An Essay to Wizards of the Coast

[foolish_mortals]

thanks for this great story. Maybe for 5th edition we can have a editions storybook where people talk about their experiences with Dnd over the years. That'd be fun to read.

foolish_mortals

 

[Ahnehnois]

I've heard that a lot. Which stories are those, and why were they hard to tell?

I'm not either of the above posters, but the stories I like to tell involve characters who have nonadventuring careers who in various ways come to develop into adventurers. They typically start as young adults with no more power or accomplishment than the average commoner. The magically inclined characters develop godlike powers, while the martially inclined characters become epic heroes without superpowers.

I can run my game in 3.X with some options and houserules, but if I were going to run 4e I would have to deconstruct the characters because 1st level 4e character already heroes and mine are not. I would have to rebuild mages to be able to do all the things they can do in 3e, and I would have to completely deconstruct the fighter class to remove all the quasi-magical and use-limited abilities (in other words, I would have to remove the entire power system). I would have to implement a new skill system will all the noncombat "background" skills I depended on. I would also have to remove all the 4e setting references because my campaign world is based around the Great Wheel and the existing conception of the cosmology and those living within it. And I would have to fix skill challenges, rituals, throw out and replace this page 42 business for reasons of basic mechanical cogency. Also, my characters use vitality/wound and carry injuries after a tough fight so I'd have to put that in and throw out healing surges.

In other words, I could run any campaign that I've ever run in 3e with some modifications, or in 2e with some modifications, but to do it with 4e I'd have to throw out the entire game and start over.

It's almost like Dungeons & Dragons, a game about heroic fantasy adventure, was making you play a game about heroic fantasy adventure!

I would say that by legislating out zero-to-hero, magic vs mundane, and increasing hp and granting free healing, they made it rather hard to do heroic fantasy adventure.

What is your response to those of us (like myself) who believe that 4e gives us far more freedom to tell the story we want to tell?

I'd ask what freedoms would be denied playing other systems (in other words, I'd ask the same thing you asked above). And I'd say you should keep playing what you're playing and enjoying it.

***

That's not to say that 4e doesn't support *a* style-it's fine for those that like it-but what several of the posters are saying (and a large part of the community has as a whole) is that it doesn't support their style.

 

[Dannager]

I'm not either of the above posters, but the stories I like to tell involve characters who have nonadventuring careers who in various ways come to develop into adventurers. They typically start as young adults with no more power or accomplishment than the average commoner. The magically inclined characters develop godlike powers, while the martially inclined characters become epic heroes without superpowers.

I can run my game in 3.X with some options and houserules, but if I were going to run 4e I would have to deconstruct the characters because 1st level 4e character already heroes and mine are not.

In what way are 1st level characters in 4e heroes, while 1st level characters in 3.5 are not?

I would have to rebuild mages to be able to do all the things they can do in 3e,

Which things are mages able to do in 3.5 that they are unable to do in 4e? And why is it important that they are able to do the same things in order to tell the stories you want to tell?

and I would have to completely deconstruct the fighter class to remove all the quasi-magical and use-limited abilities (in other words, I would have to remove the entire power system).

In what way do limited-use abilities prevent you from telling the sort of stories you want to tell?

Also, which fighter powers are "quasi-magical", and how do you know this?

I would have to implement a new skill system will all the noncombat "background" skills I depended on.

Why do you need the skill system to support background skills? And how do you avoid pigeonholing adventurers into a set number of background skills at the expense of skills that they will benefit from during their adventuring career?

I would also have to remove all the 4e setting references because my campaign world is based around the Great Wheel and the existing conception of the cosmology and those living within it.

There are basically no 4e setting references in the core rules, so that's not really a problem.

And I would have to fix skill challenges,

In what way do you feel skill challenges need to be fixed, and why? And how do they prevent you from telling the sort of story you want to tell?

rituals,

What about rituals needs to be fixed?

throw out and replace this page 42 business for reasons of basic mechanical cogency.

