Hmmm, I think my question may have come across incorrectly. I was actually genuinely admiring the way 4e proponents defend the system. There's clearly something that resonates with those that have truly embraced it.
4e is the only version of D&D that I have GMed since being a member of ENworld (when I joined I was GMing Rolemaster, though mostly using D&D fiction - Oriental Adventures, to be precise). I didn't migrate from earlier versions of D&D to 4e. I migrated from Rolemaster to 4e, in part because I had become increasingly aware of problems with RM relative to my RPGing desires, reading the Forge had helped me work out what some of those problems were, and 4e promised to overcome most of them.
My posting on 4e has had two main strands. One has been posting about my game, comparing notes with others on approaches, techniques, episodes of play, etc. That is the standard sort of posting one expects on a hobby forum. It's a functional analogue of chatting at a games club. I would hope everyone who posts on ENworld is as passionate about their hobby as I am - if you're not enjoying your RPGing, why are you spending time doing it?!
The other strand has been explaining, in various contexts and in response to a range of different posters, how 4e works as an RPG.
When WotC announced the release of 4e, and started previewing its mechanics, it was pretty clear to me that it would be a "Forge-y" version of D&D. That was borne out as we saw symmetric resource suites for players, increasing the use of fortune-in-the-middle resolution (eg death saves, inspirational healing), skill challenges, etc.
During this preview phase there was a lot of discussion about these things. I remember one poster who is still quite active on these boards trumpeting over
this preview article on skill challenges, suggesting that those who had been looking forward to skill challenges as an indie-stye closed scene resolution were going to be disappointed. (In fact, skill challenges turned out to be exactly this, as was pretty clear in that preview itself.)
For reasons that I only partly understand, there is a widespread view. at least among online D&D players, that games that use some of these techniques aren't really RPGs, and hence that 4e is not really an RPG. I respond fairly passionately to that too, but for different reasons - when I come online to talk about my hobby, it's frustrating to be told that I'm not really an RPGer at all but a skirmish gamer, or boardgamer, or MMOer, etc.
As to why 4e resonates with me - what
are its features that solve the problems I had with Rolemaster - that's been discussed at length over the years, by me and others.
Here's a post of mine from Feb 2011; the post immediately underneath it is yours, so you may have read this before:
4e resembles a game like The Dying Earth. I've never read the Vance stories, but feel that I could run a game of Dying Earth from the rulebook. It gives me the "vibe" and "meta-setting", plus tips on how to set up situations/scenarios that will exploit that vibe to produce a fun session.
My feeling is that 4e was written with the intention to be GMed in this sort of way. I say this because (i) it fits with the game's emphasis on the encounter - combat or non-combat as the basic unit of play; (ii) it fits with the obvious effort to create that default atmosphere, with the gods, race backgrounds and so on in the PHB and the little sidebars in the Power books; (iii) when you look at the original MM (with most of the campaign info located in skill check results), plus think about how skill challenges should play out (with the GM having to make calls about NPC responses, and other elements of the gameworld, on the fly in response to unpredictable player actions), and even look at the whole emphasis on "situations" rather than "world exploration" as the focus of play, the game seems intended to support "just in time" creation of world details, using "points of light" and the default atmosphere as a framework for doing this in; (iv) it fits with the absence of a developed setting.
Unfortunately, though, the rulebooks don't do much to support GMing this sort of game. A contrast is provided by The Dying Earth rulebook, which does offer tools to help the GM with this sort of situation-based preparation and play.
For 4e, this is really provided by Worlds and Monsters.
<snip>
When 4e game out, I posted on these forums that WotC apparently agreed with Ron Edwards that a narrativist-oriented RPG focusing on situation and character-driven play would be more popular than a simulationist RPG focused on the players exploring the world and/or stories that the GM creates for them. Such a belief seems the only way to explain the presence, in 4e, of all the features I've mentioned above.
And here are two more, from the following two days:
in a "world/story" game, the GM is likely to know the obstacles in advance, and to present them in some detail to the players, and the players will then be looking for action resolution mechanics that really let them enage with the detail of those challenges. And those action resolution mecanics have to produce results that put the players on the same page as the GM - otherwise the game won't run smoothly.
On the other hand, in a "just in time" game the GM is more likely to be adding details to a situation in response to ideas and interest expressed by the players as play is going on. So the action resolution mechanics have to be ones that encourage the players to produce those sorts of ideas, and that let them pursue their interests - otherwise the GM will be left with nothing to build on.
Skill challenges are, in my view, a good attempt at a mechanic for the second sort of play - and that is how the rules for skill challenges are presented in the DMG and PHB (I can provide quotes if desired). But skill challenges are a fairly poor mechanic for the first sort of play - they tend to produce the "exercise in dice rolling" experience, as the GM describes the situation to the players, and tells them their options, and the players roll the dice. And this is how the examples of skill challenges both in the DMG and in the WotC adventures have tended to be experienced (not by everyone, but I think at least by a majority of the posts I've read on these forums).
<snip>
I think Ron Edwards is right when he says that authors of non-simulationsist RPGs mechanics are often afraid to explain, in plain language, how they intend their mechanics to be used. They fall back into the language of simulationist RPGs. And this makes the rulebooks for their games at least moderately incoherent. And in my view 4e has this problem. (Worlds and Monsters is an honourable exception, but its candidness about the way in which monsters and other game elements are intended, by the designers, to be used by a GM in running adventures is reflected in only one part of the core 4e rules that I can recall - namely, in the DMG's brief discussion of languages. EDIT TO THIS: of course the DMG makes it very clear how monsters are to be used in combat encounter design and resolution - but I'm talking about the use of game elements to create an FRPG experience - indeed, the fact that the DMG goes metagame only in relation to combat, but not in relation to GMing overall is part of the problem.)
When I look at the rules in a book like Hubris's Maelstrom Storytelling, or Robin Laws HeroQuest II - which are both sterling exceptions to Edwards' generalisation about non-simulationist game texts - and compare them to WotC's efforts, it makes me cry (well, not literally!). If only WotC had actually explained to readers of the rulebooks how the sort of game that the 4e mechanics support is played and GMed, maybe 4e would not have so easily fallen victim to the "dice rolling"/"minis game"/"WoW" critiques. Instead WotC left this as an exercise for the reader - and those who tried to play the game in the typical sort of way that 2nd ed AD&D or 3E was played had, I assume, a fairly mediocre experience, of rolling a few dice and making a few tactical decisions but not really experiencing the evocative power of gaming in a fantasy world.
I don't think that 4e is a game that will give a WoW experience, for all the reasons that many others have pointed out many times before. Some of the members of my group are among the most hardcore MMO/WoW players in Melbourne (based on online hours clocked up, early adoption etc) but play D&D for a very different experience.
I really do think that WotC thought that these people - WoW players, CCG players, etc - would enjoy a non-simulationist, situation-based RPG. Like WoW it would have fantasy colour. Like CCG it would have a strong build-and-tactics element. Like an indie RPG it would use this colour and these mechanical features to drive situation-based play.
Anyway, that for me is the best way of trying to understand the game.
Four years later I stand by all of the above: for a game that is tactical/mechanically rich in resolution, that will produce evocative fantasy flavour of the sort that D&D has always promised, and that lends itself to player-driven, "just-in-time" GMing, 4e is a terrific game.
If you don't want that - to give the extreme counterpoint, if you prefer GM-driven 2nd ed-style play where the mechanics are subordinated to player immersion in the GM's world and story - then 4e is probably not the game for you.
Because I really like the former, I really like 4e!
