4E is for casuals, D&D is d0med

[pemerton]

For those people who absolutely loved straightforward fighters, it was known the moment they said "No more straightforward fighters!" like it was a wonderful thing. Same thing for those who loved Bigby and those who adored half-orcs and those who were intimate with the Great Wheel.

For a good chunk of D&D players, the tropes were the point of the play experience. Without the tropes, it's just not the same experience, and, thus, not very fun for them.

All this is true, I agree. But I don't think that this goes to any issue of "casual" vs "hardcore", or to any question of simplicity vs complexity (I'm not sure that you think so either - maybe this is just a tangent).

the powers themselves are still bland and "samey" to me to get me excited about any of them. I'm left going "Meh, does it REALLY matter?" at every level I can choose something. Nothing stands out.

Interesting, because I have quite a different reaction in looking through them and thinking about how I might build different sorts of characters. Admittedly I'm still getting familiar with my books, and I haven't read all the powers yet, but the Fighter powers combined with the Feat and Weapon rules gave me lots of ideas about different sorts of PCs, the Wizard powers suggested different sorts of casters (including a classic 1st ed Illusionist using Force Orb, Prismatic attacks, Confusion and Maze) and the Paladin powers the different concepts I mentioned earlier.

I agree that they all largely fit the description "damage + effect", but the different effects combined with the different stats that are used suggest to me quite a rich potential for play - both tactically rich and thematically rich.

4e wants, from all I can tell, to be simpler, more accessible, and to give more people what they really want based on what they enjoyed about the game before, stripped down to "bare essentials"

More accessible I agree with. These are the clearest-written D&D rules I've seen since Moldvay Basic. But simpler and "bare essentials" I don't really agree with - I remain of the view that Imaro is right about the emergent tactical complexity, and I think that the game has far more than the "bare essentials" of (for example) Moldvay Basic. I think it has more of the "bare essentials" than 3E, because (for example) it has advice in the DMG on how to handle players who want to adopt director's stance (sidebar, p 28).

given elements that will help push sub-industries like minis and DDI that can help enrich the basic game.

This stuff I agree is there but is of little personal interest to me. It's certainly not part of what makes the game attractive to me, nor part of what makes me think it is a good game.

This is like giving everyone McDonald's, because most people eat at McDonald's, and maybe letting them pay extra for "angus burgers" and "salads" if they want some options.

3e wanted to give every D&D fan something to love, and to be able to customize the basic core for their own needs.

<snip>

Maybe its just McD's is too harsh? Perhaps it would go over better if I said 4e was firing all the cooks so that they could make us all Applebee's? Or Outback Steakhouse? Or Nathan's Hot Dogs? Or Long John Silver's?

I can't relate to the Wii vs Linux metaphor because I am not a computer person. But I can relate to the generic food metaphor, and I don't find it at all helpful. I apologise for the lengthiness that is about to ensue, but I want to try and explain why I don't find it helpful.

I'm a vegetarian who's sort of a hippy food snob. I live in a suburb of Melbourne called Fitzroy, which is (on a somewhat smaller Australian scale) a little like living in Greenwhich Village if one lived in NYC. When I watch TV I watch almost exclusivly SBS (in US terms, a bit like PBS on steroids). I am an academic in two literary disciplines - philosophy and law. When I go to the movies I mostly go to arthouse cinemas to watch non-Hollywood movies. By the standards of any mainstream cultural assessment in either the US or Australia I am part of the self-proclaimed cultural elite (though, being an academic rather than a private lawyer, not part of the financial elite!).

The reason I say all this is to try to give you a broad sense of my tastes. And my RPGing tastes aren't all that different from the picture I've tried to paint. I find Ron Edwards' essays and RPG reviews insightful, and I enjoy narrativist play. It is because I think that 4e is better suited to satisfying these sorts of RPGing tastes that I think it is a better game than 3E. And I don't think it does this by becoming more bland, or more generic, or more cookie-cutter, or more simplified (and I find the analogy to McDonalds utterly inapt). I think 4e achieves what I believe it achieves because it offers robust mechanics that support a degree of narrative flexibility, and player control of the narrative, that is (for D&D) unparalleled.

