4E is for casuals, D&D is d0med

[I'm A Banana]

we've talked around a lot of this stuff a fair bit and obviously have quite different takes on a lot of things about 4e in particular

I like 4e. I like my Wii.

I don't entirely agree with your first sentence here, because "quintessential D&D" is too hard to pin down.

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.

As to 4e being simplistic, I don't see that at all. It has 400+ pages of subtly-crafted powers.

Options are not complexity. Complexity would be if each of those options had some Gygaxian sub-system and table you could roll on (for instance). That's not necessarily desirable.

I think you might be confusing elegance of design - which makes the game rules fairly easy to take in - with being simple to play. As Imaro has noticed with his chess/checkers analogy, there is no reason to think that playing 4e is a simplistic experience.

If 4e isn't remarkably simpler to play than 3e, then I don't know what half this buzz is about. In my experience, its about the same, but I've only played low-level 4e so far, and low-level 3e wasn't very complex, either.

I believe their promises about the game being simpler, and this makes the Wii analogy work well, because its a simpler, more basic system.

The difference between "simple" and "simplistic" is largely subjective, lying on that "is it so simple that it's not fun any more" cusp. There are several elements of 4e that fall into this department for me. There are certain Wii games that fall into this department for me.

I see 400+ variations on "I damage him and inflict a condition or move him some distance" to be pretty simplistic.

But either way, this isn't the heart of my post. The heart of it lies in how 3e is much more like an Open Source computer if 4e is a Wii, and that, yes, if everyone had to buy a Wii because the Nintendo could cancel Linux, there would be a whole buttload of annoyed people who didn't want to have to buy peripherals to shop at Amazon or type messages to the internet using the Wii browser. Thus, this is part of the reason why there is a substantial vocal populace who has a lot of problems with 4e being "forced" on them.

Simple is good and fine and fun for a lot of people, but if you CANCEL the complexity and force people to accept the simplicity, there's going to be some bad blood.

To Generic Food Metaphor it, if you stop letting people cook their own meals and just serve them McDonald's every day because its "Simpler" and more people buy McD's than cook their own meals, you're going to get a lot of cooks who are very pissed, even if they don't make up much of the populace.

 

[pemerton]

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.

Well, I guess different people look for different things in a game. I've been looking mostly at the Fighter, Paladin and Wizard powers to start with. Yes, mechanically the damage rolls are somewhat samey - that's a feature, not a bug. But the effects are not samey, and the stats that produce that damage and those effects are not samey. And it is the stats and effects that are important to roleplaying, as much as (if not more than) the damage.

Just concentrating on the Paladin powers, I look at Str-based attacks, and Cha-based utilities, and they speak to me about the sort of character I might design and roleplay around those powers - bellicose, arrogant, leading his companions into battle. And that would be a very different character from one who was based on Cha attacks and Wis utilities - gentle (in a certain fashion), insightful, guiding his companions without bullying or bossing.

Core 3E did not give me anything of a comparable mechanical subtlety on which to hang my character. In fact, the game mechanics of 3E barely spoke to the roleplaying at all. (Barbarian rage, and perhaps some bard and monk abilities, are the only examples that come to mind at the moment.)

 

[Lord Mhoram]

Not everyone who is mildly autistic likes 3e over 4e. I get my minutia fix other places.

That is why I play Hero.

I'm used to bland mechanics that the player fills in the "Cool factor" for. 4th has got me stoked like I haven't been for an RPG since Hero 4th edition back in '89.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Just concentrating on the Paladin powers, I look at Str-based attacks, and Cha-based utilities, and they speak to me about the sort of character I might design and roleplay around those powers - bellicose, arrogant, leading his companions into battle. And that would be a very different character from one who was based on Cha attacks and Wis utilities - gentle (in a certain fashion), insightful, guiding his companions without bullying or bossing.

The weirdness here, for me, is that you needed 4e's powers to show you this.

I look at some of my 2e characters and see this, and I can't even really remember what use paladins had for Cha in 2e aside from needing a lot to be able to take the class.

4e is not, for me at least, telling me anything new when it says "A high STR means that you hit things. You might be belligerent or aggressive or beefcake or some sort of dinosaur man. A high CHA means that you are persuasive. You might be suave or sexy or smoove or some sort of medieval Tom Cruise."

Those are archetypes, they exist for me before I even worry about what class to choose, and I know the class can add some dimension to the archetype: as a paladin, the high STR guy beats up evil guys like Superman. The high CHA guy is probably like one of those eerily friendly Mormons.

I look at 4e's Paladin powers and see: "Damage and move. Damage and condition. Damage. Damage and healing." The same thing I see with every other class power out there, though there are minor subtle changes here and there that a good DM can call out in play.

 

[pemerton]

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."

Ah, I see what you mean. What's interesting about that is that, in fact, fireball in 3E is (in play) almost unrecognisable from fireball in 1st ed, because of the vastly different hit point and saving throw numbers in each game.

I agree that 4e has not kept many of these tropes. But I think it's too early to know what effect, if any, the dropping of those tropes will have on actual play experience. Some people at least say that, to them, it plays more like AD&D than 3E did. I find this surprising, but not obviously absurd.

