4th edition, The fantastic game that everyone hated.

[I'm A Banana]

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"

Yes. Exactly.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Yes. Exactly.

In short you agree that Essentials had none of the characteristics of a new edition. They didn't pull any material from the previous edition. They didn't stop producing material for the previous edition. They produced material for the new edition and the previous edition in the same books with material that was for Essentials classes and couldn't be used with the PHB classes in the same books as material that was for the PHB classes and couldn't be used with essentials classes. So why are you trying to claim that it was some sort of new edition?

 

[I'm A Banana]

In short you agree that Essentials had none of the characteristics of a new edition....So why are you trying to claim that it was some sort of new edition?

Where we disagree is that you think 3.5 does (and yet Essentials doesn't). That would be the "overly narrow definition" I was was talking about.

I don't think either of them count. I don't think Pathfinder counts as a new edition, either. Given some of the more systemic changes between 1e and 2e, I think 2e probably does, and it certainly does in the way the games are talked about, but I've also got no problem allowing for a world in which it doesn't for some people.

Not that this lovely sidetrip down Define-The-Word-"Edition" Lane isn't fun and all, but I believe there's a main topic we're missing here.

 

[JamesonCourage]

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.

I get this to a large degree. It's even something I went for in my RPG; my people would dislike it for "having a rule for everything", while I quite like how that empowers players, since it allows them to use the rules (and build characters) reliably to achieve the ends they'd like to see as players once play actually begins. This is important to me. I also have NPCs follow the same exact rules (despite the objection to that from some on these boards), so that the players know exactly what to expect out of their enemies, friends, and the world at large, too.

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!

That's a cool goal, and I think -from what I've heard- that 4e does well on this, for the most part. From what I've seen on these boards, at least, I think it might fail when it comes to skills (and skill challenges, to a much, much lesser degree). Skills in 4e, on these boards, seem to be portrayed as rather open-ended, and to my knowledge, there isn't much there to really give players solid rules. They have some guidelines, but page 42 seems to be explicitly GM-controlled in setting the DC, some people use it auto-scaling with level, while others use it more "objectively", there aren't many skill uses listed, etc.

This is a big thing, for me, since skills in my game are used more often than combat rolls (though, admittedly, a lot of that has to do with play style). I went to great lengths to flesh out my skills, and give players ways to build on them (feats, rerolls, decreasing action times, negating penalties or DC increases, etc.). Is your experience with 4e skills different from what I seem to think it is? A lot of the anecdotes I've seen on these boards seem like it's a light game of "mother may I" (as the term is used here), in that players say what they're doing, but the GM decides how hard that is (setting a DC that hopefully remains somewhat consistent), or if that's even possible (ruling out skills in a skill challenge, the "objective" DC being too high for the PC to even make, etc.). Just curious on your thoughts on 4e and skills; I'm not trying to attack it, but since I haven't played, and I agree with you on 4e and combat "control over one's character", I'm curious what your thoughts are on it. Thanks. As always, play what you like

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.

Well, your phrasing of the question only kind of touches on what I read out of KM's post (though he answered you, so perhaps I'm off-base, here). I don't think he was saying that, in those games, PCs don't "engage the world" or "direct their actions" in the world. I think it's more along the lines of "directing" in the Hollywood sense (which is probably most meta-game powers). Though you do mention "define the world", and my players don't do that. They make characters that fit my setting, though oftentimes I work with their ideas for characters, which makes me add to my setting. But, if the idea just will not work within the setting, I say "no", and they don't play it.

For example, if they said "I want to be a noble", I'd say "cool, put your Respect 1 into Nobility, and the more Status you get at character creation, the more you're liked, the stronger family you can be from, the more strings you can pull, and the like." We're good so far.

If they said "I'm Respect 2 Nobility, and I want to be from the Terane family," I'd likely say "the Terane family requires Respect 4 Nobility, which is the beginning of the 'Major Nobility' Respect level." So, my answer would likely be "no, you need Respect 4 to be a Terane; here are other families you can be from at Respect 2."

