4th edition, The fantastic game that everyone hated.

[Ahnehnois]

That's how many stats? An entire mountain of nonsense I don't even have to think about.

And (unless I'm mistaken), stats you spent no time writing.

Nor would you necessarily need to prepare such a stat block to play a game in which that character was used.

3e is not a rules-lite system and does have extensive stat blocks. However, the amount of time that one could spend writing detailed stat blocks and the amount of time that one does are not the same thing. Nor is stat block generation the primary form of preparation. You could (if you wanted to) spend hours mapping out an intricate heist for your Leverage game. You could do hours of reading psychology textbooks in order to understand your CoC character's mental illness. You could spend hours painting tiny little figures to place on a battlegrid for your 4e game.

Or not. It's really up to you. You can run a good session without doing any of the above (including running a 3e session without preparing a single stat block).

 

[Sunseeker]

I don't see how having the actual stats for the "pegicorn" stops a DM from deciding that the PC's running into one is just window dressing? It's like saying because we have stats for dragons in the book, a dragon can never just fly over the PC's and off into the distance without swooping down and attacking. I think when the stats are present however it facilitates more playstyles... and not necessarily just ones centered around combat... What if the PC's come up with a plan to capture and use the pegicorn as a mount? It's stats could be relevant to whether the plan succeeds or fails... they could also be relevant if it does succeed and they now try to use it as a mount.

The example was merely that stat blocks don't need to exist for everything a DM can dream up.

I somewhat agree... but then I have to ask... do you feel the same way about minions in 4e, because essentially this is what a 1st level minion is in 4e, so do you think those NPC's/monsters are a waste?

As I referenced in a different thread, when my high-level PCs encounterd caves full of essentially level 1 minions, I asked them how they wished to proceed...and sure enough they slaughtered the bunch. Ran it more as a skill chellenge.

If my PCs had been closer in level(say a 1 or 2 level difference) I would have wanted stat-blocks, even if the minions were level 1, because there is still a reasonable level of challenge.

I'm not sure how this is a pro or con in and of itself for statblocks... again if something is just window dressing you've already decided it will not interact with the PC's or it's interaction with the PC is pre-determined... regardless of whether there is or isn't a statblock for it. Also you're assuming everyone plays like you, I remember there being articles and examples of people playing 4e in a mode where the PC's could actually view the statblock of a monster while fighting it... if you've already decided it has no statblock, well then you've already decided it will either not fight or the outcome of a fight with it will be pre-determined.

I would never let my players view the statblocks of an enemy in a fight.

Again, the point is more that with the proper tools and a clear math, we should not need statblocks for everything, as if a statblock is necessary it can be developed on the fly, or a more in-depth one developed with a little time.

But having statblocks does not preclude one from making their own statblocks for original or alternate creatures...

No, it doesn't, but it can cause difficulty. When the math is unclear or overly complex and tools and instruction are unavailable, or players are used to a specific concept attached to a statblock, it can be jarring and difficult to overcome while playing.

Anyway, my point at the end of it all is this: we don't need pre-done stat blocks for everything under the sun. We just need clear math and simplicity of construction when it comes to monsters. It should be reasonable that a DM could throw together some stats for a "Pegicorn" in about 5-10 minutes if an encounter called for them. It should be reasonable that a DM could take the base CR7 Wright and turn it into a CR2 or CR20 in the same time frame if necessary. It should be reasonable that how to do either is made clear in the rules on day 1. Although I dislike some of their numbers because they are seemingly very random, things like "The Advanced Race Guide" by Paizo are great tools, but they should be released early, not backwards-engineered several years into the game.

 

[Ratskinner]

OTOH, I really get the sense that people expect a hell of a lot more hand holding in 4e than they do in other editions. Looking at a lot of the criticisms of 4e, I'm baffled that people cannot make fairly simple, obvious changes to fit what they want. HP recovery too fast? Ok, slow it down. Is that really so difficult? No social statblocks on NPC's? Add 'em yourself. That's what we did for the past thirty years, why suddenly change now? On and on and on. It's almost like any criticism of 4e is couched in an absolute concrete reading of 4e without any ability to think for yourself.

Yet, every edition previously was given a pass on a lot of stuff - just adjust it this way is a perfectly acceptable answer to a lot of the issues in any edition. Yet in 4e, whenever that answer was given, it was brushed off by critics pointing to chapter and verse in books and refusing to budge from a single, almost mono-maniacal view of the mechanics.

