A bit tired of people knocking videogames...

[Dannager]

If one wants to make definitions very precise, they can always write it as a set of mathematical equations.

I'm all for a reasonable middle ground.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Pot . . . kettle . . . and all that.And as long as your character is of high enough level, he can solo Orcus.

I can make up any number of ingenuous arguments based on contrived premises, too.


Oh, and my character trying to stay alive with a single hit point? Total kick in the ass to play. I hope to run him again this summer at our local D'foot con.

You know what's super awesome? Because our 4e party has pressing reasons not to stop for an extended rest, we're in pretty much the exact same boat: we're all on zero surges. We're all bloodied. We're pretty much all out of dailies. We're having a very stressful and fun time of it.

Most editions of D&D have allowed you to heal to full between encounters if you tried and the DM didn't explicitly take measures to prevent it. The only real difference is whether it's been viable to heal up without magic.

 

[Herobizkit]

D&D came before WoW.
WoW was influenced by D&D; the creators may have even said so in an interview.

People playing WoW for the first time may not have ever seen D&D before.
People who made D&D took the concepts of WoW (et al) and converted it into print form for the purposes of tapping a 'new' market.

We old fogeys that grew up with D&D AND video games enjoy the narrative.
The young whippersnappers that grew up with ONLY video games are the target audience.

As much as we love D&D, it's still a product designed to be sold by a company.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Dannyalcatraz, the one thing that I can, with absolute certainty, take away from this thread is that when someone uses the word "videogamey" to describe something like 4e, chances are it doesn't actually have anything at all to do with video games.

I'm absolutely certain you are dead wrong.

If, for some reason, someone says that spicy tacos with cheddar cheese reminds them of Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir," if they are being honest with that statement, it doesn't matter if you can't understand the connection, their mind is making that connection.

Likewise with "videogamey": the true origins of this or that element is immaterial- if it makes you think of videogames, it makes you think of videogames. End of story.

As a cherry on top, if the only or predominant place you have previously encountered elements that you're calling "videogamey", you're going to call it videogamey even if it actually originated from Native American dance.

 

[jmucchiello]

And so we shouldn't do anything to discourage the propagation of words with meaningless - or worse, confusing - definitions? Really?

It is not my place (or yours) to tell people they can't "feel something reminds them of a video game" no matter how vague such an utterance is or is not. No one nominated or elected me (or you) English Language Czar. (Did I miss the bloody coup?)

 

[billd91]

Dannyalcatraz, the one thing that I can, with absolute certainty, take away from this thread is that when someone uses the word "videogamey" to describe something like 4e, chances are it doesn't actually have anything at all to do with video games.

Heck no. Because it couldn't possibly be true for me to think that the Rogue utility power Cloud Jump is videogamey because it reminds me of hitting the jump button twice to make Spiderman double-jump in Marvel Ultimate Alliance. I must be wrong or something. Dannager says so.

 

[Dannager]

It is not my place (or yours) to tell people they can't "feel something reminds them of a video game" no matter how vague such an utterance is or is not. No one nominated or elected me (or you) English Language Czar. (Did I miss the bloody coup?)

No one is saying they can't feel that. We're saying that discussions would be more productive if you kept the confusing video game comparisons to yourself and instead discussed the actual issues.

No one is going Thought Police on you. It's troubling that you've managed to perceive our argument that way.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I daresay that we've done more than our ample share of presenting our case. If you haven't seen the merits of our position at this point, it strikes me as unlikely that you would see them at a later point were this discussion to continue.

If the quality of that presentation doesn't improve, I certainly doubt that more of the same drek is going to make a difference. So I'm going to take Dan Savage's advice and DTMFA.


RC

 

[Dannager]

So I'm going to take Dan Savage's advice and DTMFA.

So classy.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

We're saying that discussions would be more productive if you kept the confusing video game comparisons to yourself and instead discussed the actual issues.

Productive HOW?

The actual issue is that certain parts of the game remind certain people of videogames in this way or that. This is a subjective thing; an opinion; a perception unique to that person.

Not everyone is reminded of the same videogames- surprise, surprise, we don't all play the same games. Not every element so criticized elicits that response to all the persons who examine the game- surprise, surprise, we don't all have the same preferences.

But in some way, each of us is reminded of videogames by elements of 4Ed, and in such a way that we don't care for in our TTRPGs.

So if we each trot out our specific reasons why blah blah blah seems videogamey, what happens? You assert "No, that's not videogamey at all because of yadda yadda yadda."

Which, amazingly, usually does not change the complainant's perception that the element up for discussion at that point is videogamey, because it will still evoke that response.

All that gets achieved, then, by greater specificity is that people who don't agree with that person's personal perception get to yak about how wrong that person's perceptions are.

Yeah. "Productive." I don't think that word is one I'd use in this situation.