4E DMG: No guns?!?

[Reynard]

Really, though. I think you guys are making a mountain out of a molehill here. Yeah, there's no gun rules. 4e concentrates primarily on its default D&D setting, which has a low tech level. A lack of firearms doesn't mean the game itself is incomplete - it means it may not have everything immediately at hand for some play styles. Which, honestly, we already knew.

You don't see this as a problem? You don't think that limiting the playstyle of D&D in the Core has a negative impact on the game as a whole and the potential player base? You don't think that broad strokes that give everyone, whether their are a simulationist or gamist or narrativist, the tools to create their game the way they want it strengthens the brand as a whole?

4E is a well designed game for what it is, but that doesn't mean it is a well designed D&D game. Whoever above said that each edition is a product of a small group of designers and their preferences was dead on -- and I think the people in charge of 4E's design have preferences that are far removed from my experiences with the myriad ways the game is played. Again, it isn't that the tatical, minitaures battle element of 4E is bad -- I'm not a fan, but then I'm not a minis tactical game fan either, so I can't expect to be wowed -- its that they chose a playstyle and built a rules set around that playsteyle, rather than choosing a genre/milieu/metagame and building a ulesset around that.

Really it goes back to the game vs toy argument: games have rules and specifics that tell you how to play while toys are just tools with which you create your own games. 4E is a game, while previous editions were toys.

 

[Obryn]

You don't see this as a problem? You don't think that limiting the playstyle of D&D in the Core has a negative impact on the game as a whole and the potential player base? You don't think that broad strokes that give everyone, whether their are a simulationist or gamist or narrativist, the tools to create their game the way they want it strengthens the brand as a whole?

This is exactly where I think you're overstretching.

"No guns in the core rulebook release" does not limit the game's play-style in any way, shape, or form. Just as not having lasers in the 3e DMG doesn't prevent a DM from putting a crashed spaceship in their game, not having guns in 4e's core books doesn't prevent a DM from putting in firearms, lasers, sharks with lasers, and so on.

If you can show me where it says, "You should not use guns, even if it's simple to add them," I'll concede the point that they're trying to limit play-styles. That's nowhere in my DMG, though. Heck, the DMG I'm reading encourages DMs to be creative and make up new stuff.

Really it goes back to the game vs toy argument: games have rules and specifics that tell you how to play while toys are just tools with which you create your own games. 4E is a game, while previous editions were toys.

Well, crap. It looks like I've been running 4e wrong!

-O

 

[FraserRonald]

Smoeone took me up on that. I'm quite happy.

Maybe the issue with guns is fantasy, rather than history. (I thought I was a pretty good historian until now.) They do appear in some fantasy settings, but only rarely.

I certainly wouldn't say one misinterpretation makes on a bad historian. I would say that you are right in that gunpowder is all but absent from a vast majority of popular fantasy fiction.

Personally, I like gunpowder in my fantasy. Many of the assumptions of D&D have always seemed as much late Renaissance as Medieval. For me, my favourite era to build upon is the late 16th and early 17th century. I like me some Three Musketeers-style swashbuckling, and that means guns!

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Well I know two major reworkings were ...

in the original skill challlenges, everyone had to roll initiative, and on their turn had to act within the skill challenge... thus solving the supposed problem of only one character, with the best skill, having the lone spotlight.

Now, there is no initiative check...a character does not have to participate at all in a skill challenge if they don't want to, which brings us back to tactical minded players letting their best skill man spam the challenge for the best result... especially with the wacky way successes and failures work.

That's why the skill challenge example in Keep on the Shadowfell required multiple skills (and since it was a social challenge, it was not acceptable for some PCs to just stand there and keep their low-Charisma mouths shut; fortunately, they could contribute with non-social skills).

That's the kind of thing I'd like to see encouraged, but it doesn't happen with many example skill challenges.

 

[glass]

Wait, I take that back -- it's been happening throughout the editions. 2E saw The Tale of the Comet and 'sheens' were a big hit in 3E if I recall.

