4E is for casuals, D&D is d0med

[Storm Raven]

Wow. That does suck. Maybe you could make an interesting world next time? You know? The kind where things actually happen? Like the kind that were in old school modules?

Umm, Hommlet is an old school module, published in about 1982 or so.

I've been looking at it (actually, at the T1-8 supermodule) to convert to kick off my new 3.5 campaign, and I've really noticed how sparse the module is in terms of NPC development - most don't even have names other than "carpenter" or "goodwife" or any information about what they might know about things of interest to adventurers or clues to lead the PCs to some sort of adventure, although there is a lot about how they don't get along with their neighbors "the elderly widower" and "the husky farmer".

 

[Storm Raven]

Double post.

 

[Mallus]

Combat in 2e is infinitely more interesting that 4th. You have at best 14 options in combat. We have whatever we care to imagine. Sucks for you huh?

Speaking of fallacies... why can't a 4e player imagine up and use new combat options to their hearts content, exactly? All they need is the DM's consent. Which is the same as in 2e (I remember, I was there...).

2e does not force one into a style of play.

Neither does 3e. Want evidence? Go read some of the Story Hour section here and then tell me 3e creates/imposes a uniform play style.

You have very strange ideas. Even I don't believe DDM 3rd or 4th or d20 Chainmail (or the original) are boardgames.

He said contain boardgames, not are boardgames. There's a difference. An example: the last adventure I wrote/ran contained parodies of T.S. Eliot's poetry but was not, itself, a T.S. Eliot poem. Simple, natch?

 

[Mallus]

D&D pretty much has it. A few abstract descriptions to understand where one stand demographically. A few things to own. And a description created the player that the GM uses to construct the characters abilities behind the scenes.

How does 4e not do this, again?

I cut the bean counting comment out, but you seem to think they have nothing to do with heroism.

Yes. Insignificant details are insignificant.

What does? Killing things?

Ask Achilles that question. Or Conan. But Achilles first.

If that's it, you've already cut yourself off at the knees.

Hey, I'll do the talking for me!

2nd includes rules for a ton of different things. Just look at all option in the three main books and in the additional books. They don't include feats and powers in the Castles Book. Or repetitiously dull magic items in the magic encyclopaedias.

You're kidding, right? You're comparing the three 4e rule books to the entire 2e catalog? What does this demonstrate, besides 'several hundred > three'?

2E is jam packed full of actual stuff that makes sense.

Name some. A few. I dare you. And, for the record, no edition of D&D was ever jam packed with sense.

I think I got carried away there.

No worries. It happens.

It's just hard to understand how folks can see 1000 variations on combat maneuvers as a good thing and "what roleplaying is"...

People are saying that 1000 cool combat options are cool combat options. They are not saying they represent 'what roleplaying is'. Speaking of, how's that definition coming along??

 

[Doug McCrae]

I find keeping track of arrows, rations and money to be tedious and pointless. It's better handled by a more abstract mechanic imo, if it's handled at all. However I'm definitely in a minority, polls on ENWorld show that most players do seem to like it.

Nerds.

 

[Mallus]

...but to me it maximizes the time we spend gaming with interesting choices, not accounting practices.

Same here. As they proud DM of a newly 13th level 3.5 party with 4 primary spellcasters, I'm getting a lot of practice accounting each and every session. And I don't like it, sir. Not one bit.

 

[The Little Raven]

Combat in 2e is infinitely more interesting that 4th. You have at best 14 options in combat. We have whatever we care to imagine. Sucks for you huh?

This is so wrong as to be laughable.

In 2nd Edition, as a fighter, my mechanical options for combat are move, use item, and attack. Sure, I can describe my attacks as whatever I want, using florid prose to make it sound interesting. Roleplaying is used to compensate for a lack of mechanical options. The single action I can perform is the only effective thing my character can do in 60 seconds.

In 4th Edition, as a fighter, my mechanical options for combat are move, use item, attack, and any of the other options I have chosen to take on, such as powers and feats. I can describe my attacks as whatever I want, using florid proise to make it sound interesting. Roleplaying is used to support a selection of mechanical options. The several actions I can perform are the only effective things my character can do in 6 seconds.

In short, 2nd Edition combat is horribly boring in comparison to 4th Edition combat.

