Confirm or Deny: D&D4e would be going strong had it not been titled D&D

[SirAntoine]

Nostalgia on its own isn't a good or bad thing. The problem is people are basically being told what they like is bad, but they can't see it because of nostalgia. It is dismissive. Lets not pretend it is meant as a compliment here.

I am afraid you might be right. It doesn't seem worth it to discuss what is nostalgia anymore.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I can admit how there are some games that I am wanting to get again because I have fond and fun memories of playing them when I was younger despite them having rather archaic game systems in them, Heroes Unlimited being the top on the list... but another factor is that while I know that nostalgia is a part of it... the game does some things different than games today are being made and the way it does things is different enough to make the experience of playing it also different and not the same as playing other games... and ultimately that's what we all want... a good experience playing these games that give us the kind of fun we all desire.

Is HU faulty... oh yeah, very... is it up to the standards of Mutants and Masterminds or Fate or ICONS or Marvel Heroic... very much not so... but can it play and do something the other games can't... to me that answer is Yes. And that's where the game is Fun for me.

I am sure a lot of other games are fun for many of you for reasons that might be along similar lines. We all like what we like because of something in the games that draws us to them. That's what makes rpgs special, IMO.

I appreciate the post.

Another point I am trying to make here, and admittedly maybe not doing such a great job, is that mechanics that feel archaic may not be as bad, they may still have utility. I'm not saying we need THAC0 or attack matrices. But on the other hand, you can do some interesting things with a tool like an attack matrix and it provides a very different experience in a game. It isn't something I would write off as archaic. I look at it more like music than evolution of physical design in cars or musical instruments. There are styles and patterns that develop over time. Some start to sound hokey or dated after a while, some a bit convoluted, but you can always go back and explore the tools of outdated styles for new material. Some of those things are never going to regain currency, but others will. Few people would write extended pieces in the style of Bach or Mozart today. I don't think that makes extended pieces are bad, our tastes have simply changed.

At the same time, yes there are some basic components that will change, we will learn to improve certain things. I think people now have a much tighter sense of RPG design in that we focus a lot more energy on setting clear goals and achieving them. Things do generally feel less haphazard. That is good. But sometimes I sense a good deal of hubris there as well, and I don't think that is good because you miss valuable lessons you can learn from people who came before you. I am just generally very wary of writing off anything that could potentially still have utility or tap into a gaming experience more current approaches might not allow or encourage.

So I do think the hobby should grow and change, that people should build on what has been done and seek out new directions (I try to be experimental in what I do). But we can learn a lot from the early days of the hobby. I think taking a dismissive attitude toward it is a mistake, just like it would be a mistake to take a dismissive attitude toward Lead Belly, Django Reinhardt or Monteverdi.

 

[Stacie GmrGrl]

I am not against Attack Matrixes and Tables... I have played enough Battletech and other war board games to see their merit.

A couple of new board games that have come out in the last year... 1775 and 1812, have managed to take attack matrixes from tables and instead use dice to simulate the attack matrix results. Its very genius.

It'd be neat if an RPG took a system like this and made it its own, but it would require customized dice for that RPG. And a lot of people still seem resistant to games with customized dice.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

That's because many veteran gamers literally have buckets of dice, so specialized dice are of limited interest to them.

Of course, there are ways around this. If, for instance, each die had normal numbers- therefore being useful in any game- and each number and/or each face were differently colored, your game's matrices could operate on up to 3 variables: number value, number color, and face color.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

I think that is a pretty big straw man....

I'm not surprised that you see things this way. Thank you for your thoughts.

 

[Tony Vargas]

To a point, I sort of understand the whole, "Get over your nostalgia and get with the times" argument.

It's understandable, but not reasonable. There's no need to get with the times if you're happy with what you already have.

Claiming that a 1970s stereo with scratchy speakers and 8-track player is objectively "better" than a brand new set of high-end Klipsch speakers attached to a top-of-the-line Denon receiver is, on its face, ludicrous. The only reason for making such a claim really would be nostalgia----the memories of listening to music on that 1970s stereo trump the actual equipment used during the experience.

But it's a bit more nebulous than that with an RPG system, for the simple fact that the emotional component is really at the heart of gameplay. Comfort, familiarity with a system and its tropes, experience working through its mechanics, all may lead to the "right" experience where the emotional resonance trumps everything else. An RPG produces an experience, it isn't the experience itself.

That doesn't seem completely absurd on the surface - in fact, I think I used an argument like that to justify running AD&D instead of GURPS (though, that was just to spare the feelings of the GURPS fan in question) - but it's an unnecessary rationalization. Preferring the older stereo you already have is reason enough not to buy/learn the knew one.