If they said "I'm Respect 4 Nobility, and I want to be from the Terane family," I'd be fine with it (as long as they used resources at creation to get up to Respect 4). If they went on to say "also, I'm going to be an orc" then I'd say "no, the Terane family are all humans, so you'd likely need to be one of those." If they said "likely?" I'd probably go on to say that I'd allow a half-orc with a plausible reason (even though I'd never intended to do that before). And if they wanted to do that, then I'd allow it.

It's about them fitting into the context of the setting that I come up with. I'll allow changes, based on their creations (I've added organizations when they've said they wanted to be part of one; I've added sects of supernatural people in low-magic settings, when they've wanted to come from them; I've added races, when they asked to be a particularly inspired and original race that they came up with). But, it has to fit my setting.

The players definitely get to engage the world, and direct their actions within it. They act, or react, and the world spins on. They don't, however, define the world. They work themselves in; they experience it; they engage it. My players need to worry about being a part of the world, and playing their characters, not creating pieces of the setting. That's my job. And yeah, I'll definitely work with players on it if they have a concept in mind. But I'll define the world that they play in.

I get that other people play differently, and that's cool. If you do, awesome. I've asked for stuff from players before, on the setting, too. In the past, I've done everything from "everyone gives me one fact about the setting, before I make it" to "what type of fantasy genre are you guys interested in playing?" Other times, it's "this is the setting; let me help you fit in." It just depends.

Does that give you an idea of what that type of game would look like? It means that when you make a character, you incorporate it into a setting, not make a character and dictate the setting around it (this can go for in-game actions, too). And, again, it's fine if you want to play differently (personally, I'm a lot more loose with Mutants and Masterminds than my fantasy games). I've got nothing against people playing differently. But that's what a "players don't define the game" looks like, from where I'm sitting. As always, play what you like

 

[Sunseeker]

I get this to a large degree. It's even something I went for in my RPG; my people would dislike it for "having a rule for everything", while I quite like how that empowers players, since it allows them to use the rules (and build characters) reliably to achieve the ends they'd like to see as players once play actually begins. This is important to me. I also have NPCs follow the same exact rules (despite the objection to that from some on these boards), so that the players know exactly what to expect out of their enemies, friends, and the world at large, too.

That's a cool goal, and I think -from what I've heard- that 4e does well on this, for the most part. From what I've seen on these boards, at least, I think it might fail when it comes to skills (and skill challenges, to a much, much lesser degree). Skills in 4e, on these boards, seem to be portrayed as rather open-ended, and to my knowledge, there isn't much there to really give players solid rules. They have some guidelines, but page 42 seems to be explicitly GM-controlled in setting the DC, some people use it auto-scaling with level, while others use it more "objectively", there aren't many skill uses listed, etc.

This is a big thing, for me, since skills in my game are used more often than combat rolls (though, admittedly, a lot of that has to do with play style). I went to great lengths to flesh out my skills, and give players ways to build on them (feats, rerolls, decreasing action times, negating penalties or DC increases, etc.). Is your experience with 4e skills different from what I seem to think it is? A lot of the anecdotes I've seen on these boards seem like it's a light game of "mother may I" (as the term is used here), in that players say what they're doing, but the GM decides how hard that is (setting a DC that hopefully remains somewhat consistent), or if that's even possible (ruling out skills in a skill challenge, the "objective" DC being too high for the PC to even make, etc.). Just curious on your thoughts on 4e and skills; I'm not trying to attack it, but since I haven't played, and I agree with you on 4e and combat "control over one's character", I'm curious what your thoughts are on it. Thanks. As always, play what you like


Well, your phrasing of the question only kind of touches on what I read out of KM's post (though he answered you, so perhaps I'm off-base, here). I don't think he was saying that, in those games, PCs don't "engage the world" or "direct their actions" in the world. I think it's more along the lines of "directing" in the Hollywood sense (which is probably most meta-game powers). Though you do mention "define the world", and my players don't do that. They make characters that fit my setting, though oftentimes I work with their ideas for characters, which makes me add to my setting. But, if the idea just will not work within the setting, I say "no", and they don't play it.

