Clark Peterson on 4E

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

The discussion "Is 4E D&D to me" is tiring me. Ultimiately, I totally don't care. I don't play Role-Playing Games because I want to play D&D. I play Role-Playing Games because I want to play Role-Playing Games. If that happens to be D&D, named D&D, or feels like D&D, that's fine with me. It is not any valid yardstick to me to measure a game, because all attempts to define what D&D "feels" like lead me to believe there are so many aspects that can make a game feel D&D that it's a totally subjective thing that's meaningless.

I don't usually buy 3PP content. I bought APG because Mouse gave me confidence that he was passionate about the product he made.

What I perceive Clark as saying here is that, if/when he makes 4E content, he'll be doing without any passion whatsoever.

I'll pass.

I wouldn't conclude that. He seems to enjoy D&D 4, but he doesn't yet get the D&D vibe from it. For me that makes he will 4E content with the passion he reserves for 4E, and OD&D/any-alternate-D&D-you-can-come-up-with with the passion he reserves for that.

I like Shadowrun and D&D 4E. Shadowrun is not like D&D, or vice versa. Yet, if I created supplements for either system (which I don't - I am not in the publishing business ), I would do it with passion, but they would uniquely fit to each system. It wouldn't tell you anything about its quality.

 

[Haffrung Helleyes]

wizard balance

There are other ways to balance the wizard than making him a fighter with different flavor text.

Check out the 1E wizards sometime. They were balanced by inability to cast spells in melee, spell casting times in segments, way fewer spells per day, inability to extend their firepower by scribing scrolls willynilly, and a low cap on their HP (due to not benefitting from a really high CON).


I'll certainly buy a copy of whatever Clark comes up with . Necromancer Game's track record has earned them that from me.

Ken

 

[Greylock]

Context Alert!

Some folks seem to be thinking this means - "Necro doesn't like 4E"


In fact, he's not knocking 4E - that's just what Necromancer games does - they help promote old-school feel under the currently supported version of D&D. Its what they did for 3E, and what they would be doing already for 4E if the GSL were friendlier.

No. No, that's not quite right. Tell you what, here are the major quotes, in their entirety...

The first one pretty much nails his views, the rest embellish it:

Lets just say I have an evil plan.

Imagine, if you will, 4E done right. With the spirit of AD&D still intact. That would be pretty cool. Classes powered down and actually reflecting how the classes are supposed to work. A wizard being a wizard again with a modified version of Vancian magic. Not all powers being combat powers, meaning the return of utility powers. Getting away from the grid and returning to feet. Changing a miniature game back into a roleplaying game. Restoring the classic magic items and not being afraid of buffs. Taking out the cheesy anime crap that snuck into 4E. Putting back in the goodness of AD&D. Mmmmm, wouldnt that be cool? There are some really great things about 4E, but somewhere along the way it lost its soul. Not sure how that happened. I intend to put it back in. Bill and I were talking about it today, in fact.

Clark

But I look at how Monte's Unearthed Arcana did things and I like the concept of a niche version of the rules. Plus, I want a version of 4E that I want to play. So that is what Scott and I and maybe Bill are going to do while this GSL mess gets sorted out. We are re-writing 4E the way we want it, with the soul of 1E put back in. I am really, really excited about this. I played 4E and I like some stuff about it. It is a fun game. It just isnt D&D to me, the more I play it. Yes, I can defend it. Yes, I can say it is. But the truth is that my heart knows it isnt D&D anymore. I cant ignore that. I want D&D. To me the soul of D&D was AD&D. Somehow that got lost in making 4E.

I'm going to do 4E right.

Sure, some people might roll eyes and say not another version. To those I say, then dont buy it. I'm doing this for me. And I'm inviting you along. Come along if you want. If you dont, that is up to you.

But I dont want to go back to white box simplicity. I love AD&D. I have tried to play it again, and it is fun. But I miss the modern advancements when I play. There is too much good stuff from 3E. And, frankly, there is some real good stuff in 4E. It just gets lost in a constricting grid where you feel like you are playing checkers not D&D, and in a mass of silly powers that all seem to let you move a square or move the target a square or do damage. I mean, how many million times do you need a differently named power to redundantly do pretty much the same thing. Where is the inspiration? Where is the fantasy? In the fancy power names? 'Cause it shure isnt in the checkers-like hopping of minis around that comes from the powers. I dont remember Conan or Elric or Aragorn teleporting across the board or shifting an enemy a square. I think the 4E designers fell in love with their own idea of new powers and forgot where this game comes from. There is a reason the old AD&D DMG has a long reading list of books that inspired D&D for players of the game to refer to and 4E doesnt have anything like that. Because, in my view, 4E has lost all connection with the things that inspired D&D to begin with. But I still like many of the modern advancements. I may love the look of an old classic Corvette, but I really dont want its mid-60s steering and suspension and engine. I want modern steering and suspension and engine. Its the same thing for me with D&D.

