4E is for casuals, D&D is d0med

[Majoru Oakheart]

We spend only about 20% in combat. The rest is a mix of character play, planning, and exploration. I don't mean any disrespect here, but we call what you describe in your meat response "beginner play". We spend a lot of time figuring out how to win - whatever that challenge may be. Sometimes it is combat, some times problem solving, sometimes roleplaying intelligently, sometimes just making the right decisions.

"Beginner play"? I find it difficult not to take offense to that. You are saying "You play like we did before we knew what we were doing...no offense." I've played sessions where we spend 2 hours trying to figure out a puzzle. I've played sessions where we argued endlessly about what color we should paint the hall of our museum that we had built to our greatness. We've argued the moral ramification of changing time in order to benefit us. We've even spend 30 minutes figuring out whether it is wiser to go left or right. We've had 2 hour arguments on what alignments let us do.

It's not like we weren't role playing. I used to enjoy going on tirades about how my character hated water. After the 5th or 6th time, the other players were tired of hearing it and just wanted me to open the door so they could see what was in the next room.

4e has compiled nearly all of these elements into single and complex skill roles. Let me tell you, they are vastly unsatisfactory. And that they don't include such challenges in their adventures just tells me they have no desire for the game to be more than combat scenario after combat scenario. It's like they've taken Orc & Pie as a legitimate adventure design philosophy. Tell you what. If you want, I can set aside some time and collect a list of things I can think of they deliberately left out.

Again, I'm not trying to diss your play here. We just do things differently in 2e.

I admit, there needs to be a balance between rules and role playing. We found that the further away from the rules we got the more it became random, unfair, and no fun:

PC 1: "I step into the room."
DM: "You step into the room, 30 disintegrate rays fire from the wall and kill you. Everyone else hears a voice say 'Do not step on the tiles or you will die'. The tiles fill the room and the object you need is at the back of the room."
PC 2: "Umm, I put down a blanket on the floor and step on to it. That way I won't be touching the tiles."
DM: "Nice try, the magic still knows you are touching the tiles. You die too."
PC 3: "I'm a rogue, haven't I seen traps like this before? Isn't there a way I could disable the magic powering this?"
DM: "No, you only get to tell me what you do and I'll tell you if you get disintegrated."

is just no fun. It's a guessing game: Did you do what the DM or adventure wanted? If so, you pass. If you, personally, are not an expert on riddles, traps, how the spells work in the book, and the personality of your DM then you should expect to fail...no matter what the skills of your character are.

It encouraged out of character thinking a LOT. Most of the puzzles were based around coming up with the right spell to solve the problem. Which required an encyclopedic knowledge of the spells in the game. You didn't know that disintegrate got rid of Walls of Force? Too bad, that was the only way passed this room. You didn't know that War Wizards of Cormyr wore purple? Well, you certainly aren't going to figure out this puzzle. It was more about testing the PLAYERS than it was about testing the characters.

The above scenario ALSO is perfect allowable in 4e. You can play that entire scene out using 4e rules, the same way you could with 1e rules.

Operationally, we are on very different paths. Operationally, D&D used to support multiple different ways of doing things. Now they seem to be focused on one which seems to fit you nicely, but many others rather poorly.

I'm not sure what you mean. The Temple of Elemental Evil supported multiple ways of doing things...as long as they involved entering a temple and killing the people inside. The Labyrinth of Madness allowed multiple ways of doing things...as long as you solved the problems in exactly the way the adventure wanted you to in the exact order it wanted you to.

The thing about adventures being open is they risk becoming unfocused. I can tell you that spending 4 hours wandering around a town talking to farmers about the weather...is not fun. Not for me or almost any person I've ever met. It IS technically role playing though. Same thing with spending 4 hours at a bar drinking(I've role played that session before, I know).

You want to give the players a chance to shine and do some exciting things. So you need to make stuff happen. You need to encourage the PCs to go on an adventure. And you need to encourage them to go on an interesting one, not one where they help people rescue cats out of trees.