For example, if they said "I want to be a noble", I'd say "cool, put your Respect 1 into Nobility, and the more Status you get at character creation, the more you're liked, the stronger family you can be from, the more strings you can pull, and the like." We're good so far.

If they said "I'm Respect 2 Nobility, and I want to be from the Terane family," I'd likely say "the Terane family requires Respect 4 Nobility, which is the beginning of the 'Major Nobility' Respect level." So, my answer would likely be "no, you need Respect 4 to be a Terane; here are other families you can be from at Respect 2."

If they said "I'm Respect 4 Nobility, and I want to be from the Terane family," I'd be fine with it (as long as they used resources at creation to get up to Respect 4). If they went on to say "also, I'm going to be an orc" then I'd say "no, the Terane family are all humans, so you'd likely need to be one of those." If they said "likely?" I'd probably go on to say that I'd allow a half-orc with a plausible reason (even though I'd never intended to do that before). And if they wanted to do that, then I'd allow it.

It's about them fitting into the context of the setting that I come up with. I'll allow changes, based on their creations (I've added organizations when they've said they wanted to be part of one; I've added sects of supernatural people in low-magic settings, when they've wanted to come from them; I've added races, when they asked to be a particularly inspired and original race that they came up with). But, it has to fit my setting.

The players definitely get to engage the world, and direct their actions within it. They act, or react, and the world spins on. They don't, however, define the world. They work themselves in; they experience it; they engage it. My players need to worry about being a part of the world, and playing their characters, not creating pieces of the setting. That's my job. And yeah, I'll definitely work with players on it if they have a concept in mind. But I'll define the world that they play in.

I get that other people play differently, and that's cool. If you do, awesome. I've asked for stuff from players before, on the setting, too. In the past, I've done everything from "everyone gives me one fact about the setting, before I make it" to "what type of fantasy genre are you guys interested in playing?" Other times, it's "this is the setting; let me help you fit in." It just depends.

Does that give you an idea of what that type of game would look like? It means that when you make a character, you incorporate it into a setting, not make a character and dictate the setting around it (this can go for in-game actions, too). And, again, it's fine if you want to play differently (personally, I'm a lot more loose with Mutants and Masterminds than my fantasy games). I've got nothing against people playing differently. But that's what a "players don't define the game" looks like, from where I'm sitting. As always, play what you like

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.

Then I was misunderstanding your original statement, as this is how I play. But I'm not sure that 4e encourages players to define the world in the way you initially indicated, creating a sort of cooperatively-run campaign. While I feel that getting player input on your setting can be beneficial in regards to seeing if they're interested in it, I generally don't favor allowing players to actually decide what the setting is going to be like, and I don't see that being advocated in 4e rules. Certainly there is always wiggle room for the desires of players and the things that want to do that may not fit perfectly, but I don't see outright instruction to allow players to dictate terms.

 

[JamesonCourage]

Then I was misunderstanding your original statement, as this is how I play. But I'm not sure that 4e encourages players to define the world in the way you initially indicated, creating a sort of cooperatively-run campaign. While I feel that getting player input on your setting can be beneficial in regards to seeing if they're interested in it, I generally don't favor allowing players to actually decide what the setting is going to be like, and I don't see that being advocated in 4e rules. Certainly there is always wiggle room for the desires of players and the things that want to do that may not fit perfectly, but I don't see outright instruction to allow players to dictate terms.

I think I largely agree with you, especially as it concerns cooperatively defining the setting. I don't think 4e has anything in the game that really requires that, or even particularly encourages it (though it definitely allows for it).

