Do you consider 4e D&D "newbie teeball"?

[thecasualoblivion]

See, now this is what separates 'advanced' D&D from 'T-ball D&D'. Rules ain't got nothing to do with it...

But intelligent conversation doesn't exist in 4E, and 4E sets limits on how 'advanced' or 'sophisticated' D&D is allowed to be.

 

[Theroc]

See, now this is what separates 'advanced' D&D from 'T-ball D&D'. Rules ain't got nothing to do with it...

Hm... not trying to nitpick or do some other negative flaming thing, but does this mean that a combat heavy adventure/campaign is 'T-Ball D&D'? Or is this just saying that differentiating "Our Game" from the ruleset is a mark of advanced D&D?

Just wondering, as I happen to greatly enjoy combat, and haven't seen much of late, as it seems to make people think I'm a 'powergamer' and I always get a negative vibe when I hear it.

 

[nightwyrm]

The 2e DMG.

Seriously, was there ANY advice on how to actually run a game to make it enjoyable for people in that DMG?

During the 2e era, I learned DMing from a splat book called "Campaign Sourcebook and Catacombs Guide". My favourite 2e book by far.

 

[fuzzlewump]

Hm... not trying to nitpick or do some other negative flaming thing, but does this mean that a combat heavy adventure/campaign is 'T-Ball D&D'? Or is this just saying that differentiating "Our Game" from the ruleset is a mark of advanced D&D?

Just wondering, as I happen to greatly enjoy combat, and haven't seen much of late, as it seems to make people think I'm a 'powergamer' and I always get a negative vibe when I hear it.

Playing D&D with only combat, is like using a hammer to pound nails into boards that you throw away, rather than building a house with them. Hammering things is fun enough, but it doesn't contribute to the creation of something beyond the sum of its parts.

That said, you said combat heavy, not combat only, so you focus more on the nail hammering, but a house is still being built, even if slowly. Play on! In a more direct way, combat with nothing else is essentially an exercise in dice rolling, and might as well be left to a computer simulation.

 

[Theroc]

Playing D&D with only combat, is like using a hammer to pound nails into boards that you throw away, rather than building a house with them. Hammering things is fun enough, but it doesn't contribute to the creation of something beyond the sum of its parts.

That said, you said combat heavy, not combat only, so you focus more on the nail hammering, but a house is still being built, even if slowly. Play on! In a more direct way, combat with nothing else is essentially an exercise in dice rolling, and might as well be left to a computer simulation.

I find much character development can arise from a character's reactions to events, both favorable and non, during combat. It also can often get me more excited to roleplay my character once I feel I am accomplishing these feats and overcoming such obstacles.

I enjoy roleplaying, but I love smashing the baddies a great deal too. I tend to find one enhances the other for me, in many cases. COmbat helps me solidify the character in my mind, which makes it easier to get in their head, and vice versa.

Granted, you're assuming once combat erupts that there is no roleplaying, which isn't always the case.

Anyways, just wanted to toss that in there. Apologies for the somewhat offtopic question.

 

[Dice4Hire]

kudos tothe last 3-4 posters ofr getting this back on track.

I jsut do nto see 4E as teeball. SOme parts are easier, and the simplicty of choos\ing monsters for an encounter can be nice, and less variable mechanics can make starting off easier, but there is still a lot of depth inthe game for people to explore.

With T-ball, what you see ifs what you get, it never gets mroe complicated.

I think 4E is easier to start up, especially for an experienced player with a group of newbies, hand out sheets, give them a few choices and let them go. A handful of power cards would help also. But 4E is nto a simple game, far from it.

 

[Thasmodious]

I don't play D&D as a competition between myself and the players, so that definitely skews my perception a little bit.

In my game, the intent is for everyone to have fun, DM and players. It's a cooperative play style.

Absolutely. And if the players feel that the DM is cheating and setting arbitrary numbers designed to thwart their strengths, they may well get offended by that. If a player cleverly and carefully designs his PC to have a to-hit number 4 higher than normal for his level, but then you arbitrarily adjust the ACs of your monsters so that he has the same percentage chance to hit as if he did not make those clever choices, he may well feel slighted that you cheated him out of his choices. Choices he paid for at the expense of other options.

If you set your ACs arbitrarily high and can't justify why they are that high (by knowing the numbers that make up that AC), then the PC wizard who focused on debuffing monsters gets short-changed. The PC who focused on increasing his damage output above the norm is slighted when you jack up HP because they are killing monsters quicker than you like.

Point is, with such a micro-managed system as 3e, a lot of player choice has specific, defined, expected advantages within gameplay that is thwarted if you "cheat" on your monster/NPC creation and just do whatever makes it as hard as you think it should be for the PCs. You are short-changing the choices they made, and the knowledge they've gained and put to use about how the game is expected to work.

It's no different than watching while a player spends three hours creating an awesome Loremaster when you know your DM-style is not to utilize knowledge skills hardly at all, and you never call for PCs to make knowledge rolls.

If the strength of a system is meaningful choices, you undermine that when you make those choices meaningless.

In 4e, what they did is change the balancing trigger from being building everything on the PC framework, to building a set framework for monsters/NPCs, but one that is nonetheless affected by meaningful PC choices. A PC focusing on applying effects to monsters can know and have a reasonable expectation of how that will work, what basic numbers to expect in defenses, etc. If you arbitrarily change the numbers, you undermine their choices. The difference in the editions is that 4e makes it much easier, and much, much less time consuming to stick to the math that is built into the system.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

Most everyone in this thread seems to think that the 4E as "newbie teeball" analogy doesn't hold up. Only a few odd people and ByronD seem to be arguing in favor of teeball.

 

[catsclaw227]

I am sorry. I wish I never forked this. I don't like edition wars.

(EDIT: Sorry, ByronD)
(EDIT, EDIT: Sorry, BryonD)

We all love D&D in it's many incarnations, so instead let's lean upon the magic it has given our lives.

Neither verbal riposte, nor snappy resonse are productive to describing and defending all our own ideaologies. What D&D will give us the most satisfying, deepest experience we can have? We each find and play those editions that satisfy that goal and then call it our own and we hold the fort and love our game.

Great!

Moving on now....

 

[MerricB]

And it isn't ByronD.

It's Bryon. Sort of like Brian, except spelt with a Y and a O.

Cheers!