Legends and Lore: What's With the Polls?

[pemerton]

I'm inclined to believe that it was deliberately left out. I get the impression that they don't want to tell you what's right at everyone's table, and leave that up to you to decide.

Some people enjoy that style of play, others don't. Who can tell them what edition they can or can't use that play style with? It's really nobody's business but those around the table.

The 4e DMG infamously includes a bit where it tells you that talking to NPC's isn't fun. The idea of many of the rules were "basically handwave everything except combat, and get very detailed on combat."

KM, while you're not the only person to have expressed that view, I think it overlooks at least one thing, namely, skill challenges.

Skill challenges are a mechanic that manifestly is inspired by similar mechanics in other games (extended contests in HeroWars/Quest, scene resolution in Maelstrom Storytelling, Duel of Wits in Burning Wheel, etc). They are not about handwaving, but nor are they about combat. They are not mechanics that anyone would be familiar with simply from playing earlier editions of D&D. They therefore need guidelines and advice on how to set them up and run them. Part of those guidelines and advice have to cover issues of player vs GM authority, which play out differently in this sort of action resolution when compared either to handwaving (GM has overwhelming authority) or minis-based combat (very tightly mechanically constrained relationship between rules and fiction when compared either to handwaving or skill challenges).

To the extent that such guidelines were deliberately left out, it makes a nonsense of including those mechanics. It's a bad decision. It would be like including rules for calculating AC, and to-hit bonuses, but not mentioning the bit about spending a standard action on your turn to roll a d20 to generate a number to compare to the AC.

Another example of underdeveloped rules and guidelines: the 4e DMG has a paragraph in the chapter on adventures and quests pointing out the very great benefits of having players define the quests for their PCs. But does it anwyhere talk about the implications, of this sort of player-directed play, for encounter and adventure design (either combat or skill challenge)? No. The whole discussion of adventure design begins and ends with the assumption that it is the GM, not the player, who is in charge of defining quests.

The more frustrating thing is that it's not as if 4e offers anything new to RPGs in these repsects (although some if it is new to D&D). There are plenty of examples of good rules text and guidelines to look to. (And in DMG2 they got Robin Laws to cut-and-paste some of it from HeroQuest 2nd ed into the D&D rulebook, but didn't bother to do the extra work of translating stuff that works for the HQ mechanics into stuff that would work for the somewhat similar but by no means identical 4e mechanics.)

Rules Compendium and the Essentials DM book are, if anything, even worse. If all I had read was those too books, I would have no idea how to set up and run a skill challenge. At least with the PHB, DMG and DMG2 I get given enough information to try start making translations across to the decently-written rules that I have in my HeroQuest and Maelstrom rulebooks!

Bottom line: I think it's a mistake to publish a game whose attractions, in comparison to many other mainstream fantasy RPGs, include a more modern approach to player-GM relationships, player role in story creation, and getting the mechanics to work as a game as well as they work as a device for engaging the fiction, but when it comes to writing the rules and guidelines to assume either (i) that everyone already knows how to play this new sort of game, or (ii) that everyone is going to play your new game just like a slightly crappier version of your old game (because it won't support that older style of play so well) unless they're read enough rulebooks for other games to see what your new design is actually aiming at.

 

[Aegeri]

And if all it takes is making a few marvelously effective builds without daily powers...well...that's really not even a big deal, since there is certainly more than one way to balance a class.

Except as I argued already, this is not what it takes and your argument really doesn't work well on this point.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

Hello Dannager and ProfessorCirno,

Enjoy.

I mean here at EN World we had a thread where people were lining up to applaud and pat on the back an illiterate book burner because he hated 4e and thought it was literally World of Warcraft.

Those aren't fans you're going to get back.

Those aren't fans you want back.

Too true! That disgraceful thread is certainly in the lead for troll of the year. However, you both spent enough time (and I assume enjoyed) poking sticks at the caged troll for the duration of that thread. As soon as I reported it the thread was closed. Who is worse, the troll or the ones that feed it?

Know what I want to see? Just once? I want to see someone point out flaws 4e actually has. I want someone to say "here are my gripes with 4e" and list things that exist, not list things that are made up. I want to see a post that goes into detail on what they want to see fixed in 4e and use actual examples that are present in the game.

But I know full well that I will never, ever see that.