I think, really, it comes down to a micro-focus, rather than a macro-focus. I hate to bring it up*, but I think it's basically "meta powers" (like Come And Get It), and this being a "director" type decision ("and now these guys move to me"). Obviously, Come And Get It is controversial in that people will dispute that description of it, but we've had those talks, and I don't really feel like derailing this thread (so people can debate that point if they want to, but I won't reply to it in this thread).

*I'm not familiar enough with 4e to go out and name powers that work in the same way, so I'm using Come And Get It, since it's highly recognizable.

At any rate, I was just responding to you about your reply to KM. I think I agree with you, in that I don't see how 4e particularly encourages cooperative world-building (not that I think it gets in the way there, either). As always, play what you like

 

[S'mon]

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 haven't used any Forge terminology. Certainly not in that post you quoted. I haven't read all that much Forge articles (a few back in ca 2003-4) and I have trouble understanding some of the terms Pemerton uses, especially 'Vanilla'. (I think I understand that when Pemerton says 'High Concept Sim' it is a horrible Forgeist term that actually means Dramatic play emulating a story genre, as opposed to World-Simulation).
OT: I do use the terms in the rec,games.roleplay 'Threefold model' that Edwards adapted/mangled with his GNS, but also popularised:

Gamist - game design directed to players facing/overcoming real challenges.
Simulationist - game design directed to emulating an environment, for RPGs often to foster immersion.
Dramatist - game design directed to creating an engaging/dramatic story. Includes Forgeist Narrativism.

4e encourages Protagonism by a lot of different devices - variable resources you can call on depending on how important you think the outcome is, various mechanisms protecting your PC from being taken out of play too quickly or too long, lots of elements telling you you're unusually important and backing it up with mechanics (culminating in Epic Destinies).

In 3e I remember players facing the ultimate BBEG* after a year of play, he casts Finger of Death on the Cleric. Save or Die, basically in narrative terms a big "F you - you thought you were the Hero? Roll 12+ or it turns out you're just a redshirt!" The player was genuinely upset - especially when he saved, then the BBEG did it again! (He saved again, they killed the BBEG and saved the world). My 4e BBEGs sometimes kill PCs too, but it's never as arbitrary as save-or-die, the game has inbuilt pacing mechanisms so there's a dramatic escalation.

Edit: While 4e doesn't force the GM to let the PCs be the Big Damn Heroes, there is a default career progression via the level system from fighting kobolds to killing gods, God of War style -but structured so that fighting/killing Lolth should never be like a high level 1e trawl through Deities & Demigods, it should always be a big dramatic movie-style climax.
Whil White Wolf and other '90s games may have some of the player-side elements I list above, their GM-side stuff is geared to de-Protagonise the PCs: Metaplot. Unkillable NPCs. Linear stories. Advice to use GM force to shuttle PCs down the rails and squelch any attempt to get off the tracks. 4e still has a few wisps of railroading in some of the GM advice, but nothing like the '90s. It mostly comes down to 'if you're running linear adventure try to get them back on track - but sometimes you just need to let it go'.

*The Master, from X5 Master of the Desert Nomads.

 

[S'mon]

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".

Yes. 4e does this, and in doing so it collapses the player/PC divide. I make the decisions in-character and OOC. When the chips are down I spend the inner resources (Dailies, APs etc), and I get the results. To stop this happening, to deprotagonise me, the 4e GM has to actively break the rules - "No, you can't spend an Action Point on a charge/No you can only use At-Wills here/No, the stone is immune to damage from your Barbarian's Massive Hammer Encounter Power".
Use the rules, and I get to feel like the Big Damn Hero just by playing the game the way the rules say to. I am not dependent on the kindly GM helping me out, cutting me slack, the way a Moldvay Basic GM would need to if he wanted my Fighter-3 to survive meeting that 10 hd red dragon. Perhaps more interestingly, I don't even need to Step On Up (Gamism) and manipulate the environment outside-the-rules-box to win - "Combat as War" - which is how I survive and thrive playing Moldvay/Labyrinth Lord, often to the derision of my peers with their short-lived 'charge the orcs' PCs.
I love the Gamist challenge of surviving and winning in Moldvay/Labyrinth Lord as a low level PC. I also quite like being a high level AD&D PC and killing gods with ease. But I also love playing 4e and being the Rambo/McClane Action Movie dude, doing stuff in a tough situation that would get me killed IRL and somehow pulling it off because I'm Just That Good.

