The Guards at the Gate Quote

[pemerton]

Given that 5e is now twinkling on the horizon, with admissions that some of the attitudes propounded in 4e were mistakes, I think that we can lay this to rest - Wyatt's attitude, deliberate or not, did alienate a fair number of people.

From my perspective, that has never been in doubt.

I do not think that he dismissed other styles of play accidentally

I agree with this too. At least to me, 4e comes across as the most deliberately focused version of D&D, when the mechanics, the scenario/encounter design advice, the adjudication advice, etc are read together as a whole.

one of the stated intents for 5e is to be more inclusive.

<snip>

I hope that they can take the good parts of 4e but manage to lose the hubris that offended far more than the rules themselves.

<snip>

Rather than picking at the scabs, let us let the matter go - it no longer matters.

As has come up on other threads, there were already signs of this in Essentials - not in its mechanics, which are straightforward updates and additions to 4e, but in some of it's advice, which (for example) framed the GM's authority in slightly more traditional terms.

In the PHB, for example, at p 8, the GM is described as:

Referee: When it's not clear what ought to happen next, the DM decides how to apply the rules and adjudicate the story.​

In the Rules Compendium, at p 9, the corresponding text on the GM's role says:

Referee: The DM decides how to apply the game rules and guides the story. If the rules don't cover a situation, th DM determines what to do. At times, the DM might alter or even ignore the result of a die roll if doing so benefits the story.​

It will be interesting to see how 5e frames these sorts of issues, and how it tries to achieve inclusiveness. Judging from the tone of the Legends and Lore columns, I'm not expecting a clear framing of the various playstyles and the way that mechancs and GM adjudication can be adapted to produce them, but it may be that I'll be happily surprised!

I hope that WotC keeps 4e Essentials in print as a separate property

On a recent thread (I can't remember which one - maybe the "Do you love 4e thread" on the 4e board) someone suggsted that Essentials would be better as a single RC-style book - there is a huge amount of redundant text across the two HotF* books, the DM book and the Rules Compendium.

That editing would cost money, though, which would detract from the 5e efforts. But Essentials seems to me at least to be a bit of a hopeless shambles in its current form (not from the mechanical point of view, but in its presentation).

 

[TheAuldGrump]

As has come up on other threads, there were already signs of this in Essentials - not in its mechanics, which are straightforward updates and additions to 4e, but in some of it's advice, which (for example) framed the GM's authority in slightly more traditional terms.

In the PHB, for example, at p 8, the GM is described as:

Referee: When it's not clear what ought to happen next, the DM decides how to apply the rules and adjudicate the story.​

In the Rules Compendium, at p 9, the corresponding text on the GM's role says:

Referee: The DM decides how to apply the game rules and guides the story. If the rules don't cover a situation, th DM determines what to do. At times, the DM might alter or even ignore the result of a die roll if doing so benefits the story.​

I have been curious about that - glad to see that my suspicions were correct, that WotC had tried to mend the fences with Essentials.

I think that hubris, more than anything else, led to the failures of 4e, that WotC believed that, no matter how radical the changes, folks would follow the new system, then tried to downplay previous editions in an effort to force the issue.

Given that the whole point of 3e was that the folks then in charge of WotC had realized that the biggest competitor for D&D was, well, earlier versions of D&D, the more current management should have known better.

Wyatt should certainly have known better. Those who do not learn from history, and all that.

Add to that the arrogance inherent in the first rendition of the GSL, and well....

There would likely have still been a schism, but it would have been lesser.

I do not know how much of that apparent arrogance was panic due to the shake up at Hasbro, but the result was schism, rebellion, and a sundering of nations.... (My homebrew is based on the wars of reformation/counter reformation, does it show? )

I think that WotC would have been better served keeping both 3.X and 4e running in parallel. They did not need to compete.

Rather than the glut of 3PP from the 'golden days' of 3.X, the glut for 4e was entirely of WotC's own doing, with an overly aggressive release schedule. (And that, almost certainly, was a result of panic.) Something that TSR had also suffered through.

The Auld Grump - those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it, those that do learn from history are doomed to watch others repeat it....

*EDIT* My biggest grievance is that WotC had a tremendous amount of good will that had been built up during 3.X, and they squandered it!

 

[haakon1]

So, here's at least one case study for a person learning to run the game from the book, who read that quote and did not take it literally

Reading advice, absorbing, and doing what you think best as DM, regardless of the what the experts literally said? Priceless.

May I quote Obi-Wan Kenobi: "You've taken your first step into a wider world."

