Blog post on the feel of D&D (marmell, reynolds et all)

[shadowguidex]

Some of the goals and the way the 4e designers implemented them 'do not feel like D&D to me'.

With 3.5 I have come to expect the following things of D&D...
1) Vancian Magic. Wizards get a wide variety of spells to choose and you need to pick your daily spells wisely.
2) Monsters and PCs use the same rules
3) Rogue is a very flexible class
4) Skills are varied and I get to chose which ones I am good in, mediocre, or poor.
5) OGL. I like making small contributions to the game and getting credit for it.
6) No non-traditional core races.

You may not like some of these things, but to me they contribute greatly to the 'feel' of D&D. So, I may like 4e. But so far it doesn't 'feel' like D&D to me.

If your saying that I can't say "It doesn't feel like D&D to me". Then the converse is that you cannot say "It does feel like D&D to me". The only thing you can say is "I like the rules so far revealed to us."

Of all your bullets points of what D&D feels like to you, only Vancian magic has managed to transition between all three current editions (and it has been disliked by the majority of players the entire time). The legacy of D&D has been around for far longer than 3E, and it will survive well beyond the memories of 3E. Rogues in 2E were terrible and their skill system was terrible. Monsters in 1E and 2E NEVER used PC rules (They didn't have attributes for one thing). Skills basically didn't exist in 1E and 2E, aside from Secondary skills which were a token measure with no reinforcing rules. Non-traditional core races...well if you take a glance at the 3E boards, everyone and their little dog seems to be a Succubus Ninja, or a Elemental Barbarian/Assassin, etc, which irritates me as well. I want Humans, Dwarves, Elves, Halflings, and that's it. The OGL, I do not care about this whatsoever as 95% of the OGL books I see are horrendous pieces of garbage that just appeals to the powergaming crowd, and the OGL is a mechanism that was created only with 3E, and to me it feels about as anti-D&D as it gets, as I've been playing since 1E and I think third party publishers are a terrible blight upon the game.

Why does it feel like D&D to me? Orcs. Roleplaying. Dragons. Dungeons. Elves. Halflings. Fireballs. Magic Missiles. Rogues hiding. Clerics healing. Roleplaying. Paladins smiting. Rangers arching. Gods. Planes. Kobolds. Roleplaying. Chromatic Dragons. D20. Str. Dex. Con. Int. Cha. Roleplaying. Wis. AC. Axes. Traps. Spells. Hit Points. Mind Flayers. Vampires. Unconscious and Dying. Critical Hits. Magic Weapons. Roleplaying. Bag of Holding. Belt of Giant Strength. Level. Class. Race. Adventuring. Roleplaying.

FYI - The 4E rogue is far and away more flexible that the 3E one, and eons beyond the 2E and 1E rogues.

 

[shadowguidex]

And yet, people don't have a problem when you praise a game before it comes out. Why is the same not true? Hypocracy I tell you! Hypocracy!

Again, there is a difference between liking what you know about 4E, and hating what you don't know about 4E.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Besides, if a monk in my group kept throwing salt or sand or whatever in the eyes of his opponents, I could easily come up with various ways to restrict or minimize this usage wihtout bending the rules of reality.

This is known as "backpedaling," and I think most players will eventually pick up on it and point out the inconsistency. If you have to fix a ruling because it turned out to be overpowered, it was a poor ruling. I think the thing that 4E promises that's worth noticing is that you can make rulings off-the-cuff without having to worry that they'll be poor rulings that will force you to backpedal. As long as you use the attack or check vs. defence system, you'll get something like a more-or-less balanced effect, because they designed the system to work if you do that. Since the math underlying the new rules is actually designed, rather than thrown together, they can set up such a system.

 

[AllisterH]

re: Book of Iron Might

Er, wasn't that book designed and written by Mike Mearls himself? I would assume when it comes to combat and balancing manoeuvers/exploits for martial characters while making them fun and believable, there's nobody else in the industry that comes close.

Have faith in the Mearls

 

[billd91]

Again, I have no problem with you or anybody crapping on elements of 4E that we have all seen and that they dislike, my beef is with the blogger's premise that 4E "doesn't feel like D&D", which I think is grossly uncalled for considering nobody here has seen the rulebooks concerning any of the portions of the rules he is basing the entirety of his criticism on.

How the blue bloody blazes is a personal impression ever uncalled for? He's perfectly free to base his impression on any thing he feels like.

 

[hong]

How the blue bloody blazes is a personal impression ever uncalled for? He's perfectly free to base his impression on any thing he feels like.

Yes. And others are perfectly free to call his impression misinformed. It's a beautiful symbiosis.

 

[dirkformica]

Thank you, thank you, I'm here all week. Please tip your waiter.

It is difficult to say exactly what the argument is here. I guess a large part of the internet is broadcasting your personal opinion about everything. D&D is no different.

Well I've just been reading this thread straight through and as far as I can tell this thing sort of started out as "look, here's what some people think about what they've seen and experienced with 4th edition. They happen to be game developers, some of whom have worked on Dungeons and Dragons in the past."

Then it was about how they apparently weren't allowed to have an opinion about 4E for some reason. Mainly because they didn't have all of the resources available (although this was addressed in the blog that was linked by the writer himself.) There was also some disdain for giving their opinions of "the feel" of DnD based on this incomplete sampling, which again seems odd to me since no one seems to have ever indicated that they were making blanket judgments against all of 4e, only their limited experience with the game and what they have heard/read/experienced surrounding its development.

Some also seemed to think that because some of those people writing on the blog were in the business they shouldn't be speaking out at all. I don't personally follow this line of thinking especially since they didn't seem to posit their opinions as final judgments from professional game designers, merely as a group of friends playing DnD.

Then there is the long, OCD debate about throwing sand/salt into an opponent's eyes (inexplicable to me, it seems to be ongoing.)

There was also some discussion about the value of how a game "feels," and how different people arrive at that opinion.

There's also been a good amount of"4e can do everything," and "no it can't," and "well 3.x could do it like this..." Sometimes this was an offshoot of the OCD/Autistic/Asperger's sand/salt thing.

Along these lines, there have been some general statements about not being able to judge yet because, again, we haven't seen everything and analogies were made between 4e and movie trailers.

There may be more, but those are the main points still fresh in my mind. You have to kind of love/hate how internet "discussion" follows that line from William Butler Yeats' 'The Second Coming: "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."

I'm curious to see what "rough beast ... slouches towards Bethlehem" next!

 

[Kichwas]

The statement "4E doesn't feel like D&D" means (to someone reading it) that D&D as a whole, throughout its previous editions, has a certain feel and that 4E is not maintaining that feel.

For me... dropping half-orcs, gnomes, assassins and monks is pretty much a 'jumped the shark' moment for the game. Adding in several new races and classes that either don't have any history with D&D or debated fairly late into the 3E cycle just puts another shark under Fonzie in that jump...

 

[Mouseferatu]

For me... dropping half-orcs, gnomes, assassins and monks is pretty much a 'jumped the shark' moment for the game. Adding in several new races and classes that either don't have any history with D&D or debated fairly late into the 3E cycle just puts another shark under Fonzie in that jump...

Just for the record, you know that of those four, only gnomes were in core 2E, right? The 2E PHB "dropped" half-orcs, assassins, and monks.

 

[Scarbonac]

Just for the record, you know that of those four, only gnomes were in core 2E, right? The 2E PHB "dropped" half-orcs, assassins, and monks.

Bad idea then, bad idea now.