Edition Fatigue

[Canor Morum]

You can choose to be offended if it makes you happy. I'm talking about the focus of the product, not what *you* are doing in your game.

The empirical evidence (particularly when comparing 4E with early editions, esp 1E/2E/BECM) is overwhelming. When you read the books being made, 4E skips over non-combat events. It would be ridiculous to claim that 4E treats out-of-combat the same as it treats in-combat. If 1E had a ratio of 2-to-1 (in to out), then 4E has a ratio of 100-to-1, if not more than that.

Show me the mechanics dealing with out-of-combat activity in 4E. Then compare it to 1E/2E/BECM. No comparison.

WOTC has shifted almost entirely towards combat. Simple fact.

Do you really need rules and tables in order to role-play?

Check out Skill Challenges.

 

[fumetti]

I think 4e's emphasis on giving each class a role and the ability to do something in combat other than "i hit with sword" is a strength, not a weakness. You disagree and I respect your opinion.

"something in combat"... THAT is a good idea.

Everybody doing the SAME thing? Not so good.

I think 4E got carried away with their at-will structure and turned all the classes basically into the same class with different clothes on.

FWIW, I was attracted to 4E because Wizards have something they can do in combat. I became disappointed when it became apparent that there's very little now for out of combat activity.

What I am NOT saying is that DMs can't run non-combat scenarios with 4E. I'm saying it's not built into 4E like it was in earlier versions. And then add the Essentials books that almost throws it all out completely, and then the Encounters program that is just "pick up combat encounters" (not that it can realistically be much more; it just adds more to my perception of WOTC abandoning non-combat).

 

[rounser]

But let us not kid ourselves - we've learned a great deal about RPGs since then. There has been a significant amount of competition, using substantially different designs than the engine that original D&D uses. We've gone from play by tens of people, to play by tens and hundreds of thousands. We know a whole lot more about what makes an RPG work, and how to bend it to work for various sorts of players, than Gary did.

As was pointed out on Grognardia recently, designers of new RPGs tend to chuck out things that they can't see the point of and misidentify as weaknesses. It's the "I don't care if you like rolling on random tables, they are so two decades ago" kind of game design fashion syndrome that is just "different" dressed up as "better."

For instance, if D&D were designed from scratch today, it would probably be using all d10s. Never mind that polyhedrals of various types are fun, I can argue you black and blue why my unified percentile mechanic is all the game will ever need. And traps are unfair and I can't see a way to make them work, so let's exclude and ignore them. Oh, and my mechanics are suggesting this class which doesn't map to an archetype, but I think it's cool anyway or needed for rulesy reasons...let's attach an artificial name to it like "warlord" or "mystic theurge" and go to it, nevermind that it's difficult to use as a fantasy construction kit whenever gamist stuff like this sneaks in.

With game design, steps sideways or backwards seem just as common as steps forward, seemingly. And the human processors aren't any faster than in 1980, yet here we are trying to take on Moore's Law with dice.

 

[fumetti]

Do you really need rules and tables in order to role-play?

Check out Skill Challenges.

Two points.

1) Roleplaying is more than just having characters talk in a tavern. You need rules and tables for overland travel, acquiring resources, hiring services, and all the other non-combat activity that is prevelant in any story-based game.

2) Skill challenges help. But when I see how skills were so strong a part of 3E (characters could actually be built around their skills instead of combat abilities thanks to the leveling up process), 4E looks just a notch above what BECM was doing in the Gazetteers 20 years ago. Looks like DnD took a step backwards.

 

[Canor Morum]

"something in combat"... THAT is a good idea.

Everybody doing the SAME thing? Not so good.

I think 4E got carried away with their at-will structure and turned all the classes basically into the same class with different clothes on.

FWIW, I was attracted to 4E because Wizards have something they can do in combat. I became disappointed when it became apparent that there's very little now for out of combat activity.

What I am NOT saying is that DMs can't run non-combat scenarios with 4E. I'm saying it's not built into 4E like it was in earlier versions. And then add the Essentials books that almost throws it all out completely, and then the Encounters program that is just "pick up combat encounters" (not that it can realistically be much more; it just adds more to my perception of WOTC abandoning non-combat).

I see what you're saying. I agree that more variety in individual class mechanics would be a good thing. They have tried this to some extent with psionics, fighter stances, and bringing back magic schools. Deviating from the standard AED power structure for certain classes would make them "feel" different.

I'm still not sure what you mean by wanting more out of combat rules. Beyond skill checks and pure role-playing I don't see the point. An imaginative DM can run non-combat scenes without rolling a single dice, referencing a table, or setting up visual aids. Descriptive narration and improvisation is all that's required.

 

[Canor Morum]

Two points.

1) Roleplaying is more than just having characters talk in a tavern. You need rules and tables for overland travel, acquiring resources, hiring services, and all the other non-combat activity that is prevelant in any story-based game.

I'm pretty sure there are rules for some of those. Personally, I don't use them because my players don't find it interesting. To each his own.

 

[fumetti]

Folks, I'm just flabbergasted that anything I'm saying is the least bit controversial. It's all pretty clear, all in black and white in the 4E books--and I have 23 hardbacks, all the Essential books, and several published adventures.

Just pick up, say, the Arcane Power book. Wizards overall are traditionally about as non-combat a class (certainly in the lower levels) as exists in the game (second only to Thieves). Yet vitually all the powers, feats, and Magic Tomes are combat in nature, or described in combat terms.

Only the familiars section and New Rituals are less about combat than non-combat... 11 pages out of 160.