 

[S'mon]

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.

I definitely think 4e D&D is a "Does One Thing Really Well" game - as I think it was Bill Slavicsek said about 1st edition (1984) Paranoia in his design notes. Slavicsek contrasted Paranoia with AD&D as the example of a broader game that could be adapted to do lots of different things, only not so well (in his opinion).
I'm with Slavicsek, so I think I disagree with Neonchameleon when he called pre-3e D&D narrow. I find pre-3e D&D's kludgy-but robust 'AK47 rifle' design really easy to mess with and get what I want. 3e D&D is more like an M16 or SA80/L85 rifle - precisely designed, tends to fall apart if messed with (certainly our SA80s did when I was in the Territorial Army!) - but you can turn it into something else (a CAR15, another d20 game) if you know what you're doing. 4e is more like a Barratt .50 sniper rifle - it does one thing really really well; it does not take much user skill to do it, but it is not designed to do anything else.

I think the 4e designers either did not realise they were creating a specialised game, or did not understand the implications. And so it was easy to take from the 4e marketing and design a bad message: "Your old play style sucks! Play this way!"
4e is not a broad-based game. It is closer to those games like Call of Cthulu or Feng Shui or Leverage or 1e Paranoia which are well designed towards a specific play experience. I enjoy that experience, but I see it as one game in my repertoire, alongside others I can use for different experiences. For more traditional D&D play I go to other games - recently I've GM'd 1e AD&D, GM'd Pathfinder Beginner Box, played and GM'd Labyrinth Lord. Those all do things that 4e does not do well.
Incidentally, it very much seems that 5e intends to be back in that same tradition of kludgy, broad-based, 'do what you want with our D&D' games that 4e departed from. Which is fine, but I already have lots of games like that which I use and enjoy, so I'm not sure why I'd want yet another.

 

[S'mon]

I think, really, it comes down to a micro-focus, rather than a macro-focus. I hate to bring it up*, but I think it's basically "meta powers" (like Come And Get It), and this being a "director" type decision ("and now these guys move to me").

To me, Come And Get It is me the player saying "My guy is like Neo in The Matrix, doing the beckoning hand gesture. They have to stop what they're doing and come to me..."

This is a power that the protagonist in the movie has, in-world. So it can be used entirely actor-stance. I don't even find it particularly unrealistic - I was once out hiking and found myself dragged unwillingly towards a bunch of bullocks by some inner compulsion (my wife stopped me just in time!), so I have no problem with the idea that a creature might not have full rational control of its motions even without explicit magic. A more process-simulation approach to CAGI would have it be a CHA-based attack vs Will, with penalties vs Artillery & Lurkers etc, and the result would be that it often would not work and my Fighter would suck just like in 3e. With 4e they sought to avoid the "process sim=Your Fighter Sucks" problem by concentrating on results rather than process. I'm very happy with the 'result' of that - that my Fighter is actually cool, and plays like a movie hero. In 4e I can act like Audie Murphy at Holtzwihr and 8 or 9 times out of 10 it'll turn out like it did for Audie, whereas the real Audie Murphy needed almost a freak concurrence of events to survive and succeed. It's also cool needing to use skill and luck to beat the odds like the real Audie did, but for a lot of players that translates as "Your PC died again. Next!" - and that gets pretty dispiriting for the less skilled or less challenge-oriented players. That's one way in which 4e's focused play style arguably has broad potential appeal - a wide range of newbies can play it and get a satisfying (and dramatic) play experience. Their PCs are unlikely to get repeatedly crushed, Moldvay-style. You Are The Hero.