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

[Savage Wombat]

Sounds like what in common parlance is called 'escapism' or 'escapist entertainment.' About right?

I've heard this argument before, and it doesn't hold water for me, because it blows a very small aspect of TTRPG rules out of all possible proportion.

The issue is that the gulf between player and character in a TTRPG is already so vast, that the ability to overcome that gap and achieve immersion cannot possibly be consistently, irretrievably foiled by something as obscure and trivial as a 'dissociated mechanic.' I mean, if you're trying to get under the exoskeleton of your Thri-Kreen character in Dark Sun - to achieve 'immersion' in the imagined role of a giant insect slowly cooking to death under the brutal heat of an alien sun - while sitting around a table in an air-conditioned FLGS, sipping cold mountain dew, eating twizzlers and rolling dice with your fellow gamer geeks, and you actually /do/ it, you have one kick-ass imagination. And to claim that you /cant/ do so if your ability to unleash a flurry of claw attacks is 1/encounter instead of not existing at all, is more than a little implausible. It's like the suspension of an ATV being wrecked because, between off-roading over huge rocks, it hit a small pothole on a short stretch of paved road.

This is not exactly the same thing, but it's related. People who write in genre fiction (of any kind) outside of the real world have to deal with the "suspension of disbelief" problem. And one of the first things I learned about it was that, generally, you can only take people outside their comfort zone once. Saying "this is a world where spies fight world-dominating secret organizations without mussing their suits" can get past people's filter without too much difficulty. But add in a talking animal for no reason, and you get people leaving the theater, saying it's "unbelievable".

You can only push people's immersion past a certain point, and it's different for everyone. So, yes, you can have people capable of accepting the hideous clawed monster, and then the "oh, btw, your attack power has charges" is too much for them. It's an emotional reason, but it's valid. It's not hypocritical, it's the way they honestly feel.

 

[Alzrius]

That's an interesting way of putting it. Yes, i would consider the extraordinary exploits of a hero in a fantasy story to be among that story's fantastic elements. While, say, the abilities of the simple peasant folk he's protecting from the dragon, or the slaves he frees from a band of deurgar might be quite mundane (or might not be, if say, one of the peasants was a ritual caster or one of the slaves a gnome).

If by "extraordinary" you mean something along the lines of "super power or similar ability" then I don't disagree. I just don't presume that the hero's exploits are necessarily redefined to be "extraordinary" unless that's unambiguously stated/demonstrated. Is it fair to say that you do presume such a redefinition is intrinsic to the abilities of the heroes?

So, sure, you could allow that unimportant/undeveloped aspects of the fantasy world conform to familiar, mundane reality, and thus realism has a niche in fantasy, by default, and is not 'all or nothing.' That doesn't lay a foundation for applying realism to the 'redefined' elements, though - including the hero of the piece, wielding 'magic' by the nomenclature of that world or not.

The nature of something being "redefined" is that the presumptions of reality no longer apply; hence why it's being redefined - what we could presume to know from how things in the real world work are no longer the case, and we need to be told that and how it functions now.

I am not aware of any mechanics in any edition of D&D that would provide the kind of feedback you are suggesting the characters are aware. Other than random noise from the narration of the performance, there is no way to know whether a given attempt (attack, check, etc.) was performed with good form or bad.

The nature of the die roll is the mechanic. The results are associated with how well the character performs the task in question.

 

[Tony Vargas]

This is not exactly the same thing, but it's related. People who write in genre fiction (of any kind) outside of the real world have to deal with the "suspension of disbelief" problem. And one of the first things I learned about it was that, generally, you can only take people outside their comfort zone once. Saying "this is a world where spies fight world-dominating secret organizations without mussing their suits" can get past people's filter without too much difficulty. But add in a talking animal for no reason, and you get people leaving the theater, saying it's "unbelievable".

Very true.

Genre conventions also provide a short-cut to that. If you're writing a space-opera, you don't necessarily have to lay a lot of groundwork for a jump-drive, anti-gravity, ray-guns or the like, and could even start the story without, say, any aliens, and have them discovered later (they could even look a lot like talking animals) because even though you didn't start your narrative with 'there are aliens,' finding aliens in outer space is well within the conventions of the genre.

The fantasy genre's the same way. Dragons, ogres, evil sorcerers - and heroes who slay them - all blithely accepted as part of the genre. OTOH, EGG went to a little trouble to explain both the gamist rationale, and the in-game explanations for 'Vancian' casting, for instance, because it defied genre conventions, for instance. Or, when you bring psionics or ray-guns into it, you might want to lay a little groundwork as to why it's visiting from the space opera. That sort of thing.

 

[Savage Wombat]

Very true.

Genre conventions also provide a short-cut to that. If you're writing a space-opera, you don't necessarily have to lay a lot of groundwork for a jump-drive, anti-gravity, ray-guns or the like, and could even start the story without, say, any aliens, and have them discovered later (they could even look a lot like talking animals) because even though you didn't start your narrative with 'there are aliens,' finding aliens in outer space is well within the conventions of the genre.

The fantasy genre's the same way. Dragons, ogres, evil sorcerers - and heroes who slay them - all blithely accepted as part of the genre. OTOH, EGG went to a little trouble to explain both the gamist rationale, and the in-game explanations for 'Vancian' casting, for instance, because it defied genre conventions, for instance. Or, when you bring psionics or ray-guns into it, you might want to lay a little groundwork as to why it's visiting from the space opera. That sort of thing.

Or, my personal favorite, that nowadays if you have a story with vampires in it the author feels perfectly justified in saying "and there are also werewolves, witches, fairies, etc." But drop aliens into Indiana Jones and you break some people.