And most people are NOT good at making things up on the fly, it requires an exceptional person to do it well. So you plan things in advance. Those plans pretty much mean finding ways to keep the players focused on what you've planned. The more things you expect them to do, the more planning you need to do in advance...in case they do those things. Most people don't have time to plan too much in advance, so they limit the possibilities. Plus, there are generally only a couple of plausible options to begin with. The rest are very unlikely to happen, so why plan for them. And when players decide to take the strange, never planned for option it normally ends up making the game no fun and grinds it to a halt.

Again, we seem to be on very different sides of the coin. ToH is a contentious design philosophy in D&D. The original is just too tough. Gygax did that time and again. He'd put out adventures for highly seasoned vets as the first adventure after making a new RPG. See Dangerous Journeys and Necropolis for example. It's another great tomb and trap adventure that puts new players way out of their depth.

Of course it is too hard. It was designed to kill everyone who went through it. Gary has admitted this on a number of occasions. It was an adventure he could use to smack around mouthy players. Whenever they had their characters brag about how good they were or whenever they acquired too many magic items or too much gold, he'd drop hints about the ToH. They'd go their to "prove themselves" then die and have to roll up a new character so that the player learned that they were never unbeatable.

Of course, this was all in the name of "good roleplaying". It had nothing to do with Gary's out of character desire to "control" his players.

But to beat either you need to change the way you play.

Yeah, that's kind of the point:

Player: "I'm role playing a character who is brash and impatient. He is the first to run headfirst into a room heedless of the consequences."
DM: "You run into the room and die. I'd suggest not role playing your character in the future if you want to survive. Either that or role play only the characters I want you to play."

Let me state, I like playing kick in the door occasionally. I like that 2E offers this option to me. I like even more that I can play all kinds of ways using the same rules during the same session. I prefer less monotone play.

As I mention above, nothing at all stops me from playing a 1st Ed mod exactly as written in 4e. Nothing contained in the rules stops it at all. The philosophy on adventure writing, what is fair to the players and what makes for a fun time has changed. However, you can use 4e to write your own adventures that are just as unfair, filled with unstoppable traps and interesting role playing situation and so on as the 1st and 2nd Edition mods were.

Yes, the rules now suggest that it's better to give your players some rolls to figure something out and to use traps that they have a chance of disarming and so on. None of this STILL precludes doing ToH as written in 4e nor does it make 2e any better at doing it.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

It's just hack and slash. .

[off-topic]
I think, in a way, 3E to some extend, and even more so 4E, D&D combat has become more then "hack and slash". Hack and Slash is like "roll attack, deal damage, repeat for each player and monster". But 3E and 4E added a lot more to it - 3E used combat maneuvers (trip, disarm, sunder), 4E uses powers (and some combat maneuvers, like charge and bullrush). All of them keep the pure combat part interesting and varied.

At least for those that like tactical combat and ... "tactical problem-solving" vs. solving puzzles and riddles vs. moral dilemmas and "social" NPC interaction.
[/off-topic]

 

[sinecure]

1st edition: T1/Village of Hommlet. A bit of a wander around a village as a prelude to a small dungeon. Reasonable opportunities for role-playing in the village. Very little plot. Dungeon a bit lacking in interest, lots of straightforward fights.

H1 is a great module. I'm glad you picked it. There are dozens of little hiding plots for multiple NPCs making the town reusable as most will not be found by the PCs during their initial stay there. There is NO plot other than the goal of attacking the dungeon if the players want to run through it as a one-shot. (this is a good thing, plots designed for PCs have no place in the game) Dungeon also has multiple parts unlikely to be discovered in the PCs first foray. Many interesting bits commented upon for potential tie in to the game world/further adventures elsewhere. A variety of monsters to fight or interact with and even save from captivity.