I want AD&D's classic soul to be transplanted into 4E's body with modern mechanics, and with a spiffy set of old school threads to dress it up in.

Maybe this is arrogant, but I think I can do it. This is what I want: I want Fourth Edition done right. I want the soul of D&D put back in our game.

I'll be honest, I am writing it right now. Whether all it will ever be is an intellectual exercise for me and a set of house rules in a big binder, that remains to be seen. But I'm getting bored waiting for the revised GSL. I want to support 4E, but they arent letting me. And there isnt much I can do until I can support Pathfinder, which is maybe later next year. So here I am, bored, full of ideas, wanting 4E to be a different game, but liking lots of parts of it. And, given who I am and what I like to do, my thoughts turned to how I would have done 4E.

This is not a criticism of 4E. 4E is waht it is. I want to support it. I want a revised GSL. I'm just a creative guy with too much time on my hands because Wizards wont let me support 4E with their current license. If theyd just get me a revised GSL I could get back to work supporting their game.

Look, this is not a product announcement. It isnt anything yet. It is me and Bill and Scott talking. And I threw the idea at Mona just briefly.

There is no GSL. I am bored. I wanted something to work on. So I decided to do this. It is just me screwing around.

What I want is a revised GSL and an ability to support 4E.

Lets not blow this out of proportion.

It sure would be fun though...

Clark

Here's a couple just off the top of my head.

Starting with 3E, I dont think I could ever go back to "PC vs. Monster" side initiative. I love 3E's staggered initiative. I love 3E's unified rule system, though it went way too far. I like feats and the redone skills, so that you can actually use them. I think 4E did skills even better. And I love skill challenges. I love 4E's static defenses. I like the PCs rolling against Will or Fort or AC or Reflex. I like the idea of powers for all classes (though they went way overboard and way too anime). I L-O-V-E 4E monster design. It has all the consistency and intelligence of 3E but without the shackles, it has all the fun and flavor of 1E monsters but with a logical and usable system. That may be the think 4E did best (and Scott and i actually have a way to do it even better). I like 4E's idea that race matters more than at character creation (though I dont think they fully delivered on that, I will). I love 3E (and 4E's) more logical approach to structuring and pacing adventures -- meaning understanding how and what it takes to level and how to make sure that fits in an adventure. That stuff was never really present before in adventures. You wrote the adventure you wrote and the PCs advanced however they advanced. The new system is much more able to allow you to write very good adventures that achieve specific leveling results. I love domains and domain spells from 3E. I love the healing swap out solution for clerics--you can swap out a heal of the same level for a memorized spell. (by the way, i have a hybrid system designed that returns some of the vancian memorization concepts back to clerics and wizards but yet retains the benefits of the 4E approach). I like the smoothing out of the leveling curve which was too steep in 1E. I mean, who really ever had a PC get past 12th level. That was rare. I love the way 3E and now 4E handle conditions very consistently. I love the precision of the rules language. Much easier to ajudicate for the DM. I love the way 3E and 4E made PCs more customizable. For instance, there is little difference in 1E between your 6th level fighter and my 6th level fighter other than our gear. 2E with kits and stuff started to allow PC customization. I think 3E and 4E really advanced that idea. I love that as a player.

 

[Firevalkyrie]

Well, sure those are examples. But I can't say I miss even a single one of them. Those things are far from the core of 4E's problems.

Though I agree with the "Not everything ability being a combat option" entry.

Bryon is otherwise much closer to the mark...:


Meaning that the really sacred cows were things we took for granted and never even realized how precious they were to us:

• Different classes being actually different.
• Spellcasters having more variation at their fingertips than non-magical classes. Keeping magic, well, magical.
• Miniatures optional. What you need to play is a pen. And a paper. Not a bunch of over-priced merchandise.
• A system that generates characters that feels like "real" fantasy persons first, and combat machines a distant second.
• Scrapping the "everybody's special" crap. If everybody's the hero, no one is.
• Not being afraid of death and uselessness. You can't have real drama without risk.

This list I couldn't have created without fourth edition. Because how could we know that Wizards would create such an abomination and pass it off for a role-playing game in general and Dungeons & Dragons in particular?

"Different classes actually being different" - have you actually played the game, or are you just griping because there's a unified power mechanic? Because in play, fighters, swordmages and paladins play very different and they all fill the same role in the game. Let alone other roles (try to play a rogue like a fighter and you should expect to get squashed, same with playing a warlock like a wizard). At this point, with the game having been out now for 4 months, there's no excuse for this lame meme to still be flying.

"Spellcasters have more variation than nonspellcasters" - Um, NO. Complexity should increase as you go up in level, not as you change classes. I don't want to have to scrap my level 10 fighter just because the wizard has spells that make her completely superfluous.