Old timers know how to fill in those gaps and use 4E as a story-based game (that's very heavy on combat, in terms of playing time if nothing else) But I just don't see how anyone coming into 4E as their first DnD experience can see the game as anything but a combat game. That's about all that's been covered in the books.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

You can choose to be offended if it makes you happy. I'm talking about the focus of the product, not what *you* are doing in your game.

The empirical evidence (particularly when comparing 4E with early editions, esp 1E/2E/BECM) is overwhelming. When you read the books being made, 4E skips over non-combat events. It would be ridiculous to claim that 4E treats out-of-combat the same as it treats in-combat. If 1E had a ratio of 2-to-1 (in to out), then 4E has a ratio of 100-to-1, if not more than that.

Show me the mechanics dealing with out-of-combat activity in 4E. Then compare it to 1E/2E/BECM. No comparison.

WOTC has shifted almost entirely towards combat. Simple fact.

It ani't that simple and it is definitely no fact, it is your opinion. Now I cannot speak for 1E or 2e, I never owned the rulebooks, I just rolled the dice my DM told me to role. I just had a quick look at the Basic Red Box rule books, the whole players handbook is 64 pages. There is 8 pages of games concepts explained via an adventure narrative, followed by 5 or so pages on the character. There is a page on town business and a solo adventure that goes from page 14 to page 22. Page 23 to 47 is character classes and a couple pages of charts, sample character sheets, sample characters and a sheet of graph paper. Page 48 to 52 is how to create a character and the remaining pages are about mappers, callers, order of march, alignement, dividing treasdure, combat encounters, hirelings and a glossery and 2 pages of ads.

The DM book has 2 pages of introduction, 9 of sample adventure and the reat monsters, treasure and charts.
Aside from the couple of paragraphs on ability checks and the retainer ruls there is nothing in the Basic books I would call non combat rules.

Now the 3.0 phb 286 pages including glossery and credits and the 4e phb1 317 pages so we are clearly is completely different territory in terms of rules complexity. interestingly the combat chapters are about the same length on both.

 

[fumetti]

I see what you're saying. I agree that more variety in individual class mechanics would be a good thing. They have tried this to some extent with psionics, fighter stances, and bringing back magic schools. Deviating from the standard AED power structure for certain classes would make them "feel" different.

I'm still not sure what you mean by wanting more out of combat rules. Beyond skill checks and pure role-playing I don't see the point. An imaginative DM can run non-combat scenes without rolling a single dice, referencing a table, or setting up visual aids. Descriptive narration and improvisation is all that's required.

I guess it all comes down to one's experiences. Most of my gaming experiences were as much about what happens between the fights as the fights themselves.

We never just showed up to an encounter. The travel was a big deal. It was a lot like Lord of the Rings. There was incredible danger involved in going from town across the mountains and swamps to get to the dragon's lair. We lived in fear of wandering monster rolls and running out of food/supplies. Getting wagons to the dragon's hoard was a serious challenge!

And we really didn't like our chances just being a matter of the kindness, or impatience, of the DM. We didn't like monsters to show up just because we hadn't made attack rolls in the past 45 minutes. It was just more real using the tables and taking our chances.

Maybe some players would get mad if their party got slaughtered on the way to the adventure. To me, it made the game stronger. More real. More fun. Any time a DM said "okay, you're there," I felt a little bit cheated.

Same with all the other types of inbetween activity.

To me, 4E reads as if it relies on a whole lot of "okay, you're there" expediency.

 

[BryonD]

Do you really need rules and tables in order to role-play?

Check out Skill Challenges.

This is the part where I play my broken record....

Players bring role play to the table. When comparing systems, things that the players bring to the table are not relevant. Only things that the system brings to the table are relevant.

Not all systems provide the same level of interaction between roleplaying and mechanics. For me personally, and apparently for a large number of other people who like a good level of "simulation" in their games, there are systems that do a vastly better job of creating that feedback between the mechanics and the roleplay. That doesn't mean you don't LOVE 4E and roleplay your hearts out on top of the system. It just means that there are perfectly valid reasons for people with other preferences to find 4E well down the list of games of preference.

Long before 4E existed I was using encounters that would be recognized as very skill-challenge-like. But, they also varied from event to event pretty substantially. IMO skill challenges put the mechanics to much in front of the roleplaying. The mechanics are set in and it is up to the players to describe how their characters meet the requirements. It is very similar to the use of powers in combat. I've seen many 4E fans praise the GREAT roleplaying perk of needing to come up with an on-the-fly explanation of WHY their power worked under the circumstances at hand. I can see how someone could enjoy that. But, for my preference, I want the mechanics to be as invisible as possible. I want the players to just roleplay their part and have mechanics that respond to that, not have the roleplay react to the mechanical expectations.

I don't want wizards to get better at climbing for no other reason than they gained levels. If the wizard is imagined as someone who can climb, then cool, but let the player make that call. In 4E the mechanics demand that the character have that aspect.

I want the AC of a pirate and a knight to be defined purely by the fact that they are a pirate and a knight, not primarily by the challenge level they are supposed to fit.

Over and over 4E is about mechanics first and then roleplaying to fit the allowances of the mechanics. I want my game to be about roleplay first and the mechanics do their best to keep up.

It isn't that you CAN'T roleplay 4E. Obviously you can. But the expectation is that the mechanics lead. And please, don't tell me you can ignore that any time you want. I agree 100% that you can, you can go off script and make the mechanics try to keep up. But you are now just doing a workaround that is counter to the system presumptions. The fact that you can go against the grain of the system is not a selling point for the system.