramp up time for a new player to DnD on 4e was about an hour, while in 3.5 it was usually 4-8 hours if the person was playing an easy class. (these numbers being for people who had NEVER played before without anyone to help them).

The problem with 4e is it is too narrow and restrictive. With DnD games past, you could have all kinds of interesting characters, and they felt deep and interesting. One of my more shallow characters was a fighter who always had an obsene amount of weapons. Ideally it was a piercing, slashing, bashing weapon somewhere, plus a ranged and close. With Quickdraw he was able to pull these as a free action, so in a large fight he was a whirl of metal and damage. With 4e, stuff like this isn't really doable. Sure you can have all those weapons, but there isn't a point. Just take a sword and your set.

Also, in version past, you felt like an adventurer in a world where people like you were common. You weren't some adventurer blessed by the gods for some epic quests. You were a group of normal people put in an extreme situation and you grew into a powerful party by experience, not because you just want to be a demigod at level 30.

That's not to say 4e is a bad game, nor that it doesn't have it's place in modern tabletop gaming, but the issue is simply that it is called DnD, when it lost all the small things that made dnd great.

 

[Badger Kyre]

That matter of taste came up alot in the other thread, But I'm getting to that.

We have been having a similar thread in the comments to the full interview [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/writersroom/8115-Complete-Mike-Mearls-D-D-4th-Edition-Essentials-Interview]


Which is hardly surprising if my understanding is correct and Archon posted that partially as an update to this - I was unaware this thread was still active, and have to restrain myself from repeating the same discussions.

If anyone is interested, there is a pretty in-depth series about the history of D&D up to 3rd edition [http://pc.gamespy.com/articles/538/538262p1.html], especially part 3 was very interesting to ME, since I was aware of it, but in the pre-internet age, people at the very fringes of the industry had little access to hwat was happening - we knew what we were seeing but rarely why.

The decisions made in 3rd edition, and then again in 4th, really challenge some of the fundamentals - and as to paraphrase several posters here, I think it is fair to say each has metagame assumptions - and dependent mechanics- that either do, or do not, suit your play style, and your "flavor" of fantasy...

"Also, in version past, you felt like an adventurer in a world where people like you were common. You weren't some adventurer blessed by the gods for some epic quests. You were a group of normal people put in an extreme situation and you grew into a powerful party by experience, not because you just want to be a demigod at level 30."

Indeed. My personal preference & playstyle and campaign would not be well-served by a system that expects lvl 1 characters to be able to teleport or breathe fire, for example, but it's a matter of taste... and were I to run a campaign where the PC's were, for example, minor scions of Birthright ( sorcerers in my old 3e game were ), it would fit just fine.
This has also revolved around a discussion of "dissociated mechanics"

Spoiler: An excerpt from an article about this.

There's a certain school of thought that says that the setting of a game, the genre of a game, and the rules of a game can all be divorced from each other. This school argues that one set of rules is just about as good as another, and all that counts are how the GM weaves it together. In fact, this premise underlies the rise of the D20 Open Gaming License in the 1990s. I'm not part of that school! I believe they have to form an organic whole.

On this point, at least, I did some interesting research. As my thesis project at Harvard Law School, I conducted a study on how the design of 3 different massively multiplayer games affected the societies of those games. To cut short a 100-page research paper, the answer was "strongly". It turns out that every set of game mechanics carries with it certain implicit and explicit assumptions about how the world works. They are the physical laws of the game world. Just like the law in the real world affects our societies, the laws in the fantasy world do, too. ( http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/checkfortraps/7737-Check-for-Traps-Let-There-Be-Law )

Alot of the "nerd rage" is as understandable as a comic to movie "translation" - people have imagery or ideas of how it "should be" - and that' sacred to them. In this it gets lost that one preference or another is not necessarily the "right" or only way -
the related concern of course is whether it's symptomatic of a loss in interest in what made RPG's MORE than a set of squad-tactical miniatures combats.


And I joked that in some respects, if the game goes back to more casual "hack and slash", in some respects that would be MORE the original game

Anyone interested in all this discussion I encourage to look at the history article i linked, and perhaps compare your thoughts - and the theme of this discussion with it's twin sister on the other thread.

As a post script, I noticed 4E fighters coming up a bit in this thread, and my personal opinion was that 3E gave fighters amazing options and flexibility through feat choices, in fact people often grabbed a level or two fighter to GET such options. That's pretty incidental of course.

