D&D 4E Comparing notes: Differences in play experience in 4e

[Zelligars Apprentice]

It has been stated many times here and other places that in 1st edition AD&D, the actual play experience that different groups had were vastly different from other groups playing the same game (for various reasons).

My question is: Are we seeing the same phenomenon in 4th edition? That is, from group to group, how different is the feel of the actual "sitting down at the table and playing" experience?

As a follow up: Are the new Essentials rules changing this at all?

NOTE: I have posted this in the 4th edition forum, even though the thread that prompted this thought (link) is in General, because it is primarily talking about 4e (although in comparison to 1e). Mods, feel free to move it if you feel it is more appropriate elsewhere.

 

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4e is different from all the systems before, in that it is generally played much closer to the RAW. It is much easier for a player to go from one group to another without having to change much.

1e was completely different. From one group to the next, or indeed one DM to the next within the same group, players would often have to adjust to a host of new houserules.

The main contributor to the feel of any given game (rather than the ruleset) is always the DM, so naturally a game will differ from group to group depending on where the DM puts his priorities - but the range of that difference is slightly narrower in 4e for the reasons above.

 

[Aurumvorax]

4e is different from all the systems before, in that it is generally played much closer to the RAW. It is much easier for a player to go from one group to another without having to change much.

1e was completely different. From one group to the next, or indeed one DM to the next within the same group, players would often have to adjust to a host of new houserules.

The main contributor to the feel of any given game (rather than the ruleset) is always the DM, so naturally a game will differ from group to group depending on where the DM puts his priorities - but the range of that difference is slightly narrower in 4e for the reasons above.

This I agree with. I played my 2e game out of the book with cherry picked kits if people requested. Another DM incorporated racial point buy, skills, and all the other crap from "2.5" that I didn't care for. Another DM did a mix between AD&D classes with BECMI rules for enchanting, weapon mastery, and weapon skills.

Most of my 4e games have pretty much been 99% RAW. One guy houseruled that monsters had 3/4 their normal hp but did 1.5x damage which worked well up until MM3 came out and negated the use with its new monster rules. The "feel" of the game is mostly the same across the board. Spend an hour or two in town yucking it up, intimidating people, spending money, and role play. The rest of the game is setting up the battle map and dungeon crawling.

 

[Tony Vargas]

It has been stated many times here and other places that in 1st edition AD&D, the actual play experience that different groups had were vastly different from other groups playing the same game (for various reasons).

Yes, absolutely. There were a couple of major reasons for it. For one, the culture of the hobby in those days was very open to variants ('house rules'), every group had a different experience because every DM had - either intentionally (and often extensively), or just by making some rulings and interpretations - his own set of rules. There was also not a clear consensus on the point of the game (was the DM a 'judge' or 'arbiter' or an opponent, were the players a team, rivals or constestants?), how it should be 'balanced' (if at all), or, really much of anything else.

So signing up to play 'D&D' or even 'AD&D' didn't gaurantee you much at all. Your magic-user might or might not memorize spells, your elf might or might not have access to special armor, your fireball might or might not consume all the air in the cavern and suffocate you, a jewled scarab might be a potent protective charm or a utterly lethal trap.

My question is: Are we seeing the same phenomenon in 4th edition? That is, from group to group, how different is the feel of the actual "sitting down at the table and playing" experience?

Not at all, no. There are some variations in the experiences peope report in playing 4e, but they're not the result of the rules being different, or no one being quite sure what they're supposed to be doing. Rather, they're typically the result of a more subtle 'style' difference on the part of the DM and/or players, or, sometimes, simply of a basic prejudice against the game (for the crime of not being 3.5, for instance).

As a follow up: Are the new Essentials rules changing this at all?

Nope. Nothing about Essentials particularly invites variants or confusion. The only difference is that the reported experiences distorted by prejudice against the game will be for it failing to be enough like 4e.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well.... See I think there are sort of 2 different worlds of RPGs. There's the hard core gamers, that are likely to go and houserule all kinds of stuff and created all sorts of patchwork versions of AD&D at their tables. Then there are the more or less ordinary gamers that might actually play quite a lot but don't read forums, go to cons, buy tons of RPG stuff, etc. For those people, which I will pretty much lump 3/4 of the people that I've played with long-term house ruling never really happened much.