You are painting a picture of 3E as a free-thinker's paradise. But for me that notion is bizarre. I look at 3E as suffering from the same problems that have always plagued D&D - clunky mechanics that get in the way of narrative choice (eg by so tightly linking mechanics and in-game physics that I can't conceive of my PC successfully doing X unless s/he has the feat for X). As I said on another thread, the whole hit point mechanic in 3E, which is very hard to interpret as anything other than literal toughness, automatically lowers the tone of any game, because it makes the nature of human life and death in the gameworld almost cartoonish.

When it comes to hit points, however, 4e keeps the virtues of hit points as an effective combat resolution mechanic while rendering it, at the metagame level, a type of Fate Point system rather than any attempt to model in-game physics. This opens the door for a type of serious storytelling that (IME) D&D has not really permitted in the past, but which games like Rolemaster, or RuneQuest, or HeroWars, have.

And that's why I don't think 4e is simplistic, or at odds with serious or deep roleplaying, or in general a step away from "hardcore" towards "casual".

I do agree that it makes life harder for rules tinkerers. As I noted in a recent post on another thread, one of the things about 4e that I think is wonderful - namely, the realisation of thematic elements through the powers of the various monsters and characters - creates an obstacle to making adventures about new themes for which monsters don't yet exist. (Luckily, the MM seems to cover a pretty wide thematic range, relative to the sorts of themes one might try and explore using a high fantasy game as the vehicle.) But designing RPGs isn't playing them. In my posts in this thread I'm trying to do my best to evaluate 4e as a game to be played.

Apologies for an overlong post.

 

[I'm A Banana]

4E is a modular system that was built to incorporate new resources for players and DMs in its subscription model.

Yes, and the Sky is Blue.

But more specifically, 4e presents a fantasy world with characters and empires and towns and says "Have Fun with These." They gave me a menu of options that I can choose from and that they can add to.

And 3e gave me a head of lettuce and said "Here's how you make a salad out of it. And here's how you make a sandwich out of it."

4e says "You like dark heroes, right? Here's tieflings! They have an ancient empire and a conflict with the dragonborn!"

3e says "D&D has, in the past, given you half-orcs. Here's how they look now, in Stereotypical D&D Land. Do whatever you want with 'em, whatever you've been doing for 30 years, or some of this new hotness we've got going on, or whatever."

I'm not really trying to say that either is better, just that they are entirely different goals. It's also a continuum, not a binary choice. 3e was more focused on a toolset ("Here's prestige classes! Now go make some yourself!"), 4e is more focused on an instruction manual ("Here's some really cool paragon paths! Wait for more!"). These aren't exactly exclusive of each other, but its a very different intent that has lead to certain things that some people liked about 3e getting axed to make it a better instruction manual. And because 3e runs the risk of being "canceled" because of that, people who like those things aren't happy about it.

How far do you think this food analogy goes? You don't get extra points for a Combo.

....okay, reiterating the point you're trying to respond to:

Narrative content in an RPG is not independent of mechanical systems.

Tinkering with 3E meant that you started with your poisonous apples and your tasty oranges. Sometimes you used the apples well, most of the time you realized that it didn't work and started to work within a set, limited framework of alterations.

Point the first, I'm not talking, nor do I care, about the quality you personally found in 3e's attempt to do what 3e attempted to do.

I'm putting forth a really very mundane proposition, there. That 3e was more of a toolkit than 4e is, because 4e isn't concerned as much about you modding your home game to accommodate all sorts of weirdness, largely because the team found that those rules cluttered up the main books while adding very little to most games.

Some people really liked the toolkit and are angry that it is being retired in favor of the ready-to-eat meal.