 

[LadyRhian]

Also, in version past, you felt like an adventurer in a world where people like you were common. You weren't some adventurer blessed by the gods for some epic quests. You were a group of normal people put in an extreme situation and you grew into a powerful party by experience, not because you just want to be a demigod at level 30.

Pretty much. And when you were that pasty 1 hit and you're dead wizard, every victory was like wine. Surviving and winning when you were a piece of paper facing a ginsu knife (metaphorically) was more of a thrill than facing off against 30 Kobolds when you're the 10th level fighter, which seems to be more of the way it is in 4th edition.

I also have to say that the "adventure nights" 4e is sponsoring don't interest someone like me (the ones where everyone plays the same module) because it's an unbroken string of combat-skill check- combat- skill check- combat, and if you are unlucky, two combats in a row. That just doesn't sound all that interesting to me.

 

[Alex_P]

The problem with 4e is it is too narrow and restrictive. With DnD games past, you could have all kinds of interesting characters, and they felt deep and interesting. One of my more shallow characters was a fighter who always had an obsene amount of weapons. Ideally it was a piercing, slashing, bashing weapon somewhere, plus a ranged and close. With Quickdraw he was able to pull these as a free action, so in a large fight he was a whirl of metal and damage. With 4e, stuff like this isn't really doable. Sure you can have all those weapons, but there isn't a point. Just take a sword and your set.

To me, character classes were always "narrow and restrictive". Even the simple old-timey paint-on-top-of-this-blank-canvas classes. The decades of class kits and prestige classes featured book after book of hyper-specialized classes one-note PC classes.

There's a thing about 4th Edition classes that makes them feel oddly specific, yes, but at least they wear their hearts on their sleeves. Its direct predecessor (D&D3) was much more prone to hiding the pigeonholing with a thin veneer of "YOU CAN DO ANYTHING!!" Then you'd go and do something only to realize the game system was punishing you quite severely for not sticking to a particular narrow set of strategies and "build" choices. For example...

In D&D3, walking around with a golfbag of weapons was only good for overcoming Damage Reduction. Other than that (and fiddling with reach, perhaps), there was no real benefit to switching between weapons. And there was a strong penalty for doing it, too, because the game expected you to be pouring your money into perpetually upgrading/replacing one obscenely-expensive magic weapon to keep up with monsters, not spreading that cash around on half a dozen different tools. It's exactly like you said: "Sure, you can have all those weapons, but there isn't a point."

Also, in version past, you felt like an adventurer in a world where people like you were common.

The idea of "adventurer" as an honest-to-goodness profession is pretty nutty. It very quickly turns the whole world into a hodgepodge of "adventure locations" -- quite antithetical to the "old school" tendency towards surrounding the weird in normalcy in order to make it stand out more, certainly.

I'd rather games didn't make "adventurers" the cornerstone of their setting structure (doesn't stop almost all of them from trying, though, including, of course, D&D4).

Plus, isn't "everybody's an adventurer" exactly the kind of MMOG-style thing that people bash so much?

You weren't some adventurer blessed by the gods for some epic quests. You were a group of normal people put in an extreme situation and you grew into a powerful party by experience, not because you just want to be a demigod at level 30.

The "ascending to demigod" shtick isn't new to D&D. Look up what happens after level 36 in Mentzer D&D, for example.

Moreover, most D&D characters in pretty much any edition don't just become more skilled as they gain levels, but turn into wuxia superheroes operating on a scale completely different from the one they started on. D&D3 doesn't use the word "demigod", but what else is a level 20 character? Certainly not anything resembling a regular flesh-and-blood person.

That's not to say 4e is a bad game, nor that it doesn't have it's place in modern tabletop gaming, but the issue is simply that it is called DnD, when it lost all the small things that made dnd great.

That charge has been leveled at every new game bearing the label "Dungeons & Dragons". The original AD&D was certainly quite the sea change. D&D3 threw out most of the "small things" its predecessors were doing, too.

And, oftentimes, that "throwing away" is healthy. It's better for the design than trying to keep all these little elements that don't quite fit anymore because the bigger thing that drove their inclusion in the first place has changed. Not cleaning up these proud nails just leaves you with little warts, like paladin multi-classing in 3rd Edition.

