Pros and Cons of going mainstream

[Manbearcat]

Precisely. Which puts the story to bed on this one. Its pretty self-evident.

Which leaves me wondering how, and why, a conversation is being built around the premise that its more (or at least equal) system issue rather than social contract issue. There is a locus of control issue dangling at the epicenter of this; one of which an investigation of would likely be breaking board rules.

 

[Hussar]

/snip

This is exactly the sort of things I've seen as well. But unlike you I've experienced, on other sites, it being alot more common and ingrained in the 4e community than you seem to think it is.
/snip

Whereas I think it's far, far more ingrained in the community of 4e critics than in actual 4e players. Because it only ever seems to be those who dislike the system who keep trotting these things out. I've not really seen anyone say, "Gee, I really like 4e, but, man, I wish I had more authority as the DM because those 4e rules are just so restrictive of what I want to do."

But, I certainly have seen lots of 4e critics trot that out.

 

[Hussar]

/snip
As far as the encounter, there seems to be absence of the concept of "status quo" as 3e DMG put it. Encounters have to be winnable. Which is paradoxically not diferent from previus editions, just with the clear cut math there is different definition what is called so. Sending a 18 level elite ( such as a lich) vs party of six composed of level 9 PC is not in 4th or 3rd, but acceptable in 2nd (DUN # 75 "Forgotten Man"). Is that the way to go? Matter of personal opinion.

Sigh, why do people insist on comparing apples to oranges?

A party of six 9th level PC's in 2e would obliterate an 18th level lich in about one round. About the only way the lich would survive is if the PC's didn't have +1 or better weapons (extremely unlikely for 9th level PC's). The three fighter types are doing about 30 points of damage each/round and the lich has probably about 50 hit points. Dead lich.

Different systems do not compare. Ever. A lich in 3e would mop the floor with these PC's. In 2e, it's a speed bump.

 

[Hussar]

On expectations of DM-empowerment and the implications on player-entitlement. This is all pretty intuitive to me but apparently its not a logical inference and requires written text to underscore it so some greater cultural movement of over-expectant players doesn't co-opt the table dynamic:



Do we really need rules advice that says "man up and put your foot down when necessary?" That would seem implicit. If an edition with lots of cool stuff player-side didn't have such text actually penned out would that then qualify it as "the edition that ushered in the Player Entitlement Plague"? I cannot imagine buying into that as if I did then I would have to force myself to then extend such reasoning to a whole host of other issues that I find equally implicit; don't do something foolishly perilous or negligent and then assume a 3rd party with little to no locus of control with respect to my action must then assume liability for the ill that befalls me.

But I suppose its moot because its blatantly spelled out in the 2009 DMG2. Bold mine.

Apparently, judging by many, many of the criticisms of 4e? Yes. It's absolutely mind boggling to me, but, apparently, the second we pick up a 4e DMG, we lose all critical facility and become mindless drones, subject to the whims of our royal queen players.

Funny thing is, whenever you discuss issues in any other edition, the standard answer is always, "Well, yes, but, change that rule and the problem goes away" and that's perfectly acceptable. I mean, the current problems with paladins thread states exactly that.

Funny thing is, it's reversed though. There, proponents want the restrictions hard wired in, and then tell the rest of us to just take things out that we don't like. Apparently, adding things in is impossible for a certain segment of gamers. Baffling but true.

 

[S'mon]

I don't know the Mentzer box but Moldvay Basic has the same dragon-slaying heroic stuff that the game can't really deliver...

...Because D&D traditionally has no end-point for combat other than death, it puts especial pressure on the notion of "winnable" encounters. This is also complicated by the absence in 3E and 2nd ed AD&D (as best I know) of evasion rules - whereas these are fairly prominent in classic D&D, and can be handled in 4e as a skill challenge (although you have to wait for DMG 2, I think, to see this expressly flagged).

Moldvay not Mentzer, sorry!

Evasion - I don't know why other groups struggle with this concept. If X is no longer on the battlemat with Y, X and Y are no longer in combat. If Y wants to then pursue X, that is adjudicared by the noncombat rules, such as BX Evasion %, 3e skill checks (DCs set by relative speeds, cover, etc), 4e skill challenges, etc. IMCs NPCs run away all the time, and PCs run away whenever they're losing, which happens at least a few times per campaign.

 

[S'mon]

Whereas I think it's far, far more ingrained in the community of 4e critics than in actual 4e players. Because it only ever seems to be those who dislike the system who keep trotting these things out. I've not really seen anyone say, "Gee, I really like 4e, but, man, I wish I had more authority as the DM because those 4e rules are just so restrictive of what I want to do."

But, I certainly have seen lots of 4e critics trot that out.

