4th edition, The fantastic game that everyone hated.

[pemerton]

If the scene-framing/character advocacy style of play is what you're interested in, you may prefer a game that is unequivocally designed for it rather than 4e.

What I'm still fuzzy about is why 4e would be a better choice for this than Burning Wheel

In my own case, I'm hoping to run BW once I've finished my 4e campaign.

But there are evident differences between the two games other than mechanical: BW is far grittier and less gonzo than 4e, and I would say (on the whole) more serious in thematic tone.

(On a more technical point, I also think 4e's social skill challenges have one mechanical strength over the Duel of Wits: in a DW it is possible to declare an action and resolve it without specifying what is happening in the fiction - though the rules say not to do this. In a skill challenge, a skill check can't be called for without the player first specifying what his/her PC is doing - without that, it can't be known what skill is required to be tested.)

 

[pemerton]

I think [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION] is explaining the 1e paladin well within the gamist sandbox context and he's kind of getting dogpiled by people stuck in the 4e mindset. The 1e paladin gives you more power in exchange for conduct restrictions. It's a tradeoff. Yes, the object of the game is to kind of weasel your way out of them, or at least skirt them in such a way that they don't hamper your pursuit of power and treasure too much.

Paladins came up in the context of Valiant Strike. What you've said here makes me some sense, but it doesn't seem to be describing mechanics that will engender valiant fighting as the optimal play for a paladin.

Sure, but you have to ignore the alignment rules, which are pretty central to how D&D functions. Again I am not saying a campaign that does so is bad, uninteresting, or problematic. Just that it is a key part of the game as it is written.

You can ignore them, and I have in some campaigns, but they are also keyed to a lot of things in the game itself (particularly in 3E).

Alignment plays quite a different role in B/X, and even in AD&D, compared to in 3E.

For instance, in (Gygax's) AD&D the main function of alignment is to factor into "proper" play of a PC for XP/advancement purposes: alignment is one of the strictures that a "skilled" player must satisfy. There are a few magical effects that are magic sensitive, but they're not that prominent in play (or, at least, need not be).

So from my point of view 3E is something of an outlier here.

But in any event, changing the way alignment works in D&D, ignoring it or stripping it out is nearly as old as the game. I don't think it's all that radical (and you say that you yourself have done it!) My own approach was initially influenced by the article in Dragon 101 called "For King and Country".

 

[Hussar]

No I don't think 4e sufficiently explains and supports this style out of the box, and I think the fact that it doesn't is what the scene-framing thread is all about. This is why S'mon has to pick it up from pemerton's posts. Regardless of whether the game supports whatever style, I think it's kind of jerk-y to try to bump someone out of the discussion or nullify their opinion by saying D&D is not the right game for them to begin with. Unless you're at least partially actually trying to be helpful.

Well, we can go back and forth over what is sufficient or not, but, even without the explicit explanation in the rules, that doesn't change the fact that there is more support for that style of play than ever existed previously.

But, how far can we take what you're saying though? If I want to play a robot jockey, a la Mechwarrior, isn't it fair to say, "Don't play D&D?" Certainly at the extremes, it's a perfectly reasonable thing to say.

Now, replace, "I want to be a robot jockey" with, "I want to play a process sim based game" and that's pretty much how I feel about the comments about 3e. So much of 3e (and even more in earlier editions) runs counter to this goal. Virtually every aspect of play will get in your way if you try to do this. About the only elements which might support this style of play mechanically, are some of the skills. Certainly not all. And certainly not something like Profession skills (which often get cited in these discussions) because Profession skills are about as far from Process Sim as you can get.

Roll the dice and you get this much money for this much time spent. That's ALL profession skills do, out of the box. Granted, it's not a big stretch to drift that, and that's fair. But, out of the box, that is all they do. So, how is the system promoting process sim here?

So, again, no, I don't see the comparison. 4e has several core elements that speak directly to the sort of play Pemerton talks about. The fact that many of these elements are the ones that people complain the loudest about, precisely because they are player advocacy/meta-game mechanics means that it's pretty clear to most people reading the rules that they recognize that these elements exist in the game.

3e has virtually no elements which support Process Sim play. Certainly very few of the baseline core elements do. You have to start monkeying with the mechanics right from character generation onwards in order to achieve even a semblance of Process Sim play. The whole, "I want to play a process sim game, so, I like 3e" is generally in the same category as, "3e is so video gamey" or "4e is so board gamey". A group of poorly thought out and poorly articulated arguments trying to justify why someone doesn't like a particular game. Scratch the surface and most of the argument falls apart.

 

[Fox Lee]

Granted, I can think of a few weapons removed in 3e (clerics lost warhammers, while rogue lost longsword) but I can't for the life of me really come up with mechanical reason why the "master of weapons and armor" can't wear all armor.

