Convincing 4th Edition players to consider 5th Edition

pemerton · Jul 7, 2012

billd91 said:
You shouldn't really care that someone finds 4e to be a glorified miniature skirmish game any more than I should care that someone thinks 3e is intentionally unbalanced.

The first is passing a judgement over the game I'm GMing - namely that, because it's 4e, it's not an RPG. That is the irritating bit.

Particularly coming from posters who are lauding the 5e playtest, which - as presented - is nothing but an old-style dungeon hack.

billd91 · Jul 7, 2012

pemerton said:
What I don't understand is this: if people think that "combat" is the opposite of "roleplaying", then why are they playing a game that, in its PC build rules and action resolution rules, makes combat the principal focus of conflict resolution?

I'd say it's pretty clear they don't. The fact that there's combat isn't the issue. The fact that there's a lot of combat isn't the issue. For my money, it's the fact that 4e shoehorns the characters into such a tight structure focused around it and the combat grid that throws the game out of kilter compared to other editions of D&D.

billd91 · Jul 7, 2012

pemerton said:
The first is passing a judgement over the game I'm GMing - namely that, because it's 4e, it's not an RPG. That is the irritating bit.

Particularly coming from posters who are lauding the 5e playtest, which - as presented - is nothing but an old-style dungeon hack.

The play test adventure isn't the game itself. My players have chosen to take the orcs on head on, but they could choose another route. Even the playtest module itself mentions that PCs can take diplomatic approaches if they should choose to do so.

But why should you be immunized from having the game rules you DM criticized? It's been open season on all previous forms of D&D around here since the place started. What makes the criticisms leveled at the game you prefer so personal?

Patryn of Elvenshae · Jul 7, 2012

pemerton said:
I personally think that there is a difference between saying that a game is a poorly designed instance of an RPG, and saying that it is not an RPG. The first doesn't imply that those who play the game are mistaken about their hobby, for instance. The second does.

Agreed - but I'd add "or designed to highlight things I don't really care for" to your "poorly designed."

Imaro said:
putting aside the fact that Brendan has now come forth and stated his intentions were exactly what I thought they were...

Of course [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION] intentions were what you thought they were. I thought he was saying the same thing, as well! It's been perfectly clear all along what BRG was saying.

I'm saying that I do not agree with him that the opinion "4E (or 3E, or 2E, or whatever) is not a roleplaying game / is not D&D" is fine because it really means something else. Those kinds of statements are unhelpful and need to stop showing up in conversations.

Instead, if the poster's point is that "Well, I think 4E places too much emphasis on tactical combat" or "Well, I think 3E places too much importance on fiddly and unbalanced character creation and advancement bits," then they should just come right out and say that, rather than insulting an entire playerbase - "You aren't playing real D&D; you're not actually roleplaying."

I do not see how this is a controversial position that you should avoid writing off whole swathes of the D&D family.

pemerton · Jul 7, 2012

billd91 said:
Even the playtest module itself mentions that PCs can take diplomatic approaches if they should choose to do so.

But there are no action resolution rules for diplomacy.

billd91 said:
But why should you be immunized from having the game rules you DM criticized? It's been open season on all previous forms of D&D around here since the place started. What makes the criticisms leveled at the game you prefer so personal?

I don't care about people criticising the 4e mechanics. I do get irritated by being told that I'm not RPGing, when I'm here posting on an RPG website about my RPG experiences.

Patryn of Elvenshae · Jul 7, 2012

billd91 said:
But why should you be immunized from having the game rules you DM criticized? It's been open season on all previous forms of D&D around here since the place started. What makes the criticisms leveled at the game you prefer so personal?

You're missing the point.

Criticism in the form of, "I don't like the following rules in [Edition], and here's why ..." is perfectly fine. It's awesome, because it provides a place for discussion, for figuring out what works and what doesn't.

Criticism in the form of, "[Edition] is just playing a boardgame; it's not really roleplaying" is not.