I'm a little shocked that this is even a controversial position. Of COURSE 4e wants to be ready to play out of the box. That's one of their explicit design goals. And 3e wanted to give you a whole box of tools that you could make a large range of games under. That was one of its explicit design goals. And the two aren't mutually exclusive, its just a matter of focus. I'm confused as to how the idea of 4e being "more ready to go right away" than 3e, and 3e being more "tinker-intensive" than 4e, is somehow inaccurate. That's kind of the bleedin' POINT of the link in hong's initial post: 4e is the Wii. 4e doesn't need the processing power of the more robust game systems because it knows what most people find fun, and it serves THAT (and rather well).

The point that not everyone finds it fun, because some people like a more tinker-intensive system, would seem to be almost self-evident.

Which brings me back to my original post: its more accurate in my mind, if 4e is the Wii, to say that 3e is a Linux machine (heck, its entirely Open Source!) than to say that 3e is like the PS3, and that some of the 3e anger comes from feeling like they're being kind of forced to browse the web with a Wii. That lack of choice, that feeling that what you like is being taken away just because you're not part of the majority, is where a lot of the frustration can come from. The Wii is vastly more popular than Linux, and is a lot of fun, but it doesn't have the exclusive domain on what people find fun, especially some of the "fringe" people that 4e is alienating that 3e speciflcally tried to mostly accommodate.

In no possible way does this mean that 4e somehow cannot handle people's house rules and minor tweaks. The sky is blue, of course it can. That doesn't really change the intended focus of the edition: you're not supposed to HAVE to house rule it (while 3e basically MADE you house rule it, even if you didn't really want to -- oddly enough, just like every other D&D edition, as far as I can tell).

 

[hong]

Some people really liked the toolkit and are angry that it is being retired in favor of the ready-to-eat meal.

People who want to hack, will hack, no matter what.

In no possible way does this mean that 4e somehow cannot handle people's house rules and minor tweaks. The sky is blue, of course it can. That doesn't really change the intended focus of the edition: you're not supposed to HAVE to house rule it (while 3e basically MADE you house rule it, even if you didn't really want to -- oddly enough, just like every other D&D edition, as far as I can tell).

... did you just make a virtue out of bad design?

 

[Darth Shoju]

I like 4e. I like my Wii.



As I was using the term, I meant it to mean this:

"This game is essentially the same game as before, meaning that if you are familiar with Fireball in 1e, you will recognize it in 3e, and if you know what a Bodak is in 2e, you will recognize it in 3e, and if you are aware of how a wizard works in BD&D, you will see a similarity to how it works in 3e."

3e was the "same game." It had barbarians and half-orcs and the Great Wheel and spell slots and straightforward fighters and all of those other sacred cows. The underlying rules may have changed (multiple subsystems resolved into d20 rolls), but you can basically do the same things you've always done with this game.

4e is, at least in this respect, a dramatically "different game." It has what it thinks you want most, it has sacrificed sacred cows very efficiently, the rules have changed so much that you cannot do the same things you've always done with this game if they are markedly different than the things that most other people have done with this game. If you want a dungeon survival or simulationist or Great Wheel or straightforward-fighter 4e, you're basically boned. 4e is meeting what they see as the greatest demand. They're probably right, but 3e chose a more inclusive approach (which lead to its complexity, in part).

When I say 4e doesn't want to be "quitessential D&D," I'm saying that 4e has no real interest or investment in most of the sacred cows, memes, and habits that D&D had acquired in the previous editions. 3e obviously did.

I largely agree with what you are saying. 4e is different, and doesn't really fit this version of D&D. The problem is, groups like the one I game with were tired and frustrated with 3e, and it was largely those sacred cows that were causing the problems. Shortly before 4e was (officially) announced, we were looking at heavily house-ruling 3e to fit what we wanted it to be, but it was looking like it wasn't going to be particularly compatible with any of the 3e material being released.

This leads me to the other portion of your theory, that people who like 3e and want to stick with it are frustrated because 4e will replace it. Others are suggesting that 4e is so different that it should have been called something other than D&D. If this had been done, and all of those people who were frustrated with 3e bought that game instead, would it have kept that edition in print? Would everyone have gotten what they wanted? Or, if 4e by a different name had been so popular, would any company be able to profit enough by sticking with 3e?