-- Alex

 

[Alex_P]

Alot of the "nerd rage" is as understandable as a comic to movie "translation" - people have imagery or ideas of how it "should be" - and that' sacred to them. In this it gets lost that one preference or another is not necessarily the "right" or only way -
the related concern of course is whether it's symptomatic of a loss in interest in what made RPG's MORE than a set of squad-tactical miniatures combats.

What frustrates me deeply is that those same charges were totally leveled at 3rd Edition, but somehow all its fans just up and forgot that by now.

And I joked that in some respects, if the game goes back to more casual "hack and slash", in some respects that would be MORE the original game

IIRC, the original game didn't actually hand out any experience points for combat.

As a post script, I noticed 4E fighters coming up a bit in this thread, and my personal opinion was that 3E gave fighters amazing options and flexibility through feat choices, in fact people often grabbed a level or two fighter to GET such options. That's pretty incidental of course.

Of all the sort of RPG characters out there, I love fighty folks -- battle-hardened soldiers, well-traveled mercenaries, street toughs full of adolescent bravado, pillage-happy evil overlords -- the most. That had a big hand in why I quit D&D altogether: it's just really damn lame to play a sword-ringer. The games just don't capture the flow of combat, the tension of positioning, feints, counterattacks.

In many ways, D&D occupies the worst middle ground here. The exciting in-the-moment choices of face-to-face combat are abstracted away, but you're still stuck rolling dice over and over again to see how well you swing your sword. D&D3 tried to make fighters exciting with feats, but the base system made for a terrible foundation: clunky timings, constant encouragement to stay still, and mechanics that reward piling on bonuses much more than they reward making the right tactical risk. And don't forget D&D's perpetual affectation for hit points and magic items, too. Piling a few special attacks on top of that is putting lipstick on a pig.

(D&D4 actually gets some points from me for fixing some of this crap. "Surges" are a decent improvement to the HP system, for example. And I like that the fighter has more of an in-your-face feel, quite a bit like the warrior in Guild Wars, a fairly deep and fun tactical game. It's not my bag -- and too little, too late for D&D to win me back -- but, hey, at least it shows that someone gets it.)

-- Alex

 

[Archon]

In many ways, D&D occupies the worst middle ground here. The exciting in-the-moment choices of face-to-face combat are abstracted away, but you're still stuck rolling dice over and over again to see how well you swing your sword. D&D3 tried to make fighters exciting with feats, but the base system made for a terrible foundation: clunky timings, constant encouragement to stay still, and mechanics that reward piling on bonuses much more than they reward making the right tactical risk. And don't forget D&D's perpetual affectation for hit points and magic items, too. Piling a few special attacks on top of that is putting lipstick on a pig.

(D&D4 actually gets some points from me for fixing some of this crap. "Surges" are a decent improvement to the HP system, for example. And I like that the fighter has more of an in-your-face feel, quite a bit like the warrior in Guild Wars, a fairly deep and fun tactical game. It's not my bag -- and too little, too late for D&D to win me back -- but, hey, at least it shows that someone gets it.) -- Alex

Out of curiosity, what *is* your game of choice for fantasy tabletop RPGs, especially given that you like melee combat? I.e. what do you recommend.

 

[Alex_P]

Out of curiosity, what *is* your game of choice for fantasy tabletop RPGs, especially given that you like melee combat? I.e. what do you recommend.

For crunchy combat, I like Burning Wheel (the most recent edition, known as "Revised"). The game's melee combat subsystem involves "scripting" -- plotting out your moves several actions ahead, -- requiring you to guess your opponent's moves and manage his future opportunities.

I've tried other stuff like Reign and Riddle of Steel, but whats puts BW above the rest is the pure polish -- positioning, grappling, counterattacks, feints, armor, and wounds all combine into a very harmonious (and evocative) whole. It's easy to use one-roll resolution for pretty much anything, too, to keep less dramatic combat scenes from bogging down the game.

It also helps that the rest of the game is exactly the kind of thing I want.

-- Alex

 

[Archon]

Ah, ok! I checked out Burning Wheel and could certainly see the appeal. It's a well-designed game.

 

[Badger Kyre]

(D&D4 actually gets some points from me for fixing some of this crap. "Surges" are a decent improvement to the HP system, for example. And I like that the fighter has more of an in-your-face feel, quite a bit like the warrior in Guild Wars, a fairly deep and fun tactical game. It's not my bag -- and too little, too late for D&D to win me back -- but, hey, at least it shows that someone gets it.)

