Are Essentials more old school or just a clever marketing ploy?

[TerraDave]

Oh... I guess I misunderstood what you were saying? What's improv have to do with Nentir Vale story elements?

The point is that essentials may not be the solutions to all D&D "problems"

People will do what you give them incentives to do.

What incentives? Are these in essentials and not in 08D&D? Were they ever in D&D? Main incentives by RAW have always been to kill things, take stuff. Then some secondary support for story goals, role-playing etc. (and even 1E had this, burried in the training rules). And again, the game gives the pcs the hammer it gives.

One thing that I've started to notice over the years is that some among the ranks of us older 'grognards' who have been playing the game since 80s or even 70s, have started to take exception to games not sucking sufficiently.

This is a little strong..there are some "official" cursed items in 4E...But yes, 4E is more straight forward to DM, though it does play a little slow at times.

 

[Scribble]

The point is that essentials may not be the solutions to all D&D "problems"

Oh- well yeah.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

You think so? Maybe in your experience. But waves of third party products, stuff like True 20 and Spycraft and Mutants and Masterminds, and my own personal experience certainly point to not everyone having this problem.

Tripping and breaking things were examples of things that there WERE rules for, even if you didn't have some special class feature or feat (the rules didn't make it very attractive, usually, but they were there). The amount of "underpinning," to me, was liberating, because I felt like I could extrapolate easy from the baseline, generating adventures and action around the fact that there were rules for things. I could make it a climactic encounter to knock some Evil Baron off the peaks of his high roofed manor into the waiting mob below, confident that players would find a way to knock him off and that I would have rules to help adjudicate the stunts they tried to do. I had falling damage, I had trip rules, I had bull rush, I had item damage and disarming. I knew how to quickly figure out what happened if, say, the Barbarian crushed the roof below the Evil Baron with his massive maul (item hp and saves), or the Ranger wanted to try and shoot the coinpurse from his hands (called shots and size-affecting AC). They weren't always great rules (which influenced how often they were used) but they did exist, which gave me information on how to make thrilling combats.

4e's unified stunt system is fine as far as it goes, it covers the bases, but so much of your stunt is bound up in a damage expression and a DC, often making it less attractive than the use of one of your powers, so it doesn't see any more use than the trip rules. It also doesn't give you interesting options. It tells you, "If someone does something outside the box, use this." It doesn't provide much advice in the way of things you can do that are outside the box, that might be unique to your character.

This is mostly because 4e has a powers box for...everything. You're not supposed to trip, you're supposed to use a power that knocks someone prone. You're not supposed to knock someone off a roof, you're supposed to fight them util they are at 0 hp.

It's a Paradox of Choice thing, too. Given a list, people can choose, but given a single sentence that says "YOU CAN DO ANYTHING," and people do nothing.

Huh?!

Sorry, this really doesn't hold water IMHO. You can do JUST AS MUCH with the 4e stunting/skill system as with any other system. The fact is it is a GENERALIZED system that is pretty good at adjudicating anything. The problem with the 3.x "rule for everything" system is twofold. First there is NEVER a rule for everything, thus there are always the black pits of the rules system where you have nothing to go on, except to fall back on a generalized system of action resolution, so you're just as well off with a good one of those that consistently handles all that crap from the start. Secondly the specific rules that the system DOES provide are VERY frequently themselves unworkable and stupid and have to be jettisoned anyway.

You want to handle the "the BBEG is on the roof" scenario? In 4e the players have a plethora of options that all fall within the general system. They can bull rush, they can use forced movement powers or other similar kinds of stuff. They could actually try to collapse the roof too, there are perfectly good rules for that. Or they can stunt. It is perfectly possible for a PC to say leap on the enemy and try to drag him down or whatever other possibilities I can't even think of. The DM uses page 42 and sets a DC and a skill to use based on the player's description of what he does. Damage can be picked from a standard chart if there is damage involved, an attack can be made against Fort, Ref, or Will, etc. Honestly, where is the problem?