It's utterly baffling to me to be honest. We've gone, as a community, from a group of tinkers who constantly massage and tweak our games to pissing and moaning over single feats like Prone Shooter, or single powers like Come and Get It.

Well, I hope/think I can help de-baffle you. I see several factors being important here:

First, 4e was initially presented (particularly online) as pretty finely engineered for balance, and that "messing with it" would surely break your game. Whether or not that's true in any absolute sense, the massive online debates about the expertise "feat taxes" over a +1-3 or so being utterly vital (and similar things about individual powers) don't serve to dissuade anyone from that notion.

Secondly, the presentation/structure of 4e is quite a bit different from previous editions (at least at first glance) so any previous expertise you have seems less applicable. Combined with 4e's systematic advice that at times has the tone of "this is how you may alter the game or it will break" and I think its fairly easy to see how someone can get skittish about modifying 4e extensively. (Combine this with my next point.)

Thirdly, 4e was a fairly drastic change in focus away from Simulationism, which is not clearly presented in 4e's first 3 books. I know that when I first started running 4e (from PHB1, DMG1, and MM1) I got absolutely no impression of the more Narrativist/Indie style that some of you around here run. (and FATE is my preferred rpg!) For people who are used to working in a Sim system, the transition to Gamist or Narrativist rules can be jarring and very difficult to see. If, as is indicated upthread, the initial presentation of 4e was so poorly executed that it wasn't clearly sorted out until DMG2, you can be certain that a lot of people (myself included) were already out of 4e by the time that came out.

Fourthly, a great number (not fraction) of 4e fans online purport themselves as fairly traumatized by 3e's imbalances or "brokenness". It seems to me that they reflexively resent or reject any attempt to modify 4e in order to preserve its finely-tuned engine. I think this attitude became slightly contagious, especially in reaction to the edition wars. Modifying any of 4e's general principles was wrong, because doing so was a tacit admission that 4e might not be utterly perfect. (Aid and comfort to the enemy, so to speak.)

Fifthly, the AEDU presentation. I'm not trying to criticize it overall, however, it makes it inobvious (compared to previous edition structures) how to modify or create class functions. So, in previous editions, if you want to change say...spellcasting, you do that as a blanket modification of a few rules...not so AEDU. In 4e, that might mean anything from a simple "fluff" change to writing dozens of new powers. This is especially true since the initial presentation of 4e did a poor job of emphasizing the switch of powers/spells to metagame (as folks around here term it) structures. Which made it difficult for those raised on Sim to piece together how they should go about it. Yes, its in the rulebook, but it isn't really featured at all in any examples. (I dunno about in DMG2 or after.)

So, yeah, maybe people do expect more handholding in 4e, and feel less confident about making modifications. However, I kinda see it as a result of the way the game was initially presented. I also suspect that people are less likely to feel confident about modifying non-Sim rules than they are with Sim rules (or rules they have convinced themselves are Sim). If I'm correct about that, then a lot of potential 4e house-rulers just don't feel like they "can" without breaking the game.

 

[Hussar]

See, Ratskinner, this is what I don't get. If you played a Sim game, why on Earth were you playing D&D in any incarnation? D&D is about as far from Sim as it gets. Gamist? Sure, no problem. Totally buy that. Virtually every element in the game is Gamist in nature.

If you claimed in 2005 that you were a real fan of Simulationist play, and that's why you played 3.5 D&D, everyone would have laughed at you. No one would have remotely taken you seriously. But, for some bizarre reason, since 4e was released, suddenly 3e gets heralded as this golden age Simulationist game. And it's something that has apparently stuck, because now it gets trotted out every time someone wants to claim why they don't like 4e.

I am just astonished that anyone can look at 3e or any version of D&D for that matter, and make any sort of claim to Sim play. Hero? Sure. GURPS? Sure. But D&D? Where are the sim elements? The only thing that D&D simulates is D&D itself.

 

[chaochou]

If you claimed in 2005 that you were a real fan of Simulationist play, and that's why you played 3.5 D&D, everyone would have laughed at you.

While I understand your point, D&Ds historical strength was its adaptabililty to different playstyles.