2nd edition: the introductory adventure from the Forgotten Realms boxed set. A bit of a wander around a village as a prelude to a small dungeon. If anything, fewer opportunities for role-playing in the village. Virtually no plot, and what there was made no sense. Dungeon a bit more interesting, but difficult to avoid a TPK if you followed it as written.

Don't have this on hand, but I think I have a glimmer of it in memory. Still, major bonus points for no railroading plots.

3rd edition: Sunless Citadel. Virtually nothing before the dungeon. Straight into the killing-monsters-and-getting-their-stuff. A pretty good dungeon, in many ways, a fair bit of variation. And Meepo! Which is about all the role-playing that the module gives you.

Yep, this is just a dungeon and one Melan showed to be highly railroady in length. I think this is one of those that used room connections as a way to simulate story arcing. you know, rising action, climax, exposition. That stuff. I agree it is low on roleplay. That folks so desperately wanted it that they made Meepo a star is proof it could use more characterization of the NPCs. Not all that bad, but the dungeon map definitely needed to be redesigned.

4th edition: KotS. Introductory action, followed by a bit of a wander around a village as a prelude to a variety of encounters. Some plot development. Several different locations. Lots of tactical variation in the fights. But still, let's face it, not a great deal of role-playing.

The early stuff is about all it has going for it. It doesn't do a bad job of description of the town and NPCs. Stats are forgotten for them too. No interesting elements to tie in for further development though. No NPC plots I saw that could lead to other adventure. Pretty much a base of operations for dull detail before the fighting.

Ignoring the railroad of out of town combats on the road and in the wilds (in which wilderness play is absolutely missing I should point out - ooh, and urban from the town, where were the rumors? Dynamics of the town?) We find ourselves in the least interesting dungeon I've seen in awhile without being a complete railroad. (Barrow of the Forgotten King, I'm looking at you!) The areas are boxes for DDM play where the only things of import included are monsters, some extraordinarily dull traps, and a riddle.

If I get back home I'll do a quick run through of the whole thing and see if I can get to 10 elements of the entire adventure that aren't Orc & Pie and list them out for you.

What does this tell us? Pretty much that the ethos of the game has been the same over the four editions. It's always been kill-the-monsters-take-their-stuff with some story elements and roleplaying thrown in. If you want deep immersive role-play D&D has never been your game. I'm very surprised by comments suggesting 4e is different in this regard.

Again, why despise your own game? If you didn't know before, it is great and is far more than killing things and taking their stuff to offer. I mean, why belittle one's own game? That's so odd to me. This foolishness wasn't thought up by D&Der's That it's been taken up by them only makes me sadder for the community.

No, it means that the character's actions are informed by such things as: what does the group want; what genre are we playing in; what can I do to move the storyline forward; and so on. Things which are pertinent to the player, but not the character.

This stuff takes place outside of playing in character, no? Or can equally be accomplished when in character. Of course, I don't think rules are really needed for this except only to aid the GM when asked to changed things so the world works in a different manner.

4E provides just as much, if not more, support for doing things out of combat as previous editions. The only thing it doesn't support is deliberately choosing to suck. To which I say, if you want to suck, you can always not roll the dice

The fact that one could always roll a die to decide anything in the game has not changed. The fact that the dice used to illustrate the feel of the game have been reduced to single and complex skill rolls means all that world design is gone. Everything that made the imaginary space more than a series of coin flips.

Would you honestly still play if combat were optionally changed to complex skill checks across the board? Optional combat systems are possible of course. How does that sound? You can call everything that came before in the game whatever you wish, but your games' fondest treasures for you have not been sacrificed to the gods of clarity, simplicity and FuN!

 

[hong]

Again, why despise your own game?

I am not the one despising the game.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

4e has not found that happy medium. Instead, it is a game that could be mistaken for a video game, where everyone has KEWL POWERZ and there are no consequences for anything (being turned to stone by a medua only lasts until combat is over, please.), everything has to be cool every single level, everyone has to do something heroic every round. There's no ramp up in power, you start off powerfully. There's no coherence in the world around the PCs.