I see 400+ variations on "I damage him and inflict a condition or move him some distance" to be pretty simplistic.

Well, it's all about the interactions (and I think this is Imaro's point). Again, it's too early to judge exactly how complex those interactions are, but I think they might be fairly complex. This looks to me like clever game design: easy entry, but (if I am right about the complexity of the interactions) the game keeps giving no matter how hard you push it.

To Generic Food Metaphor it, if you stop letting people cook their own meals and just serve them McDonald's every day because its "Simpler" and more people buy McD's than cook their own meals, you're going to get a lot of cooks who are very pissed, even if they don't make up much of the populace.

Well, I don't see it this way. So, if I may mix some metaphors, generic food and otherwise: 3E was McDonalds. It gave me a whole lot of crap flavour with rules mechanics intended to reliably produce that flavour. 4e is a set of mechanical tools that allow me to narrate my own flavour, whatever that might be, over the top of them without having to be worried that the mechanical framework supporting my flavour will collapse.

Roughly speaking, I think if you care more about the narrative content of the game then tweaking mechanical subsystems, 4e is likely to be a better game for you than 3E was. Of course it's early days, and I may be proved wrong. But at the moment I think the evidence provided by the design, and the playtest reports that we have had, is running my way.

 

[pemerton]

The weirdness here, for me, is that you needed 4e's powers to show you this.

Of course I don't need 4e to show me this. I can play different paladins in AD&D if I want. The point is that, mechanically, they won't be any different - when it comes to resolving the action in the game, they won't play differently.

This is what the 4e designers were talking about when they said that, in play, you'll now experience a shifty Kobold as different from a pack-fighting Gnoll.

I look at 4e's Paladin powers and see: "Damage and move. Damage and condition. Damage. Damage and healing." The same thing I see with every other class power out there, though there are minor subtle changes here and there that a good DM can call out in play.

What you see as subtle changes I see as a mechanical framework that makes the narrative difference actually matter in play. And that narrative difference is not something that I'm going to wait for the GM to call out in play. The narrative is something that I, as a player, am constructing when I build my character, and when I then use the action resolution mechanics to deliver a play experience which gives rise to the story that I want to tell.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I agree that 4e has not kept many of these tropes. But I think it's too early to know what effect, if any, the dropping of those tropes will have on actual play experience.

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.

I think WotC is obviously on-target when it assumes that the chunk was pretty small, and that most people don't give a rat's arse about who Bigby is, and that a D&D interested in recruiting new blood can't assume people will care about Bigby.

But those who already do definitely know what effect it will have on their play experience, and knew before 4e was released.

Well, it's all about the interactions (and I think this is Imaro's point). Again, it's too early to judge exactly how complex those interactions are, but I think they might be fairly complex. This looks to me like clever game design: easy entry, but (if I am right about the complexity of the interactions) the game keeps giving no matter how hard you push it.

Sure, but 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.

Well, I don't see it this way.

What's wrong with it? 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" and given elements that will help push sub-industries like minis and DDI that can help enrich the basic game. Evidence includes almost every review saying "simpler! more streamlined! faster!", minis-focused combat, the ads for DDI plastered in many places, etc., etc., et al.

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. It wanted to be a framework so that you could take and do what you wanted with it, based on what you enjoyed, whatever that was. Evidence includes the OGL movement, the SRD, genre supplements, the conversion manual, etc., etc., et al.

4e is a set of mechanical tools that allow me to narrate my own flavour, whatever that might be, over the top of them without having to be worried that the mechanical framework supporting my flavour will collapse.

3e was this, too, and moreso than 4e, since it doesn't assume you want to use Tieflings and Dragonborn, but rather assumes you want to use what D&D has always used, and then gives you rules for adding medusae and angels.

Regardless of the quality of the rules, or whether you personally felt they met your needs, the intent seems fairly obvious to me.

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?

They certainly aren't telling me to tinker with the system to produce the flavor I want. They're telling me "Hey, you think Points of Light and Dragonborn are cool, right?!"

I mean, its D&D, so it won't ever be able to surrender that tinkering mentality entirely, and 4e doesn't tell you not to or you'll void your warranty (like the iPhone does!), but it is telling you "You never really liked gnomes that much anyway, did you?"

It's going to be right more often than not. More people buy McD's in a day than cook dinner from scratch in a day. Its giving people what they have said they've wanted.

4e fires 3e, though, and so the cooks are basically told that they can't make any other food with their old ingredients. They now have to assemble them based on pre-approved designs that meet with certain criteria. McD's can always have a new limited edition sandwich, and can even bring back classics! It can make meatloaf that may or may not be just like momma used to make, but will probably be vaguely similar to what most people's mommas used to make, and might just be good enough that most people don't really care, and a few are really into it (hot smack I love those nuggets!).

But man, those cooks who made stuff from scratch and liked it, weird and obsessive and unusual as they are, were happy with the earlier edition (which did try to prepare meals for you, especially toward the end), and you can't really expect them to love the new world order.

