Is D&D "Rubbish"?

[Tymophil]

I think he is right 100%. Even his description of D&D4 is not that off the mark. This edition, that I play at the moment, is full of abstract systems and WotC did not bother to give any way to translate into roleplay experiences.

It would be nice if WotC came up with a DMG 3 that would mend this aspect by giving us tools to narrate power use, hp loss, healing surge use, etc.

Even better, they could replace to awful free Keep on the Shadowfell with a better adventure incorporating such advices in a simplified set of startup rules.

As it is now, the system looks like a skirmish game, and a very slow one. One can turn it into a roleplay experience, but it requires thinking out of the box or out of the books. It's a shame, because, there are very good things in this game...

 

[thewok]

Everyone is entitled to an opinion.

Actually, the whole thing seemed to be a (thinly-veiled) advertisement for Runequest. Once he started extolling that system's virtues, the whole thing seemed like less of a criticism of D&D and more of a schoolyard "My system is good, so yours is junk!" thing.

I can't really remark on his pre-3E comments, as my pre-3E D&D experience consists of the Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale games. But, I have to admit that I found his criticisms of 4E lacking, as they seemed to be the result of a bad DM rather than the game itself. He even said that a better DM could have come up with a way for his rogue to smash a crystal. Hell, when I heard it I immediately came up with a grab attack, followed by a hard Thievery check. If I really sit down and think about it, I might even come up with a better way, but that's just off the top of my head.

If an evoker-type wizard bores him, why not play one that specializes in other ways of doing combat? Choose powers that make walls or create difficult terrain or inflict status effects on enemies! I think of all the classes in 4E, the wizard really has the most variety in its power selection. His boredom is self-inflicted.

Does 4E read like a wargame rulebook? I have to admit that, yes, the first PHB does give off that vibe. That was a conscious decision on the part of WotC, too. Remove the fluff from the crunch. Let people make up their own fluff. I like that approach, and I like the fluff-heavy approach of Essentials as well. There is room for both.

I guess that, after that, all I really have to say is I'm glad he has his system of choice. It's unfortunate that he feels the need to blast another game to make himself feel better about his choice of game, but c'est la vie.

And, if I could speak to this guy face to face, I'd just tell him one thing: If D&D 4E isn't a roleplaying game, then you're doing it wrong.

Edit: I love the preview image of the second video. That look on his face is amazing.

 

[hero4hire]

One wonders why he stuck with it for so long.

He had some good points some I don't agree with, but...4 hours for one fight vs 5 kobolds???


Ridiculous!

 

[Hussar]

When did it become 2007 again?

I mean, these are the same, tired old arguments that have been trotted out for frigging YEARS.

Take the wank about running around the Centaur creature and breaking its stone. "Not supported mechanically"? Really? Page 42 is pretty much directly speaking to this. THIS is precisely what 4e is SUPPOSED to do.

Shame he had a crap DM.

 

[Knoxer]

I have to agree with some of his points such as healing surges and how you don't need to roleplay at all in 4th edition. There are a few parts of his argument that, as previously stated, stem from his GM. But for me 4th edition is just not that enjoyable to play as I can find better elsewhere (3.5).

 

[jsepeta]

4th edition is just fine

My weekly group has been playing 4th edition since the fall of 2008 and we have a blast with it. We are all fairly experienced roleplayers, and the books just give structure and guidance, and with 4th edition especially, a balance of powers that previous versions lacked. If you aren't roleplaying and just want a hack and slash adventure, well then your experience will differ from ours. Some nights we don't even roll dice!

Admittedly, combat starts to suck a little at 7th level and up. I don't think that characters' induced damage scales well with the difficulty level of certain monsters/encounters. But it's up to the DM to determine how quickly the enemies fall. Also the rules don't cover much about morale, as if we've vanquished 2/3 of the enemy, I'm not sure that the rest of them would fight until death - they may surrender or flee. But these are minor quibbles compared to the ease of training newbies to play D&D using the 4th edition rulebooks.

Now if the character builder was only $30/year instead of $70+...