In this case, a highly modded game of 1e would be the equivalent of someone taking that 1970s sound system and making their own self-made improvements---"See what I did to the speakers there? And how I soldered this diode on to the circuit here? That improves the sound reproduction."

Yep. And it would be a lot of work to mod a brand new one to get the same results - if it were even possible to mod the brand new one without wrecking it. That adds another dimension, it's not just nostalgia for the time and the experiences of using it, it's the personal investment in modding it.

It's wonderful stuff to be able to go back and enjoy something like that. It doesn't need to be defended or rationalized, even if there are those who don't 'get it.'

what is it about 4e that evokes such passionate responses from proponents?

I can't speak for everyone who ever spoke up in defense of 4e, but, my answer can only be 'nothing.' It wasn't 4e that prompted me to point out that any given h4ter's criticisms were invalid, exaggerated, or flatly false. I'd spoken up in defense of 3.x, of D&D in general (the height of the 90s Role v Roll controversy), and of 5e, now, in response to such criticisms. Rather, there was something about 4e that inspired it's detractors to launch more, more furious, more protracted & persistent false, invalid, exaggerated, and - as you put it 'passionate' - attacks than other editions. The h4ters' very unwillingness to put forth more honest or measured criticism leaves the exact reason for that 'passion' a matter of speculation to this day. When asked, h4ters merely repeat their edition-war-era talking points.


By far the most charitable of possible excuses for their behavior was that they were just being overly reactionary and nostalgic, letting their love for some past edition cloud their judgement concerning the latest one. Were that entirely the case, we could have expected a similar deluge against 5e simply for being new. That hasn't been the case, so the 'it was just nostalgia' hypothesis is questionable.

In any case, nostalgia remains, by itself, without any further justification required, a perfectly valid reason for preferring an older version of something. I unabashedly enjoy 1e AD&D, original Gamma World, and RQII because they evoke the fun I had with them back in the early 80s. That same nostalgia is no small component in my enjoyment when I run 5e, as well, since it very successfully evokes some of the feel of AD&D, for me. I don't have to pretend that any of those games are any 'better' than they are, I don't have to make up imaginary 'play styles' that only those dated systems can handle, I don't need to manufacture faults in newer alternatives - my history with those games is reason enough for me.

 

[pemerton]

what is it about 4e that evokes such passionate responses from proponents?

Passionate responses to what?

To being told that they aren't RPGing but are boardgaming? Or MMOing? Or Storygaming?

To being told that they need trainer wheels, or need their hands held? Or are roll-playing and not roleplaying?

To being told that they hate D&D? Or wrecked D&D? Or both?

In my personal experience on and around these boards, many of those who do not want to play 4e seem unable to articulate that desire in terms that don't imply universal, normative judgments of those who do enjoy it. The most notorious, obviously, was Justin Alexander's, but it was just a prototype for many others that followed.

Justin Alexander's essay also illustrates a recurrent feature of criticisms of 4e, namely, attacking it for possessing certain features while praising other RPGs that appear to possess the same features. For instance, Alexander says

In the case of Wushu, fidelity to the game world is being traded off in favor of narrative control. In the case of 4th Edition, fidelity to the game world is being traded off in favor of a tactical miniatures game.​

The "narrative control" that he refers to in relation to Wushu has, some paragraphs earlier in his essay, been described as follows:

“I leap into the air (1), drawing my swords in a single fluid motion (2), parrying the samurai’s sword as I pass above his head (3), and land behind him (4).”

. . .

n the case of Wushu these mechanics were designed to encourage dynamic, over-the-top action sequences: Since it’s just as easy to slide dramatically under a car and emerge on the other side with guns blazing as it is to duck behind cover and lay down suppressing fire, the mechanics make it possible for the players to do whatever the coolest thing they can possibly think of is (without worrying about whether or not the awesomeness they’re imagining will make it too difficult for their character to pull it off).​

No doubt it's obvious to Justin Alexander why leaping into the air, drawing one's swords in a single fluid motion, parrying the samuria's sword and landing behind him; or sliding dramatically under a car and emerging on the other side with guns blazing; is awesome narrative control, whereas having the goblins charge the fighter but be cut down en route (Come and Get It); or having the sorcerer teleport out of the exploding fireball, thereby taking no damage (Swift Escape); or having the evil war devil's allies besiege a protagonist (Besieged Foe); is not awesome at all but rather a mere "tactical miniatures game".

But the difference escapes me. My take-away is that Alexander enjoys Wushu, doesn't enjoy 4e - perhaps because it uses too many miniatures and not enough cars? - and felt the need to write thousands of words explaining why this wasn't a mere preference for cars over miniatures, but was an intellectually-driven choice that any rational person should agree with.