 

[S'mon]

I'm not sure about the "coherent worlds" bit - I find that hard to judge, particularly in the context of an assumed megadungeon norm, which for me has already scattered coherence to the four winds - but the rest is right according to my recollections.

My own experience with Pulsipher was, on the whole, probably negative. I enjoyed his pieces, which are well written in a very authoritative tone, and attempted to implement that style in my own game. I wasn't very good at it and my players didn't really enjoy it, but it still took me at least a couple of years, and the influence of Oriental Adventures, to find my way to a style of scenario design and GMing that was better suited to what I and my players wanted.

I guess rather than 'coherent worlds' in the sense of Tekumel or Glorantha, it was more just 'makes sense in context' and definitely Not Silly. I can't recall him being a big influence on me, I think most of his work was before I started buying White Dwarf (#84, 6 months before the beginning of the end), though I did get all the back issues I could acquire. I never ran a megadungeon campaign, most of my adventures were small surface dungeons. I'm a bit claustrophobic IRL and frankly have always tended to avoid the Never Go Outside campaign!

 

[S'mon]

That editing would cost money, though, which would detract from the 5e efforts. But Essentials seems to me at least to be a bit of a hopeless shambles in its current form (not from the mechanical point of view, but in its presentation).

Yeah, in hindsight it was one of those bright ideas that really didn't work out. A year after release no new would-be player had heard of Essentials, they were all still turning up at the Meetup with fresh PHBs.

I do love my Monster Vault softback though, it's small enough to fit in a nook in my game stroller bag between the wheel hubs and the minis case, so I effectively get a 'free' monster book!

 

[pemerton]

I can't recall him being a big influence on me, I think most of his work was before I started buying White Dwarf (#84, 6 months before the beginning of the end), though I did get all the back issues I could acquire. I never ran a megadungeon campaign, most of my adventures were small surface dungeons.

I encountered his stuff through the Best of White Dwarf collections that I got around 1984.

And I also have never tried the megadungeon, but was influenced by his verions of "skilled play" (which I encountered before I got into AD&D - and I found his presentation of the idea much clearer than Gygax's, which I didn't really notice at the time and have only become very conscious of in retrospect). This is stuff like setting up dungeons to reward sensbile use of detect spells, skilled mapping, scouting, etc.

In fact some aspects of that approach to play have come to loom large in my later gaming years, but always in the context of means to ends rather than ends in themselves. I enjoy GMing "skilled players" provided they don't take it too far (and one thing I like about 4e is that it puts a break on how far that sort of play can be taken) but I enjoy GMing other sorts of players too.

I do love my Monster Vault softback though

Monster Vault is a very honourable exception to my comment upthread. An excellent book with a clear function. And, as you note, nicely portable.

 

[Ranes]

Forgive me for not having read all of this thread but the thing I like about DMing an occasional brush with the guards at the gate (or similarly ostensibly mundane encounter) is that it presents an opportunity to set up a variation on the 'Lewton Bus' device.

For those unfamiliar with the Lewton Bus, allow me to paste the paragraph from Wikipedia's entry on the 1942 film, Cat People:

"Lewton and his production are credited for inventing or popularising the horror film technique called the 'Lewton Bus'. The term derives from the scene in which Irena is following Alice. The audience expects Irena to turn into a panther at any moment and attack. At the most tense point, when the camera focuses on Alice's confused and terrified face, the silence is shattered by what sounds like a hissing panther—but is just a bus pulling up. This technique has been used many times since. Any scene in which tension is dissipated by a mere moment of startlement, a boo!, is a 'Lewton Bus'."

Startlement? Okay... Anyway, I'm using the term 'Lewton Bus' loosely here, because I'm not talking about startling the players necessarily but, if I start playing out a scene with the guards at the gate, it's usually so unexpected as to engender some unease or trepidation on the part of the players, who reflect this through the actions of their PCs. Thus, it serves to distract them just enough for me to stage the dramatic encounter or event I really want to deliver without them seeing it coming.

 

[jonesy]

For those unfamiliar with the Lewton Bus, allow me to paste the paragraph from Wikipedia's entry on the 1942 film, Cat People:

Oooh. Dueling dictionaries.

Cat Scare - Television Tropes & Idioms

..the Cat Scare trope is also called a "bus" in commemoration of Cat People, which has one of the first uses of the trope in cinema.

 

[haakon1]

Lotr

Or as I like to put it, "Lord of the Rings" just isn't the Lord of the Rings without the Shire. Having the Shire grounds us in the story, and gives the protagonists something worth fighting for.

Mundane encounters -- or just putting effort into the setting and the background -- achieves this goal for me as a DM, and makes me happy as a player.