Sorry, I miss where any of this is a bad thing. How does the game become mistaken for a video game? Did you suddenly pick up controllers and get pretty graphics that I'm unaware of(although, I love the art in the books)? Or are you talking about the ability to do things like cast fireballs and turn invisible like you can do in WoW and D&D Online? And...1st Edition D&D.

As for the rest? You want to play a weakling with no powers who dies easily and doesn't have anything useful to do each round. Feel free, but that seems like a pretty crappy game. That pretty much describes me in real life exactly.

My least favorite part of the game is rolling up a new character because I died due to one bad die roll and then having the adventure grind to a halt as the rest of the players have to go back to town in order to find my new character and spend a while getting to know him and role play him entering the party before we can continue on with the adventure.

No coherence in the world around them? This one I'm intrigued about. What do you mean exactly? The world around them is described by the DM. It is as coherent as he makes it. That's his job. I've had DMs in 2e who made worlds that made no sense at all because they were all based on his incorrect assumptions on how things in real life worked.

4e has destroyed D&D. It's not popular to say that but it is true. The designers took a great legacy and destroyed it. Kudos to them for garnering high sales for raping (yes raping) a once great game.

I'd go with "true in your opinion". Besides, let me get this straight. If they make a game and more people like it(and therefore more sales) that means it must be a worse game?

Then I must find a way to make a game SO bad that I could become a billionaire by selling it. Maybe one of those video games I keep hearing about. Everything I hear about them makes them sound so horrible. Maybe that's why they make so many times more money than D&D does.

 

[vagabundo]

4e has not found that happy medium. Instead, it is a game that could be mistaken for a video game, where everyone has KEWL POWERZ and there are no consequences for anything (being turned to stone by a medua only lasts until combat is over, please.), everything has to be cool every single level, everyone has to do something heroic every round. There's no ramp up in power, you start off powerfully. There's no coherence in the world around the PCs.

4e has destroyed D&D. It's not popular to say that but it is true. The designers took a great legacy and destroyed it. Kudos to them for garnering high sales for raping (yes raping) a once great game.

Hyperbole much??

Seriously, 4e is a great game, only DND nerds like ourselves could pick out the differences. 4e went in in a slightly different direction from 3e, both are valid offshoots from 1e/2e's roots, to say it is destroyed is total hyperbole. Although, you could just say you like 3e more..

 

[hong]

This stuff takes place outside of playing in character, no? Or can equally be accomplished when in character. Of course, I don't think rules are really needed for this except only to aid the GM when asked to changed things so the world works in a different manner.

Now you're just rambling.

The fact that one could always roll a die to decide anything in the game has not changed. The fact that the dice used to illustrate the feel of the game have been reduced to single and complex skill rolls means all that world design is gone. Everything that made the imaginary space more than a series of coin flips.

Ah, right. IOW, all mechanics are equivalent. I remember someone else tried to make that argument.

Would you honestly still play if combat were optionally changed to complex skill checks across the board?

Tell me again how this relates to the noncombat interaction system in 4E.

Optional combat systems are possible of course. How does that sound? You can call everything that came before in the game whatever you wish, but your games' fondest treasures for you have not been sacrificed to the gods of clarity, simplicity and FuN!

Pro tip: it's a good idea not to post while drunk.

 

[sinecure]

"Beginner play"? I find it difficult not to take offense to that. <snip>

Then I apologize.

I admit, there needs to be a balance between rules and role playing. We found that the further away from the rules we got the more it became random, unfair, and no fun:
<snipped example>
is just no fun. It's a guessing game: Did you do what the DM or adventure wanted? If so, you pass. If you, personally, are not an expert on riddles, traps, how the spells work in the book, and the personality of your DM then you should expect to fail...no matter what the skills of your character are.