I'm not sure what the answer to those questions is. We've got Paizo looking at keeping 3e alive as Pathfinder, but that isn't a true equivalent to my hypothetical situation, as Pathfinder doesn't have the brand name recognition and Paizo doesn't have the resources of WoTC.

I guess what I'm ultimately saying is, should people be forced to use a set of rules that weren't working for them so it can be kept alive for those who were enjoying it? In that scenario, only one group is really getting what they want. In the current scenario, rules systems exist to satisfy both parties, but one will have to settle on not getting as much product support as they used to (and maybe additional trouble finding a group to play with).

I'm not sure what better alternative there is to this problem.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I'm cutting most of what I agree with for brevity's sake.

You are painting a picture of 3E as a free-thinker's paradise.

Not really, or at least, that's not really my intention.

3e was more of a toolbox than 4e is. 4e is more of a "packaged" deal than 3e was. 4e comes ready to eat. Faster, more convenient, easier to spread. These are very much the notions behind fast food: get it fast, get it easy, make it standardized so that people know what to expect. To a certain extent, this follows with the Wii -- it is easy, it is catchy, it is efficient. You don't need much depth to play Wii Fit.

In the food respect, because 3e is more of a toolbox, its more like unmolded, raw ingredients. This was part of its appeal, and also one of its flaws, kind of in the same way home cookin' looses out to fast food: it's not convenient, it creates very different games, and it is hard to spread because it requires an investment of time and effort, and can be more uneven. To a certain extent, this matches Linux -- it requires an involvement, a special knowledge, and a willingness to put in time and effort above and beyond normal to pick it up (even if it ain't much).

That's not exclusive, of course. Its a continuum. 3e had pre-packaged rules bits (especially late in the game). 4e can put up with house rules and add-ons.

As I said on another thread, the whole hit point mechanic in 3E, which is very hard to interpret as anything other than literal toughness, automatically lowers the tone of any game, because it makes the nature of human life and death in the gameworld almost cartoonish.

When it comes to hit points, however, 4e keeps the virtues of hit points as an effective combat resolution mechanic while rendering it, at the metagame level, a type of Fate Point system rather than any attempt to model in-game physics.

In my view, this is far too binary of a way to approach the Heisenberg Uncertainty Points. Or, for that matter, anything about 3e or 4e relative to each other. It's not a switch that you flip, it's a slight nudge of focus. 3e HP's can be fate points, and 4e HP's can be literal toughness, each when they need to be. 4e perhaps does a better job of stating and working with the notion that they aren't ALWAYS toughness, which is good, but hardly a revolution.

The vast majority of the game is a nudge in a different direction, not an overhaul. The nudge just occured at a very basic level.

And that's why I don't think 4e is simplistic, or at odds with serious or deep roleplaying, or in general a step away from "hardcore" towards "casual".

Well, there's a bone of contention.

The thing is that if you're right 4e HASN'T shifted more towards casual, then every point about 4e being easier, simpler, quicker, etc. is actually exceptionally misleading, because its just DIFFERENTLY hardcore (party dynamics and one-word ability interactions and the like are, if they are important, going to require a whole lot of attention).

If you're wrong, and 4e HAS shifted more towards casual, than that meshes with the reviews and the opinions, but it also means that it can't be too hardcore, because then one-word ability choices and an inability to quickly comprehend interactions between powers would routinely bone a party.

Right now, I've only experienced low-level 4e, which has its annoying complexities, but is mostly simple...a lot like low-level 3e (but less "get hit and die or hit and win", which I like).

I don't see 4e as particularly complex. You move enemies near the guys who hit them hard and away from the softies. You inflict ailments that give the bad guys less turns. Your primary concern is damage, as much as you can dish out, of whatever type causes it. Every choice you make in the game will do one of those three things, sometimes more than one of them at once. The only way that could be made especially hardcore is if the DM became antagonistic and gave you purposefully difficult and unusual encounters, which would still scare away newbies on both sides of the screen (players who couldn't cut it and DMs who couldn't understand the subtleties of those one-word interactions and party dynamics).

