4E is for casuals, D&D is d0med

[pemerton]

Apropos of nothing, you had a great post, except for the bit where you started delving into Forgeisms.

Really, you can't see how using words like gamism, narrativism and simulationism obscure more than they illuminate? Because, apparently, depending on the circumstances:

- Gamists like systems that are heavy on crunch, or light on crunch

- Simulationists like a game that emphasises a living, breathing world, or one that just dives into the action

- Similarly, simulationists like a game that is heavy on crunch, or light on crunch

- Narrativists like games that have the players making the story as they go along, or has the DM doing it all

Now, maybe you could say that you provided detailed critiques and rationales justifying why the circumstances in question produce these results; therefore, the GNS schema has succeeded in making you think about games. However, many people manage to think about games without using GNS. Similarly the detailed critiques can stand by themselves; while a classification scheme that gives rise to such outcomes can hardly be said to be useful.

A quibble, which I think you could reasonably take as proving your point: "narrativists" who like the GM to tell the story are (in Forge terms) a species of High Concept Simulationist.

A limited defence: I readily concede that Forgist terminology doesn't capture all the useful distinctions. But it does capture some of them. In your post you use "crunch-heavy" and "crunch-light" as if that distinction is unproblematic, but it's also ambiguous (is 4e cruch light - because it has easy statblocks and very streamlined mechanics compared to 3E or AD&D - or is it crunch heavy, because it has 400+ pages of power descriptions that are needed to make it go?).

Putting the real Sinecure to one side and focusing on the Forgist labels: they predict that s/he might enjoy Tunnels and Trolls or Palladium (gamist, probably easily drifted to the preferred non-mechanical form of simulationism), would probably not enjoy Chivalry and Sorcery (too close to RM/RQ), would probably not enjoy Prince Valiant even though it's quite simple in its mechanics from what I understand.

Maybe these things could be worked out from first principles without the aid of Forge labels - but they do help me to think about what is going on, even if they're not perfect.

 

[Steely Dan]

I don't find this a particularly strong criticism of 3e - not all half-orcs are necessarily "unpleasant in notion".

Yeah, the last half-orc in my current Planescape campaign, was born of a human father and orc mother who were forbidden lovers.


"Meet me behind the smithy for a snog..."

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

2Pemerton:
Assuming your characterization was correct, it was a great help - except for the Forgismn parts. I usually consider myself more of a gamist, but this kind of "gamismn" ("Game the DM"? "Beat the Module"?) is not to my liking.

No surprise that 4E looks fine to me then...

 

[ProfessorCirno]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but 4e has evil necromancers making horrible sacrifices of living people to the evil gods.

What, again, makes half orcs so "icky?"

I don't want this to degenerate into an argument of ethics, but, well, the world is an ugly place. Hell, isn't the setting supposed to be "Points of light in a land of darkness?" It's not "Points of wacky shenanigans in a land of sunshine and mutual respect."

Edit: On "beat the module," that doesn't require combat. Take the example of Tomb of Horrors. If you're fighting a lot of enemies in Tomb of Horrors, something's not right.

 

[pemerton]

Assuming your characterization was correct, it was a great help - except for the Forgismn parts.

Forgeisms - the red-headed stepchildren of Enworld!

But thanks - and to Hong too - I'm glad you liked the post.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Forgeisms - the red-headed stepchildren of Enworld!

But thanks - and to Hong too - I'm glad you liked the post.

I am still not sure if the Forgeismns are "good" or not. Sometimes they seemed to clear issues, in other cases, they just confuse me. I guess they still need some work.

 

[pemerton]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but 4e has evil necromancers making horrible sacrifices of living people to the evil gods.

What, again, makes half orcs so "icky?"

Well, some Half-Orcs are like Steely Dan's - the product of illicit love - and I've got nothing against that for a fantasy RPG (Half-Elves can easily be done the same way, as per Tolkien).

But where the implied backstory is rape it has (at least to me, but not only to me) an unpleasantness that is different from that of human sacrifice. This is probably for a couple of reasons: rape is a real crime in the present day, whereas human sacrifice typically is not; rape in the game raises issues of the relationship between violence and sexuality which many gaming table would prefer not to engage in (sexuality on its own can be pretty hard to handle sensibly at the gaming table).

I don't want this to degenerate into an argument of ethics, but, well, the world is an ugly place. Hell, isn't the setting supposed to be "Points of light in a land of darkness?" It's not "Points of wacky shenanigans in a land of sunshine and mutual respect."

