D&D 4E 4E: The day the game ate the roleplayer?

[Hussar]

Well, isn't it just edition wars with a moustache and glasses? Something like, 1st edition had serious balance problems, but is obviously a superior roleplaying experience. Therefore, balance problems are a prerequisite for roleplaying. Q.E.D., etc. Insert your favourite edition, and your favourite edition's flaws, and run with it. It's seems to me that these sorts of arguments are just taking a reputable concept like "roleplaying" (in fact, almost always "roleplaying") and using it as a proxy for "whatever the heck it is the speaker happens to like in a game", then trying to get as far as possible on the borrowed repute. It's like a statue of liberty play in which you get faked out by "roleplaying" and fail to notice "idiosyncratic tastes" trying to make a run up the field. Only, like the SoL play, it's hard to pull off convincingly.

Wow.

Two honking big thumbs up.

Well said sir.

 

[Jim Williams]

A really really good system can aid roleplaying by mechanically bolstering the feel that is being attempted. But that is a very small thing. As I have said in other threads, you can role play the part of a chess knight, but that doesn't make chess a decent RPG.

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On the other hand, a bad system can significantly disrupt roleplaying by grinding against the very ideas and feel of the kind of world you want to play in. What I've seen of 4E makes me think it would jump up and maul immersion around the head and shoulders on a regular basis.

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It isn't about roleplaying without the rules. That is easy. Roleplaying WITH the rules is the issue.

Good stuff here.

In the context of D&D, I think it's important to consider what exactly is the core theme of the game. What is D&D to each of you? To me, D&D is a game of fantasy heroes exploring the dark recesses of the world (and beyond) and slaying monsters for loot and glory. The game does not have to be played this way, but I believe this is its strength.

BryonD brings up a great point about the contrast of roleplaying without rules versus with the rules. If D&D is heroic fantasy, if D&D is the dungeon crawl, does the ruleset encourage or strengthen that style of roleplay? I believe it does. And based on what I've seen 4E pulls the game into this theme even more tightly, perhaps at the expense of other styles of play.

Does that make it a bad system? I don't think so; it is what it is.

 

[helium3]

Many of the things you talk about are already settled by the use of Rituals and Cantrips as well as Utility Powers.

Right. So you know how Cantrips and Rituals works? Please share.

A lot of the arguments I've seen for why people shouldn't be concerned about aspects of 4E they're concerned about seem to hang on the Rituals not consisting of the fun parts of the 3E spell lists after they've been run through a Blander (ie a Blender that makes things Bland).

 

[helium3]

The rules of the system have a direct relation of how things are roleplayed. Look at different games. Vampire 3rd edition was much more friendy to the roleplayer. Combat was a small chapter in the book. Skills and traits, were the big thing. Cyberpunk 2020 was built around skills, and tech, and when you played it, the fast and hard rules made people roleplay a certain style. Mechwarrior was more rules than anything, plotting each step a character made on a map. D&D was a nice in between.

This is exactly correct. The actual experience that playing a game provides depends on two things. One is the "culture" that's built up around the game and the other is the "rules" that dictate how the game is to be played.

Fer example, WoD plays like an EMO kid's paradise because (a) everyone else that plays WoD "knows" that's how it's "supposed" to be played and because (b) to an extent the rules support that sort of play.

If 3E D&D provides a certain experience and you change the rules in a way that supports a style of play that's different from that, I'm fairly confident that over time the culture that exists around the game will shift to reflect the new rules. Which means that people that don't want to change have to stick with the prior edition for find something else.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

Well Cantrips we have already gotten a taste of with the DDXP Wizard and the Cantrips there were in its spell-list.

Actually I play my WoD as episodic segments and it actually is closer to X-Files or Supernatural then anything else, just with Prometheans as the characters (Frankenstein monsters, main premise is the hope and wish to become Human).

 

[Incenjucar]

Right. So you know how Cantrips and Rituals works? Please share.

Have you not seen the character sheets yet?

4E cantrips are freaking amazing.

 

[helium3]

Beatcha to it, Rob!

If we were in a bar, I think this is where someone drunkenly yells "Catfight!!"

 

[hong]

This is exactly correct. The actual experience that playing a game provides depends on two things. One is the "culture" that's built up around the game and the other is the "rules" that dictate how the game is to be played.

Fer example, WoD plays like an EMO kid's paradise because (a) everyone else that plays WoD "knows" that's how it's "supposed" to be played and because (b) to an extent the rules support that sort of play.

Conversely, I've also heard it said that WoD plays like Shadowrun with a skin condition. The emo thing seems to be limited to a subset of all WoD players, the rest of whom are happily blowing up bad guys just like the rest of us.

 

[helium3]

Have you not seen the character sheets yet?

4E cantrips are freaking amazing.

I'll check them out.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

Especially Werewolf players they adore their gore and violence.

Vampire is the most "emo" oriented, but these tend to deviate from the core of Vampire anyways which is politics.

Werewolf it is pretty hard to be emo, when your a badass Werewolf beating down various spirits and spirit possessed in your Half-Werewolf form with a warhammer.

Promethean at first glance it looks EXTREMELY emo in that you are literally rejected from all life on the earth (animals and people feel agitated around you and finally run you out of town, the earth decays around you, etc.) but it is actually the most hopeful and inspiring. Since it is about discovering what it is to be human and when you truly understand that you become a living-breathing human.

Mage, not really emo at all, much more classic fantasy in many regards with more politics.

Changeling, is more creepy then anything else, what with being kidnapped by the Fae and violently transformed into a Changeling. Though being a Changeling has its benefits so it can also be the most fun-loving as well.

Mortal... Well its mortal it can be whatever it wishes it too be. Any story involving regular people and supernatural can work.