So really you could go through 9 out of 10 1e AD&D games in say 1984 and they were actually using pretty much the same rules. Some people ignored a few or used a few optional ones. Most games you could get away with using some variant class from Dragon or whatever. People might make up some stuff to deal with the dwarf that got merged with a beholder in a terrible accident etc. and maybe ignore demi-human level limits here or there. The core rules were not nearly as little adhered to as some people would lead you to believe.

Sure, 4e is probably a bit more consistent from table to table. You find less people doing extensive homebrew and whatnot, but most of them wouldn't anyway. As others have said, the impact of different DMs and players on play style is the biggest difference and that will always be there no matter what the system is.

 

[BenBrown]

I don't think the real differences at most of the AD&D1 tables were in what rules were added, so much as in what rules were ignored. there were rules for morale, monster reactions, hireling pay, weapon vs. armor type, spell acquisition, random loot distribution and (god help us) "pummelling, grappling and overbearing" in the rulebooks. An average table used about half of those (except the last. I have never encountered any accounts of anyone using those more than once. this includes Gary Gygax). Which half, however, differed from table to table.

 

[AngryMojo]

As somebody who has moved across the country since 4e came out, and played/run games on both the east and west coast, I'd say that 4e has a much more even play style than previous editions had. I think part of that is because of the modular design, part of it is because the rules are just plain clearer than before. DDI has a huge hand in it as well.

 

[ppaladin123]

Yes, absolutely. There were a couple of major reasons for it. For one, the culture of the hobby in those days was very open to variants ('house rules'), every group had a different experience because every DM had - either intentionally (and often extensively), or just by making some rulings and interpretations - his own set of rules. There was also not a clear consensus on the point of the game (was the DM a 'judge' or 'arbiter' or an opponent, were the players a team, rivals or constestants?), how it should be 'balanced' (if at all), or, really much of anything else.

See, I think of it as primarily a result of the widespread use of the character builder. Sure, you can make house rules, but unless they are very simple and easy to incorporate into the character builder power cards, feats, items, character sheet etc., they are a real pain in the butt to remember and will require extra effort in that you must manually enter them. I can't remember the last time that I sat down and built a character by hand!

So the groups I play with will occasionally give out extra rituals or expertise feats free but will rarely talk about recharge mechanics, changing ability scores associated with attacks, altering the skill system, etc. The former are simple changes you can implement with the character builder, the latter require a pencil.

On the other hand, it has never been easier to make monsters. The monster builder software means that I've seen far more home-brewed beasties than I used to see in previus edition games.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I'm sure CB makes 4e even more homogeneous across tables, but, the repudiation of house rules seemed to start with 3e. Maybe it was the ready availabilty of the SRD, or that the rules simply weren't as murky, or that there was an on-line community to tap into for answers (and groupthink).

 

[OnlineDM]

I wonder what role published adventures have in homogenizing the play experience. I've played D&D 4e only since the beginning of this year, but I've played in two different home games, two games that I've run online, and a bunch of Living Forgotten Realms (RPGA) games at my local game store and at a convention.

In every case, there has been some form of a published adventure used. One of my online games is Keep on the Shadowfell and the other is War of the Burning Sky (WotBS). The home games have been based on Dungeon Delve and Chaos Scar adventures. The LFR games have obviously been official LFR modules.

All of these published adventures have a similar style (with WotBS, the only non-Wizards of the Coast adventure, being the most unique). Skill challenges, uniformly balanced encounter design, balanced treasure parcels, etc. Yes, the DM has the freedom to customize as much as he or she wants, and the play style is up to the people at the table, but if folks are using published material the experience probably won't differ that much from one table to the next.

I'm a newer player, but I understand that DMs creating their own adventures was more common in the past than it is today. Sure, it still happens plenty now, but I think a lot of D&D 4e games are played using some published material, and most of that material has a similar feel. Because of that, I'm guessing that there's more consistency in the play experience from table to table and region to region.