[Forked from the Escapist Magazine Interview Thread] What implications does E...

[DDNFan]

What happened was that you got carried away by your own enthusiasm and messed up with the rules. The rules do not do what you claim them to. That is not a mistake of the adventure designers - the problem is that you messed up with the rules. Everyone does it from time to time.

How patronizing of you. In your world, it appears as though the only reason people didn't enjoy 4th ed adventures was because they were too stupid to understand the rules.

The eladrin in our group played with us for three years, and I helped optimize his character. I was the resident rules expert, and I also regularly destroyed tournament combats, in multiple crunchy systems including 4th ed and Pathfinder. To say that we didn't enjoy the adventure was because we didn't understand the rules is a whole other level of patronizing and frankly rather delusional.

As I wrote a few pages ago, these discussions always end up this way, and that's why I generally avoid 4th ed discussions because no matter what, you're not allowed to dislike it for its own sake, or even dislike something even tangentially related to it, or give a poor review of something its general direction, such as an adventure (which most 4th ed fans admit freely, sucked big time for tons and tons of reasons, mechanical, plot holes, story hooks that made no sense, etc. Come on, everybody knows it), without having the insinuation that you were too mentally incompetent, after several years of playing the game, to understand the rules of how one of our team mate's racial encounter powers works!

The sheer arrogance, you coat it in a polite veneer but beneath all that is a deep seated insecurity. One that reveals itself by the fact that you couldn't resist, even after I said a few posts prior, that all such discussions about adventure design and rules ends up with a 4venger telling everyone who disagrees with them or who didn't like them for whatever reason, was why we quit.

"What happened" is that I predicted your post, and you walked right into it. And into my ignore list.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I would point out that Japanese society DID have outlaws. It had masterless men and bandits who were outside the normal rules, but even they played a sort of role.

There's a distinction to be made between Japanese culture today and Japanese culture throughout history, though. Like anything else, the culture has changed and grown and altered over time. TODAY, in that world of suicides and salarymen and low theft, there aren't any real infamous outlaw-heroes. Back inna day is a different story.

 

[I'm A Banana]

How patronizing of you.

I'm gonna stop you right there. You've got a choice now to engage in the conversation peacefully, without personal attacks, or to continue down this unfortunate road. You can be a productive member of the thread, or you can not. It's a decision only you can make.

 

[Neonchameleon]

How patronizing of you. In your world, it appears as though the only reason people didn't enjoy 4th ed adventures was because they were too stupid to understand the rules.

No. The reason you came up with the specific complaints about world building and Eladrin is because you failed to understand the rules. Because the rules do not work the way you claim they do for worldbuilding.

There are plenty of other reasons to dislike 4E adventures. Too much combat, too railroady, combat takes too long, just don't like the system. All these are valid reasons to dislike the modules.

But you gave a specific reason that lead to this thread.

To say that we didn't enjoy the adventure was because we didn't understand the rules is a whole other level of patronizing and frankly rather delusional.

It is also showing about as much understanding of what happened as you do of 4E worldbuilding. I have said nothing about why you didn't enjoy the adventure. There are plenty of reasons to not enjoy adventures. But your specific criticisms raised are about the world building from Feystep.

As I wrote a few pages ago, these discussions always end up this way, and that's why I generally avoid 4th ed discussions because no matter what, you're not allowed to dislike it for its own sake, or even dislike something even tangentially related to it, such as an adventure, without having the insinuation that you were too mentally incompetent, after several years of playing the game, to understand the rules of how one of our team mate's racial encounter powers works!

No. They turn out this way because you move the goalposts. As you are doing right here.

Your comments about the worldbuilding are pure bunk. As I've shown. You have claimed Eladrin could feystep through vault doors. At which point you don't understand Feystep, vault doors, or both. I don't care which. You either do not understand Feystep or you do not understand vault doors.

You are now trying to shift the goalposts. Literally no one has said you aren't allowed to dislike 4E. No one has said you aren't allowed to like published 4E adventures (there are very few good ones). What is being said is that your specific criticisms of the world building are based on a misunderstanding of the rules. These are two different statements and you are moving the goalposts.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Your comments about the worldbuilding are pure bunk.

Perhaps I was unclear above, but the choice between being a productive member of the thread and not isn't just DDNFan's. This hostility is unnecessary and counter-productive.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

There are plenty of other reasons to dislike 4E adventures. Too much combat, too railroady, combat takes too long, just don't like the system. All these are valid reasons to dislike the modules.

No one has said you aren't allowed to like published 4E adventures (there are very few good ones).

Woah there! While I think WotC had a HARD time (and arguably never entirely did) figure out what made a good 4e adventure there are STILL a rather substantial number of them. I can think of quite a few DDI adventures that were perfectly good and probably not substantially worse or better on the whole than 3.x adventures were.

I can actually name a pretty fair number of modules that are quite well-regarded as well. The initial dozen or so adventures, the HPE series (9 modules) and the 3 setting-specific modules, for Eberron, DS, and FR were all FAIRLY lackluster overall, but even many of them had decent parts. Modules published subsequently to that were almost uniformly of much higher quality. So maybe half the modules were meh, or even blah, the other half were anywhere from not bad to this kicks ass.

Then there were the RPGA adventures, many of which were not bad, though I think some of them suffer from the format of playing RPGA itself. Still if you go grab them and run a couple you'll find they are often pretty decent adventures. The Encounters adventures are pretty basic and vanilla and railroady due to the format, but they had some good parts too, as did some of the other organized play stuff.

Third party stuff includes some pretty good stuff, including such gems as Court of the Shadow Fey, which is a truly excellent adventure (and most of the other Wolfgang Bauer stuff is very good too, though they only did a limited number of 4e titles). Need I even mention 4th Core?

I think 4e does suffer from a conceptual mismatch. People wrote a lot of pretty solid classic-style D&D adventures for it, and 4e really does over-the-top heroic action-adventure stories better than crawls, investigations, explorations, and such things (though its pretty solid at incorporating a dollup of each of these other styles within its action adventure framework). So, I suspect very few adventures REALLY cater directly to the greatest strengths of the system, but they are still mostly pretty good adventures.

I think the H series really were unfortunate. They were pretty dull and established a "4e has bad adventures" trope that never did wear off.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Perhaps I was unclear above, but the choice between being a productive member of the thread and not isn't just DDNFan's. This hostility is unnecessary and counter-productive.

We crossposted there, sorry.

 

[Sadras]

I think 4e does suffer from a conceptual mismatch. People wrote a lot of pretty solid classic-style D&D adventures for it, and 4e really does over-the-top heroic action-adventure stories better than crawls, investigations, explorations, and such things (though its pretty solid at incorporating a dollup of each of these other styles within its action adventure framework). So, I suspect very few adventures REALLY cater directly to the greatest strengths of the system, but they are still mostly pretty good adventures.

This has been my experience.

 

[I'm A Banana]

We crossposted there, sorry.

All is forgive.

A collective of the scholarly sages who hold forth on the appropriateness and taste of any action. Woe betide the eladrin who offends them!

It's interesting in that this concept helps explain the "timeless" nature of the eladrin, and it makes a lot of sense for older, less flexible cultures like the long-lived elves might have.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

All is forgive.



It's interesting in that this concept helps explain the "timeless" nature of the eladrin, and it makes a lot of sense for older, less flexible cultures like the long-lived elves might have.

Yeah, my campaign's interpretation of them is somewhat like this. Their society is vastly complex and every action is fraught with implications and governed by complex traditions, ancient rivalries, curses, etc. Little that is really new happens. The Kernyi Princes that most mortals might encounter are mostly content to live in their ancient cities and pursue their own agendas while the rest of the world is largely ignored by all but a few. A few that more often than not are unwelcome in polite Eldar society! Still, they have ancient institutions of knowledge which are filled with secrets and half-forgotten power. Crossing them when they want something usually doesn't end well.