Is the drifted narrativist "Pemertonian scene framing" with tactical combat style that 4e handles best really that compelling of a gameplay experience?

To whom? I enjoy it - which is the main criterion on which I make my decisions about how to spend my leisure and hobby time!

One thing I notice is that there is not a lot of actual play posting on ENworld. I post a lot of actual play reports. I'm happy to provide links if you'd like me to. You can read my reports and see whether you think what is being reported might be compelling to you. Or not.

When I hear the 4e stalwarts describe it, they make it sound like I've somehow completely missed out on a formative RPG experience.

I don't understand. Either you like scene-framed, player-driven RPGing or you don't.

I've never played Gygaxian D&D, and my few attempts to GM it have been failed and pointless. I lack the patience, and perhaps also the skill set (I don't know about the latter because my patience gives out before my skills are put to any serious test).

When I read other describing their Gygaxian play - not that often, but it comes up from time to time on these and other boards - I read with interest and can follow along. Generally I can see what they're doing - just because I don't particularly care for it and am not very good at it doesn't mean that I can't see what techniques others are using, note their skill (or lack thereof) and see that they are deriving pleasure from it.

The best description of Gygaxian play I've read recently is this post by Luke Crane, about playing Moldvay Basic. (The post is not recent, but my reading of it is.) I think it captures the experience pretty well:

Why is this era of D&D about puzzle-solving and exploration? Because your characters are fragile and treasure compromises 4/5s of the experience you earn, whereas fighting monsters earns only 1/5. Thus if there's a big monster guarding a valuable piece of treasure, the incentive is to figure out a way to get the treasure without fighting the monster. Fight only as a last resort; explore first so you can better solve. This shift in emphasis away from fighting was frustrating at first, but then profoundly refreshing once we sussed out the logic.

Having learned this lesson at the cost of another seven deaths, the group completed B2 in grand style: Their plans were so effective, their exploration so thorough, that the victorious player characters suffered not a point of damage in the final confrontation. And I opposed them with mind-boggling array of villainy!

. . .

This slim red volume emerged before us as a brilliant piece of game design that not only changed our world with it's own bright light, but looking from the vantage of 1981, I can see that this game changed THE world. This world of dark dungeons and savage encounters slowly crept out into ours, from hobby shops to basements, to computer labs and movie screens. And we're all better off for having adventured in it, even if the game isn't played quite the same anymore.​

For myself, though, I haven't bought Torchbearer despite owning everything for Burning Wheel that I have been able to find. Gygaxian D&D is a pastime I admire from a distance, even when mediated through the creative design of Luke Crane.

That's not a reason for me to disparage those who enjoy it, though. Best of luck to them! Judging from the way the forums are presented at BWHQ, Torchbearer is now more popular than Burning Wheel!

 

[pemerton]

a highly modded game of 1e would be the equivalent of someone taking that 1970s sound system and making their own self-made improvements---"See what I did to the speakers there? And how I soldered this diode on to the circuit here? That improves the sound reproduction."

I have a version of AD&D rules written up - I did it over the past 12 months or so as a way to fill in some time.

The main features of my version are (1) unified XP tables, which meant recalculating hit point, attack, save and some spell progressions to keep these roughly on a par with the published rate of progression, (2) eliminating multi-classes in favour of new classes that have their own progressions, (3) merging the fighter and cavalier, and to a lesser extent the fighter and the OA samurai, kensai and sohei, to make fighters slightly more robust, (4) adopting the 2nd ed AD&D system for allocating thief percentiles, and (5) pulling the action resolution mechanics scattered throughout Gygax's books out into a semi-coherent whole.

I'm happy to email it to anyone who PMs me an email address.

One of the main things that I discovered is that - once you rewrite it and strip out some of the overlap and redundancy - Gygax's reaction and loyalty system seems surprisingly workable. The odd thing is that it is not at all level dependent (unlike combat, which is). In my version paladins get to increase CHA with level (as per UA) and so do fighters (reflecting the cavalier follower ability of UA), which at least means that bold warriors get some of the recognition they deserve as they demonstrate their prowess.

I don't know if I'll ever play this game or not, but it's not completely out of the question.

 

[Stacie GmrGrl]

I kinda like the idea of classes providing bonuses to Ability Scores as they gain levels, specific to what makes the class good.

 

[Wicht]

Justin Alexander's essay also illustrates a recurrent feature of criticisms of 4e, namely, attacking it for possessing certain features while praising other RPGs that appear to possess the same features. For instance, Alexander says...

Are you seriously still debating a blog post, from a different forum, from 7 years ago?