 

[Tony Vargas]

If by "extraordinary" you mean something along the lines of "super power or similar ability" then I don't disagree. I just don't presume that the hero's exploits are necessarily redefined to be "extraordinary" unless that's unambiguously stated/demonstrated. Is it fair to say that you do presume such a redefinition is intrinsic to the abilities of the heroes?

Super powers aren't really a fantasy genre element, no. But heroes doing things that range from the wildly improbable to the super-human certainly is. I'd say the genre 'redefines' heroes as other than mundane, in general - with strictly-mundane heroes an exception that would be spelled out in the narrative, or, perhaps, sprung on the audience as humor.

The nature of something being "redefined" is that the presumptions of reality no longer apply; hence why it's being redefined

A trifle circular.

what we could presume to know from how things in the real world work are no longer the case, and we need to be told that and how it functions now.

So, for instance, Grendel, a huge, sketchily-described monster that rips seasoned warriors to bits, has been 'redefined' even though the epic never says what he is, where he came from (apart from having an equally monstrous and little-described mother), or why he possesses such superhuman power, or 'has no analogue' even though he is 'man-like.' OTOH, Beowulf, who displays the superhuman strength and prowess to swim across frigid arctic seas, wrestle sea-serpents, and rip Grendel's arm off, needs, in your estimation, some specific rationalization for those feats? He's not the son of a god, not dipped in any magic rivers, not festooned with magic items, he's just a Geat - a mighty, heroic one worthy of an epic poem. And in that context, he can do things that would be impossible, realistically.

So, no, I don't think we need to be told how heroism or super-human feats 'work' to accept that they're part of the genre. Not anymore than we need to be told how magic that conforms to genre expectations works in any great detail.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Or, my personal favorite, that nowadays if you have a story with vampires in it the author feels perfectly justified in saying "and there are also werewolves, witches, fairies, etc." But drop aliens into Indiana Jones and you break some people.

Heh. To be fair, werewolves, vampires, witches and faeries all have roots in the same sorts off folktales, even if they didn't often make appearances in eachother's stories.

And, I guess that illustrates that genres can have a fair bit of flexibility.

 

[BryonD]

I asserted that one of the reason hold-outs fulminated into full-scale h4ters and actively edition-warred was the ongoing support their favored edition enjoyed via the OGL.

You have zero evidence to support this claim and it seems absurd to me that people who felt 4E was like an MMO, or homogenous, or too tactical would stop seeing those issues.

Yet again, the tendency to see these points in *people who were 4E fans* grew over time. So the claim it would just magically reverse in the absence of the OGL is fanciful at best.

Ultimately, the 'failure' of 4e had nothing to do with it's non-adoption by hold-outs.

Which is it? Previously you said:

There have always been holdouts, and a lot of them generally come around. They didn't come around and 4e a chance because they had the promise of ongoing OGL support.

The content of the games involved is irrelevant.

Again, the idea that 4E's fate was not related to the merits of 4E in mass audience appeal is absurd and you still refuse to address why the *would* come to like. Just making up excuses for reasons they didn't doesn't do anything to say why they *would*.

 

[BryonD]

Isn't this just a matter of scope? I mean, a written story contains bits that are within a character's agency (for lack of a better word) as well as those bits without. The author is still "storytelling" whether the sentence he's writing is in that scope or not. In this way, "roleplaying" is a subset of "storytelling", I would think.

That doesn't change the fact that RPGs differ in the scope of authority that individual players are permitted within and without their character's agency. Which is a perfectly valid justification for liking or disliking a game, IMO.

I agree.
Within the context it is fair to say the roleplaying is a subset of storytelling. But the reverse is not true.
The specific nature of storytelling being discussed is not within the roleplaying subset.

And I've said multiple time now that I don't think there even should be a judgement on like or dislike. I think it would be absurd to call either one objectively better. But they are different.

 

[TwoSix]

Heh. To be fair, werewolves, vampires, witches and faeries all have roots in the same sorts off folktales, even if they didn't often make appearances in eachother's stories.

And, I guess that illustrates that genres can have a fair bit of flexibility.

Plus the fact that "urban fantasy" has become its own little subgenre. Nowadays, if I read a book with a vampire in it, I start to wait for the werewolf to turn up.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Again, the idea that 4E's fate was not related to the merits of 4E in mass audience appeal is absurd and you still refuse to address why the *would* come to like.

I am willing to back away completely from the implication that more hold-outs might eventually come-around to a new system in the absence of ongoing support for the old, than in the presence of same. I think it's a perfectly reasonable assertion, but it's in no way central to the 'perfect storm,' and the detailed data that would be needed to prove it (or prove an alternative hypothesis) are simply not available.

The validity of the perfect storm holds whether you want to believe 4e's content was abysmal or wonderful. D&D has /always/, through name recognition if nothing else, attracted new players and has a sub-set of longtime fans who unquestioningly adopt each new edition. In the absence of all elements of the perfect storm, that phenomenon, alone, would have seen 4e through a 'normal' (for WotC, apparently 8 years, vs 10+ for TSR) run and kept it from being a nominal failure, no matter how determined and stubborn the hold-outs may have been. In the presence of the perfect storm, no amount of improvement in quality or other aspects of content could have 'saved' it. There was simply no potential for any conceivable TTRPG, no matter how nearly-perfect or innovative, to pull in double or quadruple the earnings of the entire industry without establishing the hoped-for subscription revenue stream by delivering on /all/ the promises of DDI. Those two elements of the 'storm,' alone, sealed 4e's fate. The third element is really only necessary to explain Pathfinder's relative success (which is the question originally addressed). Without the OGL, Pathfinder would have to have been like 13A - a game only somewhat evocative of the prior ed of D&D, rather fully compatible and subsuming it's core - and had no chance of beating out an ed of D&D having an otherwise unremarkable run.