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What is the essence of 4E?
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<blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 7455173" data-attributes="member: 16814"><p>Only if you consider 'Skywalkers are the center of everything' as the core trope of Star Wars is it a betrayal. That complaint is almost always about what they did to Luke. I didn't mind -- he's in the same general place as Yoda and Kenobi as failed teachers in hiding. He redeems himself largely in the same way Kenobi does. It's moving around the pieces, really. Most of TLJ is moving around the pieces of Empire and New Hope with a few new bits. The main thrust that fans got upset at was the replacement of the Skywalker line as the heroes with new blood. That's the trope they abandoned, and where all the complaints come from.</p><p></p><p>So, no, I disagree there was a large abandonment of tropes in TLJ. They changed the guard, and a lot of fans (especially EU consumers) were very much attached to the old guard. Personally, I found sticking to the Skywalker line was what really killed the prequels -- they couldn't go anywhere, so they puttered around the edges with stupid to distract from the straightforward drive to the known end. The suspense thread touches on this kind of issue (poorly).</p><p></p><p>You're looking at the narrative of the game being flexible (always been thus) and using that as a stand-in for the published ruleset. No one's complaining about how your table hacks the rules -- that's 100% your deal. This issue is that 4e radically changed the way the game plays and then didn't explain that. I think that's because they didn't really understand what they had done themselves. They tried to fix the major issues with 3.x by balancing per encounter (which addressed the 5 minute workday and liner fighter quadratic wizard issues) and tried out a structure to eliminate the Diplomancer type problem by having a skill contest that couldn't just be one player rolling they're best skill to get what they want. These two things accidentally push 4e much towards narrativist play, but I contend this is entirely unintentional due to the complete lack of any suggestions in the books to play this way and the lack of developer comment on this new style. </p><p></p><p>Still, they radically changed how the game works so that the previous mode of play in 3.x and earlier editions really isn't well supported. And they did this with some changes that empower players and take away the 'DM may I' style D&D generally prefers. Then, they utterly failed to communicate this and also badly misplayed their hand with marketing. The result was a very different game without making this clear in either the marketing or in the rules themselves. Pushing away the grognards with 'suck it, we're WotC and if you want D&D you'll take it our way' marketing just further entrenched the lines. This would be like making a Star Wars movie that's a suspense-thriller involving spies and poker. </p><p></p><p>I do, however, agree that movie franchises have constraints; I don't agree that RPG franchises lack the same restraints. The formula is what matters to franchises. 4e changed the formula.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ovinomancer, post: 7455173, member: 16814"] Only if you consider 'Skywalkers are the center of everything' as the core trope of Star Wars is it a betrayal. That complaint is almost always about what they did to Luke. I didn't mind -- he's in the same general place as Yoda and Kenobi as failed teachers in hiding. He redeems himself largely in the same way Kenobi does. It's moving around the pieces, really. Most of TLJ is moving around the pieces of Empire and New Hope with a few new bits. The main thrust that fans got upset at was the replacement of the Skywalker line as the heroes with new blood. That's the trope they abandoned, and where all the complaints come from. So, no, I disagree there was a large abandonment of tropes in TLJ. They changed the guard, and a lot of fans (especially EU consumers) were very much attached to the old guard. Personally, I found sticking to the Skywalker line was what really killed the prequels -- they couldn't go anywhere, so they puttered around the edges with stupid to distract from the straightforward drive to the known end. The suspense thread touches on this kind of issue (poorly). You're looking at the narrative of the game being flexible (always been thus) and using that as a stand-in for the published ruleset. No one's complaining about how your table hacks the rules -- that's 100% your deal. This issue is that 4e radically changed the way the game plays and then didn't explain that. I think that's because they didn't really understand what they had done themselves. They tried to fix the major issues with 3.x by balancing per encounter (which addressed the 5 minute workday and liner fighter quadratic wizard issues) and tried out a structure to eliminate the Diplomancer type problem by having a skill contest that couldn't just be one player rolling they're best skill to get what they want. These two things accidentally push 4e much towards narrativist play, but I contend this is entirely unintentional due to the complete lack of any suggestions in the books to play this way and the lack of developer comment on this new style. Still, they radically changed how the game works so that the previous mode of play in 3.x and earlier editions really isn't well supported. And they did this with some changes that empower players and take away the 'DM may I' style D&D generally prefers. Then, they utterly failed to communicate this and also badly misplayed their hand with marketing. The result was a very different game without making this clear in either the marketing or in the rules themselves. Pushing away the grognards with 'suck it, we're WotC and if you want D&D you'll take it our way' marketing just further entrenched the lines. This would be like making a Star Wars movie that's a suspense-thriller involving spies and poker. I do, however, agree that movie franchises have constraints; I don't agree that RPG franchises lack the same restraints. The formula is what matters to franchises. 4e changed the formula. [/QUOTE]
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