In what way is page 42 less than cogent?

Also, my characters use vitality/wound and carry injuries after a tough fight so I'd have to put that in and throw out healing surges.

In what way is this better supported by 3.5 than 4e? Also, why do healing surges prevent you from telling the stories you want to tell?

In other words, I could run any campaign that I've ever run in 3e with some modifications, or in 2e with some modifications, but to do it with 4e I'd have to throw out the entire game and start over.

I haven't seen any evidence of that, just you saying that you'd have to do a lot of things that I sort of doubt you'd actually have to do.

I would say that by legislating out zero-to-hero, magic vs mundane, and increasing hp and granting free healing, they made it rather hard to do heroic fantasy adventure.

Again, if that's the case then why do so many people feel that it's never been easier to run heroic fantasy adventure games in D&D than it is in 4e?

I'd ask what freedoms would be denied playing other systems (in other words, I'd ask the same thing you asked above).

4e allows the DM to simply do whatever he feels is best for the story and the game, rather than being forced to run his NPCs/monsters according to the same rules that govern the PCs. That's an incredibly liberating change, and definitely in the top 5 reasons why 4e is my edition of choice.

I'm not posing these questions to badger you or anything; I'm genuinely curious. I've heard a lot of people say that 4e doesn't let them tell the stories they want to tell, and never once have any of them described to me a story that they can tell using 3.5 (or any other edition) but not 4e. In fact, Paizo once claimed that 4e didn't let them tell the stories they want to tell, so I took Paizo's stories, told them in 4e, and put the conversions online so that everyone could use them. It wasn't even difficult.

 

[keterys]

Warning: Edition warring is not allowed on enworld, and this thread is going to need serious moderation if you keep at it.

So, if you want to continue this discussion, do so in positive terms. If you don't have positive terms for an edition - hold off on it. Feel free to keep on talking about the things you did like from any edition of D&D and your hopes for 5E, though.

 

[Number48]

What is your response to those of us (like myself) who believe that 4e gives us far more freedom to tell the story we want to tell?



Yeah, man!

It's almost like Dungeons & Dragons, a game about heroic fantasy adventure, was making you play a game about heroic fantasy adventure!

Remember, I tried really hard to love 4E, I really did. If I wanted to run a non-combat session in 4E with a lot of stealth, diplomacy and court intrigue, I might as well tell my players to not bother bringing their character sheets, books or dice. 4E has skills and feats, which are great. It has skill challenges, which are really good for particular types of action. But when it comes down to it, I want to relate to the character I see on the sheet. I don't get that in 4E. It just looks like numbers and abilities designed to get you through the dungeon. That's great for a convention or other one-off game, but eventually the combat-oriented nature of the game is telling to play it that way or to play a different game.

Number48, I've heard similar stories to yours, and I've always had a question that no one seems to think to ask, let alone answer.

When you leveled up and were offered a combat power, why didn't you just not take the power?

Like I said, I want to look at my character sheet and see something like what I envisioned the character to be. So having a bunch of combat powers or having a blank character sheet does not feel like my noble diplomat.

What it comes down to is that, when leveling up your character in 4E, it feels like the game is asking you what kind of mustard you want. They have all kinds of mustard, but it has to be mustard.

 

[pemerton]

For those who like 4e, I think "4e wouldn't let me tell the stories that I wanted to tell" has to be parsed as something like "Interpreting 4e's action resolution mechanics in a simulationist fashion - ie as correlating more-or-less 1:1 with ingame fictional events - got in the way of the story I wanted to tell". So these are people who don't like treating fighter daily powers in a metagame fashion, and therefore feel that they are quasi-magical things that the fictional protagonist can do 1x/day (a bit like a barbarian rage in 3E).

