Blog post on the feel of D&D (marmell, reynolds et all)

[BryonD]

Making a special monster outside of the box requires a retarded amount of time to create

Again, maybe for you it did.
You aren't saying positive things about 3e.
3E was a hugely popular game.
And yet any time someone who liked 3e expresses a complaint about 4e it is written off on the basis of perceived 3e faults being taken as gospel truth.

Clearly, for a lot of people posting here, 4e hung the moon and 3e sucked. Great. But you can't argue with someone else's conclusion based on the fundamental presumption that their limitations and preferences are the same as yours.

and to wit, obviously I was exaggerating heavily about looking up the same rule 18 times, and if you played in my 3.5E game you'd have a blast - my games are spit and polished examples of fine gaming - so there's no need to try to mock the game experience that I am capable of putting forth.

I can only go by what you said. I know that I can run a spit and polished game, pretty much on the fly. My problems don't match your and you don't get to have ti both ways.

The lengthy and abundantly available videos, blogs, and information out there describes vividly the goals of the 4E designers which is to streamline and simplify the rules without dumbing down the game. Yes, I'm taking their words for it that they are driving in that direction (Just as I watch the Batman trailer and make assumptions about the content without making criticism about that which I have no knowledge aside from that provided to me). (Watch the 4E unveiling video and it spells out their aims pretty unambiguously). If 4E sucks I'll be the first to go back to 3.5E, but crapping on a system you haven't explored in its entirety because it "doesn't feel like D&D" seems like criticism gone wrong to me (plenty of hard info to crap on, why crap on the unknown).

Again with the having it both ways. I agree completely that there is well sufficient data out there to make fairly solid conclusions. You like what you see so far, then I am confident you will like 4e. Just the same, I have plenty of information to be certain that I won't.

But regardless it can't be "just" a trailer when that serves one side and vastly more than a trailer when that serves the same side.



Let's assume for the moment that I love 3e and it feels like the game I want to play.
Let's also assume that I love 4e but it feels all wrong for the game I want to play.
Which should I choose?

 

[Fifth Element]

And yet any time someone who liked 3e expresses a complaint about 4e it is written off on the basis of perceived 3e faults being taken as gospel truth.

This is a ridiculous assertion. Sure, there are some people who will say such things, but they are easily ignored since their arguments are not really arguments, having no substance. Your statement above is just as bad. It is very broad and generalized, and has no real content. Instead of focusing on the statements that lack content, why not concentrate on those that have something to say. Perhaps in some of the times you speak of, some 4E fans had a legitimate point about 3E, but you failed to see it because of your above conviction?

 

[Geron Raveneye]

Right. Exactly. 3e allows the same, except that once you do you've broken your game.

I doubt I would break my game with it. I know my game, and it is pretty solid, and doesn't break under small stuff such as that.

Now salt is a permanent part of every fighting character, because it rocks anyone with a low touch AC. Instead of just the Monk throwing salt because he thought it was cool, your game is a salt throwing fest.

Weird...so far, I didn't have acid-flask toting fighters, or monks with bandoliers of alchemist's fire. All ranged touch attack items, and not that expensive either. And instead of blinding someone, they cause continuous damage. Either salt is a tremendous substance compared to those...or it simply was a bit of hyperbole.
By the way, the spiked-chain-wielding trip monkey is a creature of internet legend as far as I have seen D&D personally, too.

Even using your example, you're going to break the game. The difference between the touch AC of a fighter is usually much more than 8 (+10 for plate and shield, plus magical enhancement), so salt throwing is more likely to hit than a regular melee attack. And I shudder to think of what this rule would do to dragons (great wyrm touch AC, 6).

Depending on the dragon size, nothing. Max range 10'. And if you expect a handful of salt to do ANYthing to the medium-size eye of a Colossal great wyrm, you deserve the roasting you get.
By the way, it's funny to think players could be so unadaptive that one ranged touch attack against a fighter wouldn't make the player look around for some countermeasures. And not just with salt, either.

You end up in a trap. If its good enough to be worth doing, its good enough to spam. And if its not good enough to be worth doing, there was no point in the first place. 4e allows you to replace old, weak restrictions on what you can do (proficiency, mostly) with whether or not you have the relevant power. This lets you power up the ability without screwing your game.

Right, I forget...4E, the game that explains it with "you basically do it all the time, but only when YOU think it is important, your clouds of salt actually have an effect". Yep, lovely. Obviously our tastes on how we'd like to limit the powers of the characters differ as much as our games differ in breakability. And 4E must suffer under a messiah complex by now worse than 3E ever did. I wonder how long it'll take the publishers and the community to sacrifice it on the altar of "faster better more cool fun" to 5E.

 

[shadowguidex]

Again, maybe for you it did.
You aren't saying positive things about 3e.
3E was a hugely popular game.
And yet any time someone who liked 3e expresses a complaint about 4e it is written off on the basis of perceived 3e faults being taken as gospel truth.

Clearly, for a lot of people posting here, 4e hung the moon and 3e sucked. Great. But you can't argue with someone else's conclusion based on the fundamental presumption that their limitations and preferences are the same as yours.