Never say never. I just posted on the "How did 4e take simulation away from D&D?" thread here. While the OP is quite misguided in his post, I think I gave a reasonable list of "flaws" as you mention it. Like most things though, they will be flaws for some and benefits for others. I think if the designers made a design mistake in 4e, it was swinging that gamist pendulum a little too far for a good section of their customer base. Some loved it; some hated it. Thus was the D&D community polarized and rent. At least there are some of us who can happily play both without their "eyeballs bleeding", so to speak.

In essence and in reference to some of the posts upthread, I think that Wizards can get many of the lapsed fans back with a new edition that tried to genuinely unite the fans again. Do they have the capacity to do this? I hope so.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[Tony Vargas]

In essence and in reference to some of the posts upthread, I think that Wizards can get many of the lapsed fans back with a new edition that tried to genuinely unite the fans again. Do they have the capacity to do this? I hope so.

I want to say that's impossible. But, y'know, I gave up on D&D in the 90s when 2e was collasping under the weight of its own suplements (and trying too hard to be like White Wolf, of all thing - like that'd work, eh berk?). But 4 or 5 years later, they came out with a version of the game that didn't suck. So, yeah, it's possible to bring people back.

But not by going backwards. Apeals to nostalgia only go so far, because 'like the game you remember' can never quite compete with the /actual/ game you remember, which you still have in a box in your garrage. I don't doubt that there are people who bought the Red Box for their kids or something... and rather than jump on the 4e/Essentials bandwagon, just got old gaming stuff down (or went on ebay and replaced some old books) and played that now and then.

 

[pemerton]

Responding to Prof Cirno's call for the pointing out of flaws:

*a couple of posts up I pointed out what I think are major flaws in the way the rules and guidelines are written and presented;

*and I think the almost total lack of guidance on how to integrate the two and very distinct action resolution systems - combat/tactical and skill challenge - is an obvious and annoying gap.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

I should begin clarifying: I would love to see these things outside of the 4e forums . And 4e does have a good number of flaws!

I'm rather unhappy with Skill Challenges myself, for example - good idea with a terrible implementation. I think the biggest issue is that it's trying too hard to be too mechanical. The Obsidian system works far, far better, and one of the big reasons is because it's made of rounds rather then failures. I'm still not 100% satisfied with it though; I think that, in the end, you're inevitably going to clash between the nWoD system of extended vs simple skill checks and the desire for all members of the group to contribute.

Hello Dannager and ProfessorCirno,

Too true! That disgraceful thread is certainly in the lead for troll of the year. However, you both spent enough time (and I assume enjoyed) poking sticks at the caged troll for the duration of that thread. As soon as I reported it the thread was closed. Who is worse, the troll or the ones that feed it?

Neither - the ones who morally support the illiterate book burning troll.

In many ways I feel it was not Dannager and I that were trolled - it's the ones that gave the troll XP.

See now we're getting downright zen in this ;p

 

[Dannager]

Too true! That disgraceful thread is certainly in the lead for troll of the year. However, you both spent enough time (and I assume enjoyed) poking sticks at the caged troll for the duration of that thread. As soon as I reported it the thread was closed. Who is worse, the troll or the ones that feed it?

Or, y'know, you could tell us who you think was the worst person in that thread, and why. That sounds like a good time waiting to happen.

 

[pemerton]

I'm rather unhappy with Skill Challenges myself, for example - good idea with a terrible implementation. I think the biggest issue is that it's trying too hard to be too mechanical.

I personally like the mechanic - I like failures (= complications) as the measure of progress through the challenge, because of the way it supports a certain sort of unfolding dynamic as the encounter progresses. My complaint is about the rules presentation and the lack of integration with combat.

I should begin clarifying: I would love to see these things outside of the 4e forums

Well, in my experience trying to talk about 4e on the General RPG forums is a bit of a challenge. The last big thread on Industry (Roads to Rome Redux) ended with a good chunk of posters simultaneously asserting that 4e is radically different from 3E, but is incapable of providing a play experience that is both different from 3E and worthwhile experiencing. A slightly bizarre experience.

 

[Dannager]

The last big thread on Industry (Roads to Rome Redux) ended with a good chunk of posters simultaneously asserting that 4e is radically different from 3E, but is incapable of providing a play experience that is both different from 3E and worthwhile experiencing. A slightly bizarre experience.

It's awfully difficult to break through cognitive dissonance like that.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

Or, y'know, you could tell us who you think was the worst person in that thread, and why. That sounds like a good time waiting to happen.

The troll closely followed by those who thought the sublime ignorance praiseworthy followed closely by those that fed and provoked the troll. The thread should have been reported and closed way before it was.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise