D&D 4E Is there a "Cliffs Notes" summary of the entire 4E experience?

[Alzrius]

In short your problem isn't that you aren't restricted - it's that you're not restricted enough

Not particularly - though I suppose you could impose that indictment if you wanted fatigue to be an omnipresent system with regards to any combat action.

There is no way in which hit points model reality. Unless we're in action movie physics and cosmetic damage land.

That's exactly what we're talking about, with regards to fatigue and injury-debilitation.

1E lent strongly one way. 4e lent the same way. 2E, 3.0, and 3.5 weren't specific and have hit points as a complete mess. Accept it and move on.

1E did not lean strongly in any particular direction, every edition prior to 4E lent in the direction of hit point loss as physical damage, which was intuitive. I have accepted that; why can't you?

I repeat, try and CAGI in 2E.

I repeat, the GM would laugh at the player who attempted that, and be right to do so.

I can do more in Fate than with non-magical characters in AD&D.

You have the same degree of character agency, though you may have greater player agency.

That's because it's no simulation of injury at all. It's trying to simulate Eroll Flynn style swashbuckling.

It's not trying to simulate the effects of injury.

So your problem is that AEDU isn't restrictive enough. That's the opposite issue to what you were claiming.

That's because you've misstated my problem with AEDU - if you want to claim that it works because you fatigue, then you need to abide by how lopsided that explanation is, since you aren't applying that restriction elsewhere. In other words, you're the one who doesn't find it restrictive enough.

 

[Alzrius]

I think we remember that article very differently: Gary starts with the list of game play requirement and tries on a few different ideas before saying (despite quotes, I'm paraphrasing) "Hey, wait, if I use this Vancian Magic thing I can get the mechanics I want with a plausible explanation!" I can excerpt it here if that would help.

You can excerpt if you want, but that doesn't change the underlying logic of the system. What order he invented them in doesn't change the fact that magic by nature is self-explanatory from an in-game standpoint.

You are saying "untrue" but as near as I can tell there is no actual justification for this. All the rules in all the systems, including 1e, 2e, 3e, and 4e are the way they are Because Game. I get that you find the explanation in 4e to be unsatisfying, but I don't see how you can argue that the game mechanics of the various systems are not the game mechanics of the various systems. What am I misunderstanding?

Apparently everything I've said. You seem to be arguing that there's no underlying logic or rationale for anything: everything is "because game." I'm saying that's not the case.

I mean, basically this conversation feels like retread #835,152 of "It's not realistic that that dragon's acid breath would not corrode my armor!"

I'm not sure where that's coming from, since I've already said that there's no particular issue with the debilitating effects of damage not being present.

Magic is self-explanatory from an in-game standpoint, which is inherent to its nature as magic. It has no dissociation.

 

[Alzrius]

I think it's possible to note that a mechanical or genre reason isn't arbitrary from a player standpoint, even if it is arbitrary from a character standpoint. And that we do a lot of things that are arbitrary from a character standpoint and only make sense in a player standpoint -- ESPECIALLY DM's, but players, too, in certain ways.

So I think we can agree that there is a reason for it -- perhaps a dang good reason -- but that this reason has to do with the metagame, not the character experience, and thus breaks the character experience for some portion of the players.

Yeah, wasn't that clear in my previous post? (That's not sarcasm either.)

 

[I'm A Banana]

Yeah, wasn't that clear in my previous post? (That's not sarcasm either.)

Hehe, I just think the use of the word "arbirtary" can imply a judgement -- as in, "it makes no real sense, it's just arbitrary."

There's sense to be made, just by the player, not by the character. And that division isn't a positive or negative judgement either way, it's just that some people would prefer it to be one or the other and might get their experience harmed if it's not.

 

[Neonchameleon]

This is a product of your own mind, and nothing more. While external factors are by their very nature associated, the idea that somehow fatigue only applies when performing special moves is so lopsided as to be on-its-face discarded for its lack of believability.

The game is about wounds, it's just not about the debilitating effects of wounds. Again with this silliness that "we must perfectly model all aspects of reality!"

And this is where an insistance on associated mechanics is shown to be immersion and genre shattering. What an insistance on associated mechanics as opposed to a good set of disassociated mechanics means is that only the factors you measure have any in game world meaning. The rest are absolutely worthless. You aren't playing in an ordinary fantasy world. You're playing in a world like that of The Order of the Stick or possibly Erfworld.

If you have an outcome-sim where the world appears right, you get an active and alive world and the choices people make being the ones you'd actually expect. Now you might find the Order of the Stick to be more believable than Lord of the Rings. But I for one do not.

It's not that you don't model the debilitating effects of wounds in an associated system that's the problem. It's that because you do not model them they do not exist.

A good disassociated system is a sketch map trying to draw in a lot of factors. It's an impressionist painting and you're asking why individual brush strokes.

1E did not lean strongly in any particular direction, every edition prior to 4E lent in the direction of hit point loss as physical damage, which was intuitive. I have accepted that; why can't you?

Because it is neither true nor intuitive. Hit points were explicitly invented as genre emulation of swashbuckling films, and 4e is the only version to even try to associate them. Why can't you accept this?

I repeat, the GM would laugh at the player who attempted that, and be right to do so.

So it's something the 4e fighter can do that the 2e one can not attempt.

It's not trying to simulate the effects of injury.

Which means there are no effects of injury. You can do absolutely everything you could do before with no penalties. A quest for pure association produces broken game worlds.

That's because you've misstated my problem with AEDU - if you want to claim that it works because you fatigue, then you need to abide by how lopsided that explanation is, since you aren't applying that restriction elsewhere. In other words, you're the one who doesn't find it restrictive enough.

No. This is because you are assuming that there must be one single factor always and without exception.

I think it's possible to note that a mechanical or genre reason isn't arbitrary from a player standpoint, even if it is arbitrary from a character standpoint. And that we do a lot of things that are arbitrary from a character standpoint and only make sense in a player standpoint -- ESPECIALLY DM's, but players, too, in certain ways.

So I think we can agree that there is a reason for it -- perhaps a dang good reason -- but that this reason has to do with the metagame, not the character experience, and thus breaks the character experience for some portion of the players.

There is no choice I am aware of that will not break some peoples immersion. Hit points, despite being utterly incoherent, only didn't because they were simple enough people didn't investigate them.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Again,
I agree with you that the "perfect storm" elements exist. You have done nothing whatsoever to show a relationship between that and 4E's fate.

Please, don't be ridiculous. They are all things that directly related to D&D from 2008 through 2011. How can you possibly pretend that that an outlandish revenue goal wouldn't impact the 'fate' of the product expected to meet it? Maybe you are completely ignorant of economics, so I'll explain that when production of complementary goods ends, demand for the product they complement tends to decrease (that's an impact of the GSL driving away 3pps). Maybe you can't see how a product meant to deliver some of that improbable revenue growth via a subscription model revenue stream suddenly halting development because of the untimely death of the developer might impact the 'fate' of the line?

I shouldn't have to spell it the relationship between the 'perfect storm' and the fate of 4e, because it was painfully obvious. But, now I have.

The "tapering off" pattern was not remotely the same as any other edition.

But it is a fact that every post-fad D&D rev-roll has had strong core sales that tapered off. So the idea that tapering off is a valid alternate hypothesis of greater-than-normal rejection of the game as a whole would require some compelling evidence. Or at least some evidence other than you claiming that it was somehow not the same. I assume you don't have any statistics to demonstrate this difference you imagine. A safe assumption since detailed time-series sales data for 4e and prior editions is simply not available.

The bottom line of "people won't play a game they don't like" remains. You have offered nothing to challenge that.

I don't need to challenge it, because it's been true of every new edition. Every time there have been hold-outs who wouldn't play it and people who just didn't care for it. Due to the OGL enabling ongoing support, there was an energized 3.5-holdout/Pathfinder community to drive the edition war, so you did perhaps have a few more, unverifiable, anecdotal, anonymous claims from h4ters that they 'gave the edition a fair chance' before giving it up. Very often, those claims followed hot on the heels of others that evinced obvious and profound ignorance of the actual content of the game itself. And, between the anonymity of the internet, the ease of creating 'sock puppet' accounts, and the manifest willingness of h4ters to resort to outright lies at the height of the edition war, those anecdotes must carry very little weight - even for anecdotes, which are extremely weak evidence, to begin with.

And they're all you have to support your alternative hypothesis that 'the fate of 4e' was wholly determined by the unwillingness of h4ters to adopt it. At most, they illustrate that hold-outs were louder this time around because they had 3pp d20 support to rally around - and that actually supports the OGL third of the 'perfect storm.'

 

[Tony Vargas]

Ironic and true. The OP really had his wish granted... he got to relive all the things that he missed.

Yep. Y'know, if you flagged a post 'Pathfinder' and asked about the history of that game, I doubt you'd get many 4vengers ranting in it.

 

[TwoSix]

Hehe, I just think the use of the word "arbirtary" can imply a judgement -- as in, "it makes no real sense, it's just arbitrary."

There's sense to be made, just by the player, not by the character. And that division isn't a positive or negative judgement either way, it's just that some people would prefer it to be one or the other and might get their experience harmed if it's not.

Agreed. It has a valid game design intent, therefore, it is not arbitrary. It just doesn't have an in-world justification. As has been stated many times before (like the rest of this discussion, although I feel this discussion peeled away from semantic camouflage quite fruitfully), many of us use genre conceit and expectations to inform our world workings, rather than deriving them from the game rules.

 

[Lalato]

This thread wins as performance art. Maybe this is actually the 4th current "joke" thread that is happening.

/ragequit

 

[Alzrius]

And this is where an insistance on associated mechanics is shown to be immersion and genre shattering. What an insistance on associated mechanics as opposed to a good set of disassociated mechanics means is that only the factors you measure have any in game world meaning. The rest are absolutely worthless. You aren't playing in an ordinary fantasy world. You're playing in a world like that of The Order of the Stick or possibly Erfworld.

Actually, that shows where the insistence on associated mechanics is shown to be immersion-enabling, though it does shatter "genre" in terms of "you must act within genre guidelines, rather than how you think your character would actually act in that situation." That's because dissociated mechanics are ostensibly making things happen in the game world without saying how they're happening in the game world. That utterly destroys any sense of immersion you'd otherwise have, and is like playing in a bad action movie.

If you have an outcome-sim where the world appears right, you get an active and alive world and the choices people make being the ones you'd actually expect. Now you might find the Order of the Stick to be more believable than Lord of the Rings. But I for one do not.

What's ironic is that your examples don't speak to your principles here. The choices made in the context of any narrative are, by necessity, based on what the characters do, and hence are associated. Saying that the narrative is abetted by meta-narrative restrictions is not only disingenuous, it's impossible to demonstrate when the narrative is all you have to look at.

It's not that you don't model the debilitating effects of wounds in an associated system that's the problem. It's that because you do not model them they do not exist.

Flat-out untrue. Just because you don't model something doesn't mean you can't have it be understood. By that logic, when you run your game, the characters are of races that never have to go to the bathroom because you don't model that. Apparently, you think that everything needs to be modeled to exist, which is hideously burdensome.

A good disassociated system is a sketch map trying to draw in a lot of factors. It's an impressionist painting and you're asking why individual brush strokes.

These analogies don't showcase anything. A dissociated system still inherently limits the things that your characters can do.

Because it is neither true nor intuitive. Hit points were explicitly invented as genre emulation of swashbuckling films, and 4e is the only version to even try to associate them. Why can't you accept this?

It's both true and intuitive. Leaving aside that the circumstances of an idea's genesis do not define it, 4E does not try to associate them, which is ultimately detrimental to character immersion.

So it's something the 4e fighter can do that the 2e one can not attempt.

So the fighter is somehow making them approach him? How? And why will that work that specific time and not (as well) every other time?

That's leaving aside that the 2E fighter can attempt to bring an enemy closer - it's just that that attempt will work the same each and every time, instead of going through weird periods of effectiveness and ineffectiveness.

Which means there are no effects of injury. You can do absolutely everything you could do before with no penalties. A quest for pure association produces broken game worlds.

There are no effects of injury to the point where they affect the metagame level of play, sure. That's not an issue of association, though. A quest for pure simulationism produces a burdensome world, which is what you seem to think associated mechanics mean.

No. This is because you are assuming that there must be one single factor always and without exception.

As opposed to unknown meta-factors that make no sense from an in-game standpoint, even though they affect the in-game characters.

There is no choice I am aware of that will not break some peoples immersion. Hit points, despite being utterly incoherent, only didn't because they were simple enough people didn't investigate them.

If they weren't motivated to investigate them, that's usually a good sign that they're intuitive enough to hang a believable in-character framework off of them.