He can't use all weapons either, but that's not a good enough reason to give him free proficiency with all Superior weapons.

Ah yeah, Splatbooks. Selling us options we had in the PHB just an edition ago...

And it's not as if they put any new work into the PHB to replace it, those lazy bastards.

The ranger has had different mechanical expressions of the same archetype: A survivalist, man of the wilderness, expert tracker and hunter, and master of the tricks of nature. He's Orion, Jack the Giant Killer, Robin Hood, Aragorn, Drizzt and the Green Arrow. Its a calling; a duty to serve as guardian of the woodlands. He doesn't worship nature, but he respects it and gains its blessing anyway. Animals are calmed in his presence. He can slip through the woods with great stealth. He is a natural tracker and hunter. He understands his chosen foes and can deliver punishing blows to them. He can command wild beasts to aid him. He can even master simple druidic magic. That is a ranger. Two weapon fighting and archery dovetail nicely with it, but he is FAR MORE than an archer or dual-wielder build to be refluffed into swashbucklers, thieves, and fighters.

Explain to me how Robin Hood is a guardian of the woodlands who commands wild beasts? He's a hero of the the people, not the wilderness; fighting a corrupt system for the sake of the downtrodden, involved with the wilderness only as far as he could hide in it. In all likelihood was constructed as a folk hero for middle-class merchants of the time. If hiding in the trees is all it takes to make you a warrior of nature, hell, I used to have a treehouse too.

And the Green Arrow, seriously? Last I checked he was the mayor of a freaking city, who uses a high-tech compound bow and a series of technological gadgets to match up to superpowered heroes. Duty to protect the wilderness? Slips through the woods? Druidic magic, for crying out loud?

Ironically, what you are describing with these two is "generic bow guy", and they are excellent candidates for the 4e ranger because the critical aspect of both of them is just "archery". Earlier rangers, with their drudic magic and favoured enemies and animal companions? A genuinely terrible match. In particular you would have to houserule the off of 3.5 Ranger to make it fit (oh hey, in 3.x they would both have to be evil since their favoured enemy is human by exclusion! What a perfect match!).

You know, you can mock refluffing all you want, but it seems to me that expected re-fluffing is a damn sight better than expected houseruling.

 

[JamesonCourage]

Roll the dice and you get this much money for this much time spent. That's ALL profession skills do, out of the box.

I'm not sure about 3.0, but 3.5 mentions using Profession for basic stuff; Profession (sailor) can stand on a ship without Balance checks, or tie knots on ships without Use Rope, etc. Not that this is too much of a comment on the "process sim" conversation (which I think is pretty non-productive in nearly every conversation on these boards, since it's not widely understood jargon), but I thought I'd mention it.

(oh hey, in 3.x they would both have to be evil since their favoured enemy is human by exclusion! What a perfect match!).

I think this is also a 3.0 thing; I don't remember this in 3.5, but I could be wrong. I house-ruled a lot. As always, play what you like

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It was a balance issue; you're neglecting the fact that clerics could not use magic swords.

Magic swords were much more common on the magic weapon tables than were any weapons permitted to clerics. Even through to AD&D, you didn't tend to see many non-swords above +2 on the treasure tables. Also, I believe that OD&D's magic swords were all intelligent, though I can't verify that.

Magic swords were generally better than other magic weapons until 3e ( at least in the core rules), which was a disadvantage for clerics.

Its also not strictly true that "all weapons were the same" in OD&D (pre-Greyhawk). The two-handed sword dealt 2d6 damage (IE double that of other weapons). This was a significant loss for especially low-level melee PCs that often lacked shields and magic weapons. There were other things too. A dagger, spear, or hand axe could be thrown, a pole arm could be used to strike from a distance or against a charge (no real explicit rules, but you would consult Chainmail, or else the DM was expected to come up with something if the player tried it). Maces were OK weapons, but not great, even in the early days.

Remember, stats counted for very little, the cleric and the fighter had very similar hit points, etc. The MAIN thing that made the fighter better in combat was better weapons, better armor, and eventually better to-hit. So I have to agree, clerics lacked full weapon access for mechanical reasons. I know that was the opinion prevailing amongst the group I played OD&D with back in the day because we talked about it. Once in a while someone talked the DM into allowing a cleric with spears or whatever. It was always debated if it was changing game balance.

 

[sabrinathecat]

Except for badly written or edited publications, I've enjoyed 4th Ed. The thing that has bothered me most has been the uneven release of materials. We have Dragonborn and Tiefling splatbooks, but nothing for other races. They kept releasing books with new races and classes, but half the time (esp Heroes of Shadow) failed to ever support them with magic items, feats, or other build options (unless you cough up for the DDI subscription, and then a lot of the material is fan submission rather than WotC). They kept throwing out new power sources, and then pretty much abandoning them for yet newer ones rather than supporting/fixing what was already 1/2 donkey'edly done.

