D&D 4E The Usage of the Non-Sequitur "4e is a Tactical Skirmish Game"

[Crazy Jerome]

I think it's two things, really, though lately this particular statement has morphed into almost pure "goad":

• An example of how people (i.e. all of us) use imprecise language, made even more so without face-to-face interaction, sometimes trying to get to an idea. It's the nature of the internet.
• People hiding behind that nature to goad while largely shielded from the consequences.

Because of this, I prefer to give the first N times of such statements a free pass and/or ask for clarification. After some time, however, the responsibility moves to the speaker to at least acknowledge prior discussion somewhat.

Lately, people well over N and showing no signs of improvement go straight to my ignore list. It wastes my time and everyone else's for me to reply to their posts. But worse, they use up all tolerance for the poor newbies that blunder innocently into these discussions. The worst I've ever felt about a post was tearing a strip off a new poster because his poor expression of a thought happened to sound a lot like the goads that were circulating heavily that month.

 

[Manbearcat]

This is for 4e advocates only. This is a public poll.

Easily my favorite part of this thread is the fact that this is literally the first sentence of the thread (the intent of the thread was explicated to specifically solicit the reaction of FOURTH EDITION ADVOCATES when this statement is invoked by DETRACTORS). Funny enough, pretty much all the votes in the "trying to compel" column are detractors rather than advocates...who shouldn't be voting in the first place. Amusing.

 

[Blue]

Understand where they are coming from

I'm a fan of 4e (and other editions, and other RPGs), and actively play in several 4e games. I'm saying that to give a feel that I'm not kicking 4e.

As a percentage of 4e rules, "tactical skirmish" is by far the most represented, either directly with combat rules, or indirectly through character creations & advancement rules that are heavily biased towards combat.

There are rules for skill challenges, but they don't take up much room compared to combat. (And did not seem nearly as robustly tested when the game came out, often leading them to be delegated to a lesser station for a while.) So what conflict there is that isn't combat is minimized. There's alignments, and skills, and RP advice to flesh out. But none of those comes close to the amount of pages give to combat and encounters.

Now, if you go back to early editions of D&D, you could start to say the same things. But spell lists (a very large chunk of rules) were heavily given to things that were useful in non-combat situations. The 4e MM did a wonderful job of "we're not bogging down the monsters with every little power - if they need something for plot reasons, give it to them". But the flip side is that if you look at individual monsters, nothing in the mechanics section has to do with anything except combat. Earlier editions had sections like magical properties of gems or other things to evoke wonder and thought.

I know DMs that forget that monsters have surges (one per tier) because it's not listed - there's a heavy trend towards "everything I need is in one place, and if it's not there, it's not needed." Power cards lead to that as well for the players. So the layout of the material also helps to reinforce this stereotype. (One kudo for D&D Next is that "Improvise" is listed on the same page as other combat options.)

That covers a reading of the rules without play - nothing takes up as many pages as combat, a/k/a "tactical skirmish". Now turn towards the community. The primary one-shot to do at FLGS? D&D Encounters or Lair Assault. Neither is a poster child to dispel this.

Do I think 4e is just tactical skirmish? Heck no. If it was, I wouldn't be playing in multiple long-running campaigns. But it's easy to see from either reading of the rules or from sponsored games at FLGS that this can easily be seen as the case. No one can say the game isn't tactical skirmish, you just need to add in all the rest it is as well.

 

[Advilaar]

Choice 1.

4e EXCELS at being a tactical skirmish game with deeper tactical rules than any other previous incarnation of DnD.

Yes, there are RP elements. Yes, there are orcs and men and dragons. But all this takes a back seat to the battlegrid.

 

[DragoonLance]

Choice 1.
Yes, there are RP elements. Yes, there are orcs and men and dragons. But all this takes a back seat to the battlegrid.

I don't understand this viewpoint. By this definition, only one other RPG I've played out of the over two dozen I've played/ run in the last 20+ years counts as a "real" role-playing game. And the current 4e campaign I've been playing (level 29 currently) has never once used a battlemat of any sort. Insert joke about doing it wrong.

 

[Lwaxy]

There is no option for having that opinion without wanting to convince 4e players. Trying to convince someone what they are playing is something it is not always has some missionary aspect which I don't think most of those considering 4e a skirmish game intend. Some people just say what they believe (and then more or less stubbornly stick to their opinions).

To me, personally, truthfully, 4e is not "real" D&D. Nothing could convince me it is just because the letters are printed on it. I don't care the least if it is D&D to 4e players. My guess would be to the ones who switched, it is, and to the ones who started with it, they don't know anything else.

The one time I really tried 4e as D&D, it did feel like a skirmish game to me. Probably no wonder, it was short after the release and the GM had no experience with it. I hated it. Later on, I found someone using the system but not the fluff (more modern setting with lots of battles in the story) and liked playing. Removed from its D&D baggage, it was fun enough to play that I stuck with it for the whole 6 month campaign. And it was far from being only skirmish.