Sure, the world's an ugly place. But I only want some of that in my game. And I don't think that D&D, played according to the rules as written - with its shining knights, alignments, unproblematic deployment of "just war" justifications for what might otherwise look like routine murder - is the game to really explore the issue. (I'm not saying we have to go all the way to "I Kill Puppies for Satan" to make it a legitimate topic for roleplaying - just that I don't think D&D is the game for it.)

On "beat the module," that doesn't require combat.

I don't think anyone suggested that it does. Sinecure didn't. And I didn't. And I don't think Mustrum Ridcully did. So as far as that is concerned, we're all on the same page.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Here's a list of some of the worst things about the new edition. I thought I'd put together a list for anyone too blind to see through the shiny wrapping.

Have you forgotten the ENworld rules? No insulting other board members.

That means that implying that anyone who doesn't share your views is "too blind to see through the shiny wrapping", aka stoopid, is not on.

Change your ways or you'll be taking a short holiday from the boards.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but 4e has evil necromancers making horrible sacrifices of living people to the evil gods.

I believe the idea is that these people are the "bad guys". Bad stuff is allowed to happen, but it is only allowed to happen to NPCs by NPCs. The players are supposed to be the heroes saving people from the bad things in the world.

What, again, makes half orcs so "icky?"

I believe the idea is that Orcs are horrible creatures, brought up in an evil society and pretty much born with evil instincts. They attack villages, kill and rape innocent people, and are violent and chaotic. They don't get along peacefully with people and therefore the chance of them having a loving relationship that created a half-orc is low in the way that most people think of them.

So, the idea is that you don't want your game to HAVE to go there. You can run an entire family friendly game where the PCs never encounter anything unsavory that they don't have the chance to stop. I think they don't want the DM to have to say "Yeah, Orcs went raping and pillaging and that's where you came from. You have the blood of an evil beast inside of you."

I know this will come back to tieflings and how they are "evil" as well. However, their story is so far removed from the PCs that it becomes just a background story: Your ancestors, 1000 years ago made a deal with demons. You have some demonic power, but you aren't a demon or evil. I think you'll find more people are willing to be that character than the one that says "Your father was an evil monster who used to kill people for fun. He raped your mother and you were the result. People hate you for what you represent and the fact that you might be evil just because of your blood."

I don't want this to degenerate into an argument of ethics, but, well, the world is an ugly place. Hell, isn't the setting supposed to be "Points of light in a land of darkness?" It's not "Points of wacky shenanigans in a land of sunshine and mutual respect.

The idea is that the players are supposed to represent those points of light, trying to bring light to the darkness. You deal with darkness, you defeat darkness, but you aren't darkness yourself.

 

[I'm A Banana]

What, again, makes half orcs so "icky?"

Implied Rape.

Hope I'm not violating the Grandma Rule, but there it is. Orcs are the classic "raiding savages" who come out of the wilderness and burn your town to the ground and stack skulls outside of your village like the Huns. A strong population of half-orcs suggests that often, rape is part of that conquest. Often enough to leave offspring that have a strong population in the implied setting, anyway.

Now, take a look at, say, the Yeenoghu entry. A lot of violence, a lot of filth...even some light cannibalism (though gnolls eating humans might not be as "bad" as gnolls eating gnolls or humans eating humans). But it doesn't really combine with sex anywhere.

You could chalk that up to the classic American paradox: we're great with blood and guts, but private parts will always make us squeamish. This is especially so with D&D, which is kind of targeted at high-school age folks, and kind of targeted at boys.

And you could probably make a case that half-orcs weren't very popular anyway (being a slightly sub-optimal choice in most cases) so cutting them isn't going to alienate a lot of people, while it will avoid a very "icky" issue.

Of course, there are counterpoints. That not every half-orc needs to come from rape (or even most of them), that if there are half-elves, then human barbarians can be the creatures invading the forests making it slightly MORE disturbing, that it is kind of satisfying from a storytelling standpoint to be a half-breed bastard-child, that both half-orcs and half-elves existing says something interesting in the implied setting about humans, elves, and orcs....

WotC just thought the "icky" factor outweighed all of those. And, really, I can't blame them much for that.

Not that people don't have very good reasons to miss their Krusks and Imishes.

The idea is that the players are supposed to represent those points of light, trying to bring light to the darkness. You deal with darkness, you defeat darkness, but you aren't darkness yourself.

.....just to make a counterpoint?

Tieflings. Warlocks. Evil paladins. Shadar-Kai.

"Dark Heroes" are definately in for 4e.