And as far as converting characters from one edition to another, WHY? Why would you even try? This is a new game. Make a new character. Make a new story. 4th Ed was such a drastic change (and improvement) over the previous mechanics for balancing classes and evening them out, that trying to port something else that wasn't even designed to fit is like getting upset when the square peg won't fit into the round hole.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Why? 4e works perfectly fine for this sort of scene-framing/character advocacy style of play right out of the box without any need to adjust the game in any meaningful way. The game is built for it. That's been one of the primary criticisms OF the game since day one - that people don't want this sort of thing in D&D.

I do think you're off base in the comparison because other editions of D&D were never fine with process sim based play. The group had to do all sorts of hand waving and overlooking the rules all over the place to get the system to do process sim based play. The basic rules of the game have never supported process sim play out of the box. Hit Points, combat mechanics, economy, the exponential power curve of characters, on and on, the game will fight you every step of the way to try and do process sim play.

That would be the primary difference. People have internalized just how far they've drifted D&D into process sim play by all sorts of means, and then try to turn around and claim that these concepts have always been present. Which is why you get the comments asking why you would ever use D&D for this sort of play. OTOH, 4e works for scene-framing/character advocacy style of play right of the box and isn't shy about letting you know that. Dozens, if not more, meta-game powers, healing mechanics, hit points, combat, skill challenges, etc. Heck, even the whole "Say Yes" push in 4e supports this.

Actually IMHO the greater argument here WRT 4e is that OD&D and its direct spawn largely reference a world that, while clearly unrealistic in all the ways that you mention, still has a basis in some sort of assumption of PC mundanity. In OD&D your character is very definitely just some ordinary human (albeit a relatively tough and hardened customer). The primary mode of play in early D&D was Gygaxian dungeon exploration. The PCs try to survive and acquire treasure in a hostile underground environment which is designed to challenge them. The less explicitly fantastical the PCs are the more easily they can be challenged and the less arbitrary ways they have to circumvent things. Spells, items, etc can be given away by the system as desired to relax the constraints on the PCs but the gist of play continues to always be fragile limited characters being challenged by the environment. This is neither highly simulationist, nor does plot/narrative play a particularly strong role. It would be possible to play this game with some sort of plot coupons, but they would simply be another resource like hit points and rather out of place WRT the goals of the game.

Now, obviously D&D expanded in some sense far beyond that original dungeon crawling sort of model, but in a larger sense it has been stuck there the whole time. Most people play through modules, which are essentially dungeons, without much larger scale plot or campaign arc. Even when there is some of that it isn't overly developed. Something like the Paladin's alignment thing existed within this. The idea of "just RPing a good character" assumes that there's some sort of significant long-term trajectory to the game in which the character's overall personality matters. The D&D paladin's mechanical alignment fit that paradigm well, in each largely disconnected scene of the game the character might have a 'good' or an 'evil' choice. You could largely ignore the wider implications of your paladin being a member of a gang of "murder hobos" or if it was good or bad to murder 'orc babies'. Those things could come up, but you could exactly just hand-wave them. They didn't impact the game balance or goals of dungeon crawl.

Clearly 4e in particular has given short shrift to purely episodic dungeon crawl type play, though 3.x also undermined it to a smaller extent and certainly catered heavily to other things (so did 2e, though by keeping the core rules intact it could go either way trivially). That's what the problem is that people like Bedrockgames seem to have is coming from. YOU are playing a game that involves characterization, heavy plot involvement of the world in the form of story arcs, lots of interaction between the characters at the world at multiple levels, and long term goal-oriented play with, certainly in 4e, the ultimate goal being the evolution and eventually apotheosis of the PCs. The characters are inherently fantastic heroes from the start. The idea isn't so much to challenge them with a hostile environment as it is to play out their journey through the environment and how that journey leads to that apotheosis. Plot coupons and heavily RPed alignment with the players and DM free to work out the consequences of something like 'orc babies' without heavy-handed alignment penalty rules are all clearly good things. You can go on and introduce BW-like rules for goals, scene framing, etc if you want. 4e still straddles the fence some in that respect, and seems to want to exist in a sort of halfway point where you can still run a dungeon crawly episodic game or you can play out something closer to an epic soap opera.