I can only go by what you said. I know that I can run a spit and polished game, pretty much on the fly. My problems don't match your and you don't get to have ti both ways.

My own personal rule is that in conceptualizing each encounter, I can always add more depth, more description, and more intriguing elements to the fight. I hardly ever use monsters straight out of the book, I always make changes, whether is be adding spellcasting or rogue capabilities, or tailoring their feats to match what I think they need to do, or adding terrain twists or cliffs, rope ladders, waterwheels, oxen grinding wheels, traps, etc etc. My rule is that once an encounter feels complete, I have to add one more defining elements to make it even better - my players can recount many of the encounters I have crafted in detail (In fact I burned copies of the 500-page Adventure writeup of our first 3E adventure and gave everyone a copy). I spend a significant amount of time statting monsters between sessions - time that I would prefer to use on further conceptualizing the fights and writing up truly vivid descriptions, and sometimes in 3E I just don't have the time because I spend so much of it statting monsters.

In 3E, to play "pretty much on the fly" you cannot incorporate too many complex elements into the game correctly and mechanically sound unless you stat out the monsters correctly ahead of time (Unplanned Dragon with prestige class - good luck doing that quickly and efficiently), which is just simply going to be fundamentally easier for the DM in 4E. If you like out of the box monsters then 3E is not limited for you, but for the complexity that I enjoy in crafting encounters, I am greatly looking forward to 4E from the DM's side of the screen. I'll happily disagree with you here though, as I know my game is going to remain vibrant and fun no matter what version I play, I just like the small, incomplete taste of the tools that 4E seems to be presenting for for toolbox that will enhance my ability to craft memorable and exciting encounters, and if the trend holds I think 4E will be a boon to my style of gaming.

Again with the having it both ways. I agree completely that there is well sufficient data out there to make fairly solid conclusions. You like what you see so far, then I am confident you will like 4e. Just the same, I have plenty of information to be certain that I won't.

But regardless it can't be "just" a trailer when that serves one side and vastly more than a trailer when that serves the same side.

Again, I have no problem with you or anybody crapping on elements of 4E that we have all seen and that they dislike, my beef is with the blogger's premise that 4E "doesn't feel like D&D", which I think is grossly uncalled for considering nobody here has seen the rulebooks concerning any of the portions of the rules he is basing the entirety of his criticism on. If the complaint was a specific such as: "I hate the chosen classes in the PBH", or "The defenses system sucks because X", then I think those are valid criticisms based upon factual knowledge of the game, not mere conjecture that supports a premise - the guy was clearly fishing for details that supported his main premise, not the other way around. Me personally, I hate the Dragonborn and Tiefling are being included and Gnomes being left out. It irritates me that they are making those two races core...I don't want them in my classical fantasy game (Those are things I want my players to kill, not play). See, I'm not all fanfare and confetti.

Let's assume for the moment that I love 3e and it feels like the game I want to play.
Let's also assume that I love 4e but it feels all wrong for the game I want to play.
Which should I choose?

Play 3E, no worries and lots of love for you (I have played 3E since release and I also love it), but don't make a blog before you have even seen the books proclaiming that 4E doesn't feel like D&D, when inherently, you have no basis to make that determination yet (which heweven admits at the very end of his entry). My criticism is aimed directly at the guy who wrote that blog, the basis for this entire thread.

I'm not picking arguments with people here, I'm trying to tone down rhetoric like "Doesn't feel like D&D" from people who have seen a couple character sheets and a 2 page need-to-know rules writeup...particularly when they have the clout like a 3E designer should have. He, of all people, should know better than to crap on unknown portions of a new edition before it's even on the shelves - it's no wonder he doesn't work for them anymore.

 

[malraux]

Weird...so far, I didn't have acid-flask toting fighters, or monks with bandoliers of alchemist's fire. All ranged touch attack items, and not that expensive either. And instead of blinding someone, they cause continuous damage.

Blinding is far worse than 1d6 a round. Blinding with salt is roughly equivalent to Power Word: Blind, a 7th level spell, other than Power Word: Blind can't bypass spell resistance. I'd say that's a bit worse than a flask of acid.

 

[Wolfspider]

4e allows you to replace old, weak restrictions on what you can do (proficiency, mostly) with whether or not you have the relevant power. This lets you power up the ability without screwing your game.

Sure.

But it does so by sacrificing sense.

If a monk has a pouch full of sand, how does it make sense that he can only try to throw it in someone's eyes once a combat or once a day?

I would rather remove restrictions and risk unbalancing the game than resort to such heavyhanded, nonsensical rules.

Besides, if a monk in my group kept throwing salt or sand or whatever in the eyes of his opponents, I could easily come up with various ways to restrict or minimize this usage wihtout bending the rules of reality.