So here's the thing: Either the cake is a lie and 4e really is as complex and obnoxiously stringent as 3e was (but in a different way), or its not, the cake is truth, and it will loose one of the things that drew certain people to 3e.

But regardless of that outcome, 4e is still less of a toolbox than 3e was, and that has already alienated some people.

And abandoning 3e and telling those people to play 4e is a little bit like forcing Linux users to post to ENWorld using the Wii: it doesn't do what they want it to do, and they can't use what they want to use anymore because there's nothing to support it.

Fortunately, its not quite that dire, thanks to Pathfinder at least, but this is what some people might be feeling when they aren't interested in 4e.

 

[I'm A Banana]

... did you just make a virtue out of bad design?

Ask any newly potty trained toddler: doing it yourself has its own rewards.

If this had been done, and all of those people who were frustrated with 3e bought that game instead, would it have kept that edition in print? Would everyone have gotten what they wanted? Or, if 4e by a different name had been so popular, would any company be able to profit enough by sticking with 3e?

The thing is, if WotC basically did Pathfinder and called it 4e, they might've been able to solve the problems without a massive overhaul and abandoning the 3e gearheads. And if they released a more streamlined 4e as a new minis game (for instance), they might've had their cake and ate it, too.

You don't need as massive an overhaul as 4e did to fix those problems.

But the team, rather understandably, wasn't interested in it. 4e wasn't created just to solve 3e's problems. It was created to revive sales, to launch new revenue streams, to establish new IP and brand identity, to liberate WotC from the OGL entirely, to make D&D more broadly appealing, and also to fix some of 3e's problems. And then it also served the purposes of promoting some of the designers pet sexy beasts and design theories.

They wanted to accomplish a lot more than just fixing a previous edition's flaws, and I'm not even sure that was one of the highest priorities, since they've fallen into a few of the traps they set out to avoid because of other considerations.

I'm not sure what better alternative there is to this problem.

It would have been possible to fix 3e without the wholehearted shift in focus, or to better support toolboxing and simulationist gameplay in the core rules, but at least everything I mentioned above trumped that for the design team this time around.

 

[pemerton]

KM, thanks for the thoughtful series of posts.

make it standardized so that people know what to expect.

This is true of fast food. I don't get the sense that it's interestingly true of 4e in a way that it wasn't of 3E. Both give races, gods, an implicit social system etc.

Fast food also implies bland, unhealthy, tasteless, poor quality etc. In short, generic. I don't get that feel from 4e at all. I get it less from 4e than from 3E precisely because of the design of 4e's powers (as I've sketched in earlier posts). It may be that my response in this respect is atypical.

The thing is that if you're right 4e HASN'T shifted more towards casual, then every point about 4e being easier, simpler, quicker, etc. is actually exceptionally misleading, because its just DIFFERENTLY hardcore (party dynamics and one-word ability interactions and the like are, if they are important, going to require a whole lot of attention).

If you're wrong, and 4e HAS shifted more towards casual, than that meshes with the reviews and the opinions, but it also means that it can't be too hardcore, because then one-word ability choices and an inability to quickly comprehend interactions between powers would routinely bone a party.

I see the force of your argument. I'm not sure what the true response should be. But here is one response which I would like to be true, even though it may not be.

Adorno and the other Frankfurt school theorists took the view that, when it comes to aesthetics, the masses would prefer the (self-evidently, to those theorists) superior high culture over low culture if only they got the chance to be exposed to it and make it their own. (A somewhat related notion lay behind the movement for working men's colleges in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centures.)

Ron Edwards' attitude towards RPGing, as expressed in his essays, has a similar optimistic tone: the masses would love RPGs if only good RPGs were made accessible to them.

I would like to think that 4e might be something that vindicates Ron Edwards' view, and therefore the Frankfurt school aesthetic theory, at least in one aesthetic domain (namely, that of the RPG). That is, that we have a game which can be played and appreciated for what it is by the masses, not because it speaks down to them or has been made "casual", but because it speaks aesthetic truth to them and makes that truth accessible to them.