Nobody can win a debate between you. Bedrockgames keeps insisting on his version of D&D that supports his sort of play. He's going to want hard-coded alignment rules and such because very simply alignment and good and evil etc are just more parts of the environmental puzzle to deal with, and PC characterization is simply scene-based, there's not some elaborate personal narrative around the character. If such a narrative evolves it is purely composed of individual incidents and maybe what areas of the sandbox the player decides to have that character dig in. Alignment and code of honor etc are simply rules that create certain challenges and their point is only to make the character behave in a certain way in each scene. Meanwhile you are injecting larger scale story arc based considerations. Your paladin requires rules that let him evolve a moral stance and follow a personal story arc that is under yours and the DM's control. While you will solve puzzles and whatnot through the lens of your character's alignment you want choices, not challenge mechanics.

This is ultimately why things like this thread and the whole giant edition war exist. There are simply fundamentally incompatible visions of what the game is all about.

 

[D'karr]

And as far as converting characters from one edition to another, WHY? Why would you even try? This is a new game. Make a new character. Make a new story.

I think that is too broad a statement. Many people, myself included, have spent long hours creating "world, characters, and monsters". Many don't want to see that work go to waste. I agree that the "simplest" solution is to start anew. I just don't think that is always an option, or a preferred option for many. They want to move their "worlds" forward to the new shiny, and I don't blame them for it.

I think that conversion between editions is always doable. I know that thematically (broad concept) I can convert most any concept from one edition to the next. Not all mechanics will work the same way, so there might be alternate mechanics that are needed or simply ignored.

When 3e came around, I tried the mechanical conversion, using the published conversion guide, for some of my 1e characters. It was horrid. That was because the mechanical conversion was not taking the broad concept into consideration. It was simply trying to move numbers around. To a player, and DM, a character is usually much more than mere numbers.

However, when I simply went for a thematic conversion I was able to do it with a bit of effort. Converting it to 4e was also done on a thematic basis and it worked quite well. Doing it required that I understand the thematics of each class, something I couldn't easily do when the game first came out. It took time for me to understand a lot of the "ramifications" within the game system.

WotC was reticent of providing a mechanical conversion guide from 3.x to 4e, and for good reason IMO. The conversion guide they did for 3.x had been so thoroughly reviled by most that going that route again would have simply added more criticism for very little gain. WotC is always in a position of "damned if you do, damned if you don't." Providing a thematic conversion guide is a damn hard thing to do in a generalized way. So they chose not to provide one at all.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Paladins came up in the context of Valiant Strike. What you've said here makes me some sense, but it doesn't seem to be describing mechanics that will engender valiant fighting as the optimal play for a paladin.


Alignment plays quite a different role in B/X, and even in AD&D, compared to in 3E.

For instance, in (Gygax's) AD&D the main function of alignment is to factor into "proper" play of a PC for XP/advancement purposes: alignment is one of the strictures that a "skilled" player must satisfy. There are a few magical effects that are magic sensitive, but they're not that prominent in play (or, at least, need not be).

So from my point of view 3E is something of an outlier here.

But in any event, changing the way alignment works in D&D, ignoring it or stripping it out is nearly as old as the game. I don't think it's all that radical (and you say that you yourself have done it!) My own approach was initially influenced by the article in Dragon 101 called "For King and Country".

The genesis of alignment in Gygaxian play was really to serve as a simple marker for who was friend or foe. Lawful creatures would potentially ally with the PCs or at least you could deal with them. Chaotic creatures were fundamentally unreliable, they wouldn't honor an agreement and were mostly hostile. Note that elves were chaotic IIRC, the fey were not to be trusted. Dwarves were lawful, they would make a deal and stick to it. Overall though the idea was just that lawful creatures were civilized and chaotic creatures were lawless and thus outside civilization and fair game for looting.

It was only with the introduction of AD&D and 4-way alignment I think that the 'proper play' thing showed up (at least in print). AD&D also introduced advancement rules where the PCs advanced at a rate dictated by the DM's 1-4 point assessment of the PLAYER. This would include their adherence to alignment, etc. Not only did you have to get XP, you had to get treasure to pay for your training and the 1-4 rating was a multiplier on the cost/time to train, so it was a HUGE factor. The theory was that players would be highly motivated to play their alignment because if you got a poor rating from the DM (say a 4) then you had to spend 4 weeks training at 1,500 gp/week level. If the rest of the group got a 1, then you either didn't play for 3 game-weeks or started a new character. Getting a low rating at levels 1-3 was almost as bad as your character dying, you might as well start over.

In practice I never saw the 1e advancement system used as written, most DM's were content to stick with punishing gross alignment transgressions with alignment change and the subsequent loss of a level (perhaps, that was usually ignored too). Frankly IME alignment was a fairly minor consideration. The main place it came up was with followers, who would generally be pretty unhappy with your PC if you started acting some way. Nobody was ever actually sure what behaviors belonged to what alignments, so any associated rules had few teeth. A paladin might release orc babies or he might kill them, but he could argue either way that his actions were 'lawful good' and it wasn't likely a DM that was going to survive long would argue too much with that. We had a LOT of DMs to choose from too...