All this "everything sucked before 4e came along and everyone who doesn't like it is just wrong!" stuff is exhausting. Essentials is good step in a positive direction for a lot of people. If that makes you unhappy because those people shouldn't be welcomed into the game, you should perhaps open your mind to what the game can be, or at least who can play it.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I've never said ANY system sucked. I haven't heard other people say that either here. I've heard them say what they think is good about the new system, 4e. I've also heard them articulate concerns that Essentials is trying to abandon hard won progress in the system based on a (as some of us would believe) mistaken assertion that somehow going backwards will make a better game. 4e is a more modern and polished game design than previous editions of D&D. It may not be the one you like as much but since I have played ALL versions of D&D, and all but 3.x VERY extensively I'm pretty darn sure 4e has the most solid rules of all of them. If it doesn't do what you want, then play a different version, but don't come around and tell me what I need to rethink, lol.

Honestly, I understand when people state that they find 4e formulaic in some sense. I don't really agree as to the reasons why it seems that way though. That's OK, we can disagree but we can debate it instead of telling the other guy to rethink because he must be wrong.

Personally I think the issue with 4e isn't powers trumping creativity. You can use powers creatively and you can do other things. I think the issue is they really honestly tried to remove a lot of the variability in how things work. What people miss is things like monsters that have major weaknesses and also scary ridiculous nasty effects. Items that can curse you. Totally off the wall overpowered magical effects, etc. That kind of stuff can wreck a game or make it darn hard to play, but if used RIGHT it can also really add to the game. Breaking away from a formula encounter paradigm will also bring benefits by making the play have more real meaningful variety.

I think the place where 4e went a bit wrong was they poured out a huge amount of pretty vanilla content. It is GOOD, but they kind of just left the wacky stuff totally to the DM. That's good for some people, but it leaves a lot of others feeling like they're in a small box. Like I said up thread I think part of the reason this happened is that the devs are VERY experienced players and GMs. It just didn't occur to them that most people need someone to say "and you can make a zombie that poisons people dead if you really want, its OK as long as you make it a good story". Instead they just left out such elements, knowing that as ultra-creative types they'd certainly have no trouble adding it in themselves.

 

[Imaro]

Huh?!

Sorry, this really doesn't hold water IMHO. You can do JUST AS MUCH with the 4e stunting/skill system as with any other system. The fact is it is a GENERALIZED system that is pretty good at adjudicating anything. The problem with the 3.x "rule for everything" system is twofold. First there is NEVER a rule for everything, thus there are always the black pits of the rules system where you have nothing to go on, except to fall back on a generalized system of action resolution, so you're just as well off with a good one of those that consistently handles all that crap from the start. Secondly the specific rules that the system DOES provide are VERY frequently themselves unworkable and stupid and have to be jettisoned anyway.

You want to handle the "the BBEG is on the roof" scenario? In 4e the players have a plethora of options that all fall within the general system. They can bull rush, they can use forced movement powers or other similar kinds of stuff. They could actually try to collapse the roof too, there are perfectly good rules for that. Or they can stunt. It is perfectly possible for a PC to say leap on the enemy and try to drag him down or whatever other possibilities I can't even think of. The DM uses page 42 and sets a DC and a skill to use based on the player's description of what he does. Damage can be picked from a standard chart if there is damage involved, an attack can be made against Fort, Ref, or Will, etc. Honestly, where is the problem?

Yeah, I didn't find 4e's original system for improvisation and stunting (pg. 42 in the DMG) all that great. Why, well because it really only deals with DC's and damage... not condition. Also it does an, IMO, piss poor job of explaining exactly how levels/difficulty/gameworld interact... thus you had some peopel believeing everything should scale with the adventurer's. Finally it gave no way to mesure the power of effects... and since everything is designed as an exception... if there was a way to infer the power level of conditions in relationship to each other and character level... it wasn't at all transparent.

