4th edition, The fantastic game that everyone hated.

[pemerton]

I thought you played 4e in a non-sim manner... but you just cited RM as a simulationist game. So were you running 4e in a sim-manner or not?

RM is a simulationist ruleset. I ran it as a vanilla-narrativist game. Its PC-build rules actually support this very well. Some parts of its action-resolution mechanics can be drifted in that direction, but others aren't so good for it. (As I've often posted, this is a big difference between RM and RQ - I don't think that RQ can be drifted to narrativism very easily.)

Hence my preference for 4e.

is it any wonder people get this idea that you are doing some sort of "weird Forge drifting" of 4e when you're citing information and guidance that isn't actually in the corebooks?

But if someone used Moldvay Basic to play Gygaxian D&D noone would accuse him/her of drifting, yet the idea of Gygaxianism really isn't present in Moldvay Basic - it's advice and tone are much closer to heroic fantasy, despite its mechanics.

4e is part of a TSR/WotC tradition, in my view.

What is it that 4e does that other games don't? Well, I think it offers a promise to the player - "You can be the Protagonist. You can be the Hero" - and this is a promise that other editions of D&D have made, but are not actually set up to fulfil.

<snip>

Unlike all other D&D editions, unlike all the traditional Gamist (T&T) & Simulationist (Runequest) RPGs, unlike even '90s Storyteller type stuff (Exalted), the 4e ruleset is actually set up to support follow-through on that promise.

I think this is exactly right.

I've posted - maybe a year or so ago - that the Foreword to Molvay Basic (about killing the dragon tyrant with the magic sword handed over by the mysterious cleric) made a promise that Basic itself didn't deliver on, but 4e does. And that's why I like 4e.

And your post really captures that point.

(As does the story I've seen you post before, about your first play experience with the action-pointing fighter.)

 

[Remathilis]

I'm confused. Where the HECK did WotC ever say that 4e was the same game? They published several BOOKS just on how 4e was different from/improved over 3.x. That's what I remember.

[video=youtube;sbbqMoEwDqc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbbqMoEwDqc[/video]

I believe you're looking for the 3:50 mark.

 

[I'm A Banana]

What is it that 4e does that other games don't? Well, I think it offers a promise to the player - "You can be the Protagonist. You can be the Hero"

I'm not sure I quite understand.

See, I've never had a big issue with "protagonism." The characters that the players are playing are the center of the action. I feel like this is true for any RPG being run well. This doesn't mean they can dictate the terms of the world, but their goals and the actions they take are absolutely center stage. Nothing happens unless they do a thing, and what they do provides direction for where the game is going.

I've also not had any issue with "heroism." The characters have goals that they want to accomplish, and they go try to accomplish them, overcoming obstacles to do so. I feel like this is also true of any RPG being run well. In D&D, that means being a cut above the common folk and being able to take on challenges that would obliterate them, but I think every edition of D&D supports that (some, almost exclusively).

I don't quite understand what elements of 4e help out with this in play.

It's possibly a terminology problem. Forge-isms tend to obfuscate at least as much as they enlighten.

 

[Balesir]

I'm not sure I quite understand.

<snip>

I don't quite understand what elements of 4e help out with this in play.

It's possibly a terminology problem. Forge-isms tend to obfuscate at least as much as they enlighten.

I think it has to be deeper than terminology, because it seems to come up a lot. Just as you are puzzled by [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION]'s comments, I am puzzled by what you write here, since what S'mon means seems blindingly obvious, to me - the sound I hear, reading his post, is that of a nail being hit squarely on the head.

I really do see 4e as offering something which older editions of D&D don't in the sense of control over one's character. I should be clear that such control is not necessarily an essential or even a good thing for all roleplaying styles - but it is essential for the style I find supported by 4e. That "something" is genuine control over your PC; not qualified control or conditional control or theoretical control, but real control, which is essential for the player (as opposed to the character) to be the driving force - the protagonist - in the game. What your PC's powers can do is not conditioned by what you can persuade the DM that they should be able to do, and does not have to measure up to some locally defined yardstick of "believability". Your character's powers do exactly what the rules say they do, in system terms; what that means in world terms, and whether that effect is "believable" or not, is for the others at the table to figure out - it's not your problem.

