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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Argyle King" data-source="post: 6052453" data-attributes="member: 58416">The best illustration I can give for what the Saturday group's game had turned into is to give a brief recap of a conversation I had with the guy who was usually the DM.He commented to me that he didn't see the point of designing social challenges anymore.  The reason he gave was that he fully expected several of the players to bully their way through them.  The example he game (and one I've repeated in previous conversations here on Enworld) was having an audience with a king or a lord.  Even surrounded by guards and whatnot, he expected a significant portion of the group to be on board with simply killing the king/lord/whatever and then just mowing down the guards and other pcs if need be to get away.  While I do agree (to some extent) that it was a player problem, I also sat and tried to consider the situations from the point of view of a character in the game world.  To be quite honest, if someone gave me the powers of Superman here in the real world, I cannot say I believe I would be a completely good person.  I think the problem is made a little worse after realizing that the other beings in the world (demon lords, dragons, gods, and etc) who supposedly are on the same level as you sometimes struggle to do something even as simple as breaking through a wall or door.  Meanwhile, the supposedly unbreakable gates which guard one of the levels of hell are wiped out by one of your at-will abilities.Part of the reason I quoted the "ze game will remain ze same" mantra is because that swing was coupled with an advertising campaign which seemed to indicate the swing wouldn't be noticeable at all.  For me personally, what I took from the 4E preview books (such as Worlds & Monsters) was a completely different vibe from what the actual game gave me.  When looking at the preview books, my impression was something which was potentially darker than what 3rd Edition had presented; perhaps bordering on sword & sorcery.  Granted, there were no mechanics.  It was simply the feel which I took from the product.  I'm sure there are others who had a completely different feel when reading them.More than anything, I think what gave me problems with 4E is that I didn't feel the mechanics of the game system meshed very well with the type of story that was attempting to be told with the early books.  One of the reasons I feel I had such great success with the last few games I DMed is because I completely ditched the fiction as presented.  For many people, I am told that is not the case.  I accept that I am in the minority when it comes to that, but I do not believe I am alone in feeling that the 4E mechanics are trying to tell a different story than that of the 4E fluff.  I think it is especially noticeable within certain D&D settings.    All things considered, I am certainly capable of enjoying the game style 4E has.  However, there are many fantasy influences I have which I do not feel I can do very well with 4E.  That it no way implies I cannot enjoy 4E.  I am also not implying that 4E absolutely cannot aid me in telling stories which are a product of those influences.  I'm simply suggesting that I find that -while 4E can tell some of the stories I want to tell- it does not necessarily do a good job of telling them.  It most certainly does do a great job of doing what it does.  I just wish that -during the time when I was still buying 4E products- what 4E did well was a better match for what I wanted it to do well.  I came to the realization that a lot of D&D aspects do not make sense at all outside of D&D, and that makes trying to do something which didn't originate inside of the confines of D&D difficult.  You might be able to fake it well enough to be happy with the result.  What I found especially jarring in the case of 4E was that some of the things which originated within the confines of D&D didn't really make any sense either given a world which worked differently.  It may be that this is also true of the transition from 2nd to 3rd.  I'm not sure because I haven't played 2nd, and I'm only just now becoming acquainted with 1st edition.  The best example I can think of for what I felt did not make sense anymore would be to think back upon the Dragonlance books.  If those books were written with the 4E books in mind, I do not feel the books as currently written would make any sense.  Dragonlance based around the way a 4E world works might very well be an excellent story, but I argue that it would not be the same story.  It wouldn't make sense for it to be the same story.  To shed more light on what I want out of a rpg, I'll provide this link and point to the comments I've recently made in a different conversation: <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/tabletop-gaming/331887-why-realism-lame-3.html" target="_blank">http://www.enworld.org/forum/tabletop-gaming/331887-why-realism-lame-3.html</a>To be fair, I don't think 3rd Edition was the best fit for me either.  However, there were a few factors involved in why I didn't notice.  The first is more than likely because I didn't really know any better.  Having little experience with rpgs outside of D&D at the time, I was happy to just have a game to play and accepted some of the thorns along with the roses so to speak.  The second is that 3rd Edition did a pretty good job of faking it; of making me believe it was a certain type of game without actually tying itself to being it.  In many respects, I do feel some of the things 4E changed were for the better.  Unfortunately, I find that it was built with ideals which have a tendency to conflict with my own.  I have learned how to reconcile those two sets of ideals, but I've now also learned that I have other choices when it comes to system and game as well.  Also unfortunate is that I learned how to reconcile my differences with 4E after the decisions was made to stop supporting it in favor of a new edition.  Going forward, I'll end this response by simply saying that I feel similarly toward what I currently see of 5th edition and where it is going: I'm sure it will be a great game for what it does, but I'm not convinced I'm part of the target audience.</blockquote>

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