D&D 4E AICN 4e Review Part 2: DMing 4e

[Charwoman Gene]

Please give specific examples of why you feel this is "Embedded Reporter Syndrome".

All you have done is explain Embedded Reporter Syndrome and show that it is logically a concern. You have failed to make this info relevant to discussing this article in a meaningful way.

 

[Knight Otu]

Level 1 characters are front loaded with hit points and abilities, so the old accidental crit by the goblin archer won’t actually kill a player.

Good thing that's over. The police was getting suspicious.

Massawyrm certainly is enthusiastic about 4E, but I wouldn't say he's said all that much that could convince someone who was very sceptical (of course, his proper NDA should still be in place - he's presumably speaking under the "tell them what you liked, tell us what you didn't like" policy). The D&DXP reports did more for me, really, though I'm curious about the "Phoenix" abilities, I must admit.

 

[eleran]

I've read the review, and it sounds like the writer is suffering from Embedded Reporter Syndrome. Whenever people are granted exclusive access to something, it creates a feeling of comradery and belonging. People feel like they are co-soldiers, or in this case, co-designers. Consequently, they become disinclined to report negatively on anything, beacuse it feels like a betrayal. Its why the military embedded reporters with units during the invasion of Iraq, for example. The Pentagon knew that that if they made the reporters feel like they were part of the units they reported on, there would be no Vietnam War-style negative stories. Smart marketers know that as long a product isn't totally awful, they can create positive buzz by granting a select few people pre-release access. The real reviews will be written by people who have no psychological investment in the quality of 4th Edition. For now, I feel justified by history in not putting too much stock in the reporting of officially-sanctioned insiders.

You're right of course. No one in the world but you is totally objective.

 

[WhimsyTheFae]

You're right of course. No one in the world but you is totally objective.

Yeah, I'm convinced that the reviewer doesn't actually like 4e, but is instead suffering from ERS. Poor guy. Somebody get him a does of 3.5, stat!

 

[Mouseferatu]

I've read the review, and it sounds like the writer is suffering from Embedded Reporter Syndrome. Whenever people are granted exclusive access to something, it creates a feeling of comradery and belonging. People feel like they are co-soldiers, or in this case, co-designers. Consequently, they become disinclined to report negatively on anything, beacuse it feels like a betrayal. Its why the military embedded reporters with units during the invasion of Iraq, for example. The Pentagon knew that that if they made the reporters feel like they were part of the units they reported on, there would be no Vietnam War-style negative stories. Smart marketers know that as long a product isn't totally awful, they can create positive buzz by granting a select few people pre-release access. The real reviews will be written by people who have no psychological investment in the quality of 4th Edition. For now, I feel justified by history in not putting too much stock in the reporting of officially-sanctioned insiders.

All this goes to prove is that you don't read AICN regularly.

Massawyrm is one of their regular movie reviewers. He's frequently among a select few who get to see a movie early--sometimes months early. He attends insider parties. He talks with filmmakers at all levels, from no-name locals to Quentin Tarantino.

And he still gives as many negative movie reviews as positive ones.

To suggest that he's suddenly feeling any obligation or emotional pressure to give extra-positive weight to D&D of all things--which has no bearing on his career whatsoever--when he's clearly never given in to any such pressure from being part of the "in-group" in his actual job, is just silly.

 

[Ulthwithian]

nor are you expected to have magic loot at certain levels

This contradicts what we've heard from WotC employees. This is the only disconnect I've seen, and what he says about running a game is _very_ similar to what WotC employees said on the latest podcast.

Overall, good times.

 

[Raduin711]

an end to magic item shops...

 

[eleran]

Hey Mouseferatu, any chance you are the freelancer mentioned by Massawyrm?

 

[Larrin]

Well, i stopped reading the comments after that. AICN comments aren't as useful as EN World or Gleemax to find interesting (including criticizing) posts to that article. Too many non-gamers...

I felt like i'd walked through open sewage after reading some of those comments. Even the most reactionary comment here has more eloquance than some of the "good" replies. Wow.

What i liked was the example of "i kick the table out from under them" having a nice, fairly easy answer. Perfect solution? maybe not, but functional, levels with the characters and gets the job done.

 

[Dausuul]

Anyone else notice that we now have a fix on how power scales with level?

The 3E standard is that power doubles every 2 levels--that is, a 6th-level character is the rough equivalent of two 4th-level characters*. Based on XP values (level 1 monster is 100 XP, level 5 monster is 200 XP, level 9 monster is 400 XP), the 4E standard seems to be that power doubles every 4 levels.

So, where a 20th-level character in 3E was approximately 700 times as powerful as a 1st-level character, a 20th-level character in 4E will be only 27 times as powerful. Even a 30th-level character is only 150 times the power of a 1st-level one.

They have indeed flattened out the power curve. I can see people fighting 1st- and 2nd-level monsters well into the paragon levels now, which would have been inconceivable in 3E.

*Where "twice as powerful as" is defined as "equivalent to two of." Actually, a more mathematically solid definition of character power would be damage absorption times damage output, in which case the 3E standard is power tripling every two levels. However, in practical terms it's often simpler to think of it as "how many people of level X do you need to equal one person of level Y?"