-- Alex

I thought surges were more of the same "dissociated mechanics" that has been a bugbear of D&D since day 1 - hit points were supposed to represent NOT GETTING HURT in the first place ( V&V had "power" that represented it better IMO, and has popped up other places )

The only thing 4th added IMO was your combat skill making you harder to hit, which was a no-brainer in most games from LONG ago.

If you want to talk about REAL OPTIONS in combat being as or more important than abstract - this dice represents a "round of combat" that most tabletop uses, let's see, there was MAGIC REALMS, Nova Game's diceless "Lost Worlds", an Avalon Hill Gladiator game I can't recall, and Knights of Legend ( origin ) - that gave you real options in combat ( ie player decisions on a blow by blow basis ).

As to Guild Wars, I ENJOY THE HELL out of it, but let's be honest, unless you mean PvE, the combats in GW have as much to do with any kind of reasonable fighting simulation as Tetris does. And the Warrior has CONSIDERABLY fewer options than one in 3rd is likely to, even my warrior-priest, it's still maxed at 8; and most of the "options" are really "special attacks" that cause wounds that should be consequent of ANY time you are stabbing or hitting someone.

3rd has ALOT of issues and inconsistencies; but lack of fighter options and tactical sense aren't EITHER --and DOES NOT encourage standing still
A fight in 3rd turns into a swirl of "5'steps" - which in 4th is represented also, just not as logically - the fights tend to be people manuevering in melee - and I suspect you should watch an SCA fight or a boxing match if you think the guild wars/mmo combat is better simulating anything but a GAME.

That had a big hand in why I quit D&D altogether: it's just really damn lame to play a sword-ringer. The games just don't capture the flow of combat, the tension of positioning, feints, counterattacks.

I simply disagree in that i think it captures it BETTER:
I think you mean "positioning" and 3rd used the "drift" (5' step)and threaten "attacks of opportunity" mechanics to represent the swirl of melee - I suspect "marks" were supposed to represent some of the same things, just "mmo style".
D&D online , btw, used 3rd/3.5 ed and in "real-timing" it dropped the concept of "engagement"
with some success - and ended up quite a bit like GW - two of the only "fast" MMO's. Also, in both D&DO and my campaign, I saw MANY builds, and I didn't hear too many people complain that they were "gimped" or penalized for not playing a specific build, other than the issue with 2-hand weapons ( i did NOT say 3rd was flawless, simply that I disagree what the flaws WERE).
I believe "engagement" was what 4th was trying to reflect with the "mark" mechanic, I just ... don't like it much myself.
As to parries, feints, etc, 3d had feints, but, primarily, I agree with you - and thus what i said about options and other games having a "skill versus skill" rather than "skill versus armor" to hit mechanic ( a relic of the D&D "hero" figure and it's extra hit points) - and yes, 4th at least tried by giving you a bit of hero-system "defensive combat value" in terms of skill based "AC" bonus. ( man-to-man/gurps, and runequest, etc, had "active defenses" that are less abstract - but slower mechanically. warhammer used straight skill vs skill "to hit" )
Mostly, I agree in that MOST games abstract what happens in a round - and thus I named off exceptions that didn't. Whether or not that degree of abstraction is a problem is a matter of taste. certainly when one watches

Spoiler: cinematics, battle isn't people standing there exchanging heavy blows until one or the other finally falls over form running out of hit points

Who wants to imagine their 12 level fighter defeated a 12' tall giant with a club bigger then you are, because he had " more hit points" and did more damage faster?

. "Realistically", between fairly matched opponents, six, or 10, or even 1-minute rounds, may not be all that long - an uneven match can be over VERY quickly.

Despite our niggling differences of opinion, I suspect I would ALSO enjoy "Burning Sands" quite a bit. ( i googled it and seem to get unrelated junk so far )

HOWEVER I think the real discussion has been whether people think 4th Ed served their style of gameplay, or not, and I don't think your responses changed anyone's opinion on that.
I'd like to point out that as far as I can see, most people who didn't like 4th, are also the same ones who have been leery of D&D/TSR/ WOTC since the 80's overhaul of the "theme".

ps, Dark Sun may be a bad example - it is low-loot but HIGH fantasy.

I suspect that the settings changes mentioned wouldn't address many of the "meta-game" issues that flavor 4th ( loot isn't the issue ). IF i am mistaken, pardon my ignorance of the menu/setting you refer to.