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Speculation about "the feelz" of D&D 4th Edition
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<blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7024244" data-attributes="member: 996"><p>I played the heck out of AD&D back in the day, went to every convention I could find (and we didn't have a shortage of them in the bay area), and had the opposite experience. With D&D, we used minis if we possibly could, because you needed them - for marching order, for positioning. The thing was, we didn't always use the expensive lead minis and take hours painting them... sometimes I'd play with a DM who had already been into wargames and had tons of the things, often very inappropriate to D&D (these orcs look surprisingly well-dressed), when I ran games, I didn't have the mini collection, so if someone had a mini specially for their character, great, otherwise dice or whatever was handy served, and until there were battlemats, I'd just lay down pencils to get the size/shape of a room or corridor. AD&D certainly assumed minis and even pushed it's own mini line, though it was never that great (Ral Partha was the gold standard back in the day, IMHO). </p><p></p><p>But, if we were playing somewhere with no table, well, no playsurface, you can't do even that. TotM wasn't a style, it was adversity. Like many, many bad things from the early day, folks get so used to coping that they can't cope with things getting better.</p><p></p><p>The split wasn't entirely unprecedented. AD&D wasn't well-received by all the older fans, and many felt Arduin was the true successor to 0D&D. 3.x was rejected by AD&D grognards. </p><p></p><p>It was just a particularly vindictive split. </p><p></p><p>Yes, there were regional differences (just w/in the US, never mind the UK, never mind outside the anglophone sphere) in how RPGs were played. There still are. Thus the danger of generalizing from personal experience or anecdote.</p><p></p><p>What does stand, regardless of region or personal anecdote, is the game, itself. And D&D has never had meaningful support within its rules for playing in the TotM style....</p><p></p><p>'Grid dependence' was a frequent criticism of 3.x - especially from 2e fans hat'n on it - and it was just as unfounded as it was later when applied to 4e. It's really a nonsense claim, D&D has never provided rules that actually facilitate TotM, even 5e which claims to 'default' to that style has nothing, it's mere lip-service. (Which, frankly, was an excellent move, you had such a fake uproar going that they had to move away from having functional rules for minis, yet the core of the fanbase driving that uproar was so traditionalist that any hint of an actual TotM system, like 13th Age uses, would have been equally provocative. So just turning back the clock and positioning 5e's combat system neatly between 2e & 3e, while giving a purely symbolic nod to the disingenuous talking points of the edition war was the best way of coping with a bad situation.) </p><p></p><p>13A delivered on several 5e promises better than 5e did. TotM being the stand out example, but also arguably, BA, class differentiation, balancing encounters & day length, magic items, etc...</p><p></p><p>(... full disclosure: in spite of recognizing the above, I barely play 13A at all.)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Tony Vargas, post: 7024244, member: 996"] I played the heck out of AD&D back in the day, went to every convention I could find (and we didn't have a shortage of them in the bay area), and had the opposite experience. With D&D, we used minis if we possibly could, because you needed them - for marching order, for positioning. The thing was, we didn't always use the expensive lead minis and take hours painting them... sometimes I'd play with a DM who had already been into wargames and had tons of the things, often very inappropriate to D&D (these orcs look surprisingly well-dressed), when I ran games, I didn't have the mini collection, so if someone had a mini specially for their character, great, otherwise dice or whatever was handy served, and until there were battlemats, I'd just lay down pencils to get the size/shape of a room or corridor. AD&D certainly assumed minis and even pushed it's own mini line, though it was never that great (Ral Partha was the gold standard back in the day, IMHO). But, if we were playing somewhere with no table, well, no playsurface, you can't do even that. TotM wasn't a style, it was adversity. Like many, many bad things from the early day, folks get so used to coping that they can't cope with things getting better. The split wasn't entirely unprecedented. AD&D wasn't well-received by all the older fans, and many felt Arduin was the true successor to 0D&D. 3.x was rejected by AD&D grognards. It was just a particularly vindictive split. Yes, there were regional differences (just w/in the US, never mind the UK, never mind outside the anglophone sphere) in how RPGs were played. There still are. Thus the danger of generalizing from personal experience or anecdote. What does stand, regardless of region or personal anecdote, is the game, itself. And D&D has never had meaningful support within its rules for playing in the TotM style.... 'Grid dependence' was a frequent criticism of 3.x - especially from 2e fans hat'n on it - and it was just as unfounded as it was later when applied to 4e. It's really a nonsense claim, D&D has never provided rules that actually facilitate TotM, even 5e which claims to 'default' to that style has nothing, it's mere lip-service. (Which, frankly, was an excellent move, you had such a fake uproar going that they had to move away from having functional rules for minis, yet the core of the fanbase driving that uproar was so traditionalist that any hint of an actual TotM system, like 13th Age uses, would have been equally provocative. So just turning back the clock and positioning 5e's combat system neatly between 2e & 3e, while giving a purely symbolic nod to the disingenuous talking points of the edition war was the best way of coping with a bad situation.) 13A delivered on several 5e promises better than 5e did. TotM being the stand out example, but also arguably, BA, class differentiation, balancing encounters & day length, magic items, etc... (... full disclosure: in spite of recognizing the above, I barely play 13A at all.) [/QUOTE]
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