NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="James Gasik" data-source="post: 9216116" data-attributes="member: 6877472">One interesting thing about the Great Edition War was how people bounced off of the requirement of 4e to use minis/tokens and a tactical map.  3e was certainly designed with this sort of thing in mind, and there are examples in the rulebooks showing tokens on a tactical map to explain things like attacks of opportunity.  Characters got powers that granted additional or alternative methods of movement, 5' steps were a thing, etc. etc..So when they said 4e was designed to use a map and mini/tokens, I was like, yeah ok, I've been using both extensively since 2000?  In fact, after starting to use them, after my "theatre of the mind" AD&D years, I found a lot of the little headaches I used to have with arguments about who is where and how did that goblin attack me vanished, so I almost always use them, save for small skirmishes where it really doesn't matter.So what was the problem?  It seemed to come down to two sticking points.  The streamlined rules for diagonals (leading to one of my favorite 4e-isms, the dread FIRECUBE!) and "squares of movement".See, while races generally moved at the same speed as they did in 3e, rather than say "30' movement", suddenly Humans had 6 squares of movement.  Even though squares were still 5' x 5', so it wasn't hard to figure out how much distance was being crossed, this apparently was "too gamist" for some.  They pointed at the forced movement and zones and pointed out how this game was designed to be used with maps and tokens (just like 3e was!) and said "you'll take my Theatre of the Mind away from me when I'm dead and buried!", even though 3e had the same things (though they were more common in 4e).In the end, 4e's presentation and it's marketing doomed it more than the actual game did.  That and the fact that, as I said way upthread, the fact that not everyone was ready for a new edition, or hadn't yet experienced the more experimental concepts of late 3.5, like the Warlock, the Miniatures Handbook, or the Tome of Battle.And while 3e made a lot of changes to 3.5, they were largely culled from late 2e and popular house rules.  Enough stuff stayed the same that while people did reject some 3eisms, they grumbled and sallied forth (I recall a fantastic debate about "attacks of opportunity" where I pointed out they were directly inspired by AD&D attacks on retreating characters, and were actually created in late 2e to people who thought this "new" rule would destroy the game (or something, it's been 24 years).The Miniatures Handbook, interestingly, is a piece of the puzzle I hadn't considered before, but makes this push for 4e to be played with a battle map come into sharp focus.  During 3.5, WotC attempted to make a miniatures game for D&D (far from the first time this has happened) that used very compatible rules with 3.5.  They produced a line of plastic miniatures to go with the game.  But the game flopped, yet they had all these miniatures that weren't selling...and wouldn't you know it, it was for my 4e game that I bought like 50 goblins (among other things) from this line cheaply online!</blockquote>

Verification