D&D 5E New L&L for 22/1/13 D&D Next goals, part 3

[Obryn]

But to each their own! Your play style is valid too, it's not just D&D IMO, it's videogamey.

It's funny, because I too have been playing D&D for around 30 years, and 4e captures the heart and soul of D&D better for me than anything else, post-AD&D 1e. (My other edition of choice.) But I also don't go around telling people that 3e is "not D&D" whether it's "IMO" or not*, because it's rude and dismissive and frankly a bit insulting.

It also tells me we can't have a dialog, because if you are dismissing play styles like that as "Not D&D" rather than "not the D&D I like to play," then the conversation about D&D is over. And frankly, I'm well past sick of it.

-O

* (for the record, it's not my "O" )

 

[Gorgoroth]

Does one who boldly proclaims "Pizza without cheese is NOT pizza!" need a preface of an "in my humble opinion?", how tedious if we all had to state what we write is merely our own opinion each and every time. What I wrote only entails my opinion...as to what the essential nature of my favorite hobby is. No, I don't think 4e captures the essence of D&D, and I'm not alone in that opinion (I dare say it's the majority), nor will I apologize for saying so.

When people say bad things about AD&D (and a lot of it deservedly so), I don't take it personally. That's their opinion, they're entitled to it. In many cases I agree. But the game was still better. I played it for 20 years. I admit many AD&D rules suck - everyone knows they're quite bad in many ways - but on the whole, we ran up against bad rules with less headaches/frustration/vexation and annoying argumentation than the entirety of 2008-2011. Going back to pathfinder was a breath of fresh air, and that system is far from perfect as well.

One of the goals of DDN should be to recapture fun at the table, rather than endless rules debates. Some are of the opinion that 4e sucks worse than others, and vice versa. Why the need to caveat every comment with "in my opinion". At a certain point, it becomes tedious semantics. I write my opinion here...why should I feel bad about it? I don't. And neither should you, Obryn

 

[Obryn]

Does one who boldly proclaims "Pizza without cheese is NOT pizza!" need a preface of an "in my humble opinion?", how tedious if we all had to state what we write is merely our own opinion each and every time. What I wrote only entails my opinion...as to what the essential nature of my favorite hobby is. No, I don't think 4e captures the essence of D&D, and I'm not alone in that opinion (I dare say it's the majority), nor will I apologize for saying so.

When people say bad things about AD&D (and a lot of it deservedly so), I don't take it personally. That's their opinion, they're entitled to it. In many cases I agree. But the game was still better. I played it for 20 years. I admit many AD&D rules suck - everyone knows they're quite bad in many ways - but on the whole, we ran up against bad rules with less headaches/frustration/vexation and annoying argumentation than the entirety of 2008-2011. Going back to pathfinder was a breath of fresh air, and that system is far from perfect as well.

One of the goals of DDN should be to recapture fun at the table, rather than endless rules debates. Some are of the opinion that 4e sucks worse than others, and vice versa. Why the need to caveat every comment with "in my opinion". At a certain point, it becomes tedious semantics. I write my opinion here...why should I feel bad about it? I don't. And neither should you, Obryn

I don't take it personally - you're just a dude on the internet. I just have better things to do with my time than try and converse about D&D with someone who's insisting I'm not actually playing D&D. There is, at that point, no common ground for a conversation about D&D.

As I've said, I don't try and waste my time by kicking games I don't care for out of the "D&D club" in a useless display of tribalism. For example - Pathfinder doesn't even have D&D on the cover; it's not called D&D and it's not made by the company who owns D&D. Is it a kind of D&D? Well, most of the people playing it think it is, and that's sufficient for me. Is it a kind of D&D I care for? Not really - but that's not relevant to the classification, and I don't go around correcting people when they say it's their favorite kind of D&D.

And that's pretty much as productive as this conversation with you can get, so I'm exiting it.

-O

 

[am181d]

Does one who boldly proclaims "Pizza without cheese is NOT pizza!" need a preface of an "in my humble opinion?"

There is no situation in which "boldly proclaiming" that X is not Y is not snobbish/obnoxious. Putting an "in my humble opinion" in front of it doesn't make it any better.

 

[Iosue]

As an old B/X, BECMI player who missed out on 3e and thus has no lingering war wounds about it, I have often found myself of late arguing against my fellow fans of 4e, pointing out where I think 4e is deficient and could be improved, and extolling the virtues of older editions as legitimate virtues, not accidental by-products of immature or haphazard design.

