Confirm or Deny: D&D4e would be going strong had it not been titled D&D

[Bedrockgames]

Nostalgia while not the total answer is a significant factor in people still playing old school games. I hang out on old school boards and I often hear things like "that's not the D&D I remember from my youth." But just liking the design of earlier games is a significant factor as well.

It is funny seeing old schooler like games that have the elements that they hate in later D&D editions.

I hang out on such boards as well and this is not my impression at all. Are there folks who are drawn by nostalgia? Sure, but the vast majority I encounter match SirAntoine's description.

 

[Stacie GmrGrl]

I hear what you're saying, and I think this is a thoughtful post, but I don't think nostalgia plays as big a role as you think. All of the people I know who still play an older edition just love it. They don't break anything down and talk about "design" the way modern game whizzes do. They sincerely believe that the older editions had the best design, simply because they were the most fun in their personal opinion. The people I know who still use THAC0, for example, won't hear of anything unintuitive about it. They aren't doing it for nostalgia. It never stopped being part of their passion.

To me THAC0 is the worst game mechanism ever invented, based on an idea and concept that literally makes no sense to me... and believe me, I tried to understand it. I can understand and grok Aspects in Fate games, the Milestones of Marvel Heroic, the chaos that is Heroes Unlimited, even the utter mess that is Anima: Beyond Fantasy... but I've never been able to understand how D&D survived the use of THAC0.

I also think this is a key difference between me and most gamers in the hobby... I had a strange path towards D&D, as it wasn't my first game. It wasn't even one of my first ten games. So when I finally came to it around 1997... and this system that uses THAC0... negative AC is positive, charts to look up saving throws, classes that had such hard core restrictions for races and max levels, and this really weird d20 rolling system that was so anti-logic to me... yeah I wanted D&D to burn in a fire at that time.

Never had I hated a rpg that much than this game that so many others wanted to play all the time after I moved to that rinky dink town when I had a collection of other games that were vastly superior in so many ways... superior to my rather limited thinking at the time and one that I have learned to let go of... and the only gaming was either AD&D 2e or nothing, I didn't game until I moved to where I am now in 2000 and 3e came out.

Today... I can see the merits of the older editions of D&D. I can understand why a lot of people played it, although I still think that as far as game mechanisms and rules, how rules interact and can provide a particular flavor and way to play games.. I still think THAC0 is pretty crap but I can also see how people can have fun with it. It's just not for me.

It is proof that people can have a lot of fun despite a rules system being... well, I can't use those words here.

 

[Bedrockgames]

THAC0 came around in 2nd edition. Before that you had attack matrices and THAC0 was a way of keeping the game backwards compatible and giving folks a simple formula to figure out to hit on the fly (rather than having the attack matrices to look up). The advantage of the decision was you could easily run most 1E modules and supplements in 2E. The downside was people found it less intuitive than something like d20. But I will say d20 still has its flaws. Rolling and adding a number opened up its own can of worms, whereas the old THAC0 and attack matrices were a bit more contained (you just didn't have the huge Difficulty Numbers to hit or the wildly varying modifiers you got during 3E (not knocking 3E as it is a really good system, I am just pointing out that there is usually a downside for any design choice). In the end, I don't think we are going to back to a THAC0 like system. Most people have adopted the d20 mechanic at this point for Dungeons and Dragons. What i would say is it is worthwhile to at least go back and try 1E and 2E and see if you notice anything good about mechanics you might otherwise think of as clunky.

When I first returned to 2E (around the time of 4E coming out) I honestly did it mainly as a joke. I had this memory of the system being really clunky, really strange in its use of sometimes rolling high, sometimes rolling low. But I found in practice after playing it again when I'd had years away from it, that some of these choices actually worked better for me than what was in 3E. One thing I liked was the lack of social skills. My games instantly started to feel more like I remembered them (heavier on dialogue and more direct interaction with the environment)----this was something I had been struggling to recapture for a long time and had just chalked it up to nostalgia or me being young and bright eyed when I first started playing. I also noticed a few other things. I preferred the initiative system in 2E (lower was better, but that worked because you count up, which is more intuitive during play for me). I also really preferred NWPs to skills and I greatly preferred roll under your attribute than d20 + attribute modifier (the probabilities just worked better for me). Now, I am sure much of that could be done using regular d20 + modifier as well with the right tweaks to the system. But I do think it is always worthwhile to test some of our assumptions about things and see if a system we think of as clunky or unintuitive has any redeeming qualities. In my own design, I haven't reintroduced THAC0 or anything like that. What I have done is taken some of the lessons I learned about what I like with 2E (despite some of its quirks) and applied that to a streamlined approach.

 

[cmad1977]

The title dungeons and dragons is not what made 4th edition unappealing

 

[billd91]

One thing I liked was the lack of social skills. My games instantly started to feel more like I remembered them (heavier on dialogue and more direct interaction with the environment)----this was something I had been struggling to recapture for a long time and had just chalked it up to nostalgia or me being young and bright eyed when I first started playing.

One of the ways the system (or relative lack thereof) matters. The playstyle you adopt matters too, but sometimes that's like Sisyphus rolling that boulder up the hill against the ease of simply rolling the check.