Knowing what your character can do, you can go ahead and "protagonise" in the game. Only Lady Luck (in the shape of the dice) or the antagonists can stop you. That's being a protagonist as it should be!

 

[I'm A Banana]

That "something" is genuine control over your PC

I don't really believe that other editions lacked this. Certainly I've never felt like I didn't have genuine control over my PC's in any of the other e's I've played, and I don't detect any elements of 4e that enable PC control that other editions lacked.

Every edition of D&D has had the basic rule: When a player says their character does something, that happens.

What your PC's powers can do is not conditioned by what you can persuade the DM that they should be able to do, and does not have to measure up to some locally defined yardstick of "believability".

So it sounds like perhaps this is about agency, then: the players' ability to dictate what is "believable" and not. 4e certainly has more explicitly character-facing abilities for players to dictate the way the world works (poster child: Come and Get It, but also the way Skill Challenges were open-ended). But this is a weakness of the game, too, because for some playstyles that obliterates engagement.

Which brings us back to the point I made above: 4e's big weakness IMO was that it was monolithic. It assumed everyone wanted to direct the game and define the world and play the metagame. If it would have been more flexible in this, it might not have been the shortest edition in D&D history, and it seems the designers, in making 5e explicitly adaptable, may have realized this.

...and quite possibly it could be just about table communication, instead, with the DM setting clear expectations and the players making clear their actions, but I don't think that would be quite so extreme in most cases as to have the rules assuage fears of getting screwed or not agreeing on style.

 

[Sunseeker]

I don't really believe that other editions lacked this. Certainly I've never felt like I didn't have genuine control over my PC's in any of the other e's I've played, and I don't detect any elements of 4e that enable PC control that other editions lacked.

I've only once felt like I wasn't play my character...but that was because the DM wanted to have puppets to play out his story rather than players to participate in a shared experience.

Every edition of D&D has had the basic rule: When a player says their character does something, that happens.

Within reason of course.

So it sounds like perhaps this is about agency, then: the players' ability to dictate what is "believable" and not. 4e certainly has more explicitly character-facing abilities for players to dictate the way the world works (poster child: Come and Get It, but also the way Skill Challenges were open-ended). But this is a weakness of the game, too, because for some playstyles that obliterates engagement.

Which brings us back to the point I made above: 4e's big weakness IMO was that it was monolithic. It assumed everyone wanted to direct the game and define the world and play the metagame. If it would have been more flexible in this, it might not have been the shortest edition in D&D history, and it seems the designers, in making 5e explicitly adaptable, may have realized this.

...and quite possibly it could be just about table communication, instead, with the DM setting clear expectations and the players making clear their actions, but I don't think that would be quite so extreme in most cases as to have the rules assuage fears of getting screwed or not agreeing on style.

I admit that this style of play is to my liking...so I'm rather curious what a game looks like wherein players don't engage the world, don't direct their actions and define the world? I just can't seem to picture it because it seems more like reading a book than playing a game.

 

[Neonchameleon]

The 4e "The Game will remain The Same" depends which of the barely compatable games under the heading of D&D you were playing. 4e would if anything only be an improvement for people who where running the Dragonlance Saga (or just about any other Adventure Path). On the other hand it's frightful for Keep on the Borderlands which is more or less what oD&D was pitched to and D&D has been drifting away from ever since.

Which brings us back to the point I made above: 4e's big weakness IMO was that it was monolithic. It assumed everyone wanted to direct the game and define the world and play the metagame. If it would have been more flexible in this, it might not have been the shortest edition in D&D history, and it seems the designers, in making 5e explicitly adaptable, may have realized this.