I'm pretty much of the mind that d20 was the end of D&D.

Then discussion with you is pointless since you've already arrived at a foregone conclusion which strangles that discussion.

 

[I'm A Banana]

To dredge up a few things...

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."

Thats a pretty broad-brush assessment that fits more into your personal bias than as part of an objective observation.

Its not really a broad-brush assessment. Its two specific examples where the basic philosophy of the game diverges. It also contains no obvious quality statements: I am not saying any one method is inherently better than any other, merely pointing out that they are different methods, examples of differing philosophies, and that each of these paths makes certain choices about how to achieve their goals, and that these choices are going to alienate someone.

The above seems extraordinarily obvious to me. So if its not, stop trying to claim that I am personally biased, and actually contradict the evidence. This will lead to a generally productive conversation. Me repeating the obvious doesn't seem like its really doing that.

First, the Implied Setting you note is not a problem, considering that gods and planes are a bigger piece of the landscape for homebrews-

Tieflings have Angst because they are spawn of demons. Half-Orcs have Angst because they are spawn of savages. The former has even more of an icky connotation that leads into more Sturm and Drang.

This is completely unrelated. I don't really care if you personally find it a problem or if you personally find something icky. This isn't, I'd hope, two people just screaming their preferences at each other. I'm trying to get at some of the real, cogent differences between the editions, and there is much more depth there than "3e sucked, 4e rocks!", or the inverse.

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

That is largely a factor of Genre.

...no, it is largely a factor of what an RPG is -- a union of narrative content and mechanical systems, each of which informs the other.

Narrative Content is actually things such as Absolute spell stats, Wealth-by-Level charts, Flat Diplomacy skill DCs, and 3-easy-then-1-hard-encounter-then-you-rest system assumptions. Having decoupled "Ritual" systems that involve behind-the-screen assessments like a Succubas charm, you actually give more room for a DM to create the Narrative Content than before.

The idea that less rules = more narrative is deeply flawed, and, in any case, ignores the true relationship between the rules and narrative in an RPG.

I don't believe you can talk about the achievements and goals of a system without taking quality into account.

The plumage don't enter into it. The goals are largely independent about how you personally feel about the ickiness of half-orcs. The question is about the functions of half-orcs.

Not only that, but quality is INSANELY more subjective (and thus more useless for productive conversation here) than the stated or obvious goals of the game.

"The Wii" is a crypto-slam meme on 4E for being "Casual", which is a lame pejorative trying to play up into a "Supercool Hardcore" image of the user.

No?

Like I've said upthread, I like my Wii. I like 4e. This isn't about slamming anything, from my side. "Casual" isn't a bad thing. Its a description that seems accurate, not any sort of loaded term.

A bad system is still bad, no matter what its goals are. He may love you and buy you flowers, but a black eye is a black eye.

Once again, I don't care what you think is a bad system. Quality isn't at all a useful distinction between 3e and 4e because it is such a subjective, loaded distinction. Rather, there are things that are descriptive that it seems can be largely agreed on regardless of your quality assessment. One is that 4e is more of an out-of-the-box game than 3e, which suffered from a need to tinker. The choices that went into that weren't made because the designers were dumb chimps who didn't know what they were doing. The choices were made in pursuit of the goal, and one place where 3e and 4e diverge (ever so slightly, but still significantly) is on the goal of "encouraging people to make their own game." 3e forced it to a certain degree, 4e just lets it happen on the sidelines.

Most of the 3E grognard crowd that ascribe to any printed game being the bringer of milk and honey for all their needs is a reactionary response supported by a self-selected group on the internet. You see the same thing in Pro-Ana Livejournal groups and other forms of risk appeasement communities.

You've passed the limits of basic constructive conversation at this point, and I really don't feel the need to respond to bizarre comparisons of 3e fans to people who encourage eating disorders.

Talk to me when you're done pointlessly villifying people.

 

[DonTadow]

I wouldn't take the casual notion as a slam too much, it is what it is. Read the tone of the books, its not written to people who have any idea of what role playing is, its written for new players, players who just pick it up and want to play. this is cool, but that reason alone is why I can't call this edition a traditional dungeons an ddragons.