In 3.x I felt like I had enough examples in the exsisting mechanics and that they were attached to the gameworld in a way that made it easy to extrapolate most improvised things from a DM and PC side. I didn't feel this way with 4e. I knew what a level 3 hard DC was... but what tthe heck did that mean in a gameworld sense? Also, how do you decide the power of conditions in 4e when players try to stunt to inflict them.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I've never said ANY system sucked. I haven't heard other people say that either here. I've heard them say what they think is good about the new system, 4e. I've also heard them articulate concerns that Essentials is trying to abandon hard won progress in the system based on a (as some of us would believe) mistaken assertion that somehow going backwards will make a better game. 4e is a more modern and polished game design than previous editions of D&D. It may not be the one you like as much but since I have played ALL versions of D&D, and all but 3.x VERY extensively I'm pretty darn sure 4e has the most solid rules of all of them. If it doesn't do what you want, then play a different version, but don't come around and tell me what I need to rethink, lol.

It sounds like you're trying to tell us and WotC to "rethink", and honestly there does seem to be a little "essentials sucks" in there as well.

Personally to me the point of a "Game"is to create a fun time for those who participate in it. Whether it's rules are polished and superb and flawless matters very little unless the game is fun. I think Chess is a better designed game than checkers... yet the number of people who play checkers for fun far outstrips those who play chess for fun. I feel like Essentials is bringing some fun back to what I felt was a very well-balanced, nicely-designed but also uninspiring, sterile and text-book like game (at least until hybridizing and psionics were introduced to the game). I don't want you to agree with me... but the fact of the matter is you've already got a ton of toys to play with... so, why does essentials bother you?

Honestly, I understand when people state that they find 4e formulaic in some sense. I don't really agree as to the reasons why it seems that way though. That's OK, we can disagree but we can debate it instead of telling the other guy to rethink because he must be wrong.

Personally I think the issue with 4e isn't powers trumping creativity. You can use powers creatively and you can do other things. I think the issue is they really honestly tried to remove a lot of the variability in how things work. What people miss is things like monsters that have major weaknesses and also scary ridiculous nasty effects. Items that can curse you. Totally off the wall overpowered magical effects, etc. That kind of stuff can wreck a game or make it darn hard to play, but if used RIGHT it can also really add to the game. Breaking away from a formula encounter paradigm will also bring benefits by making the play have more real meaningful variety.

Yep, and along with some old school sensibilities... essentials is bringing this stuff back... to a point. We've got stuff like the rare magic items now, and random treasure parcels... things to make the game (outside of combat powers) mysterious and strange to the PC's again.

I think the place where 4e went a bit wrong was they poured out a huge amount of pretty vanilla content. It is GOOD, but they kind of just left the wacky stuff totally to the DM. That's good for some people, but it leaves a lot of others feeling like they're in a small box. Like I said up thread I think part of the reason this happened is that the devs are VERY experienced players and GMs. It just didn't occur to them that most people need someone to say "and you can make a zombie that poisons people dead if you really want, its OK as long as you make it a good story". Instead they just left out such elements, knowing that as ultra-creative types they'd certainly have no trouble adding it in themselves.

I would say their content was good... mechanically, as far as it inspiring me, getting me excited to run 4e or leaving me with ideas to implement within it... I would say alot (though definitely not all) of the 4e stuff kind of fell flat... and IMO, for an rpg, that's a no-no. As far as the devs and what they may have not thought of... I disagree with that as well. You see the problem was that alot of this was called out as unfun, or stuff that needed to be fixed during the 4e marketing campaign... so really there was alot of push against stuff like this being "better for your game". even Dragon and Dungeon which had traditionally been theplace to get your fix for the weird, wacky and broken stuff was assimilated into 4e's philosophy.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Wait... What do 3rd party products have to do with improvisation?

They spoke to the idea that the rules did not confine you, but rather gave you a baseline to launch from. What the proliferation of these companies -- which were often just formalized and (sometimes) better-tested house rules -- showed was that a DM could easily take the baseline 3e mechanics and feel free to tweak away on the fly without too much concern, thus opening up vistas of improvisation.