Sheens were 2e too, I believe.


glass.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Sheens were 2e too, I believe.


glass.

While not a fan of high-tech stuff in DnD, sheens hold a soft spot for me. I just happened to have bought a Dragon Magazine article that introduced me to them.

 

[Kmart Kommando]

I read a novel where two human civilizations from different parallel worlds were fighting, one side had magic and magical lightning guns, flamethrowers and such, and the other side had 'real' guns and stuff, and the magic side got pounded by artillery in short order.

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

Kmart,
hm, that rings a bell...

but in D&D style magic, nah...

Western militaries are unparalleled in their destructive capabilities. However, they are focused on destroying other enemies effciently, not civilians etc, but they could certainly do that if wished.

Western militaries work by extremely fast movement, co-ordination and precise use of force. So, traditional enemies get left with no one to fight and get an airstrike in their faces, and then when they're cut off, weakened, then you make them surrender...because you don't WANT to fight man-o-emano, and slaughter isn't efficient or necessary in our kind of wars.

However, D&D = capture an enemy soldier, charm + comprehend languages...teleport + invisibility, capture officers, fireball ammo dumps etc...very very bad news. Like Guerilla warfare from hell (literally perhaps, lol)

Also add in undead and plagues etc.
Don't dismiss the supernatural, we're not used ot it, undead and the like would cause terrible panic...and small calibre modern assualt rifles are not going to be much use against zombies. It's not stupid "wanna-be-scifi zombies", brains don't mean a thing to the undead so headshots are useless. You'd need heavy machine guns, mines artillery etc to take care of them.

I odn't think it would be one sided at all. luck, cirumstances etc would have huge role.

And there's many enemies guns aren't gonna be good for, as noted, like zombies. Not a concern in 4th ed perhaps, but definately in 3.5.

 

[brocktoon]

Limiting playstyle? compared to 1e with strict limits on levels for races?

Games vs. Toys?

Huh?

Passion and your dislike of 4e aside (jump back in the posts 2 years, and sub 4e for 3e), explain.

How is 4e any more of a game than 1e.

4e allows me and my players (9 total for this one session fighting against 6 uber-foes) (if they did some prep work) to play a very high level game having to refer to the rules twice, and most of the players had only 1-3 sessions of experience under their belt. Previous iterations of D+D never accomplished that, be it mages looking up every spell, or the DM having to look something up.

That to me seems far more like a toy and less like a game.

A session whereeach player has to spend 1/2 their time flipping through books is very much like a game, and removes the player from any sense of immersion.

Even if there was an alternative games vs. toys argument, stating that previous editions were toys and 4e is a game... huh? what about 3e?

3e was far more crunchy and required much more cross-referencing of rules than 4e.

Looking through a high-fantasy game and claiming it is somehow incomplete or limiting because it doesn't include lasers and guns... Huh?

<snark>I thought 1e was very limiting because it did not have stats or alterante base asumptions that allowed for inclusion of Bigfoot as a race and didn't have a class that allowed me to fly at first level.</snark>

I think you are nitpicking.

Not liking 4e is one thing. Being dissatisfied with 4e because it isn't your own personal vision of what the ULT!M$4T3!!!! D&D should be is another thing.

And where are the psionics? 1e had them....

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I read a novel where two human civilizations from different parallel worlds were fighting, one side had magic and magical lightning guns, flamethrowers and such, and the other side had 'real' guns and stuff, and the magic side got pounded by artillery in short order.

In the Darksword series,

Spoiler

technology lost.

A sci-fi world fought a magic world. Unfortunately, the sci-fi guys only used energy weapons, and one of the guys from the magic world was dead (a term meaning having no magical ability whatsoever, and therefor the subject of many a murder attempt), but he made a darksword, basically a magic-sucking sword.

And energy = energy, so it sucked in the tanks' energy weapons, the soldiers' energy rifles, etc.