D and D has never been for the casual gamer. It's bee nfor the person who wants to spend a bit of extra time doing something. It's a hobby for just about everyone. It certainly isn't a game where you pick it up, put it down and come back 23 days later.

The reason why some like 4e is why some players hate it. There's no detail in it, its meant for quick battles to satify some wierd urge (I've never wanted to role play for just 2 hours). The inclusions are put their to satify types of MMO players as opposed to make a solid cohesion of elements (dragonkind and tiefling parties... right....). someone tells me the battles are quicker, I tell them that their turn is coming quicker, the battles take the same time, what they seemed to do was make a dummy version to play, strip out any complexity and have you have at it. It's akin to when I used to give my little brother the unplugged Nintendo Controller.

So will bringing in a lot ofp eople with no real care for old school dungeons and dragons kill dungeons and dragons. I think it will kill the concept of detailed games and campaigns. YOu're going to get a flurry of players who want to pick it up and kill mobs and quest, then will get too bored with the pacing and move on to the next mmo... i mean rpg. Then talk about how wow is better.

4e ends up selling a lot, making other companies follow suit, and the idea of character customization will become a think we tell our grand children about. Bottom line you won't get a lot of long term players because it will not longer be a hobby but a fad.

 

[Scribble]

3e wasn't trying to be the PS3 or even the Xbox 360. It was more like it was trying to be a home computer, like a Linux PC: something that worked well that you could tinker with endlessly. It was, at best, trying to be quintessential D&D. Take all the bits from the past, and reassemble it in a way that made it work like it was always kind of supposed to from the beginning.

Partialy agree, but dissagree in a way.

3e was tough to tinker with endlessly because it was a Jenga game. Change one piece and the whole thing is in danger of collapsing.

Add onto that they also seemed to do their best at hiding their code, so your Linux comparison is WAY off base in my opinion... You could clearly see they had a pattern to things, but it wasn't always easy to figure it out. Ohhhhh NOW you tell em that undead is supposed to ALWAYS be imune to x attacks, etc... OH NOW you tell me that classes all have a different TYPE of BAB progression which factors into their balancing act...

3e tried to do 2 things.

1. Standardize the rules so that the endless rules arguments/ confusion would be answered.

2. Allow for options that people complained D&D lacked

The problem was they did so by trying to basically think up EVERY option you could want and apply a rule to it. This lead to not nessearily rules complexity, but overbearingness.

It wasn't particularily HARD to learn to play 3e... it just took a lot of memorization.

4e doesn't want to be quintessential D&D, at all. It doesn't want to be a ruleset that you take and play with as you like. Not even a little. It wants you to play, not tinker.

I whole heartedly dissagree with this statement.

They give you the work. They say, here is how we designed monsters. Here are the way you set up their attacks their defenses... Their powers. here's the damage they will do by level based on the attacks. Here's everything you need to tinker away and make your own game without having to worry about breaking it because you missed the hidden pattern.

It sets up the game so you can play it (which most people I'd say want to do) but also makes toying with it a snap.

3e basically said, hey instead of making your own stuff, just copy ours and change it a bit. You won't be able to figure out the patterns and you'll mess stuff up if you don't. (check out the section on making new races or classes... this is pretty much what it says!)

In pursuit of that goal, it becomes not just simpler, but simplistic. The comparison to the Wii is apt, though we're still lacking the Development Kit for 4e. It's not a ruleset that lets you do what you want, its a ruleset that gives you what it thinks you want. And, given WotC's famous ability for market research, its probably right, more often than not.

Again I dissagree.

The 4e rules take into account the kinds of things they found people tend to actually USE at the game table.

In addiiton to that, however, they also give you the tools needed to handle things that are not as common.

It allows you to have options, but doesn't become overbearing in order to do so.

It's not simplistic. It's just clear cut.

3e wasn't the PS3, or the Xbox 360. 3e was a hacker's computer. 4e is kind of like the Wii, but the comparison looses some momentum in that the Wii isn't replacing anyone's computer, while 4e is replacing 3e (at least for WotC, if not for everyone).

To follow your computer theme... 3e was like Windows or Mac OS... It's made to be what it is. You CAN change it, but doing so without knowing a LOT about the system (with that info only being given to a select few, or those with the time/ability to reverse engineer it) has a LOT of potential hazzards.