Alzrius
The EN World kitten
I agree. I've been phrasing it as being more or less work for some people to bridge the gap, but that's basically the same as what you're saying here.
D&D 4E Bridging the cognitive gap between how the game rules work and what they tell us about the setting
I'm not doubting that for some people it is a gap.
What I'm and I assume others on this thread are arguing is that:
1) this work to bridge the gap in some people's mind I believe is real and I understand how that could prevent people from liking 4e. if you can't approach 4e with certain mental frameworks it does breaks down. However...
2) there is a mental framework that works and makes everything pretty coherent. it is not useful to illustrate a bunch of ways the system breaks down when approaching 4e from a mental framework that leads to nonsense. EVEN if the books are confusing, non committal, or even intentionally lead you to a poor mental framework (which I don't think is true btw). At this point, who cares? Use the mental framework that makes things make sense, or if that is too much cognitive work to be fun then move on. But continuing to state the implications of approaching 4e with a mental framework that you know will lead to nonsense when there is a framework that won't? I don't see the point.
It's a continual theme in these 4e discussions, of which the meaning of hit points and healing is just one example.
Nature of minions -- things get nonsensical if you apply a simulationist framework where you expect minions and all stat blocks to be an actual thing in the world instead of a mechanic to represent relative interaction with PC characters of X level. Actually this includes another example of HP in 4e best represented as the amount of effort needed to be "taken out" of a scene. If I remember minions can't take damage on a "miss" (another poorly labeled and explained mechanic -- but it works in the right mental framework!)
DC by level -- things get nonsensical if you apply an interpretation where everything scales with level around you regardless of the in game fiction. I've seen people argue that regular locks in farmhouses would be Level 25 DC if encountered by a Level 25 party? Why interpret the system this way when another framework leads to coherence -- that Level DC guides are meant to give you a value for level appropriate challenges and those level appropriate challenges should be in fiction different very different for Level 1 characters and Level 25 characters. And that 4e is not designed to mechanically model rolling dice to resolve Level 25 characters trying to get into a regular farmhouse. If you did have a PC roll dice, it should be against whatever the regular farmhouse lock DC would be though -- say Level 1 or 2 DCs -- auto success. 4e is primarily designed to model and resolve challenges and encounters that are more or less near Level (within +/-X), and assumes the heroes are seeking out those appropriate challenges, which will change in fiction as they progress in level and Tier.
etc.
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Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
So your argument is, "people shouldn't talk about their problems with 4e unless they've bought into the playstyle that makes the most sense for that edition, even if it is radically different from what they are used to, comfortable with, or in fact enjoy. Please just stop talking about it". Is that about right?
No, not at all.
My argument is that if people aren't willing to embrace that playstyle / framework that makes the most sense, then 4e will create lots of nonsensical situations so probably not a good system for them
If people say "for 4e to make sense it requires a playstyle that I am not used to, comfortable with, or in fact enjoy". I'd say, great, I understand. 4e doesn't sounds like a good fit for them.
When people explain why the playstyle/ frame work they prefer will lead to problems, that creates understanding of why it is not a good fit for them. All good as well.
What I don't think is productive, is when I see people acting like 4e is never coherent under any framework, insisting that the framework that leads to nonsense is the one the designers intended so for some reason another framework that leads to coherence can't be adopted, etc.
Neonchameleon
Legend
It's about as useful as "I hate AD&D 1e because Dungeon Crawling is boring and classes get in the way of roleplaying and XP for GP is silly and unrealistic". It adds nothing and certainly isn't worth creating an entire thread for.
Well this one, worse than that because the criticisms in question required deliberate selective interpretation of the rules (pretending healing surges didn't exist and that hit points are a thing that they have never been). Tedious edition warring is tedious edition warring and misrepresentations are misrepresentations.
Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
It may not be what the designers Intended, but many people coming from other editions are not going to expect 4e's intended playstyle to be as different from those as it turned out to be, which means a lot of people bounce off it, even if they give the game sufficient attention to understand what they intended.
Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
They don't require willful misinterpretation. They just require not buying into 4e's intended playstyle, which is IMO understandable given how specific to 4e that playstyle is compared to other editions.
Neonchameleon
Legend
When you are talking about attrition you are right. When you are talking about the arrant nonsense that started this thread and that pretends that Healing Surges aren't a thing, or talk about hands being shouted back on, then yes that does require wilful misinterpretation.
Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
Or perhaps merely literal interpretation, focused through the lens of how a particular person sees the game. You're assuming malice, when my belief is that @Alzrius was merely trying to explain his opinion as to why so many people didn't and don't care for 4e.
Alzrius
The EN World kitten
Presuming I'm reading your post right, you're essentially asking "you already know that 4E doesn't work with your preferred style of play, so why are you critiquing it?"
The short answer is because I want to better understand how it's different from not only my preferred style of play, but also from the other iterations of D&D which better dovetail with said play-style.
The longer answer is that we can all perceive that 4E is different from its predecessor editions, and given that I find D&D and its history endlessly fascinating, I want to analyze those differences. Moreover, I want to do so in a public venue, where others can add their thoughts and insights. What goals were set for 4E, and how did it attempt to achieve them? To what extent were they achieved, and how artfully (or lacking in artfulness)? In what manner were these different from prior editions? All of these are worthwhile questions, and deserve to be brought up, even if the critiques don't paint a flattering picture of 4E.
I noted in the OP that 4E had the shortest shelf-life of any modern edition (where "modern" means "debuted as of the year 2000 or later"), which is the most non-judgmental way I could come up with to say that a significant portion of the D&D community rejected it. Why? What about it caused that reaction?
We can talk about a lot of factors external to the nature of the 4E rules and setting in that regard, to be sure. The GSL. The DDI. The marketing. The pulling of older-edition PDFs (though I need to double-check the timeline there). And quite a few others. But if we make what I think is the non-controversial assertion that a not-insignificant part of the reason why so many in the D&D community couldn't countenance 4E was because of the structure of the game engine (though the changes to the lore was also part of it), then that justifies taking a look at those aspects of the game itself, both in terms of what they do and how they compare to previous editions (and, by extension, the presumptions that previous editions inculcated in their fans as to what exactly D&D is "supposed" to be).
Jon Peterson wrote an entire book about the history of attempts to define exactly what role-playing games are (that being The Elusive Shift), and the entire reason why he had enough material to make a book about it was because we've barely been able to scratch that surface, even after five decades of community engagement and development. The threefold model. GNS theory. Trying to parse the difference(s) between a role-playing game and a storytelling game. And quite a few more. In that regard, we can take a narrower focus, and try and figure out what D&D "is" and how its various editions play into that paradigm, both in terms of where they're the same and where they differ.
4E is no exception in that regard, nor should it be.
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