I don't think anyone can claim that, by design, D&D is more simulationist than GURPS or Runequest. But then, no-one can claim that it is, by design, more narratavist than HeroWars or Burning Wheel. Nor that, by design, it is more gamist than Paranoia or Tunnels and Trolls. In 30 years I've never been aware of D&D being the poster child for any specific playstyle, only for the hobby as a whole.

I liked 4e. But I guess I saw in it a game I wanted to play. I'd hardly played 2nd or 3rd ed so I wasn't trying to use it to recreate previous editions, or relive the AD&D of my youth. I played it for what I saw it as - a supers game with a fantasy skin. It's very good at what it does, but I suspect it's harder to drift than previous iterations.

That's not a problem for me as I've always played lots of systems. It's like picking the right tool for the job. When I want X I play Burning Wheel, when I want Y I play Apocalypse World and so on. When I want a rollicking beat-em up with over the top villains trying to 'Destroy the World!' (TM) I think 4e is as good a choice as any.

 

[S'mon]

Is a social statblock different than just describing the NPC's goals and personality somehow? Does anyone have an example of a good "social statblock" they can post or link to?

Aside from personality notes, I would like to have the NPC's Attributes, Skills, and bonuses listed. This would give me a handle on the competency of the NPC and help me to play them more effectively. Basically think of the Skill & Attribute lines in the regular combat stat block - it would be good to have those two lines given for non-hostile NPCs.

 

[S'mon]

P
However; in the beginning, I obviously hadn't played 4E before (since it was at that time a new edition) so I was taken by surprise when I had a lot of the problems I had. I was especially surprised because a lot of the problems I had were problems which cropped up when I attempted to use the official advice concerning how to run the game. In a different thread I have a post about an encounter I had involving gondolas; the way things panned out weren't at all when I expected.

In your gondola example it sounds like you were taking the DMG's very very rough guidelines on breaking objects, and using them for a purpose for which they were not intended. Because breaking the gondola was critically important to scene resolution, the 'correct' intended way to do your gondola-breaking in 4e would actually be a Skill Challenge (probably 6 or 9 successes and mostly Hard DCs, depending on the attacks used, failure = can't be broken within the duration of the encounter). I certainly appreciate that the DMG does not do a great job of making this clear.

You could do the gondola-breaking as process-simulation in 4e, and I might well do it that way, but then you would have needed to work out appropriate defenses, Damage Resistance, and hit points for the cable - and the DMG doesn't give you most of that, so you would have needed to use your own judgement.

Edit: Still, it is FAR better that you erred on the side of making the gondola too easy to break, resolving the scene too early. The one really bad experience I have had playing 4e was a GM who did the opposite - there was exactly one way to end the encounter, by solving the arcane multi-stage skill challenge/puzzle trap the way he had designed it, and damned if he was going to let me do anything else. To do so he arbitrarily made the stonework of the traproom door & frescoes completely immune to my dwarf barbarian's GIANT HAMMER and massive damage rolls, in order to railroad the resolution the way he had intended. Whereas in your case, you might have been a bit unhappy but I bet the players didn't mind much!

 

[pemerton]

4e was initially presented (particularly online) as pretty finely engineered for balance, and that "messing with it" would surely break your game. Whether or not that's true in any absolute sense, the massive online debates about the expertise "feat taxes" over a +1-3 or so being utterly vital (and similar things about individual powers) don't serve to dissuade anyone from that notion.

I find the angst over Expertise a bid weird. I do think they're fairly bad design as feats and work better as an on/off toggle for the whole campaign. But I run my game with no expertise feats, and at 19th level am not experiencing any "to hit" gap crisis. Rather, the players in my game do what I am guessing the designers initially anticipated would be done: use powers, combat advantage, paragon path features and general synergies to make up their chance to hit.

I also suspect that people are less likely to feel confident about modifying non-Sim rules than they are with Sim rules (or rules they have convinced themselves are Sim).

I think this makes a certain degree of sense. If the rules are meant to be sim, and you can see a better sim by tweaking them, then you tweak. But if the rules are meant to deliver a certain play experience that will satisfy some non-sim urge, and you tweak them, maybe your tweak will block the production of that experience - a bit hard to know until you try! So you don't try.

That said, slowing down the recovery rate for extended rests is an utterly trivial tweak whose impact on the play experience looks completely transparent to me. So I share [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s frustration that it gets attacked over and over and over. (Contrast healing surges and short rests, which are intimate parts of the game and I think quite hard to tweak without changing the experience in all sorts of somewhat unpredictable ways.)