Do you understand the difference?

Bedrockgames · Jul 7, 2012

pemerton said:
I personally think that there is a difference between saying that a game is a poorly designed instance of an RPG, and saying that it is not an RPG. The first doesn't imply that those who play the game are mistaken about their hobby, for instance. The second does.

But the first does imply they have poor taste in games and can't see the bad design for some reason. Both have the same insult potential. I think we could quibble over how equivalent these are. The point is neither one is much of a threat to you so long as the person is just giving his honest opinion and not trying aggressively to deprive you of yours.

Harlock · Jul 7, 2012

pemerton said:
But there are no action resolution rules for diplomacy.

I don't care about people criticising the 4e mechanics. I do get irritated by being told that I'm not RPGing, when I'm here posting on an RPG website about my RPG experiences.

Some people take the same offense when someone calls the 5e playtest and "old school dungeon hack". Just saying.

Live and let live. Also, there is still a lot of playtest to come and feedback to give before anything is finalized, if my guess is correct. Who knows? We might see that the modules do somehow encompass all editions fairly and even better, work together at the same table. I'd need to see that to believe it, of course, but stranger things have happened.

As for action resolution rules for diplomacy... can the DM not be trusted to judge through roleplay if the objective was met?

Umbran · Jul 7, 2012

Folks,

Okay, let me set something straight for all of you.

As far as EN World is concerned, 4e is a role playing game. So is 3e. And, unless they decide to put a cabbage between two covers instead of a rulebook, 5e will also be an RPG.

Now, any one of these may be an RPG that you don't personally have any fun with. And you know what? That's okay! If we all liked the same things, the world would be in for one heck of a haggis shortage.

Fighting over it, edition warring, as we call it, is non-constructive. We all know you want your voices to be heard, so that your desires are reflected in the new design. We get that.

But they aren't going to listen to you if you act like a big old jerk.

Really, they won't.

They won't, and none of the people on the other side of the discussion will, either. If you're going to be a jerk, just save us all the trouble and shout at your bedroom wall, please. It'll save us the bother of removing you from the conversation.

From this point on, we expect you to be perfect ladies and gentlemen in this thread. That means no use of foul language (even masked). That means you shouldn't get personal. That means you don't stoop to insulting people for what kind of game they prefer.

Any questions? Please take them to e-mail or PM with your favorite moderator. Thanks.

Shadeydm · Jul 7, 2012

Tony Vargas said:
4e preceded Pathfinder, so I guess you mean 5e? The GSL was different from the OGL, perhaps in an attempt to coerce 3pps into abandoning support for 3.5 - an attempt that clearly backfired in a big way.

It was because of the GSL that pathfinder went from supporting D&D to doing it own thing. So yes they made it so different to prevent that sort of thing being possible this time around. Call it protecting thier IP if you prefer.

Tony Vargas said:
I expected it to look like a horribly imbalanced retro-clone of AD&D with powerful/versatile casters, an inconsistently performing Thief, and an optionless fighter that tried to make up for being less entertaining than watching paint dry by hitting a little harder than everyone else.

Um yeah ok those first 3 levels were horribly imbalanced... Watching paint dry...wow. I bow to your powers of exaggeration, kudos and best of luck gaming hope the super cool powerz module will be more 4E than you think and makes everything ok for your poor painter fighter

.

Tony Vargas said:
Sorry, I've been committing that particular bit of humor ever since Hasbro (/Hasbro?/ Seriously?) bought out WotC. And I wasn't much more charitable towards WotC before that (The makers of M:tG bought D&D? Has the whole world gone mad?). I spent most of my career working for Corporate America, and I was cynical to begin with. :shrug: They've gotta make money for the stockholders, and hit quarterly numbers, and that leads to some crazy stuff. Stuff that very often is less successful than focusing on quality and consistency would have been.

Yes it led to stuff like 4E whoops there goes that argument...

Anyway I think i've knock my head against that brickwall enough for the day, cheers!