Roughly speaking, I think if you care more about the narrative content of the game then tweaking mechanical subsystems, 4e is likely to be a better game for you than 3E was.

"I think if you care more about eating food than about making it, this New World Order of fast food is likely going to be a better way to eat for you than making food from scratch was."

This ends up being false, too, because, as Michael Pollan points out, narrative content is not independent from mechanical subsystems.

But perhaps I've wrung this metaphor about as tight as it can go at this point.

 

[Intense_Interest]

3e wanted to give every D&D fan something to love, and to be able to customize the basic core for their own needs. It wanted to be a framework so that you could take and do what you wanted with it, based on what you enjoyed, whatever that was. Evidence includes the OGL movement, the SRD, genre supplements, the conversion manual, etc., etc., et al.


3e was this, too, and moreso than 4e, since it doesn't assume you want to use Tieflings and Dragonborn, but rather assumes you want to use what D&D has always used, and then gives you rules for adding medusae and angels.

First, man did Monsters-as-PCs in 3E suck. House rules in 3E is house rules in 4E.

Yet wasn't the main complaint that the subscription model is holding back content that players want? So really, the problem is that you can't get all you want right now, right?

So therefore 4E is the Mall with a few empty storefronts. Thankfully the Mall itself doesn't leak, has a good design, and won't collapse on you randomly. Every new book gives us a few more storefronts open to enrich the experience, instead of weakening it.

"I think if you care more about eating food than about making it, this New World Order of fast food is likely going to be a better way to eat for you than making food from scratch was."

This ends up being false, too, because, as Michael Pollan points out, narrative content is not independent from mechanical subsystems.

But perhaps I've wrung this metaphor about as tight as it can go at this point.

Narrative content will never be sold to you in printed form. They're called "books".

Mechanics of something like FATAL, true, limit the narrative content (or at least push it into a specific niche), but once you co-opt the House Rule idiom, the mechanics of the system are set to be nigh-independant, from what I can tell.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Yet wasn't the main complaint that the subscription model is holding back content that players want? So really, the problem is that you can't get all you want right now, right?

No, the problem is that 4e existing means that 3e might not be able to exist (and certainly not in the form it has before). 4e is giving people what it has figured out they want, but in serving the mainline exclusively, you're going to cut out the outliers, whereas 3e made special efforts to include the outliers.

Like how Linux users would feel if they had to surf ENWorld on their Wii.

Thus, the original analogy is fairly apt, but misses a large portion of the reason people have a problem with 4e. Not so much because there IS a simpler alternative, but because the simpler alternative means that there will be no more complex option (or that it will change drastically at least).

3e trufans aren't PS3 users, they're Linux users.

Narrative content will never be sold to you in printed form. They're called "books".

Wait, that doesn't make sense. Narrative content is sold to me in printed form all the freakin' time. In books. But that has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that narrative content in an RPG is not independent of mechanical systems (because they create a cohesive "supersystem" in the same way that various forms of life make an ecosystem that determines our food). So....?

Mechanics of something like FATAL, true, limit the narrative content (or at least push it into a specific niche), but once you co-opt the House Rule idiom, the mechanics of the system are set to be nigh-independant, from what I can tell.

I'm only explaining that 4e is selling fast food, while 3e was selling raw fruits and veggies and meats. Each has its strengths, but 3e was obviously geared toward tinkering to get what you want and 4e is obviously geared toward consumption as-is (though often with a choice of flavors, I'd imagine, and with an intelligent admission that people are going to mix Sprite and Coke in the fountain).

 

[Intense_Interest]

No, the problem is that 4e existing means that 3e might not be able to exist (and certainly not in the form it has before). 4e is giving people what it has figured out they want, but in serving the mainline exclusively, you're going to cut out the outliers, whereas 3e made special efforts to include the outliers.

Like how Linux users would feel if they had to surf ENWorld on their Wii.

Thus, the original analogy is fairly apt, but misses a large portion of the reason people have a problem with 4e. Not so much because there IS a simpler alternative, but because the simpler alternative means that there will be no more complex option (or that it will change drastically at least).

3e trufans aren't PS3 users, they're Linux users.

Murf.

4E is a modular system that was built to incorporate new resources for players and DMs in its subscription model. Its far more Linux-like to most users than 3E is.

3E is Unix, 4E is Linux. Calling it "casual" is trying to prove how much of a Hardcore "gourmand" you are.

Wait, that doesn't make sense. Narrative content is sold to me in printed form all the freakin' time. In books. But that has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that narrative content in an RPG is not independent of mechanical systems (because they create a cohesive "supersystem" in the same way that various forms of life make an ecosystem that determines our food). So....?

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

I'm only explaining that 4e is selling fast food, while 3e was selling raw fruits and veggies and meats. Each has its strengths, but 3e was obviously geared toward tinkering to get what you want and 4e is obviously geared toward consumption as-is (though often with a choice of flavors, I'd imagine, and with an intelligent admission that people are going to mix Sprite and Coke in the fountain).

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.

4E is the FDA. It won't clear the case-based homeopathic remedies (house rules to fit a table), but it won't squash new recipes and was built exactly for that.