I'm a big 4e fan, and enjoy the metagame aspects of 4e, and sometimes I get frustrated with the way non-4e players express their objections - often assuming that simulationist, immersion style play is the only valid form of RPGing - but the bottom line is that not everyone enjoys every sort of system.

I do feel sorry, though, for those who want the simulationist experience of 3E without the search-and-handling time issues. I think that that isn't going to happen. If you want shortcuts while keeping your story, I think you have to go metagame - use the mechancis to distribute narrative authority around the table, and then rely upon parameters set by the mechanics (in 4e, keywords are central to this) plus shared genre expectations to ensure that the narrative is the one that you want.

 

[pemerton]

If I wanted to run a non-combat session in 4E with a lot of stealth, diplomacy and court intrigue, I might as well tell my players to not bother bringing their character sheets, books or dice. 4E has skills and feats, which are great. It has skill challenges, which are really good for particular types of action. But when it comes down to it, I want to relate to the character I see on the sheet. I don't get that in 4E. It just looks like numbers and abilities designed to get you through the dungeon. That's great for a convention or other one-off game, but eventually the combat-oriented nature of the game is telling to play it that way or to play a different game.

I actually think here that you are understating the breadth of the game, and the potential of the skill challenge as an action resolution system. Here's a link to an actual play report of the best court intrigue skill challenge I've run in my game to date.

What is unfortunate about 4e, in my view, is that the rules don't tell GMs how to set up and run this sort of encounter - they only give you the maths for its resolution. I learned how to set up and run this sort of thing by reading threads at The Forge, and reading rulebooks for other games (especially HeroWars/Quest, Maelstrom Storytelling and Burning Wheel).

I hope WotC writes better GM guidelines for the next iteration.

 

[Dannager]

Like I said, I want to look at my character sheet and see something like what I envisioned the character to be. So having a bunch of combat powers or having a blank character sheet does not feel like my noble diplomat.

What is it about what you saw on character sheets of previous editions that made your character feel like a noble diplomat?

 

[Number48]

I actually think here that you are understating the breadth of the game, and the potential of the skill challenge as an action resolution system. Here's a link to an actual play report of the best court intrigue skill challenge I've run in my game to date.

What is unfortunate about 4e, in my view, is that the rules don't tell GMs how to set up and run this sort of encounter - they only give you the maths for its resolution. I learned how to set up and run this sort of thing by reading threads at The Forge, and reading rulebooks for other games (especially HeroWars/Quest, Maelstrom Storytelling and Burning Wheel).

I hope WotC writes better GM guidelines for the next iteration.

I've been a DM for 30 years. I can handle running any edition of D&D to the best it is. However, just because you can put a saddle on a giraffe doesn't make it a horse. Skill challenges are a great way to throw dice at stuff which isn't hit points and monsters. It's great for a single diplomacy encounter in a game session. But when all your wizard abilities do damage and all virtually all rogue abilities do damage or move you around in combat? Not useful. There are skills, but you just simply cannot build a character in 4E who is GOOD at noncombat. If you run a noncombat session, how much of your character are you using in 4E? Ten percent?

In my games, to play the game I want to run, means we are using 10% of the character sheet 60% of the time and the other 90% for the other 40% of the game. It CAN be done, sure. But why would I want to? Pathfinder suits my game better.

Like I said in my original post, if you read it all. Give me 3E feel for characters and 4E combat and DM prep time.

 

[Elf Witch]

I feel like that as someone who does not like 4E I have to defend my reasons why. And when I do try and explain why I am usually told I am not bright enough to fully comprehend how it works. At least that is how it often comes across.

Because of 4E mechanics I don't feel as if I can immerse myself in the game world all the little fiddly bits continually pull me out. I am not going to claim that never happened in any other edition it did but not as often.

There are one to many game mechanic that makes me go huh which is a sure fire way to make me not be able to suspend my disbelief.

It comes down to not being able to deliver the game experience I need to be able to tell the kind of stories I want to to tell.