neonagash
First Post
Why do you need D&D for different types of games? Theres a million RPG's out there and some are really good at types of games that D&D isnt. Play one of them. I do when I want a break.
What will happen to 4th edition?
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Why do you need D&D for different types of games? Theres a million RPG's out there and some are really good at types of games that D&D isnt. Play one of them. I do when I want a break.
Imaro
Legend
Wow, not sure I would agree with this at all... So you're saying that the changes to OD&D to get AD&D were fairly small, let's just say I think they are fairly different games but I can accept that you disagree. Also weren't most of the first rpg's you're speaking of created as a reaction to be "not D&D" in some way?? I don't think you can have a base game that started the hobby and then claim it didn't change itself from it's beginnings as much as games that were actively seeking to distance themselves from it... the logic in that comparison seems slightly flawed.
What I would be more interested in is how much have those games you listed "innovated" since their first edition was created? That, IMO, would be a more fair and accurate comparison...
Imaro
Legend
[MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] ... I just want to clarify what we mean by innovation. Are we speaking "innovation" as in something new to D&D or "innovation" as in something totally new to the entire hobby?? Because honestly I think it's kind of unfair to speak to innovation in the sense of the hobby when the reaction that inspired most of that (especially early on) was to be "not like D&D" in some way. So D&D's innovation was creating the hobby and having their game serve as the "baseline" game...
What actions in 4e broke the initiative order and were not reactions to something. I'm trying to remember some and am drawing a blank, all the out of turn actions I remember were a reaction to a specific situation...
Well again it's hard to be a leader of "innovation" when said "innovation" arises for the most part in order for games to be... "not like you", since you were first. It seems to put you in the position of "innovating" and creating a game that is "not like D&D" or sticking with your base formula and revising, refining, etc. that.
What actions in 4e broke the initiative order and were not reactions to something. I'm trying to remember some and am drawing a blank, all the out of turn actions I remember were a reaction to a specific situation...
Well again it's hard to be a leader of "innovation" when said "innovation" arises for the most part in order for games to be... "not like you", since you were first. It seems to put you in the position of "innovating" and creating a game that is "not like D&D" or sticking with your base formula and revising, refining, etc. that.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
I thought the products IMPROVED with time, but what never did happen was an EMBRACING of what 4e is. I can't say literally that MM and Co couldn't understand the game, but they CERTAINLY COULDN'T ACCEPT IT. 4e was a game of larger-than-life action-adventure. Yet not even one single adventure, not even one in Dungeon actually supported that kind of play or presented an adventure based on it. Even the Essentials-era and post-Essentials adventures like Gardmore Abbey simply attempt to shoehorn 4e into some sort of previous-edition shoe.
I think the product would have been vastly more successful had they constructed the types of adventures I've found are most suited to the game. I can understand people saying "OK, that's not my cup of tea", but they did produce the game, it seems idiotic to then so ill use it that you fail in the market. I can only assume WotC was for whatever reason literally incapable of producing any different sort of adventures and supporting material. I don't really understand how that could be, it seems terribly limited. Ironically Paizo manages to produce a wide variety of adventures of all sorts even though the underlying GAME is still the same one that was intended to run dungeon crawls as its main goal.
Scrivener of Doom
Adventurer
I definitely agree with those points/that argument, particularly the sentence I have marked in bold.
Balesir
Adventurer
As someone who ran D&D for a while with the AD&D Monster Manual (because it came out first) alongside the OD&D booklets, then added the PHB (next printed) and, finally, the DMG (just before moving on from D&D altogether for a bit), it should be no surprise that I agree with [MENTION=40166]prosfilaes[/MENTION]. AD&D was basically a dressed up OD&D (note - OD&D, not Basic).
I don't think they were, no. They were created to "rectify" a range of perceived flaws in D&D, which naturally made them somewhat different, but I don't think merely making "something different from D&D" was a design aim for any of the early designers, though I may be wrong as I haven't quizzed them on this.