Something I haven't seen discussed is that when compared to 0e-3e, 4e encourages a less adversarial mindset between players and GMs. The player and GM advice and the mechanics seem designed to foster trust between the two - trust that both are working together in trying to create a fun game, which in 4e seems primarily about creating an engaging story. It's widely recognised that 4e is less Simulationist than pre-4e, but it's also less Gamist, except within the narrow combat-as-sport confines of the combat encounter system.
The result of this trust is that IME in actual play 4e players don't complain about GMs going 'outside the rules' - because they trust that doing so will create an engaging story, and is not being done in adversarial fashion.
In this sense, 4e feels empowering for both GMs (who can do what they like) and for players, who are trusted to contribute in creating the emerging story. But it also means that 4e is a different and (I think) narrower game than pre-4e D&D; it is not designed for the Gamism-built-on-Simulation style which I think was common to at least 1e through 3e, if not 0e (0e seems more pure Gamism to me, but obviously had the potential to be tweaked in a Simulationist direction). I think it's a legitimate complaint about 4e that it is not good at 'doing D&D', if D&D means the Gamism-on-Simulation style of 1e or 3e. It's also not very tweakable to other styles, eg the way 2e used 1e rules for a more dramatist/story style. I'm wondering if this is a source of the complaints about disempowerment: it's not disempowering if it's run the way it's designed, but it's not designed to run like traditional D&D.

 

[Hussar]

I think it's a legitimate complaint about 4e that it is not good at 'doing D&D', if D&D means the Gamism-on-Simulation style of 1e or 3e. It's also not very tweakable to other styles, eg the way 2e used 1e rules for a more dramatist/story style. I'm wondering if this is a source of the complaints about disempowerment: it's not disempowering if it's run the way it's designed, but it's not designed to run like traditional D&D.

I agree with most of what you said.

Only thing is, I don't think that 2e was very successful using the 1e rules for a more story style. The reason that 2e was, for the longest time, the red-headed stepchild of D&D is because it tried to be a bunch of things for a bunch of different styles but generally failed at all of them. Die-hard 1e fans hated it because it was too poncy and into Thespianism and the story gamers hated it and fled for Vampire and other games of that ilk.

4e, IMO, fails because it is so transparent. It doesn't hold anyone's hands. People suddenly see under the hood and they don't like it. Take the whole, "Encounters must be winnable" line. That's not what 4e says. 4e says that, by and large, most encounters that the PC's face are winnable. Now, you never saw anything like that in the 1e DMG because Gygax didn't have the luxury of 30 years of gaming to look back on and make pronouncements like that. But, the 4e devs did. They looked at the modules and whatnot produced over the decades and made a pretty easy generalization - most encounters that the PC's face are, in fact, winnable.

3e went some way down this road. When you read the CR/EL guidelines, they pretty much say the same thing. It might be fuzzier - but when most encounters, according to the guidelines, are EL=Party level par, then most encounters are winnable fairly easily.

Thing is, 3e monsters vs parties were so tight that it's a very fine line between a cakewalk and dead PC's. The monsters didn't scale very well. AD&D isn't really a problem since monsters in combat, outside of save or die, were individually so weak. 3e, OTOH, was a much different animal. 4e is different again in that it makes the monster math 100% visible to the DM. A level X monster can do Y to Z damage. Raise the level of the monster and the damage scales.

I honestly think what people are really reacting to is the transparency of 4e.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Something I haven't seen discussed is that when compared to 0e-3e, 4e encourages a less adversarial mindset between players and GMs.

Hmmm, I can't say I agree with this...nor can I disagree.

IME, the adversarial relationship between GMs and players varies more because of the individual on the other side of the screen, or sometimes the nature of the campaign, and less with the system. I base this on 30+ years of gaming experience in over 100 systems in 3 states and 5 cities...on both sides of the shield.

But I have only gamed with one guy who runs 4Ed- and he has only run 4Ed in our group- so my sampling size on that side of the analysis is insignificant. I cannot make a valid comparison.

I have to say, though, that in my primary game group, our playstyle didn't change as the campaign was updated from 1Ed to 2Ed, then later to 3Ed & 3.5Ed.

For us, it wasn't transparency that turned @50% of our group irrevocably against 4Ed.

 

[S'mon]

I agree with most of what you said.

Only thing is, I don't think that 2e was very successful using the 1e rules for a more story style. The reason that 2e was, for the longest time, the red-headed stepchild of D&D is because it tried to be a bunch of things for a bunch of different styles but generally failed at all of them. Die-hard 1e fans hated it because it was too poncy and into Thespianism and the story gamers hated it and fled for Vampire and other games of that ilk.

I don't disagree, I never actually owned a 2e DMG anyway so my experience is limited - we basically used 2e PHB & MM as supplements for our 1e campaign, which was never a Story type campaign, it was pretty hardcore Gamist as [MENTION=326]Upper_Krust[/MENTION] could attest.

 

[S'mon]

IME, the adversarial relationship between GMs and players varies more because of the individual on the other side of the screen, or sometimes the nature of the campaign, and less with the system.

In pre-4e editions of D&D, a very common starting experience for new players is that in the first session their new 1st level PC suddenly gets killed, seemingly out of nowhere. IME players immediately react to this by going into adversarial stance. The only way to routinely avoid this is to run very low-threat 'newbie quests' or else fudge to keep PCs alive - neither very satisfying IMO.

Random death is much rarer in 4e, and there is not the 1st level 'fantasy effin Vietnam' experience. While I have had a 1st session TPK in 4e (and several later session near-TPKs), the system pretty much ensures that PC defeat comes at the end of a long, drawn out combat where the PCs go down heroically swinging. These tend to be quite satisfying even for the losers, and PCs rarely die randomly or alone. This in itself I think reduces the adversarial perception on the player side.