 

[Gondsman]

I have to agree with some of his points such as healing surges and how you don't need to roleplay at all in 4th edition

I don't understand why it has to be the gamemaker's position to require roleplaying. the gamemaker provides a framework of rules that avoids the classic "i hit you" "no you didn't" "yes i did" argument from all the cops v robbers type games we played as kids. Roleplaying has always been the responsibility of the player. Personally, I fail to see how the gamemaker can force people to roleplay without throwing all the rules out the window and telling the GM to flip a coin.

People who complain about this or that with 4e are in my opinion too lazy to do their own roleplaying, they just want to read a script and call it good. Unless you are playing in some kind of strict tournament, i have a term for all you RPG complainers, it's called "house rule." you don't like the way it was written? change it!

 

[swordsmasher]

I heard somewhere that the designers of 4th edition boiled D&d down to what they believed was its core element: Kill monsters, take their stuff.

So that's what they built with 4e.

I've been gaming since 1E, and i did go back and run the BECM for a bit, and the RC (I still us ethe War machine and Siege Machine rules in my Pathfinder game, almost CORE!), and of course on through 3rd. I've dealt with many of the concepts he talked about, but back then we figured What the heck? THAC0 was AWESOME, man!

When 4E came out, I bought all the books, re-wrote my campaign, and then ran my first adventure. My group is experienced with mutiple systems and games, so roleplaying comes second nature. However, when we found there was very little CRUNCH to build up our FLUFF, there was issue 1. HOUSE RULED feats.

and the first combat DID take 3 hours. 4 players against 4 goblins. it took three sessions to get through the first HALF of my adventure, and i ended up altering the adventure and moving up the encounter witht he BBEG just to get the story moving.

After that I made sure all of my adventures had no more than 2 or 3 combat encounters.

We stuck with 4E until about level 13, and then it just didn't do it for us anymore. Having adventured in a homebrewed world for 13 years, my players knew the ins and outs of everything, and suddenly with 4E these people they knew didn't work anymore, and they could NOT build the characters they wanted to anymore.

I enjoy many of the Aspects of 4E, epecially from a DM's viewpoint. But we switched to Pathfinder simply because they COULD build the characters they wanted.

When Essentials came out, I of course went out and bought that, and we switched back to 4E for a bit. We got to level 7 and then ran into all of the same issues again.

Call me a bad DM if you want, I know the truth of it, and so do 4 players who have been with me for 13 years. 4E works and does what it was supposed to do. Allow players to kill monsters and take stuff. Anything else is player and GM fiat, and NOT ALL players and GM's are capable of doing that.

In my 20 years of gaming, with mutliple games, and systems, and having run a gaming store or 2 in my time, I can honestly say I agree with many of the points the gentleman in the video talks about. (Though I've never run Runequest, oddly enough).

and, surely enough, with the current sales models, and the popularity of Pathfinder, and many of the Open Source Old School gaming Projects going on right now, I think that many other people feel that 4E is not the right system for them.

For those that do, feel the love, gaming brothers! At least you're tabletop gaming!

 

[Gondsman]

Swordsmasher, i'd like to thank you for presenting the first complaint about 4e that i've ever completely agreed with. You complained about content not fitting well with playing style, and i can agree that 4e does lack somewhat when it comes to character variety, you do get sort of railroaded into specific progressions more with 4e than with others. And certainly there are a lot of feats like Irresistable Flame that only helps people with fire attacks, but there is no comparable feat for say a bard who mostly has thunder attacks, and you have to houserule a feat and call it Irresistable Thunder.

Personally I like to houserule a lot of stuff. I'm about to run a campaign that's about 3/5 3.5e and 2/5 4e. I like the less rigid approach to classes, but i dislike certain things like the skills list in 3e, it just doesn't make sense to me a rogue that seperately trains picking locks and disabling traps since the mechanics are often very similar, so i pull in some of the more broadly defined skills of 4e and condense the list a bit, and i also think that 3.5 spellcasters are significantly underpowered with no at-will magic attacks so i blend in a little bit there. with more time on my hands i might look at another system like pathfinder, but for now i stick with something that satisfies most of my needs and i make up the rest.

I do think that far too many people place all the burden on the game rules, when no rule, no matter how cool or well developed is going to satisfy everybody.

 

[Krypter]

He's absolutely right. D&D was never very good and now 4E is a just a bad skirmish game with nonsensical boardgame rules.