It's sort of like: improv actors have "stocks." Stock situations, stock characters, stock lines. The improvisation occurs as these are remixed, mutated, and recombined with new audience input. The rules of the D&D game, for those of us who like to improvise, serve as those "stocks."

3rd party publishers showed how easy it was to combine the "stocks" in different ways for whatever effect you were going for (from Telekinetic Jellyfish to Litorian Armigers).

I think when they designed it, rather then look at what they "intend for you to do" they looked at what the majority of people DO, and built in options for them.

See, that gets the whole game design desire/fulfillment thing backwards, if that is what they did.

They have to see the things they WANT the players to do, and then design incentives (carrots and sticks) to get players to do it.

Of course D&D players have always taken the game in their own directions (which is a great selling point of D&D), but then you build game rules for what they want to do.

Game design is, IMO, a big process of desire-making and reward-distributing (and it's not unlike much creative art in that regard, but I digress).

Chances are they'll find whatever limited list they do have (oh it says I can swing a sword, so... I do that.) Or, they'll think up one or two things, and when they discover they work, will continue to do those same things over and over (essentially making their own list.)

Right. AKA: The Powers System.

Back in the day people got upset because there weren't rules for various actions.

So the game gives more rules, and now people get upset because the game has rules for doing things...

I diverge with a lot of the "true grognards" when I put my flag in the sand with this:

You need rules for things you want players to do with your game.

The amount of rules you have for a thing effectively speaks to what you want people playing the game to spend their time doing. Rules are there to resolve conflict, after all. If it's not important, and it doesn't affect your game, you're not going to need a rule to adjudicate it.

Which is why 4e's support of intricate combat rules and it's lack of support for solid noncombat rules is such an axe for me to grind.

What incentives? Are these in essentials and not in 08D&D? Were they ever in D&D? Main incentives by RAW have always been to kill things, take stuff. Then some secondary support for story goals, role-playing etc. (and even 1E had this, burried in the training rules). And again, the game gives the pcs the hammer it gives.

I was speaking pretty broadly, there, but there are some incentive differences between Essentials and '08. For instance, the lack of martial dailies in Essentials decreases the incentive to justify a PC's abilities by circumstance, chance, luck, or metagame need. There's others, too.

You can do JUST AS MUCH with the 4e stunting/skill system as with any other system.

I'm not saying you can't. I'm saying there's not much incentive for it. The game doesn't reward it. The game discourages it. The game doesn't really want you do to it, but it'll oblige you if you happen to demand that.

It's not a binary can/can't thing, it's a "will they want to or not?" thing.

And "as any other system?" Have you played Feng Shui?

I can't speak for anyone else, but I've never said ANY system sucked. I haven't heard other people say that either here.

If you can look at Tony Vargas's post and tell me with a straight face that saying "people are unhappy because 4e is such a good game that they don't have those shared suffering experiences" is not actually a condescending position, there's not much I can do to help you see it.

 

[GreyLord]

You think so? Maybe in your experience. But waves of third party products, stuff like True 20 and Spycraft and Mutants and Masterminds, and my own personal experience certainly point to not everyone having this problem.

That wasn't because 3e was innovative, that was due to the OGL. If you had that with 2e, you would have even MORE innovation...or even with 1e...oh wait...they didn't have it with 1e but the company was even MORE innmovative back then with the stuff they created and the myriads of different game systems. Most of those game systems were typically NOT based on 3e per se either...but BREAKING the normal rules of 3e. Furthermore, you saw the DEATH of RPG innovation during that time period...as more rulesets became D20...and there was less innovation on the whole for RPG's and different types of systems.

Hence...I don't think you even have a point on this one.

Tripping and breaking things were examples of things that there WERE rules for, even if you didn't have some special class feature or feat (the rules didn't make it very attractive, usually, but they were there). The amount of "underpinning," to me, was liberating, because I felt like I could extrapolate easy from the baseline, generating adventures and action around the fact that there were rules for things. I could make it a climactic encounter to knock some Evil Baron off the peaks of his high roofed manor into the waiting mob below, confident that players would find a way to knock him off and that I would have rules to help adjudicate the stunts they tried to do. I had falling damage, I had trip rules, I had bull rush, I had item damage and disarming. I knew how to quickly figure out what happened if, say, the Barbarian crushed the roof below the Evil Baron with his massive maul (item hp and saves), or the Ranger wanted to try and shoot the coinpurse from his hands (called shots and size-affecting AC). They weren't always great rules (which influenced how often they were used) but they did exist, which gave me information on how to make thrilling combats.

