The Guards at the Gate Quote

[DEFCON 1]

My name, traveller?!? You want my name?!? Very well... my name is James Hyneman, and you are trying to enter my village of Mithbustaville. Now be on your way!

 

[Tuft]

[MENTION=9213]ShinHakkaider[/MENTION] - Yes, I think the quote is enough to put someone off of 4E. But I would think it a shame to base one's opinion on a single quote.

i'd imagine that the "fairy ring" quote was more opinion-forming than the "town guard" quote, especially considering where and when they were published; the pre-release books ought to have been aimed at existing fans, rather than the supposed 14-year old WoW-playing recruit...

Together they kind of form a pattern though...


The whole badwrongfun aspect of WOTC:s initial 4E marketing kind of reminds me of a Microsoft marketing campaign for an Office upgrade, where they portraid those running the older version of their software as moronic clueless bumpkin dinosaurs... Not ridiculing that they had not gotten around to upgrading yet, mind you, but that they were running such bad and inappropriate software...

 

[pauljathome]

Except that some folks enjoy RPing encounters simply for what they are without them needing to be "challenges" per se. I think that's part of what you're still not grasping, Hussar. Something can be an RP encounter simply to set tone, mood, the stage, to pass information along without it requiring some sort of "challenge." .

I should also point out that on more than one occassion something that I (as GM) had put in as "fluff" turned out to be absolutely central to the campaign.

Sometimes the players get really invested in something and it is often hard to predict what that will be in advance. When I see my players invested then, if at all possible, I'll expand that into an adventure or 10.

One entire campaign that lasted a couple of years got generated from a throw away encounter (in the third session) with a girl coming up to their fire in the middle of the night. The players went at her back story like dogs with a bone and I just went with it

 

[pauljathome]

I will reiterate it one last time, since I'm fairly sure people will only read that last sentence and try to use that as my entire post while ignoring the meat of what I'm saying---Wyatt's advice is excellent for people who are just becoming DMs for the first time and need the express train to funville to keep them interested. It's not for experienced players and DMs who dribble away bits of their time and energy in the minutiae of parsing the language of a roleplaying game. We just aren't the target audience.

I disagree with this.

I think that (as AuldGrump pointed out) the addition of a single "if" would have made this very good and valuable advice for that beginning GM.

"If the encounter with the guards is not fun then skip it" is absolutely superb advice.

I wouldn't even have a problem with
"For a great many groups the encounter with the guards isn't fun and should be skipped"

 

[S'mon]

This advice simply isn't geared towards the people who are offended by it. And I suspect (I may be wrong, but based on the names of the people involved in this discussion) that most of the offended posters are people who don't like 4E to begin with and just seem to keep finding nits to pick.

Not me, it's my favourite game system for tabletop play.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

And I can accept some variance in what folks percieve as fat.

Not every gate guard scene is fat. Not every shopping trip is fat.

It's me, isn't it? I knew this uniform made me look fat!

The Auld Grump

 

[S'mon]

Where are all the threads bemoaning Gygax's "terrible advice" in the AD&D PHB?

It helps that Gygax addresses the reader as a fellow adult, not as 'Mr Professional Games Designer' talking down to a not-so-bright 14 year old. As a 12 year old first reading the DMG, I think that made a big positive impact on me; I always much preferred it to the 'for the kiddies' Mentzer Basic approach, even though Moldvay-Mentzer is much clearer writing. And the presentation of advice in 4e DMG, unlike Mentzer Basic, often *is* very patronising IMO. The 'From the Professionals' sidebars really got my back up. You may be professional writers (not very well paid ones), but you're not Professional DMs. At best you are keen amateurs, just like the rest of us.

 

[Mercutio01]

I disagree with this.

I think that (as AuldGrump pointed out) the addition of a single "if" would have made this very good and valuable advice for that beginning GM.

"If the encounter with the guards is not fun then skip it" is absolutely superb advice.

I wouldn't even have a problem with
"For a great many groups the encounter with the guards isn't fun and should be skipped"

He did say "An encounter," not "The encounter," if we're going to get nitty on parsing the language. I think trying to read that as "ALL encounters with two guards aren't fun" is reading way more into that sentence than was intended. "An" implies one, not all, especially since "an" is the root word for "one." And if we go with that meaning, we can also come to the following: "This encounter with two guards at the gate isn't fun, but another one might be."

But that's picking nits. Once again, I think the crux of the statement is being nit-picked to death. People seem to think Wyatt wants to prohibit any and all meetings with gate-guards, when what I think he's really saying is don't add a needless meeeting with a gate guard that goes like this, "Welcome to our city. Be good." "Thanks, we will. Which way to the inn?" "That way." and instead just jump past it with, "You enter the city and make your way to the central inn."

Not me, it's my favourite game system for tabletop play.

I did say "most" and not "all."

 

[I'm A Banana]

Not me, it's my favourite game system for tabletop play.

And for another perspective, the quote doesn't bother me too much, I'm playing in no less than three simultaneous 4e campaigns at the moment, so I can't really have THAT big a problem with the game.

I did say "most" and not "all."

Ascribing motives to anyone is not really useful. Remember, the person on the other side of the inter-tubes is an intelligent, rational, well-intentioned person, even if you disagree with them.

It's quite possible that the reason some folks aren't a fan of 4e has a lot to do with Wyatt's quotes, meaning it's not really a nit to pick, it's one of the core reasons they're not fans of the game.

After all, no one likes being told that they're having fun in the wrong way. Fun isn't an objective thing that should be present universally given certain starting conditions, and the arrogance to dismiss entire playstyles can certainly be off-putting, even for those of us who play 4e on a regular basis, and like it at least well enough.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

And for another perspective, the quote doesn't bother me too much, I'm playing in no less than three simultaneous 4e campaigns at the moment, so I can't really have THAT big a problem with the game.



Ascribing motives to anyone is not really useful. Remember, the person on the other side of the inter-tubes is an intelligent, rational, well-intentioned person, even if you disagree with them.

It's quite possible that the reason some folks aren't a fan of 4e has a lot to do with Wyatt's quotes, meaning it's not really a nit to pick, it's one of the core reasons they're not fans of the game.

After all, no one likes being told that they're having fun in the wrong way. Fun isn't an objective thing that should be present universally given certain starting conditions, and the arrogance to dismiss entire playstyles can certainly be off-putting, even for those of us who play 4e on a regular basis, and like it at least well enough.

Exactly - if the quote prevents someone from trying the game, or lessens their enjoyment in running the game, then it is not a 'nit'.

If it is a symptom of a wider problem then it is not a 'nit'. It was a statement that our style of fun was not fun.

And for some of us it was only one of several such statements, including some on the animated cartoons for the game and the trailer. (Oh look, isn't it funny? The dragon is taking a crap on a troll that is complaining about our game. Ha ha ha....)

I do not know what percentage of the lines that ticked people off about 4e were Wyatt's, but he was not working in a vacuum. However, he certainly has some of the gems that are most prone to quotation.

The Auld Grump