I have to say the example isn't very fair. Death trap with no rhyme or reason is a rather unpopular playstyle. I'm not saying that's what we do. But yes, we do have rules to enable use to play in the direction we are interested in. If we want to hunt the great Kazeeker bird, we can. Finding clues, hunting down those who claim to have seen it, taking notes on it's behavior, the wild accounts of its powers. That stuff doesn't lend itself to a skill system. It works best (for us) by accumulating in character knowledge through in character actions. That the DM may or may not have rules to assist him in keeping that play consistent is his business. But yes, as a DM I certainly say it makes the game. Without such, it can become rather dull. Especially when core systems are built in to short circuit such.

It encouraged out of character thinking a LOT. Most of the puzzles were based around coming up with the right spell to solve the problem. Which required an encyclopedic knowledge of the spells in the game. You didn't know that disintegrate got rid of Walls of Force? Too bad, that was the only way passed this room. You didn't know that War Wizards of Cormyr wore purple? Well, you certainly aren't going to figure out this puzzle. It was more about testing the PLAYERS than it was about testing the characters.

That's a lot of D&D. Testing the players. Or it wouldn't really be a game would it? Testing players by forcing them OOC though is something I disagree with. This can be solved by being up front with ones DM ahead of time.

The above scenario ALSO is perfect allowable in 4e. You can play that entire scene out using 4e rules, the same way you could with 1e rules.

That's not exactly a scenario in my book. That's potential mob kill, go back and find another way. What I suggested cannot be done in 4E nor can really any in depth wilderness exploration. It's Unfun.

I'm not sure what you mean. The Temple of Elemental Evil supported multiple ways of doing things...as long as they involved entering a temple and killing the people inside. The Labyrinth of Madness allowed multiple ways of doing things...as long as you solved the problems in exactly the way the adventure wanted you to in the exact order it wanted you to.

LoM is a pile of dung, pardon my French. ToEE isn't all that great either, but it has no requirement it be played as you say. You could just as easily ingratiate yourself and attempt to take it over assuming one of the head clerics positions or ingratiating yourself with one of the monster groups. Then use the whole as a base of operations, power center for enacting more of your groups' goals. Really, it didn't need to be kill everything room by room. (check out Contxt's storyhour for a well run campaign of ToEE. On the DMs side at least)

The thing about adventures being open is they risk becoming unfocused. I can tell you that spending 4 hours wandering around a town talking to farmers about the weather...is not fun. Not for me or almost any person I've ever met. It IS technically role playing though. Same thing with spending 4 hours at a bar drinking(I've role played that session before, I know).

All adventures are unfocused. Focus is a PC group decision.

You want to give the players a chance to shine and do some exciting things. So you need to make stuff happen. You need to encourage the PCs to go on an adventure. And you need to encourage them to go on an interesting one, not one where they help people rescue cats out of trees.

Not me, baby. Dude, if you and your buddies want to spend the afternoon in imagination land rescuing cats from trees... I'm there for ya. I'm not here to tell you what's fun. I'm here for you to tell me.

And most people are NOT good at making things up on the fly, it requires an exceptional person to do it well. So you plan things in advance. Those plans pretty much mean finding ways to keep the players focused on what you've planned. The more things you expect them to do, the more planning you need to do in advance...in case they do those things. Most people don't have time to plan too much in advance, so they limit the possibilities. Plus, there are generally only a couple of plausible options to begin with. The rest are very unlikely to happen, so why plan for them. And when players decide to take the strange, never planned for option it normally ends up making the game no fun and grinds it to a halt.

Yikes. Let's just say I can't disagree with you more. Yes, preparation is a hallmark of any good DM, but so is rolling with the changes. You have to be able to think outside the box just like the Players. Or your going to get left behind. I'm not saying make up a dungeon on the fly made of feather because that's what the players want. Grow from something you already have. But if they change focus, change with them.

Of course it is too hard. It was designed to kill everyone who went through it. Gary has admitted this on a number of occasions. It was an adventure he could use to smack around mouthy players. Whenever they had their characters brag about how good they were or whenever they acquired too many magic items or too much gold, he'd drop hints about the ToH. They'd go their to "prove themselves" then die and have to roll up a new character so that the player learned that they were never unbeatable.