"Miniatures optional" - well, I can't argue with that. I've had arguments with my partner because I want to not be beholden to the battle grid all the time and she loves it.

"Real fantasy persons" - Do you realize how much of an oxymoron this is?

"No 'everyone's special,' some people are supporting characters." Yes. The supporting characters are NPCs. PCs should be an ensemble cast - everyone gets to be important, just not all at the same time. If any of the PCs are supporting cast, they shouldn't be. In the games that I run, I try to make sure every PC gets the spotlight at least once a session, and gets the spotlight for the majority of a session at least once in the campaign.

"Not afraid of death and uselessness." Again, you're not real familiar with the 4th Edition rules, are you? Or at least if you are, you don't have a DM who's willing to challenge the party. You can seriously risk death in 4th Edition, I've come close to a TPK on more than one occasion.

 

[Halivar]

Just one thing:

Scrapping the "everybody's special" crap. If everybody's the hero, no one is.

This doesn't make any sense to me at all. If anything, this is an argument against 3E, where everyone and their uncle has class levels. In my 4E game, there are 5 people in the whole world with class levels.

 

[Nikosandros]

The discussion "Is 4E D&D to me" is tiring me. Ultimiately, I totally don't care. I don't play Role-Playing Games because I want to play D&D. I play Role-Playing Games because I want to play Role-Playing Games. If that happens to be D&D, named D&D, or feels like D&D, that's fine with me. It is not any valid yardstick to me to measure a game, because all attempts to define what D&D "feels" like lead me to believe there are so many aspects that can make a game feel D&D that it's a totally subjective thing that's meaningless.

If it's tiring then maybe you shouldn't engage in it...

More seriously, I also play RPG to have fun. I enjoy several different games. AD&D is one of them, so when I see a game with D&D on the cover, I'm interested on how related it is with a game I like.

4e, for me, is remotely related, if at all. This is not a slam on 4e, which I can evaluate on its own merits. I don't consider it the best game ever made, but I enjoy it enough to run two weekly games of it currently.

 

[Jack99]

Edit: To put it another way: if *I* had said the exact same things, no one would say the glass was half full. They'd just call me a "hater".

Of course they would.. You have, at no point (iirc), said much positive about 4e. Clark has, so when he says something like he has, it sounds more like an honest opinion than blind irrational hatred.

Anyway, I must admit that I agree with Clark on a lot of the points. Sure, I like 4e about a 100 times more than 3.x, but that doesn't mean I think it is perfect. In fact, the game that Clark outlines would really turn me on . It is feasible? most likely. Is Necromancers' 3-man (?) operation capable of doing so? I hope so, but I do not expect it.

Cheers

 

[xechnao]

The discussion "Is 4E D&D to me" is tiring me. Ultimiately, I totally don't care. I don't play Role-Playing Games because I want to play D&D. I play Role-Playing Games because I want to play Role-Playing Games. If that happens to be D&D, named D&D, or feels like D&D, that's fine with me. It is not any valid yardstick to me to measure a game, because all attempts to define what D&D "feels" like lead me to believe there are so many aspects that can make a game feel D&D that it's a totally subjective thing that's meaningless.

You are missing the point. The aknowledgment within Clarc's sayings is that 4e does not feel as a roleplaying game ( D&D as a term is used to represent a gronard currency value of story-driven roleplaying instead of game-driven roleplaying):
"you feel like you are playing checkers not D&D, and in a mass of silly powers that all seem to let you move a square or move the target a square or do damage. I mean, how many million times do you need a differently named power to redundantly do pretty much the same thing. Where is the inspiration?"
And I do not think he is any wrong here.

 

[Filcher]

"Different classes actually being different" - have you actually played the game, or are you just griping because there's a unified power mechanic? Because in play, fighters, swordmages and paladins play very different and they all fill the same role in the game. Let alone other roles (try to play a rogue like a fighter and you should expect to get squashed, same with playing a warlock like a wizard). At this point, with the game having been out now for 4 months, there's no excuse for this lame meme to still be flying.....

This. There are certain elements of 4E that aren't clear until you actually play the game. Classes are NOT interchangeable --- anyone who has played in a lopsided party and a balanced party can tell you this.

It's just like AD&D --- if you don't bring a fighter, a thief, m-u and cleric ... you're screwed. This is true of any (and every) Gygaxian dungeon. Sure, once you have the major food groups, feel free to add on the thief-acrobats and cavaliers, but if you take them and exclude the core classes, you are toast.

True in AD&D. True in 4E.

 

[Filcher]

I mean, how many million times do you need a differently named power to redundantly do pretty much the same thing. Where is the inspiration?"

And I do not think he is any wrong here.

I respect your opinion, but in my experience the powers are much more nuanced than that.