But Gorgoroth's arguments are unconvincing in the extreme, and there is virtually nothing I can get behind. They read like a parody of edition war rhetoric. 4e is "not D&D". And this is the majority view. 4e doesn't let you be creative because powers are set in stone. 4e doesn't let you be creative because skills are not set in stone. You say, "We didn't do X, Y, Z because the game didn't let us." People say, "WTF? X,Y, and Z are explicitly mentioned, allowed and encouraged on pages E, D, and F!" "Be that as it may, our DMs didn't do that, and that's the game's fault."

When 4e folks complain of bad experiences with DMs overruling their cool idea/character concept, or with vicious character imbalance, or with the 15-minute adventuring day, the are invariably told, "That's not the game's fault. That was a bad DM." And that's not entirely untrue. But the pendalum swings both ways. Yes, 4e made some changes to the game. The 4e DMG also provided PLENTY OF ADVICE and how to work with those changes to create the play experience people enjoyed. In over 25 years of gaming and dozens and dozens of game systems, the 4e DMG was best I've ever seen (about equal with Moldvay's DM advice, which gets points for succinctly hitting all the high-points of DMing a rules light game). If your DMs blew off the DMG because they figured "I already know how to DM," and then the game didn't work for them that's not the fault of the game. You had some mistaken/misguided, in a word, bad DMs.

What got me into 4e in the first place was AICN's Massawyrm's review, wherein he wrote about a player diving under a table a goblin was standing on, and kicking it out from under him. Massawyrm thought about it for a moment and then said, "Athletics check vs Reflex". A simple, elegant ruling making use of a solid rule structure that encouraged and rewarded creativity. And nothing that was the result of a special, highly-skilled DM. That's 4e. I said, I have to get me some of that. If you didn't get that from 4e, you were playing it wrong. And not "wrong" in a "not optimized" meaning, or "not using Forge concepts and reskinning to turn abstract mechanics into a fully realized genre", but wrong as in not using the basic tools the game gave you. As wrong as someone playing Basic D&D, charging into 15 goblins, saying "I attack," "I attack" over and over again, and then when they are killed in short order, saying, "This game is stupid. It's not role-playing. You can't do anything and you're character gets killed too easy."

 

[Obryn]

As an old B/X, BECMI player who missed out on 3e and thus has no lingering war wounds about it, I have often found myself of late arguing against my fellow fans of 4e, pointing out where I think 4e is deficient and could be improved, and extolling the virtues of older editions as legitimate virtues, not accidental by-products of immature or haphazard design.

When I ran it a few years back for the first time in over a decade, I was incredibly impressed with how well 1e held up to scrutiny. And RC is a really damn fine edition that was probably kinder to Fighters than any edition other than 4e. I likewise think oldschool D&D got a lot of stuff right. Not everything (no edition has), but it's a legitimately good series of games in its own right with legitimately clever design. For example, XP for gp is one of my all-time favorite "gamist" RPG reward systems.

It's weird - folks somehow expect that I, a fan of 4e, hate what's gone before. Nothing could be further from the truth. I played 'em all - and lots of other games, to boot - over my 38 years.

-O

 

[pemerton]

Fair enough, but I wonder if limiting spells/powers to in-combat (which, let's face it, the level 16 4e wizard fly spell pretty much is)

Why wouldn't a wizard use 5 minutes of flight to (say) fly up a cliff to explore a cave?

In my game the PCs have never had 16th level fly, but 10th level daily Arcane Gate has seen both combat and non-combat use.

Also, you seem to be ignoring the ritual rules: when you want to travel long distances you don't use fly spells, you use Phantom Steeds!

I find this example very instructive of the differences in play style, and what people are looking for when they play D&D. Why? Because this example of play: I hate it.

<snip>

I hate the strategic, spell loadout, "let's look up the weight limits of our stuff!", everyone is referencing books to find new spells to use, style of play.

I've GMed quite a bit of this style (in Rolemaster rather than D&D) because RM lends itself to it. It can be combined with "story now(-ish)" play, but the "nows" can be interrupted by extensive periods of the stuff you hate! (Rolemaster has a "stored spell" mechanic, which precludes you from casting other spells until you cast your stored spell, and I have particularly strong memories of the group trying to load up a party of PCs with as many nested stored spells as possible, so that the casters would have the right bypasses to get their other necessary spells off, and the sequence in which the party's nested spells would "de-nest" would be the right one to accomplish the mission. It becomes worse when some of those nested stored spells have to be recasting of Store Spell plus some spell to be stored, so that the whole sequence will work out!)

I don't mind the intellectual exercise element of it (I also don't mind crosswords), but I feel I don't really have the time for it in my gaming any more.

 

[pemerton]

the 4e DMG was best I've ever seen (about equal with Moldvay's DM advice, which gets points for succinctly hitting all the high-points of DMing a rules light game).

