D&D 5E You can't necessarily go back

[triqui]

Hit points could be interpreted dissociatively by you and not by me

The only reason you (or anyone) could interpret hit points as a non-dissociative rule, is because they willingly chosed to blind themselves to the issue.

There's no way you can explain how a high level mortal fighter can jump from a 20 floor building repeatedly and not dying. Or how he can drink a galloon of poison, make a save, and survive, or being chewed, then swallowed by a 15 tons winged lizard's jaws without even going unconscious, or how he can be tied to a pole, and being shot by a heavy crossbow firing squad with no risk of dying before the 7th volley of bolts.

Simply your brain choses not to look at the gorilla in the room, so you can play the game you like, and not break your immersion. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo"]gorilla in the room[/ame]

 

[rounser]

2. Derogation - Implying that people who like 4E are either inferior or misguided. Example: "4E is not D&D."

Well, for some of us it just isn't, and never will be. Hundreds of thousands of ASCII characters have been spilt on the topic, both for and against, but the very fact of this may hint that the argument has purchase.

I don't consider you inferior or misguided, but push come to shove, I don't share your particular vision of what constitutes D&D. And I maintain that, in my opinion, 4E isn't D&D as I know it or want it to be. The thing is, 4E was such a departure from D&D's past that it is alien to a good deal of the existing D&D audience, such that when it came out, draping itself in D&D's colours and livery like so much drag, the statement that "4E is not D&D" was just a way for disappointed and disenfranchised existing D&D fans to call it out as an imposter.

Which, arguably, it is. The sacred cows it delighted in roasting, the retcons it required to have existing worlds fit to it's new implied setting, and the gamist direction it took with disassociated mechanics were all done unashamedly. Small wonder that former fans didn't hesitate in unashamedly pointing out that it was an imposter to the name of D&D, as they knew it.

 

[Emerikol]

You forgot the Third and Forth types;

Those who purchased 4e PHB only then to return it, (or give away as a gift) then falsely claiming they gave 4e a FAIR trail.

Those who only browsed the 4e books at the store, then decided they hate 4e without ever making ANY effort to try 4e.

I lump those into the never really tried it category. I ran it for a year as DM before my group and I gave up. I also bought a lot of books. So I'm in the latter category.

I do think though that the better you know yourself the easier it is to know if you will like something. I admit that prior to 4e there were a lot of aspects of rpg design that I had not encountered. So I had to experience them to see if I liked or disliked. In many cases I disliked. But I was unaware. I can't blame others if they see it quicker. A good example is 13th Age. I saw the playtest and decided it's not for me. I judged it without ever playing it. I think I know enough now to see that I won't like it. I did buy the initial book though because I felt I could cannibalize stuff from it. I do that all the time. I own tons of game systems I've not played.

 

[Emerikol]

The only reason you (or anyone) could interpret hit points as a non-dissociative rule, is because they willingly chosed to blind themselves to the issue.

You can keep repeating this tired argument and it doesn't become more true with repetition. Hit points are an abstraction but they are real. When I hit your character with a sword he feels it just like your player does. What it represents to both of you is abstracted but both of you are aware of it.

There's no way you can explain how a high level mortal fighter can jump from a 20 floor building repeatedly and not dying. Or how he can drink a galloon of poison, make a save, and survive, or being chewed, then swallowed by a 15 tons winged lizard's jaws without even going unconscious, or how he can be tied to a pole, and being shot by a heavy crossbow firing squad with no risk of dying before the 7th volley of bolts.

No one has made the case that D&D is realistic. Big difference though from a criticism of it being dissociative. They are not the same. The character jumped and in that characters mind he fell to the ground. The player also thought the same thing. (as an aside I did tend to use alternate falling rules because this realism aspect affronted me but that is a realism argument and not a dissociative one.)

Same for poison. The character drank it. The character fought off it's effects. Nothing the character doesn't know that the player knows. Same for the dragon. In the case of the crossbow bolt, you would die even at 20th level. At least in my campaign you would.

Simply your brain choses not to look at the gorilla in the room, so you can play the game you like, and not break your immersion. gorilla in the room

I have tried repeatedly to clarify the distincts between realism (D&D is not!), abstraction (D&D is assuredly), and dissociative (pre 4e D&D was not necessarily). Dissociative mechanics are specific things where the player and character have to think about something differently. A fate point is an easy and perfect example. If you can use some pool of resources to modify a die whenever you want but only so long as you have points in the pool, then that is dissociative. The character does not know about the pool. The character does not know why he suddenly got better this time. etc...

