Clark Peterson on 4E

[Nikosandros]

In other words, "You remember mostly the good stuff, get over yourself." If you don't come after me trying to convince me that my playstyle sucks, I don't give a rat's ass what you're doing in your basement.

I was following you until this last, very dismissive, point.

Just so that you know, there are people that truly enjoy old games. I like AD&D not because of nostalgia, but because I have lot of fun playing it. In the last game that I ran, out of 5 players, only one had previous experience with AD&D. All the rest had played several other systems and 3e. All of them enjoyed it.

This, of course, doesn't mean by any stretch of the imagination that AD&D is popular among the majority of gamers... but there are people who like old games and not because of "rose-colored" lenses or any of that nonsense.

 

[Firevalkyrie]

I was following you until this last, very dismissive, point.

Just so that you know, there are people that truly enjoy old games. I like AD&D not because of nostalgia, but because I have lot of fun playing it. In the last game that I ran, out of 5 players, only one had previous experience with AD&D. All the rest had played several other systems and 3e. All of them enjoyed it.

This, of course, doesn't mean by any stretch of the imagination that AD&D is popular among the majority of gamers... but there are people who like old games and not because of "rose-colored" lenses or any of that nonsense.

I'm not saying I didn't enjoy AD&D (I did, but more modern D&D variants suit my playstyle progressively better, so I prefer those versions... when 5E comes out in 2016-2018 I'll either go "This fits my playstyle so much better than 4E!" or I'll go "This sucks, why did they change everything that's cool about D&D!?"). But rose-colored glasses are a fact of psychology whether you acknowledge their existence or not (there's also poop-colored glasses for those who hate the past, but that really kind of fits into the same paradigm because the same people often view the present with rose-colored glasses). Everybody reinterprets the past in the context of their present experience, that is simply a fact of how the human brain works.

About 2013 I intend to start paying REALLY scrupulous attention to what's going on in indie gaming, because that will probably herald what's likely to go into 5th Edition, just as 4th Edition takes cues from the exceptions-based approach and social conflict rules championed by the indie games that came out in the 2004-2007 timeframe.

 

[JeffB]

In a few hours I'm going to be downloading Mega Man 9 on my Wii, which is about as retro a modern video game as you can GET. Mega Man 9 is done in the playstyle of Mega Man 2, complete, old-school, Nintendo-Hard retro platform shooter. But at the same time there are gamers who will swear on a stack of bibles that modern video games are nothing but full 3D out the arse looks-good-plays-bad, conveniently ignoring that for every Mega Man there were a dozen Master Chu and the Drunkard Hus. I look at those retro gamers with the same jaundiced eye that I look at retro RP gamers who say that their favorite version of D&D is the One True Game, and anything else is desecrating their rose-tinted memories and Gary's corpse.

In other words, "You remember mostly the good stuff, get over yourself." If you don't come after me trying to convince me that my playstyle sucks, I don't give a rat's ass what you're doing in your basement.

And all of this is relevant to what I've been talking about how?

 

[Nikosandros]

Everybody reinterprets the past in the context of their present experience, that is simply a fact of how the human brain works.

And how exactly is my group reinterpreting the past, since we are enjoying AD&D right now (and several of the players had never played it before)?

 

[Firevalkyrie]

And all of this is relevant to what I've been talking about how?

Seriously, you can't see how making your own, personal tastes the arbiter of GoodRightFun in video games is the same kettle of fish as making your own personal tastes the arbiter of GoodRightFun in roleplaying games?

 

[scruffygrognard]

Setting aside that what it means for you doesn't help me understand Orcus, here

What you say doesn't really give me any information. You see, from where I sit, every major edition change has been a "wholly different game" - 1e, 2e, 3e, 4e - all wholly different in my own estimations. Thus, I have learned nothing about the specific issues he may have, or in what direction his rewrite would go.

I don't agree with you here. Mechanically AD&D, AD&D 2nd edition and 3rd edition were mechanically different BUT, if you read spell descriptions, magic item descriptions, racial descriptions and class descriptions you'd see that the flavor was largely unchanged.

With each new edition, the classes and races were adapted to better fit the current rule mechanics and, over time (from AD&D to UA to 2nd edition to 3rd edition) , restrictions on races were decreased and non-combat options were expanded upon.

4th edition, to me, threw much of D&D's background out of the window in the attempt to freshen up the game (by breaking free of many classic D&D tropes) and translate it to a new audience. In the process it lost me and EVERY gamer I have ever gamed with (about 20 people).

 

[Firevalkyrie]

And how exactly is my group reinterpreting the past, since we are enjoying AD&D right now (and several of the players had never played it before)?

Great, good for you. I'm not saying you shouldn't. What I am saying is that a lot of people see "old" and "good" as synonymous when they aren't, there was a lot of drek you had to plow through to find the good stuff, then as now. The fact that OD&D, BECMID&D and AD&D all needed a lot of house ruling indicates that while they may have been fun games with sufficient tinkering, they weren't very complete designs. They weren't necessarily bad games, but they were badly designed, in the sense that their design did not result in a fully satisfactory play experience without significant user customization.

In that respect, 3E and 4E are considerably better designs, as they can be played pretty much straight out of the book without much in the way of house-rule tinkering.

Personally, old school D&D does not any longer appeal to what I find to be fun. It did once. I remember it being fun, and not just because I didn't know any better; but my playstyle has changed in 15 years and fortunately for me, D&D has changed largely in sync with my playstyle, to become more narrative and game oriented over pretensions of reality-simulation, which I find more and more in my opinion to be what Twain described as puce Christmas trees appended to the clean line of a game's prose.

If you like it? Great. But don't arrogate yourself to tell me that I'm having fun the wrong way.

 

[xechnao]

But don't arrogate yourself to tell me that I'm having fun the wrong way.

Unfortunately this, to a certain degree, is inevitable . It seems here though you are more considered in rising the flames than what ever else could be done. Just my impression, that obviously could be wrong.

 

[Imaro]

If you like it? Great. But don't arrogate yourself to tell me that I'm having fun the wrong way.

Uhm...I just wanted to ask...where is this "wrong way fun" thing coming from you keep bringing up. After reading through the thread... I don't see it.

 

[Firevalkyrie]

Going back to what Clark said originally, the problem with the whole idea is that it presents "Dungeons & Dragons" not as a game that can be revised and altered to incorporate new ideas and new means of storytelling - see the whole ugly hue and cry when D&D Insider was announced - but as a Platonic ideal from which any deviation is inherently a corruption.

D&D is not a Platonic ideal. Gary might be dead but he's not a god. The 3.5 books are not the Holy Bible, nor is the original Brown Box the Ark of the Covenant. They are games. They are fun and interesting games, but that is all that they are. They can - and should - be revised, altered and reinterpreted. They should be revisited and changed.