If you claimed in 2005 that you were a real fan of Simulationist play, and that's why you played 3.5 D&D, everyone would have laughed at you.

The Alexandrian blogged his defence of low-ish level 3E on simulationist grounds in 2007. The "Gygaxian Naturalism" blog is from 2008. That suggests that at least some people must have been thinking of D&D in simultioninst terms in the years leading up to those blogs (which are clearly considered opinions developed over some time).

That's not to defend D&D as simulationist - I don't find it to be so, and in 2005 was GMing Rolemaster in part because I enjoyed (to a reasonable degree, at least) its genuinely simulationist mechanics. But the idea does seem to be deeply entrenched at least by the mid-to-late part of last decade.

I liked 4e. But I guess I saw in it a game I wanted to play. I'd hardly played 2nd or 3rd ed so I wasn't trying to use it to recreate previous editions, or relive the AD&D of my youth. I played it for what I saw it as - a supers game with a fantasy skin. It's very good at what it does, but I suspect it's harder to drift than previous iterations.

<snip>

When I want a rollicking beat-em up with over the top villains trying to 'Destroy the World!' (TM) I think 4e is as good a choice as any.

I agree that 4e has a strong "supers" feel. I think that the whole open-ended team play dynamic of post-Gygaxian D&D is supers-like in nature. (The Gygaxian stable of characters is a bit different, unless your supers team is The Avengers.)

I had a post about this towards the end of last year:

For me, the influence of the X-Men works in a few ways, primarily about method/structure rather than detailed content:

* The X-Men features a lot of physical conflict, but it is not about combat. Fisticuffs is a means of representing confict within the contraints of the 4-colour genre tropes. (The Hulk is another example - it's about the struggle betweeen Id (the Hulk), the Ego (Thunderbolt Ross) and the Super-ego (Banner), with Doc Samson as the analyst - but it uses physical conflict as its medium. I enjoy the Hulk more than a lot of other literary or academic treatments of Freud!)

* The X-Men involves a party. So it shows arcs and antagonists that establish links between superficially disparate protagonists. I think this is quite an important technique for making D&D work nicely when genre and theme are important to play. You don't want it to look completely arbitrary that the PCs have a longstanding, coopeative relationship.

* The X-Men involves long-running, complex, overlapping story arcs. Which, I think, D&D also benefits from (if you're going to keep the game going from 1st up to epic).

* The X-Men is about a special group of individuals - the mutants - who are somewhat outside of, and in sheer power terms superior to, ordinary society. And it gives a model of how to establish at least a fig-leaf of plausibility for the existence of that group, and its various factions and cabals, within ordinary society. In D&D, this is the problem of "Why don't the PCs, or their antagonists, just conquer the world?" I'm not saying the X-Men provides an answer to that question, but it provides an example of world flavour that can help discourage the question from being asked.​

In the sort of game I run, the PCs really are more like a superhero team than like the mercenary band that Gygax and Arneson may have had in mind when they first started running the game. And the open-ended campaign is more like an ongoing comic series than a movie or novel. So I think there's a certain logic in drawing on that material. And in my personal view Claremont X-Men is some of the best! (Despite the somewhat ignomious ending to it.)

 

[S'mon]

Things I've rewritten for myself for when I run games include (but aren't limited to) how skill challenges work, the monster XP tables and XP budgets for encounters, and the DC table (mine differs from both the values given in DMG1 and the ones given in DMG2.)

I also rewrote the DC table to one I can hold in my head. It has only 7 entries plus a +/-2 modifier. But it generates DCs from 8 to 42, which when I checked the Essentials DC table, I saw was exactly the same range WoTC had finally settled on also.

 

[S'mon]

I don't think anyone can claim that, by design, D&D is more simulationist than GURPS or Runequest. But then, no-one can claim that it is, by design, more narratavist than HeroWars or Burning Wheel. Nor that, by design, it is more gamist than Paranoia or Tunnels and Trolls.

Oh, I would have pegged Paranoia as very much not Gamist - it's Sim with a side order of Dramatism. Who plays Paranoia to 'win', unless you're defining 'win' as 'most entertaining death'? It's absolutely not at all a game about facing & overcoming challenges-to-the-player. According to the design notes it's about 'fear'.