 

[Bedrockgames]

One of the ways the system (or relative lack thereof) matters. The playstyle you adopt matters too, but sometimes that's like Sisyphus rolling that boulder up the hill against the ease of simply rolling the check.

and I do realize that many people can live comfortably with such skills, not having them affect how they RP. I've now come to find a way to implement them in my games in a way that doesn't discourage role playing. But for theobgest time I found they interfered.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

I hear what you're saying, and I think this is a thoughtful post, but I don't think nostalgia plays as big a role as you think. All of the people I know who still play an older edition just love it. They don't break anything down and talk about "design" the way modern game whizzes do. They sincerely believe that the older editions had the best design, simply because they were the most fun in their personal opinion. The people I know who still use THAC0, for example, won't hear of anything unintuitive about it. They aren't doing it for nostalgia. It never stopped being part of their passion.

You kinda just defined nostalgia, with those last three sentences.

Since joining the online gamer community, I’ve come to understand why a lot of traditional D&Disms are the way they are, and to see the advantages of some of the quirks which I had originally dismissed as nonsense. Like xp for gold, for example. It makes no sense from an in-world perspective, and it doesn’t fit the heroic-quest play style that dominates modern modules and APs. But for the play style that Gary and Dave originally conceived of D&D with, xp for gold makes perfect sense, and it’s a demonstrably better motivator than xp for victory or xp for quest completion.

But there are some things which just don’t stack up to modern improvements, despite now understanding how they came about, and thac0 typifies this kind of thing. I understand that it’s an improvement on the look-up charts that preceded it, which makes it a great innovation for its time. But I’ve never heard anyone come up with a positive contrast to the attack-bonus system. Typically thac0 is defended with ‘It’s not that hard’ and ‘It’s better than the zillion modifiers that come with modern D&D.’ The first defense, while true, doesn’t change the fact that the attack-bonus system is even easier. While thac0 itself isn’t a game-ending hassle, it typifies a system chalk full of odd subsystems; higher numbers being better than lower numbers is simply more intuitive than vice versa, and addition is easier than subtraction. The second defense is a subjective statement that conflates two separate game issues; the attack-bonus system can (and I believe has) been back-ported into retroclones without ‘bonus-bloat’ to create the best of both worlds, and thac0 could theoretically be forward-ported into a modern system to combine the worst of both worlds.

When someone says “I like prior edition or retroclone X overall better than 4e, despite whatever flaws it may have in contrast to whatever features 4e may have,” I take them at their word. But when someone focusses on 4e flaws — often entirely subjective flaws/features, by gamers who haven't even played 4e -- while denying or downplaying the flaws of other editions, I can’t help but think nostalgia! And I've heard and saw a lot of that during the past seven years. I still do, once on a forum completely unrelated to gaming! So while it’s impossible to quantify how big a role nostalgia plays in edition wars and the short 4e lifespan, I don’t think that Stacie is overstating its influence on gamers.

 

[Bedrockgames]

You kinda just defined nostalgia, with those last three sentences.
.

No he didn't actually. Nostalgia would be finding a game the most fun because that is the first one you were exposed to and you associate it with happy memories of a particular time in your life (i.e. liking monopoly because you associate it with memories of Dad and Mom taking you to a summer cabin in Maine). But liking something because it is the version you find the most fun, that also happens to be an early version of the game, isn't nostalgia.

But lets put this THAC0 thing to rest. I'm one of the few people I've ever met who defends it and even I don't seriously think it is going to make a comeback. Very few people I know who are into OSR stuff use THAC0. With things like subsystems, I think the thing to keep in mind there is while there certainly is a complexity trade off, one thing you get when you have them is more control over discrete parts of the game. I say that as someone who uses a universal core mechanic in my own games. I like that one can predict how a unified system will play, but I also see the downside of that approach because it limits my options for individual areas within the game. It does reduce learning curve, but there are advantages to employing a bunch of unique subsystems. I can enjoy games that do either honestly. What I think most people are saying is not "bring back THAC0" or "restore roll under mechanics" they are saying "don't throw the baby out with the bath water". Some of these things may have use to people in their design of future games.

And again, I was someone who picked up 2E again with the intent of having a good laugh. I honestly just assumed things were so much better now and so much worse before based on my memories of playing the game. Some of my players still felt that way after playing. Personally I was a bit humbled and realized you can learn a good deal going back. Doesn't make 2E perfect. Doesn't make 1E perfect. Doesn't mean there is never a better way.

 

[innerdude]

I am not troubled if someone dislikes an older edition. I am troubled that people attribute my dislike of 4E to nostalgia, clinging to past version or a failure to think outside the box.

I agree completely. Especially when my journey in looking to a system other than 4e led to an outright rejection of D&D entirely. I didn't go back to something else based on nostalgia.

But it does bring up the point---what is it about 4e that evokes such passionate responses from proponents? Is the drifted narrativist "Pemertonian scene framing" with tactical combat style that 4e handles best really that compelling of a gameplay experience? When I hear the 4e stalwarts describe it, they make it sound like I've somehow completely missed out on a formative RPG experience. I'm genuinely interested in hearing the answers to this question.

 

[Evenglare]

I like 4e because it provided me with a Final Fantasy Tactics like experience. Almost every turn based strategy RPG for a console is praised universally. Final Fantasy Tactics, Fire Emblem, Vanguard Bandits, XCOM, Front Mission, Tactics Ogre. All of them contain extremely engrossing story lines and very tactical combat, yet for some reason people act like 4e cant provide these kinds of stories because of the mechanics. I just... it makes no sense. I certainly hope these people that bash 4e aren't the same people who have played the myriad of masterpieces on consoles. I simply don't understand which is why I created this topic. I honestly think Square could have gotten this and re-skinned it as Final Fantasy Tabletop Tactics and no one would have batted an eye at it.