Maybe lots of testers had a similar experience. It's easy to apply one play style you encounter to the rest of the game. Heck, someone without prior experience doing some of my current D&D/PF campaigns would probably believe it is all about avoiding conflict. Which is not what said editions are meant to be, either.

In this light, adding the words "just" to a statement may just indicate the person in question has no other experience with the system and may not even notice how condescending it sounds.

Oh dear I wrote an essay. I blame it on my headache

 

[Umbran]

Amusing.

Yes, well, the idea that a "public" poll explicitly applies only to a specific subset of the public is also amusing.

There is no option for having that opinion without wanting to convince 4e players.

This is an excellent point. We should not draw much from skewed results when the poll options and audience are rather strongly selecting, hm?

 

[Manbearcat]

There is no option for having that opinion without wanting to convince 4e players.

2 - 4 are not trying to convince. In order, provoking, preaching to converted, celebrating amongst fellow detractors or some other form of catharsis (opining for the sake of opining).

- Do they believe they are being willfully provactive?
- Do they believe they are stating this position just as reinforcement amongst fellow believers (preaching to the choir)?
- Do they believe they are celebrating the opinion, communally, with other detractors or some other form of catharsis such as "opining for the sake of opining on something they feel strongly about"?

Yes, well, the idea that a "public" poll explicitly applies only to a specific subset of the public is also amusing.



This is an excellent point. We should not draw much from skewed results when the poll options and audience are rather strongly selecting, hm?

That was the point. Some commentors have stated that they feel that stating this offhandedly is a good-faith statement (to what end? Good faith must imply to convince otherwise it is gratuitous.). They have stated that the statement is not caustic to discourse (despite an extraordinary amount of evidence to the opposite) and that it doesn't derail threads down into edition war venom. So, who to best ask then 4e advocates (as they are the ones reacting...either emotionally or intellecturally is irrelevant...the effect on discourse is the same). If you are soliciting the spcific opinion of a demographic (which by definition excludes those outside of the demographic), you should not include within the sample those who are either not 4e advocates or are 4e detractors.
The poll must be self-selecting as it is soliciting the opinion of a specific demographic in order to answer the specific question:


"What is the consenus reaction among 4e advocates when a commenter states '4e is just a tactical skirmish game?'"


So what do you ask them specifically?

- Do they believe it is a good faith effort to convince a 4e advocate that 4e mechanical ruleset does not encapsulate the RPG experience?
- Do they believe they are being willfully provactive?
- Do they believe they are stating this position just as reinforcement amongst fellow believers (preaching to the choir)?
- Do they believe they are celebrating the opinion, communally, with other detractors or some other form of catharsis such as "opining for the sake of opining on something they feel strongly about"?


There is no need to include corner case reactions that are not helpful to the survey as it just adds needless noise to the signal; The signal being 4e advocates reaction to detractors stating 4e is just a Tactical Skirmish Game.

 

[Lwaxy]

2 - 4 are not trying to convince.

2-4 have nothing to do with a de facto statement though. I don't think most people believe anything suggested, they are just stating their personal impression. If there is anyone else of a similar opinion, they might talk a bit about why they think what they think, but that's usually all.

Online, the situation is a little different, I guess, because everyone is able to read up if something has been said already (although if a thread is too long I don't always do that either). It might be more of a "me, too" effect if several people post the same opinion.

It's unfortunate that humans tend to see personal experiences/opinions as a fact. Everyone does that at some point.

 

[Ahnehnois]

When I see this kind of thing, I think it's a consequence of political correctness. I think the person writing it is trying to make a point about how they think 4e lost some essential aspect of D&D, but is trying to find the least inflammatory language possible to do it.

Unfortunately, the result is that each new phrase people pick to criticize 4e sets off the same arguments, meaning that it becomes charged. Eventually, any time it's used, it will carry the connotation of edition warring. I try to avoid these kinds of catchphrases, which frankly is not easy given how many of them there are. However, I think most people who use them simply have not read the thousands of pages of prior threads and are genuinely attempting to articulate a critical point.

FWIW I think it's bizarrely inaccurate. If I were to see the phrase "tactical skirmish game" outside of this context, I would think of a highly realistic simulation involving intricate, in-world tactical choices (i.e. "that guy has heavy armor, we need to use a greataxe against him" is a tactical choice, "that guy looks powerful, I'll decide that my one opportunity per day to hit him hard occurs now" is not). D&D is not a tactical skirmish game, being not particularly realistic, nor focused on minutia like facing and hit locations, and 4e is even less tactical than the other editions.

***

Wonder what would happen if the same poll were ran for phrases like "15 minute adventuring day" or "quadratic wizards/linear warriors", which I think are used to be inflammatory at least as often as the above but don't seem to be called out as such.

***

This is for 4e advocates only. This is a public poll.

Ah, so it's *public*, but only for a select few. Say what?