Clark Peterson on 4E

[Firevalkyrie]

There is an important element missing here: who kills things and takes their staff? Are they robots? are they pirates? are they ninjas? Or something else?


Interesting to you. Not interesting to me. When my PC represents a man fighting and the fight revolves powers or techniques -or whatever name you want to give- that they apply periodically with the same period and are nothing but certain chances to transfer the same certain types of partecipants in the same certain specific directions in nothing but interesting to me. I rather find it silly as it is at odds of how fights are and thus should be represented. 3e has silly elements as well but at least it lacked square transfering stuff so it was less silly I guess. I am all for more options but I am against silly options -silly the way I find them.

What the hell is so silly about Tide of Iron? You slash somebody with your sword (or whack them really good with a mace or axe), and then as a follow-up you ram into them with your shield, forcing them back. That's not silly, that's what warriors have been doing for ages. You don't fight statically, you push your enemy into the position you want them to be in - and they are trying to do the same to you.

I guess one of the things that bugs me about the battle grid is that nobody does seem to move; if you're playing the fight in your mind, you are probably quite correctly imagining your character ducking and dodging, constantly moving about to get the best advantage. With the battle grid things look far more static.

At risk of sounding like a fangirl, it's like comparing a battle in Macross with one in Battletech - one is fluid, mobile, dynamic and the other is fixed, positional and rather plodding.

 

[jdrakeh]

I'm not certain that there is much to discuss. Clark dislikes D&D 4e due to how it handles certain things. That's his opinion and he's entitled to it. Further, his opinion is not fact, nor must anybody else embrace it unless they choose to. So, Clark has an opinion? Good for him. Other people want to embrace it? Good for them. Some people have different opinions? Good for them, too. But what's to discuss? To wit, most of what I see in this thread is complaining, not discussion.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I am not sure it is that much ingrained into the system. The implementation in form of the existing powers is board-game dependent. But if you add a few more conditions (and use the existing ones more), you could probably come up with a system that doesn't rely that much on positioning. I think they key to making combat with a power system interesting is in allowing for a lot of "emergent" tactics, combining game effects in reaction to other game effects. The grid is the easiest and least artificial way to create such effects.
You can literally see the possible combinations.

Question is - would you want to? Or is all this "positioning" crap not just too much fun to pass up? That's entirely subjective, of course.

Personally, I'm kind of with Clark in that I don't like the grid so much. It's too much simulation, not enough game, IMO.

In some of my design work and in my home games, I solve this with an effective "rows" system. Either you're in melee, or you're at range. When at range, you can't fire into melee. When in melee, you can't fire at range. There is no positioning fiddly bits. There is no real "tactical movement."

But there is the abstraction of tactical movement. The battlefield has options if you want to use them. Say what you want to do (maybe climb a wall to a ledge for a better shot?). Make a skill check (maybe Atheltics?). Get some miscellaneous bonus (+2?). If someone wants to take that bonus away from you, they can make a skill check (maybe their own Athletics check to climb up on the wall next to you?).

There aren't Opportunity Attacks. Reach isn't much of an issue (some monsters with long tentacles can melee creatures at range maybe). Size scales much more smoothly.

It works pretty well for my purposes. It kind of defeats a lot of the "feet" measurements that longtime D&D fans adore, and yes, it dismisses a lot of the tactical movement, but getting rid of tactical movement was something I wanted because I don't like it.

 

[xechnao]

It could also be argued that it is silly the way previous editions have combatants slugging it out without ever moving.

In light of this revelation, I declare 4E to be simulationist. Previous gamist iterations were less realistic when it came to moving around in combat.

They did not consider moving around at all. They were not realistic because they did not depict at all how movement could indeed happen. 4e does depict it but wrong (IMHO). So I can not possibly say that 4e is more simulationist. In fact 3e allows me more space to create my own rules regarding movement.

What the hell is so silly about Tide of Iron? You slash somebody with your sword (or whack them really good with a mace or axe), and then as a follow-up you ram into them with your shield, forcing them back. That's not silly, that's what warriors have been doing for ages. You don't fight statically, you push your enemy into the position you want them to be in - and they are trying to do the same to you.

I find silly the fact that you can decide when you can pull off (as of chances) exactly the same trick. I think combat action is based on the respective values or properties of the partecipants and the area around them than specifc tricks. You could rarely have the same chance of pulling the same trick -even more in a periodic fashion- hence tricks are irrelevant as the base of the combat system. It could happen something that seems what tide of iron describes but its randomness has nothing to do the way 4e calculates it IMO.

 

[billd91]

At risk of sounding like a fangirl, it's like comparing a battle in Macross with one in Battletech - one is fluid, mobile, dynamic and the other is fixed, positional and rather plodding.

At the risk of sounding sarcastic, well, duh.
There's a big difference in presentation between an animated series, bound by the animator's imagination and craft, and a balanced, structured game. And there's a big difference between either and reality... where I suspect a battle between giant, anthropoid robots would probably be positional and plodding... assuming there were even a realistic military case to be made for big, vulnerable, expensive mecha.

 

[Jack99]

I am some friends have, it was actually pretty fun. More so than just a normal game. Including one player leaping from his hotel one he was out of money.(aka he was out of them game) Not something we have done much or often but have done it and it was fun.

Yeah, well I have played "burglar and lonely housewife" with the missus as well, and it was fun. Still, that doesn't make sex a roleplaying game.

Cheers

 

[Jack Colby]

I have long wished that Necro would make their own game or version of the game, and support Clark 100% if he wants to do this. I'd buy it and play it instead of official 4E. I really, really hope he goes through with it and doesn't just toss around ideas then leave it be. It would fill a niche that has long needed filling: a game for those of us who love the tone and atmosphere of the older editions, but not the cumbersome rules.

 

[Firevalkyrie]

At the risk of sounding sarcastic, well, duh.
There's a big difference in presentation between an animated series, bound by the animator's imagination and craft, and a balanced, structured game. And there's a big difference between either and reality... where I suspect a battle between giant, anthropoid robots would probably be positional and plodding... assuming there were even a realistic military case to be made for big, vulnerable, expensive mecha.

This is the sound of somebody pretty much missing the point (by the way, thanks for the added and unnecessary tangent of "mecha aren't realistic," anybody with half a brain already knows that).

The point was, you can have the exact same things acting in completely different ways, and in this case the primary separator is the need to display them on a tactical battle grid.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

The speed at which people turned on Clark like a group of rabid dogs made me laugh on the inside.

For a group that says "Don't think hard about fantasy," you guys REALLY have a lot of emotional investment in this.

 

[jensun]

The speed at which people turned on Clark like a group of rabid dogs made me laugh on the inside.

For a group that says "Don't think hard about fantasy," you guys REALLY have a lot of emotional investment in this.

Edit: Just read his statement, must learn to do my own research rather than relying on other peoples posts.

Yes, I agree, pretty much an overreaction.