thecasualoblivion said:
Never said anything about immense variety. I said that homogenity was a misnomer, coming from a jaded point of view....I said exactly what I was talking about...
Notice how I didn't quote anyone? Yeah, that was intentional. The general "You're just wrong" argument doesn't help anyone run a better game. The argument itself -- no matter who is espousing it -- doesn't actually address the issue. No one is going to go "Oh! Well, I guess I'm just wrong then!" It's just gonna degenerate into a pointless internet debate about subjective perceptions. That's not a conversation that is generally worth having.
Meanwhile, the "where can diversity be found?" discussion and the "how much diversity do we need?" discussion and the "how is Wizards adding diversity even now?" discussion are pretty useful.
If you think I'm talking about you when I dismiss that kind of argument, then you should probably stop making that kind of argument. If you don't think I'm talking about you, then, guess what, I'm probably not.
An example of a pretty good conversation?
thecasualoblivion said:
I said that the variety in 4E lies in tactics, not mechanics.
I mean, I don't really understand what that
means ('cuz tactics are mechanical), but at least it is a "Here is somewhere that I have found diversity!"
Now, I haven't seen it in my experience. 4e combats are more tactical (what with the moving and the shifting and the big rooms and the traps and whatnot). This doesn't necessarily translate into added variety. Anyone using a lot of terrain in any other edition or game could also achieve this tactical variety. 4e combats are tactically various, but I haven't found them to be exceptionally different than any other game. 4e certainly doesn't lack variety there, but I would hesitate to argue that it's MORE diverse.
Since that's just my experience, I suppose I could be doing it wrong.
If you are hell bent on only accepting variety of build as the definition of variety, than variety of outcomes won't mean anything to you, and brings close mindedness into the other side of the discussion.
Man, I don't know why we're degenerating into semantic rabbit-holes with this. Variety is a broad, over-arching effect of the entire game system from character build to play at the table over the course of a campaign. And, yes, 4e feels largely homogeneous. I'm sort of under the impression it kind of
wanted to. It's more consistent that way. It's easier to balance the combats. Nothing is swingy, nothing is out of left field, nothing is weird or unusual or incompatible with the core system. It's like how you know no matter what McDonald's you visit, the hamburger is going to taste the same, but if you go to some local burger joint, you might hate it. Consistency has it's advantages and disadvantages, and given how binary 3e combats could be, 4e wanted to integrate more consistency. Generally, I'm a fan of the goal, though I think they might have gone too far, because it does seem kind of dully similar to me in a lot of ways.
One, your bringing in the "I'm a special snoflake" mentality here. People tend to miss that this can have a negative impact on the rest of the table. The other is modularity, and I would argue that modularity isn't what D&D has ever been about, and is not what most people want.
Now you're just arguing with yourself.
Read what I write and try not to get caught up in what that might mean about my inner psychology. You don't know me. I didn't make any case for specialness or modularity. What I said was 4e is less accepting of more exotic options. This is true. For instance, in 3e, I could play a character who could not be magically healed except with a special niche spell designed specifically to heal only my character. In 4e, that would not be allowed -- healing heals everyone equally. There are advantages to this (no one needs to play a special "heal that guy" class), and disadvantages to it (my ability to reflect a totally different biology, mechanically, is more limited, since one size fits all).
I'm arguing with his terms, and the fact that the word homogenity and 4E as a system have no correlation.
Semantic arguments are just about as useless as "you're just wrong" arguments, mostly because they are "You are just wrong, because you're not defining your terms in this way that I've set up to understand them." Maybe more useless because then the argument becomes about esoteric linguistic rabbit-holes and not about the actual dilemma of people who think 4e is too "everything's the same" for them.
OGL talk here. I eagerly await the day when people who don't want to play D&D can find innovative and unique systems that serve them, instead of some d20 clone. If you want to play D&D, play D&D. If you want to play something else, play something else.
What's this soapbox have to do with anything? The OP says we're not likely to see diversity added through the GSL, and I agree, I don't think we will. Do you disagree? If so why, if not, why not? If you'd like to talk about the OGL and d20 clones and what people who "want to play D&D" actually play, and keep a hawkish eye on any seditious "OGL talk," there's another thread with your name on it somewhere.
If you want variety of mechanics, you should most likely play something other than 4E.
Part of the OP's case seems to be that mechanical variety is not necessarily incompatible with 4e, but that the designers have chosen to avoid it. I agree with that assessment. 4e could theoretically have diverse mechanics. It's not likely to, however it has been making some progress. Maybe we play something other than 4e, or maybe we keep talking about it so that WotC designs future supplements with an eye toward adding variety while still playing and trying to add variety to 4e through house rules, or maybe we do both at the same time. Abandoning 4e is one solution, though it might not be the most rewarding solution for everyone (particularly if they mostly enjoy 4e, and just have niggling problems like this).