Yeah...in the past and in 4e we use something called...wait for it...wait for it...common sense. WHAT...people LOST that during the 3e years? Common sense can dictate...hey...why have 3 million rules I have to memorize when I can simply remember one...called an ability check...and it covers all those situations? One rule vs memorize Fifty? Which do you think creates more innovation...telling people that they have these materials to build a moving vehicle (the non-3e rules) OR giving someone a direct plan for HOW it should be made and then telling them to make the vehicle (In my experience...most will follow the plan instead of being innovative).

4e's unified stunt system is fine as far as it goes, it covers the bases, but so much of your stunt is bound up in a damage expression and a DC, often making it less attractive than the use of one of your powers, so it doesn't see any more use than the trip rules. It also doesn't give you interesting options. It tells you, "If someone does something outside the box, use this." It doesn't provide much advice in the way of things you can do that are outside the box, that might be unique to your character.

This is mostly because 4e has a powers box for...everything. You're not supposed to trip, you're supposed to use a power that knocks someone prone. You're not supposed to knock someone off a roof, you're supposed to fight them util they are at 0 hp.

Does it now? You seem so stuck on trips and stunts that you are forgetting the ROLEPLAYING portion of ROLEPLAYING. Furthermore...I've seen many "stunts" driven by players outside of their "powers" as you put it. If you want to go that path...the "FEATS" of 3e did the same thing. Why would a fighter not power attack, or cleave...or a Spellcaster use a metamagic feat? In fact...just like 4e....they used the feats like powers...so that's something that can be equally applied to 3e. What 4e DOESN'T say is that you have to do it this way outside of combat maneuvers. 4e is more minimalistic, and like the raw materials vs. the written out directions as given above...it gives players more incentive to ROLEPLAY situations rather than rely on having the specific skill or feat to do it.

Now the key thing is that the DM has to be smart enough to realize about the roleplaying aspect...but the DMG covers that a LOT better in 4e then it ever did in 3e as well...so that's actually LESS of a problem.

Don't get me wrong...I think 3e is a grand system...but players from it consistently seem to be handicapped in actual roleplaying ability from what I've seen thinking they have to stick to their skills and feats and nothing can operate outside of that. In fact, it tends to make some rules lawyers as they argue about specifics...so they can become combat monsters.

4e can have the same problems in combat...without a smart DM who realizes what the DMG is actually telling him about Roleplaying...

But overall, 4e is kinder, happier, and more towards the older style of encouraging roleplaying with a looser set of rules...inspiring the possiblities for innovation far more than 3e. (which as I said, created a bunch of zombie clone D20 rules...which basically killed almost ALL RPG system innovation for a couple years. OGL was great...and from it some great systems came out...but it was also terrible in other ways...such as the aforementioned actual innovation).

Depending on what style of game I am wanting to run...I'll run 3.5 (leaning more towards a PF type now) or 4e game...both are good...but I don't think 3e or 3.5 actually inspired much innovation during it's reign as RPG champ. I also think that 3e and 3.5 drew a DIFFERENT CROWD then the traditional D&D player...more along the lines of the Rolemaster lite, Gurps, and skill set players who typically preferred to try other systems outside of D&D. 4e appeals more to the type that would have played D&D in the past (IMO), but still isn't completely in their camp. To many things which are too heavily focused (ex. combat) on with the lack of focus on other areas (ex. fluff) to be a complete winner...hence I think it's more a flux in the middle.

