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What is the essence of 4E?
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<blockquote data-quote="Imaro" data-source="post: 7454662" data-attributes="member: 48965"><p>Couple of points... </p><p></p><p>1. I think people took it at face value that this was D&D... that the same stories and games they had told and run in previous editions would be playable with the new edition... I think this assumption (especially since it was also part of the 4e marketing, remember... "ze game remains ze same!"... makes me question whether 4e was intended to be this narrativist/story now/etc. game that you and others seem to classify it as. Or whether it was secondary effect. I lean towards a secondary effect of everything listed in that article since I just don't see the designers banking on indie design as carrying the type of numbers 4e needed... When compared to previously sold traditional D&D editions the numbers for indie games sold are a drop of water in a lake... why bet your new edition on that type of design?</p><p></p><p>2. I'll just say I enjoy Essentials and the essentials classes. While the class change may not have solved everyone's problems they certainly did make the game appeal more to me (along with some of the polish and the concise/compact nature of this sub-branch of the game). IMO, essentials actually delivers on making 4e a game that is good for introducing new people to the hobby, as well as serving casual gamers... in fact I will be starting up a secondary game using 4e essentials because of that fact. Now admittedly I don't discuss essentials much since it seems that many 4e "purist" have a pretty strong bias against essentials so that could contribute to why they aren't discussed (except un a mostly derogatory way) in most of the 4e venues online. </p><p></p><p>Ultimately I don't think you can definitively say that it's clear Essentials didn't solve any of what players were concerned about... it released 2 years after the core books and I'm sorry but that's a long time to expect people to stick with a game they didn't care for... especially with a popular and readily available alternative in Pathfinder. I think perhaps if the 4e PHB had been a mix of the essentials and core book classes it woud have come of much better overall than it did... I think so, but at the end of the day it's all just speculation. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I disagree here... Story Now is a particular set of techniques/playstyle that while including the traits you mentioned is not specifically necessary for a DM to run a game where he is reacting, adapting and telling a story. {Perhaps you see it that way because it's your preferred style (I also think this is why you and others were able to apply this to 4e) but it most assuredly is not necessary for a DM to include those things in his game. </p><p></p><p>As for why it wasn't written all over the game... well I would think the designers/developers would have the best handle on the game they designed and I tend to think they didn't necessarily intend for D&D 4e to be run in that specific playstyle and thus why it wasn't promoted as such upon release. I think later they may have figured out it <em>could</em> work that way and tried to push that as a sort of retroactively applied default playstyle (especially since it had little in common with the default Pathfinder style) to try and slow the growing number of dissatisfied players... </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Well I'm not sure it was the "right" game... again banking on indie design (with the available data on it's market ) to make D&D a core brand of Hasbro doesn't feel like what they needed either.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Imaro, post: 7454662, member: 48965"] Couple of points... 1. I think people took it at face value that this was D&D... that the same stories and games they had told and run in previous editions would be playable with the new edition... I think this assumption (especially since it was also part of the 4e marketing, remember... "ze game remains ze same!"... makes me question whether 4e was intended to be this narrativist/story now/etc. game that you and others seem to classify it as. Or whether it was secondary effect. I lean towards a secondary effect of everything listed in that article since I just don't see the designers banking on indie design as carrying the type of numbers 4e needed... When compared to previously sold traditional D&D editions the numbers for indie games sold are a drop of water in a lake... why bet your new edition on that type of design? 2. I'll just say I enjoy Essentials and the essentials classes. While the class change may not have solved everyone's problems they certainly did make the game appeal more to me (along with some of the polish and the concise/compact nature of this sub-branch of the game). IMO, essentials actually delivers on making 4e a game that is good for introducing new people to the hobby, as well as serving casual gamers... in fact I will be starting up a secondary game using 4e essentials because of that fact. Now admittedly I don't discuss essentials much since it seems that many 4e "purist" have a pretty strong bias against essentials so that could contribute to why they aren't discussed (except un a mostly derogatory way) in most of the 4e venues online. Ultimately I don't think you can definitively say that it's clear Essentials didn't solve any of what players were concerned about... it released 2 years after the core books and I'm sorry but that's a long time to expect people to stick with a game they didn't care for... especially with a popular and readily available alternative in Pathfinder. I think perhaps if the 4e PHB had been a mix of the essentials and core book classes it woud have come of much better overall than it did... I think so, but at the end of the day it's all just speculation. I disagree here... Story Now is a particular set of techniques/playstyle that while including the traits you mentioned is not specifically necessary for a DM to run a game where he is reacting, adapting and telling a story. {Perhaps you see it that way because it's your preferred style (I also think this is why you and others were able to apply this to 4e) but it most assuredly is not necessary for a DM to include those things in his game. As for why it wasn't written all over the game... well I would think the designers/developers would have the best handle on the game they designed and I tend to think they didn't necessarily intend for D&D 4e to be run in that specific playstyle and thus why it wasn't promoted as such upon release. I think later they may have figured out it [I]could[/I] work that way and tried to push that as a sort of retroactively applied default playstyle (especially since it had little in common with the default Pathfinder style) to try and slow the growing number of dissatisfied players... Well I'm not sure it was the "right" game... again banking on indie design (with the available data on it's market ) to make D&D a core brand of Hasbro doesn't feel like what they needed either. [/QUOTE]
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