4e is the longest lived edition WotC have brought out. 3.0 lasted two and a half years and 4e has outlasted 3.5 although only just. If you count a fundamental reboot that significantly changed at least four of the core classes and a lot of spells and skills as the same edition, you need to count 1e and 2e as the same edition - they probably changed less between those two.

 

[gyor]

Another off-putting aspect for many had nothing to do with mechanics or rules, but presentation and "fluff" that veered away from the classic Greyhawk/Forgotten Realms D&D that long-timers identified with. For some, dragonborn, eladrin and shardminds should not have been brought into being at all, for others they should have been more marginalized as variant options. I'm guessing that the latter is what will end up happening in 5E - they'll be around, but the core game will be more traditional.Or maybe that's just wishful thinking?

I agree except it wasn't Shardminds or Dragonborn, which I think were annoyance at worst for some, not me. That think it was that they dumped out so much of D&D legacy, I mean they litterly nuked with the Spellplague FR for example. Then also turned ideas like Archons and Elderin into different creatures, reworked the entire cosmology, and so on. Some of the changes were cool, but they were careless and in essence broke over peoples toys as it were. What they created was awesome in many cases, but they needlessly destroyed stuff people liked in the process, which again was careless and insensitive. Hopefully 5e will avoid that mistake via modularity and reasonable compromises between factions. If Northern Ireland can achieve peace I think D&D can too

 

[I'm A Banana]

I admit that this style of play is to my liking...so I'm rather curious what a game looks like wherein players don't engage the world, don't direct their actions and define the world? I just can't seem to picture it because it seems more like reading a book than playing a game.

I tried to get at that idea here, by contrasting metaphor with definition and acting with directing and referencing the right-brain-dominant processes of immediate reactions with left-brain-dominant processes of contextualization and analysis.

I wouldn't call it a lack of engagement with the world, but it's certainly accurate to say that the players don't really define the world when the players are in an "actor" mindset. It's not passive -- the player is constantly thinking as if they are the character they are playing, and making decisions and actions based on being that character. That is the action that moves the game forward. However, their sphere of control stops at their character. It's similar to an improv routine: I do not define what my other performers do, or the context of the story I'm in, I simply take action. Similarly, the DM's control stops there, too: the DM does not control the character. The world is not so much there for the player to define as there for the character to interact with in pursuit of that character's goals, so the character engages the world at the player's direction rather than having the player directly define the world.

You can see this in some pronoun ambiguity: using "I" for "my character," or "you," for "your character." You can see it in the central question used to keep the game moving: "What do you do next?" The game in this light is constantly asking the player (and the DM) to make an in-character decision about their characters' next actions.

From this activity, we get emergent phenomenon: out of dice rolls and in-character choices comes the gameplay, and context gets applied to what happened. You don't use the rules to model anything, but rather you determine what kind of results happen by what the rules cause.

4e is the longest lived edition WotC have brought out.

Not according to the commonly accepted meanings of the words. I suppose one may be overly narrow in their definition of "edition," and then somehow exempt post-Essentials 4e on a technicality, but I don't know what one would gain from than other than a disconnect with how the rest of the world talks about edition changes.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Not unless you are overly narrow in your definition of "edition" (and then somehow exempt post-Essentials 4e on a technicality).

Where by "technicality" you mean "The later splatbooks all have crunch that requires the PHB 1 to play and can not be used with just Essentials". Elemental Chaos has a new PHB Warlock Pact, and a new PHB 3 Monk build, and some other stuff that you can't use with just the Essentials books. The Dungeon Survival Handbook has Warlord powers (Warlords never having been part of Essentials) and literally no crunch that was compatable with Essentials but not with the PHB.

Essentials was exactly what WotC claimed it would be. An on-ramp and different take on 4e. But not a new edition or equivalent to 3.5 however much some people would like it to have been. If it was a new edition, it lasted all of six months before they reverted to producing material for 4.0. Or maybe it was exactly what they claimed it would be.