You can keep snarking away but all you are doing to revealing ignorance on the matter. It is something precise. It would be better if you just said it doesn't bother you. A reasonable position. But denying it is ostrich head in the sand.

 

[Prickly]

I keep reading this and trying to come up with a way to express myself. I'm in a very odd position when it comes to 4E. I don't/didn't necessarily dislike the game, but there were times when I felt I was somewhat mislead about the kind of game it was.

On that note (and to stay on topic,) I would say that I found a lot of the 4E DMG advice to be generally useful for rpgs, but not necessarily useful for DMing 4th Edition. I know that sounds odd, but that was my experience. I felt as though the game expressed a style of play which didn't exactly match up with the style of play that the mechanical structure of the game seemed to support. That pretty much sums up a lot of the issues I have with the game.

While I dont doubt you feel this way I must admit I have found the 4e dmg advice very useful for 4e games.
but perhaps because I got the idea that 4e basically says this:

"You get rules for for things that you need rules for. These rules work as written but feel free to reflavour and change as needed.

You dont get hard rules for things like social interactions and empire ruling but here are some guidelines and advice. Use them or dont, your call."

 

[billd91]

The only reason you (or anyone) could interpret hit points as a non-dissociative rule, is because they willingly chosed to blind themselves to the issue.

There's no way you can explain how a high level mortal fighter can jump from a 20 floor building repeatedly and not dying. Or how he can drink a galloon of poison, make a save, and survive, or being chewed, then swallowed by a 15 tons winged lizard's jaws without even going unconscious, or how he can be tied to a pole, and being shot by a heavy crossbow firing squad with no risk of dying before the 7th volley of bolts.

Simply your brain choses not to look at the gorilla in the room, so you can play the game you like, and not break your immersion. gorilla in the room

None of those issues make those mechanics dissociative. There's nothing in hit points, with those examples, that suggests dissociation. Really people could survive a fall, survive a poisoning, and maybe even survive being swallowed (in no small part because lots of critters that swallow whole in the real world don't do a lot of chewing). From the player point of view, those events cause injury - as they do from the PC's point of view.

I think you're hanging up on the fact that hit points are abstract and, thanks to random variations, the results of these events can vary significantly and may not be particularly severe compared to our real world understanding (where life and limb and injury is decidedly less abstract). But that's not really dissociated.

 

[Argyle King]

While I dont doubt you feel this way I must admit I have found the 4e dmg advice very useful for 4e games.
but perhaps because I got the idea that 4e basically says this:

"You get rules for for things that you need rules for. These rules work as written but feel free to reflavour and change as needed.

You dont get hard rules for things like social interactions and empire ruling but here are some guidelines and advice. Use them or dont, your call."

I got the idea of what 4E was saying. I in no way had difficulty understanding what was written. I just do not feel the game plays out the same way it is portrayed to play out.

I also have no issue with refluffing. However, I am someone who believes fluff and crunch should have a coherent relationship. Even if I were to refluff some of the things into something resembling more of what I wanted, I do not feel the mechanics of the game would support it very well. Likewise, I also do not feel that the 'Points of Light' concept really made sense when paired with 4E mechanics.

I do not feel that a world built upon the mechanics of 4E would look anything like what the fluff says the 4E world would look like. Putting myself in the shoes of a character living in that world, it was difficult to take some of the things seriously. In particular, I remember the first campaign I played to 30 ending with Orcus (as well as pretty much everything leading up to him) being crushed so handily by the party that the DM ruled it was viable for him to surrender to an intimidation check from my warlord character. According to the fiction, he was supposed to be feared; a scourge to the world. In 'reality' he ended up being my butler.

Also, as mentioned in other threads I've been in, I could easily smash through walls and even the literally gates of hell with my PC; in contrast, some of the supposedly most feared monsters could scarcely scratch a flimsy structure. From the players side of the table, that made it difficult for me to take the idea that I was living in a 'Points of Light' world very seriously. From the DM side of the table, it was frustrating because a lot of challenge types I wanted to use weren't really viable.

Outside of combat I had issues as well; I've elaborated on those in other threads. The short version is that I feel the 4E advice and structure makes it very easy to get to the minimum bar required to get a game moving. That is a good thing for a group just starting out. However, I do not feel the 4E advice nor structure necessarily makes it easy to run a good game. I suppose that means I'm contradicting myself now that I think about it because that would mean I didn't feel some of the advice was really all that good. I do believe I've commented in the past that some of my most successful games came after I started to ignore the 'official' 4E advice.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Those who purchased 4e PHB only then to return it, (or give away as a gift) then falsely claiming they gave 4e a FAIR trail.