I think the point about "innovation" may be slightly misdescribed. I don't see that D&D has ever been particularly innovative in the sense of "adding something new to the whole field of roleplaying" since it was first published. What it has tended to do, however, is follow on and imbibe new developments that have been added in other games and are seen by the designers of D&D's next edition as "improvements". Oftentimes, these new elements had been in use as "house rules" for D&D before they were added to an official edition. In this sense, D&D was "furthering innovation" since it was introducing its (relatively) massive audience to cool new stuff that had been developed in the wide hinterlands of roleplaying.
I think what 4E tried to do in this respect was add aspects of Narrativism/Storygaming to D&D. Sadly, it seems that (as Ron Edwards initially suspected) the audience for D&D was really not the one that was increasingly enjoying such systems. The new innovations in RPG rules that were, as usual, coming from other, newer games on the market were all of a sudden a "step too far" into modernity for the (increasingly crusty and old) players of D&D. As a result, while I'm sure 5E has some neat mechanical widgets that afficionadoes love, it really hasn't got any innovations included in it from the rest of the RPG market of recent years.
I *think* that is probably what [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] was getting at with his remarks about innovation.
billd91
Not your screen monkey (he/him)
I think this paragraph is perpetuating some age-ist myths about D&D and its players. If the statement Mearls has made lately are correct that D&D is still attracting a young crowd through the playtest, then I think you have to be confronted with the idea that it wasn't just the "increasingly crusty and old" players of D&D who weren't interested in 4e's changes.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
Because I like D&D? Why SHOULDN'T there be D&D that I appreciate? There are a ton of things about D&D's various elements that I am quite happy with. I guess this is a more legitimate question post-OGL, but even with the OGL and etc we still have basically a 3.5 clone and some older edition clones and some other variations that haven't scratched my itch. 4e did, and does.
And I dunno, but I don't see why this argument should be in your favor anyway. If you want to say "because I've been playing my game since times of yor and its always been thus" that's OK, but I started playing in 1975 when the game barely existed, so I'm probably as entitled as anyone around here to say what the game should be on that basis. So clearly this is nothing but a preference difference between us. So there's no way to settle it by reference to who should get what.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
I'd like to second this, as my experience was pretty similar. The MM was actually compatible with OD&D, as AC10 isn't present anywhere in it (and it is unclear exactly what the ACs that are present represent in terms of armor since most monster's AC isn't really based on armor per-se). That being said there was a very early on ethos of OD&D, the very 'ur-game' that was played with the 3 books before even Greyhawk that was I would say a rather different game, but so few people experienced THAT game that basically 1e was a polished late 70's OD&D.
Again I really have to mostly agree with Belesir here. MOST of the earliest RPGs were of a couple sorts, either they were games that to some extent predated D&D, like En Garde!, or they were in some degree attempting to 'fix' D&D. However, these games were pretty innovative. RQ and Traveller deployed skill systems. Boot Hill employed a more RP centered story type of game with a percentile system (the first one I believe). T&T was a completely different sort of game in many respects than D&D.
That sounds about right. What concerns me is that the same thing is true of the canon surrounding the mechanics. While 5e gives a tiny bit of lip service to some of 4e's "knock the cruft off and make it work for you" canon they're clearly betting on the old stuff, not the new stuff. In this climate what are we going to see? It seems to me that the future holds basically rehashes of the old standbys and such. Its not like we've seen any indication that WotC has something in their release schedule that is even going to be unique to 5e. Obviously we're going to get some modules that are 'new', but given the basic elements of 5e and its designed use cases it seems unlikely they're going to be ground-breaking or even modestly innovative. Phandelver certainly isn't!
M.L. Martin
Adventurer
At this point, I think WotC has more or less committed themselves to a D&D based around Organized Play, lapsed/old-school gamers, and introducing new gamers through those two elements and perhaps 'transmedia' events. And I am ready to leave the game to them, maybe popping in if there's something interesting happening with the setting material.
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