 

[smetzger]

Again, I have no problem with you or anybody crapping on elements of 4E that we have all seen and that they dislike, my beef is with the blogger's premise that 4E "doesn't feel like D&D", which I think is grossly uncalled for considering nobody here has seen the rulebooks concerning any of the portions of the rules he is basing the entirety of his criticism on. If the complaint was a specific such as: "I hate the chosen classes in the PBH", or "The defenses system sucks because X", then I think those are valid criticisms based upon factual knowledge of the game, not mere conjecture that supports a premise - the guy was clearly fishing for details that supported his main premise, not the other way around. Me personally, I hate the Dragonborn and Tiefling are being included and Gnomes being left out. It irritates me that they are making those two races core...I don't want them in my classical fantasy game (Those are things I want my players to kill, not play). See, I'm not all fanfare and confetti.

Some of the goals and the way the 4e designers implemented them 'do not feel like D&D to me'.

With 3.5 I have come to expect the following things of D&D...
1) Vancian Magic. Wizards get a wide variety of spells to choose and you need to pick your daily spells wisely.
2) Monsters and PCs use the same rules
3) Rogue is a very flexible class
4) Skills are varied and I get to chose which ones I am good in, mediocre, or poor.
5) OGL. I like making small contributions to the game and getting credit for it.
6) No non-traditional core races.

You may not like some of these things, but to me they contribute greatly to the 'feel' of D&D. So, I may like 4e. But so far it doesn't 'feel' like D&D to me.

If your saying that I can't say "It doesn't feel like D&D to me". Then the converse is that you cannot say "It does feel like D&D to me". The only thing you can say is "I like the rules so far revealed to us."

 

[Fifth Element]

Some of the goals and the way the 4e designers implemented them 'do not feel like D&D to me'.

With 3.5 I have come to expect the following things of D&D...
1) Vancian Magic. Wizards get a wide variety of spells to choose and you need to pick your daily spells wisely.
2) Monsters and PCs use the same rules
3) Rogue is a very flexible class
4) Skills are varied and I get to chose which ones I am good in, mediocre, or poor.
5) OGL. I like making small contributions to the game and getting credit for it.
6) No non-traditional core races.

You may not like some of these things, but to me they contribute greatly to the 'feel' of D&D. So, I may like 4e. But so far it doesn't 'feel' like D&D to me.

This is exactly why "feel" arguments are so weak. Several of the above-noted points appeared for the first time in 3E (namely 2, 4 and 5). You could say it doesn't feel like 3E to you, but you then extend it to "D&D" in general, and there it gets muddled. What about someone who plays 1E? He doesn't expect 2, 4 or 5 (or arguably 3). So maybe he will find 4E to "feel" like D&D. And he's right, for him.

To me, "it doesn't feel like D&D" is an extremely weak argument against 4E. "Feel" is a nebulous term, and no one is able to define it properly, in the sense that the definition is different for every player. While this means there is no way for me to argue with someone who makes that assertion, since it's up to the individual to make such a determination, it also means the term is so vague as to be useless.

 

[smetzger]

This is exactly why "feel" arguments are so weak. Several of the above-noted points appeared for the first time in 3E (namely 2, 4 and 5). You could say it doesn't feel like 3E to you, but you then extend it to "D&D" in general, and there it gets muddled. What about someone who plays 1E? He doesn't expect 2, 4 or 5 (or arguably 3). So maybe he will find 4E to "feel" like D&D. And he's right, for him.

Re-read my original post I did say 'doesn't feel like TO ME'.

1e & 2e no longer 'feel' like D&D to me. Actually they never did. I always had a mountain of house rules and the rules as written did not 'feel' like D&D to me.

Notice I didn't say 1e & 2e are not D&D. Nor did I say 1e and 2e do not feel like D&D.

 

[Mephistopheles]

I'm the GM in a fake 4E combat, and my player wants to throw sand in the orc's face (I have never seen the rulebooks, this is based off what I know of 4E):

Player1: I want to throw sand in the orc's face to blind him!!

Me(DM): Cool. That will take a standard action to grab some dirt and throw it. Roll Dex vs. his Reflex...no wait, Fortitude, he is just going to tough it out.

Player1: I rolled a 12, plus my Dex thats 14.

Me(DM): The sand gets in his eyes and impairs his sight but doesn't blind him. The orc grants combat advantage till the end of your next round.


WOW..thjat was tough..... How does this adjudication example not feel like D&D... Also, how was this handled in 3E....not nearly as well.

I'm seeing this scenario repeated a lot and I think it may be giving 4E more credit for ease of improvising than it is due.

While a DM could very well do what you describe, if a warlock or wizard (or whichever class has a Blind type class power) pipes up and says something like "Hey, that's almost as good as (or as good as, or better than) my Blind encounter ability", then is it still so quick and easy? Or do we get to a point where the DM has to work within the space of options provided by the class power lists and consider what powers he might be stepping on when coming up with an ad hoc ruling in response to something a player wants to do? If so then the DM is effectively working within, or having to work around, the option space defined by the rules much like he would have been with 3E.

I think that is the issue JD was getting at with regards to why 3E didn't feel like D&D for him, and it is something he sees as a core design element of 4E and so he says 4E won't feel like D&D for him either. We may or may not agree with him but I don't think it's as absurd a concern as some people are making out.