CarlosDosBrickos
Explorer
I've been studying the rules for a while, and ran the Raiders of Oakhurst adventure for my local gaming group last week. Overall I'm very positive about 4e, and can't wait to get my hands on the new books.
However...
I'm a big fan of Play by Post D&D too. It's a very different vibe, and gives the opportunity for some really in-depth RP. And my site of choice (Woldian Games) is pretty much the best site of its type I've found. Around 100 or so players in many seperate games at last count. The DM posts once per day, and then all players post in whatever order they post in (initiative kind of goes out the window, replaced by a loose first post, first strike policy).
What concerns me is that the change from 3.5 to 4 may be a step too far for this site and others like it. The shift from 2 to 3 was quite an upheaval for Woldian Games, but was ultimately more a logistics excercise than an issue of gameplay mechanics. But the move to 4e may simply not work. By moving to an exception-based mechanic that allows far more "out of turn" actions than previous versions of D&D, the whole "DM posts, players all post, rinse and repeat" structure is gone. And my guess (only a guess!) is that the interaction between powers will only increase the out of sequence aspect to the game as charactesr rise in levels and the interaction of powers becomes more complex.
I'm not saying 3.5 didn't have some of this out of turn stuff. AoO's of course. And grapple and other special attacks, for example, were so conditional that we had to create house rules to simplify them for online play.
But now with 4e and the increased focus on trigger effects, interrupts and the like, I'm not sure how a PbP game would work.
Does anyone else have any thoughts on this?
However...
I'm a big fan of Play by Post D&D too. It's a very different vibe, and gives the opportunity for some really in-depth RP. And my site of choice (Woldian Games) is pretty much the best site of its type I've found. Around 100 or so players in many seperate games at last count. The DM posts once per day, and then all players post in whatever order they post in (initiative kind of goes out the window, replaced by a loose first post, first strike policy).
What concerns me is that the change from 3.5 to 4 may be a step too far for this site and others like it. The shift from 2 to 3 was quite an upheaval for Woldian Games, but was ultimately more a logistics excercise than an issue of gameplay mechanics. But the move to 4e may simply not work. By moving to an exception-based mechanic that allows far more "out of turn" actions than previous versions of D&D, the whole "DM posts, players all post, rinse and repeat" structure is gone. And my guess (only a guess!) is that the interaction between powers will only increase the out of sequence aspect to the game as charactesr rise in levels and the interaction of powers becomes more complex.
I'm not saying 3.5 didn't have some of this out of turn stuff. AoO's of course. And grapple and other special attacks, for example, were so conditional that we had to create house rules to simplify them for online play.
But now with 4e and the increased focus on trigger effects, interrupts and the like, I'm not sure how a PbP game would work.
Does anyone else have any thoughts on this?