Of course, this was all in the name of "good roleplaying". It had nothing to do with Gary's out of character desire to "control" his players.

That sounds possible. It still doesn't make it a bad adventure. It only makes it more like one best designed for Call of Cthulhu adventures. The kind you never expect to come back from.

Except CoC adventures are full of train rides (some literally) and nowhere near as good.

Yeah, that's kind of the point:

Player: "I'm role playing a character who is brash and impatient. He is the first to run headfirst into a room heedless of the consequences."
DM: "You run into the room and die. I'd suggest not role playing your character in the future if you want to survive. Either that or role play only the characters I want you to play."

Better yet. In character, turn around and say, "This sucks, let's never come back here" and go do some other thing you've got on your PC group agenda. It's not like anyone is forcing you to be in any one spot. And if so, if it's not from repercussions of what your characters did, just tell the GM he sucks and walk out for real.

As I mention above, nothing at all stops me from playing a 1st Ed mod exactly as written in 4e. Nothing contained in the rules stops it at all. The philosophy on adventure writing, what is fair to the players and what makes for a fun time has changed. However, you can use 4e to write your own adventures that are just as unfair, filled with unstoppable traps and interesting role playing situation and so on as the 1st and 2nd Edition mods were.

Again, didn't say you couldn't. Only that the current ones have been pretty sucky. Last few years for 3rd. Now in 4th even moreso.

 

[Cadfan]

I find it entertaining that 4e, which is probably the most tactically rich RPG out there as far as combat goes, is also lambasted as being overly simple. The simplifications of 4e mostly relate to areas where complexity is useless, or even counterproductive. Take an obvious example like Turn Undead. In 3e, this was a bunch of work. In 4e, you make an attack roll. There are a LOT of things like this in the game, where multiple rolls have been reduced to just one.

The reason I find that so valuable is simple- its a question of where I want the game to focus.

3e had a certain inevitable focus on mechanics, since a lot of them were a bit complex. Want to knock someone prone? You needed an unarmed melee touch attack, you got attacked by an attack of opportunity (unless you had the feat that made you immune, which you probably did because almost no one tripped if they didn't), if you hit your target you got the chance to make a strength check opposed by their strength or dexterity (their choice) modified by a + or -4 for every size difference between the two of you. If you succeeded, they fell prone. And of course you probably have a feat that lets you take a free attack once your foe is tripped.

In 4e, you use your per encounter power that hits someone in the face so hard they fall over. Make an attack roll. Did it hit? If so, do damage, and your target is prone.

So much easier. So much better for casuals. But notice! Its EXACTLY as tactically rewarding! Absolutely nothing of what I value in D&D was lost. And by making something interesting like Trip happen quickly, it means that more interesting things like that can happen per fight without bogging down the game. Simplicity of mechanism can produce depth of interaction.

Meanwhile the noncombat systems are just as good as 3e, and do just as many of the things which matter to adventurers as 3e, plus a few more. The things which were omitted, like professions, are better handled through roleplaying than stats anyways, in my opinion. I don't predict the slightest hitch in how I handle matters outside of combat.

 

[Doug McCrae]

We spend only about 20% in combat.

And you use 2e? Wouldn't it be better if you weren't bored for at least 20% of the time? This is the genius of d20. They realised combat can be a fun part of the game too.

The rest of the time when you're coming up with cunning plans, investigating, going shopping, having arguments about morality or whatever floats your boat, the nominal game rules don't really matter. You may as well be playing T&T or Palladium Fantasy or Earthdawn or BD&D. All it affects is the number and shape of dice you roll for perception checks and the like.

4e has an interesting system for integrating those skill-type rolls with more freeform roleplaying but it isn't required. The DM decides if a situation is no roll, single roll or an extended skill challenge.