D&D 4E Bridging the cognitive gap between how the game rules work and what they tell us about the setting

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'd argue about whether the Expertise-Dodge-Mobility-Spring Attack-Whirlwind Attack editions actually did remove that stuff. I mean that's four prerequisite feats just to get one PHB feat; we're not throwing in the Spiked Chain Tripper or other build nonsense here. And paladins falling was certainly part of 3.X But it did ease back on it a lot from late 2e.

Yeah, 4e certainly allows for building towards some specific shtick like that, but every step along the way is playable and make sense on their own. At worst you might miss some minor immediate optimization.

 

[Zeromaru X]

I'd argue about whether the Expertise-Dodge-Mobility-Spring Attack-Whirlwind Attack editions actually did remove that stuff. I mean that's four prerequisite feats just to get one PHB feat; we're not throwing in the Spiked Chain Tripper or other build nonsense here. And paladins falling was certainly part of 3.X But it did ease back on it a lot from late 2e.

I was talking about the "DM vs players" thing, lol.

The list of prerequisites for stuff was lowered down by 4e. 3e abused asking for prerequisites for everything, lol

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I was talking about the "DM vs players" thing, lol.

The list of prerequisites for stuff was lowered down by 4e. 3e abused asking for prerequisites for everything, lol

4e has a few, but they're generally things where one feat leverages another one, or simply serve to limit things to one type of build or something like that.

 

[Mannahnin]

So basically you had to both have a 17 Dex and put up with a dozen or so levels of sucking in order to become a ludicrously broken one trick pony that only acted one turn in two. This sort of ability is only really of interest while reading or to munchkins playing games that start at ultra high level.

And, to be honest, these abilities with waterfall development over such an absurd level range shatter any feeling of realism I have. Cuchulain was powerful - but he was anything but the one trick pony a technique that costs six weapon proficiencies would make him. Bad detail makes the world less real.

Yup. From a standpoint of fantasy heroics, 4E is clearly much better suited to emulate Irish myth and legend than 2E was. Cuchulain didn't go around spamming the Gae Bolga throw. He pulled it out as a super-heroic trick when it was needful. Something which would be much better emulated as a Daily power.

The worst problem is WSG itself is not only just rules pulled from thin air, but it is utterly unplayable. If you actually ran an overland wilderness adventure using those rules it would require 100 dice rolls for each day of travel. Chances are something would go terribly wrong by day 2.

I mean, clearly, at most these rules would only ever be applied in some especially dire situation, or simply to establish color, like using the shelter rules to describe someone camping out, but not actually applying the rules as such. Do we need a 150 page book to tell us what a tent is like or that your campfire can get out of control?

Yup. The WSG is 90% trash and clearly never playtested. As I recall Dan "Delta" Collins said that trying to implement it faithfully in his college game killed his campaign. He had too much faith in TSR and couldn't square the circle that it was just a garbage set of rules and should be ignored.

 

[Voadam]

Yup. From a standpoint of fantasy heroics, 4E is clearly much better suited to emulate Irish myth and legend than 2E was. Cuchulain didn't go around spamming the Gae Bolga throw. He pulled it out as a super-heroic trick when it was needful. Something which would be much better emulated as a Daily power.


Yup. The WSG is 90% trash and clearly never playtested. As I recall Dan "Delta" Collins said that trying to implement it faithfully in his college game killed his campaign. He had too much faith in TSR and couldn't square the circle that it was just a garbage set of rules and should be ignored.

It is the one 1e hardcover I never got, and that looks like the one to miss out on from such reports.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yup. From a standpoint of fantasy heroics, 4E is clearly much better suited to emulate Irish myth and legend than 2E was. Cuchulain didn't go around spamming the Gae Bolga throw. He pulled it out as a super-heroic trick when it was needful. Something which would be much better emulated as a Daily power.


Yup. The WSG is 90% trash and clearly never playtested. As I recall Dan "Delta" Collins said that trying to implement it faithfully in his college game killed his campaign. He had too much faith in TSR and couldn't square the circle that it was just a garbage set of rules and should be ignored.

Yeah, I was just reading the credits and Kim Mohan's Preface. There's not a hint there that any playtesting was done, whatsoever. No testers are credited, nobody in charge of playtest, nothing. The closest thing is a credit 'Proofreading and tinkering: Mike Breault', who was a commonly cited contributor to various mid-80s TSR products. The Preface itself talks about process of creating the book in rather abstract terms, writing an outline, doing some research, writing the text. He doesn't really talk about what comes after that much, but obviously there was editing. Again not a whiff of any suggestion that anything was played by anyone before the book was published.

It was an odd sort of blindness of that period that reflection on WHY something should be done, and what the possible approaches were, which would be most appropriate, etc., none of that was really considered. Certainly not considered in 1986 in mainstream RPG publishing circles. So you get these weird books like this which are entirely unusable in the fashion which they avow to be written for. It's not to say that the information is all junk, nothing like that. It is a bit shallow in that it is written by gaming geeks and not, say, some US Army Rangers (well, I don't know Kim's biography, perhaps I'm wrong there!) BUT having at least a modest amount of camping and hiking experience it doesn't seem like any of it is crazy. I'm sure DMs read it and often got some thought out of it that was useful, maybe referred to a table here or there. It's just damned weird, and I even remember thinking something along these lines in 1986, that you would present it like it is an actual coherent usable game system.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It is the one 1e hardcover I never got, and that looks like the one to miss out on from such reports.

Well, equally the DSG, though in that case I guess you could say it is more close in form to the 4e Underdark book, focusing more on the races and such. It does have a 'player's section' that includes a much briefer and I would say more useful consolidated set of underground exploration rules. MOST of the book however talks about the Underdark, though oddly half the text uses the alternate term 'Deepearth'. So it is more of an underworld adventure source book than a survival guide similar to the WSG. Still, I don't recall using it much. I think we'd played through the GDQ modules quite thoroughly well before 1986 anyway. IIRC by then our campaigns were more like a fusion of 1e AD&D, 1e Gamma World, Fight in the Skies, Car Wars, Boot Hill, and lots of other stuff. lol.

 

[James Gasik]

It is interesting that The Celts book has the precursor to Feats though. Even called Feats!

 

[W'rkncacnter]

It is interesting that The Celts book has the precursor to Feats though. Even called Feats!

i mean...is it even just a precursor at that point?

 

[Voadam]

I

It is interesting that The Celts book has the precursor to Feats though. Even called Feats!

I trace feats back to martial arts and certain Nonweapon proficiencies in 1e Oriental Adventures. Blindfighting for instance started there.