If such a thing were possible, then it could be true that a game could appeal to the casual gamer without forsaking that which makes it rich for the hardcore.

Now, all the above might seem like mere academic wishful thinking or projection! But there are a couple of historical examples that show that it can happen: in the nineteenth and early twentieth century (basically, the pre-modernist period) the great authors (eg Twain, Dickens) were also popular authors; from the 30s till some time around the end of the 70s the great flims (Casablanca, Citizen Kane, Les Enfants du Paradis, Midnight Cowboy, 2001) were also the popular films. So it doesn't seem to be a necessary cultural truth that the great cannot also be the popular.

Anyway, whether or not the any of the above is actually true, I hope it explains why I can see the force of your argument and yet refrain from fully agreeing with you.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

First off, good lord, that was an amazing post Kamakazi Midget. I dunno what to add. Well, there is this:



I ahve to disagree. Trudging through the lists of powers was boring and painful. They all start to melt together. Ok, one does damage + wisdom, the other does damage + charisma, but it's still the same thing. Occasionally you'd see an ability that shifted you or an opponent. Maybe one gave them one of the ten trillion marks we'll need in combat.

But they were still all very...what's the word? Same-y? Like I said, they really started to melt together for me.

Why do you quote pemerton but don't read what he writes? He said that the rules text itself is not evocative. That is not the goal of the rules text.

The question is what happens in play. And if you haven't played the game, you can't really judge it (I suppose, pemerton can neither). But if you read the powers and think about how they can interact, what it means if I slide an enemy into a flanking position, if I daze a Dragon before he becomes bloodied, what happens if shifty Kobold meets Figher with Combat Superiority, you will see a lot of potential for interesting interaction. It is an emergent complexity, but that isn't bad.

---

For house-rules in 4E: What do people consider house-rules? Creating a new monster to fit your story? Creating a new race? Creating a new feat or spell (power)?

Or creating a new spellcasting subsystem (spell slots=> power points)? Creating a different damage resolution model (aka Hit Points => Wound Points and Vitality Points)?

Because I absolutely don't see how you can't do the former, and that is the kind of house-rules I have done all the time in D&D 3E. And I am already doing for 4E.
The latter is rarely done, because they require a lot of work and re-balancing. And 3E isn't any better at it then 4E...

 

[pemerton]

It would have been possible to fix 3e without the wholehearted shift in focus, or to better support toolboxing and simulationist gameplay in the core rules, but at least everything I mentioned above trumped that for the design team this time around.

This I agree with. Looking at 4e as a "fix of 3E" is like looking at HeroWars as a "fix of Runequest". That is, it tells you virtually nothing about the design goals of the game or the play experiences it is likely to deliver.

if WotC basically did Pathfinder and called it 4e, they might've been able to solve the problems without a massive overhaul and abandoning the 3e gearheads.

Now, I think this notion of the "gearhead" is interesting. As I hope I've managed to make clear, I haven't been including design (or tinkering) within my notion of playing an RPG. For those for whom tinkering actually is an important, or the most important, aspect of RPGs, then I suspect 4e may not deliver, because I don't get the sense that it is easy to design well for. Good powers, for example, require a rather subtle correlation of mechanics and theme which may be harder to pull off than simply determining mechanical balance (which comes to us in 4e prepackaged in the form of the repeated "damage + effect" formula).

My use of "prepackaged" there is deliberate - maybe I've worked out what you meant by your fast food metaphor!

 

[pemerton]

The question is what happens in play.

Thanks for the post, obviously I agree with the bit I've quoted!

For house-rules in 4E: What do people consider house-rules? Creating a new monster to fit your story?

For the reasons I've given, I think this may be harder to do well in 4e than in earlier editions, because the emphasis is no longer on mechanical balance (this is already given to you), but on the integration of mechanics and theme, which may be harder to successfully pull off.

Of course, it may not be.