I really like Moldvay's GM advice, and I'm glad you've called it out. Page-for-page I think it's better than the 4e DMG.

What I found, though, was I could never quite seem to get Moldvay's advice to fit his mechanics, precisely because of this:

charging into 15 goblins, saying "I attack," "I attack" over and over again, and then when they are killed in short order

In other words, Moldvay's D&D, and his discussion of scenario design, made me want to run a non-classic-dungeoncrawl game - but it took the original Oriental Adventures to actually give me the material to really do that for the first time.

Your play style is valid too, it's not just D&D IMO, it's videogamey.

<snip>

I don't find playing immortal characters in a role playing game or in a videogame very challenging or rewarding. There is no death to defy, and thus no glory.

I'm not sure you've really grasped what [MENTION=205]TwoSix[/MENTION] wants out of RPGs. There was nothing in there about videogames, or that struck me as "videogamey".

I mean, looking at the list:

Use my powers.

Interact with interesting NPCs.

Fight, not as a last resort, but because there are bad guys that need whupping, and I'm the biggest ass-whupper around.

Avoid caution, because my character can handle almost anything I throw at him short of pure suicide.

Travel the planes, not because I got the right spell, but because the party managed to complete the ritual at the altar of the fallen temple that opened a passageway to Hell.​

Where's the videogame? What I see there first and foremost is immediacy - in the situation that the GM is describing things are happening to my PC now. There's no time to faff around with encumbrance, or planning spell books - I have to act, and because the NPCs are interesting, and because a passageway to Hell has just opened, and because I'm the biggest ass-whupper around, when I act it will matter. Stuff will happen.

At least for me, the emotional experience of playing a spell-stocktake game is something like the emotional experience of doing a crossword, or winning at Connect-4. It's puzzle-solving. I think TwoSix is looking for a more visceral experience, one that is closer, in play, to reading REH's Conan (minus the virulent racism, I guess) or to watching John Boorman's Excalibur. It's about players and GM collaborating to create a drama rather than a spreadsheet.

As for death or glory - even in my rather staid academic life I feel I've had moments of glory, though I was never in danger of dying. A game can have high stakes, stupefyingly intense stakes, without having to put the PCs' lives on the line in any mechanical sense.

 

[D'karr]

When I ran it a few years back for the first time in over a decade, I was incredibly impressed with how well 1e held up to scrutiny. And RC is a really damn fine edition that was probably kinder to Fighters than any edition other than 4e. I likewise think oldschool D&D got a lot of stuff right. Not everything (no edition has), but it's a legitimately good series of games in its own right with legitimately clever design. For example, XP for gp is one of my all-time favorite "gamist" RPG reward systems.

I think Moldvay Basic, my second favorite, and 1e, my third favorite were great games in their own because of their unapologetic "gamist" elements. I got used to ad-hoc game rulings exactly because Moldvay gave the DM just a hint of something, and left so much open. 1e gave the DM, so much, but everything was pretty much considered optional. Use what you want, and forget the rest, or make it up as you go. I absolutely loved the freedom of those systems. On the other hand having to make so many ad-hoc rulings was in a sense "exhausting." Specially because I was making it up as I went.

I really like the framework that 4e provides. You can still make all these ad-hoc rulings, but you can ground them in a common, solid, framework - that works incredibly well with very little effort.

It's weird - folks somehow expect that I, a fan of 4e, hate what's gone before. Nothing could be further from the truth. I played 'em all - and lots of other games, to boot - over my 38 years.

-O

Same here, played them all, and have loved things from all. Some more than others, but D&D has been a very solid "friend" over the years. I hope that 5e gives me as much fun as the ones that have gone before.

 

[D'karr]

I really like Moldvay's GM advice, and I'm glad you've called it out. Page-for-page I think it's better than the 4e DMG.

Yes, Moldvay is awesome.

What I found, though, was I could never quite seem to get Moldvay's advice to fit his mechanics

Yes, the promise of Moldvay was never really provided by the on the page mechanics.

Where's the videogame? What I see there first and foremost is immediacy - in the situation that the GM is describing things are happening to my PC now. There's no time to faff around with encumbrance, or planning spell books - I have to act, and because the NPCs are interesting, and because a passageway to Hell has just opened, and because I'm the biggest ass-whupper around, when I act it will matter. Stuff will happen.

What I really like about 4e, and I hope 5e makes a point of providing, is the immediacy of the character I want to play, NOW! Not 3, 6, or 20 levels from now. 4e was the first that actually did that for me. The scene described on the preface of Moldvay, was finally actually playable with 4e. The mechanics and the "story" could meld. I hope 5e really retains that.