That said, I still think Essentials is made to appeal MORE towards the old time gamer than the 3e and newer players. As someone said in another thread...to paraphrase or steal their thoughts...a choice of a couple Hundred thousand 3e players...or 25 million lapsed AD&D players who don't play any RPG anymore...I think I'll see if I can get a slice of that bigger pie of 25 million.

 

[Scribble]

They spoke to the idea that the rules did not confine you, but rather gave you a baseline to launch from. What the proliferation of these companies -- which were often just formalized and (sometimes) better-tested house rules -- showed was that a DM could easily take the baseline 3e mechanics and feel free to tweak away on the fly without too much concern, thus opening up vistas of improvisation.

Eh... I don't know man... This kind of feels like saying that Scaled Composites showed us how easy it is to mess with Astrophysics when they built Spaceshipone...

3e was a system that required a lot of work to modify and keep balanced- I'd still argue a large reason these games sold was because they did all the work of modifying the game to meet the needs to the buyer.

See, that gets the whole game design desire/fulfillment thing backwards, if that is what they did.

They have to see the things they WANT the players to do, and then design incentives (carrots and sticks) to get players to do it.

I see what you're saying, but maybe we'll just have to disagree here... I say the whole carrots and sticks thing is just (mostly)backwards.

I think there's SOME truth to it... I mean sometimes advertising convinces us things are more important then they really are sure- but overall?

Products are designed to meet the needs a potential buyer has, and advertising highlights the ways in which they do.


In any case- I have FAR overused my thread jack powers for this thread, so I'ma bow out now.

 

[TerraDave]

I was speaking pretty broadly, there, but there are some incentive differences between Essentials and '08. For instance, the lack of martial dailies in Essentials decreases the incentive to justify a PC's abilities by circumstance, chance, luck, or metagame need. There's others, too.

Trying to veer back to topic. We agree that essentials makes all sorts of concessions to bring things closer to "D&D canon". That in turn may increase verisimilitude and or invoke nostalgia for an important part of the audience. (And some changes may be better for in play reasons that have nothing to do with this or my "give backs" thead).

Thats great. But I don't think it goes beyond that. Its still (4.x) D&D.

 

[Imaro]

Thats great. But I don't think it goes beyond that. Its still (4.x) D&D.

I'm trying to understand exactly what you mean by this... I mean when one says 3.x that encompases both 3.0 and 3.5 ( sometimes even Pathfinder.)... many would argue that 3.5 was different, though the extent would probably vary from person to person, compared to 3.0. I guess I am just looking for clarification on what you mean when you say 4.x... if it is that it is an iteration of the 4th edition engine I would agree... if you mean it is the same as the game that was first released in the 4th ed. PHB1, MM1 and DMG1... not so sure I would agree with that.

 

[Imaro]

Eh... I don't know man... This kind of feels like saying that Scaled Composites showed us how easy it is to mess with Astrophysics when they built Spaceshipone...

3e was a system that required a lot of work to modify and keep balanced- I'd still argue a large reason these games sold was because they did all the work of modifying the game to meet the needs to the buyer.

Eh, I liken it more to lego... Just like 3.0's OGL games... there are a bunch of specific sets to build a specific thing... but you can also build most of that stuff, and more, from the generic sets to if you want. Of course molding the generic set is more work than buying it already made for you... but that's kinda the point, some people are willing to give up money for ready made stuff... I'd argue that's almost the entire basis of the rpg industry.

I see what you're saying, but maybe we'll just have to disagree here... I say the whole carrots and sticks thing is just (mostly)backwards.

I think there's SOME truth to it... I mean sometimes advertising convinces us things are more important then they really are sure- but overall?

Products are designed to meet the needs a potential buyer has, and advertising highlights the ways in which they do.


In any case- I have FAR overused my thread jack powers for this thread, so I'ma bow out now.

I agree with KM on this one as your statement seems to run along the lines of guesstimating or assuming playstyle with a particular game. I think this is particularly erroneous when dealing with an rpg that is the gateway and most popular rpg... you're bound to have a ton of people using it in very different ways. When you start assuming how they use it (especially without market research to back it up) it can cause dissatisfaction in a significant portion of your customer base.