Those who only browsed the 4e books at the store, then decided they hate 4e without ever making ANY effort to try 4e.

I don't get the implication that someone who simply browsed a book in a store didn't give the thing a fair chance. D&D is sold in book form. If that book (like any book) doesn't make a solid enough impression in the store for a prospective customer to buy (or keep it), the book has failed, not the person who didn't like it. The point of creating any consumer product is to convince people to buy it.

There are plenty of movies, for instance, that I actively dislike but have never seen, based on the trailers or other incomplete information. There are plenty of places in this world that I have never been and never wish to go to, which can be an informed opinion. etc. etc.

I, for one, know a lot about 4e, more than I wish I did, more than I know about almost any rpg, but have never played it, considered playing it, or met anyone in person who played it.

 

[triqui]

None of those issues make those mechanics dissociative. There's nothing in hit points, with those examples, that suggests dissociation. Really people could survive a fall,

That's why a said "repeatedly"

survive a poisoning,

Survive a poisoning, and survive a galloon of poisoning are different things[quote and maybe even survive being swallowed (in no small part because lots of critters that swallow whole in the real world don't do a lot of chewing). [/quote] The chewing part is the dissociative one.
Or when a 15 ton dragon LANDS on you, pinning you under it's crushing weight (and doing crushing damage)

From the player point of view, those events cause injury - as they do from the PC's point of view.

The dissociative part is that, after being crushed by a 15 ton dragon, then chewed, then hit by a fire breath with no saving throw (because of being chewed), he can dance just fine.

Or when he falls 200 feet, and after hitting the floor, he just stand up, shake off the dust, and is ready to beat the long jump record while on his plate armor.

I think you're hanging up on the fact that hit points are abstract and, thanks to random variations, the results of these events can vary significantly and may not be particularly severe compared to our real world understanding (where life and limb and injury is decidedly less abstract). But that's not really dissociated.

That a regular, mortal human can be chewed by a jaw that is twice the size and strength of a tyrannosaurus, the spit from 1000 feet against a hard stone floor, just to stand up and sprint just fine because he has 1hp left, IS dissociative. Your character can't explain why he survived, let alone why he survived without any injury, scar, or broken bone that impede him to run and jump and fight just like if he were unscratched. Or why he can drink a galloon of poison before swiming in a 50m swimming pool of lava to celebrate that he didn't died in the first volley of crossbow bolts from the fire squad.



If you don't see so, it's because your brain has chosen to ignore the gorilla in the room. Which is absolutelly fine, But the gorilla is there, anyways.

 

[Argyle King]

Further thoughts...

I realized that it seems like I'm picking on 4E. That is not my intent. I'm just trying to express the relationship I have with the game. It's also something I'm passionate about because I *do* feel 4E did a lot of things right and honestly did take a few steps in the right direction in some areas. Unfortunately; at the same time, it somehow took all of those steps which were in a direction I felt was right and ended up somewhere completely different than where I wanted to go.

One of the biggest improvements for me would be the ideals behind encounter design. I like the idea of having a lot of moving pieces in an encounter. To me, a bunch of creatures facing off against the PCs is more interesting than a small number of CR appropriate creatures being beat upon by a group.

Likewise, I felt that the lessened power curve between levels was a great thing. I liked that creatures could (in theory) still be a threat across a more broad range of levels. In 3rd Edition, sometimes the difference of one level was a world of change. Suddenly, I would find myself going back through encounters I had written and needing to change all of the creatures into something else or spend time giving kobolds several class levels.

Item dependency was something of a mixed bag. Even though 4E has less 'required' items -something I feel is good, it somehow seems as though the ones that are required are more heavily assumed to be part of the character. It somehow always seemed to me that I was trading things out more often even though I had less items.

The early fluff is something I thought was fantastic.

There are aspects of 4E which I highly enjoy, but that's why looking at the game as a whole is so frustrating for me. It perplexes me that there can be so many elements I like, yet I still somehow cannot fully embrace the game. I feel that the last few games I DMed went exceptionally well, but -to get there- I needed to make more than a few tweaks to both my style and the system.

The tweaks I mentioned are important. Suffice to say that I more often felt I had to change my vision to fit the will of the system than I felt I could bend the system to fit my vision of how things should play out. I don't fault the game for that. It does what it is intended to do. I simply feel that what it is intended to do isn't necessarily what it was advertised to do.