Cynicism of an AD&D refugee

[SteveC]

Yeah you have a point. You could use those swell descriptions to narrate any fight, regardless of mechanics. I could describe that as a fight between an OD&D fighter and an orc chieftain and it would work out fine.

Its all in the description, so if you resolved that fight with a few hit rolls and d6 damage rolls and arrived at the same results then you get the same thing out a little booklet as that massive rulebook. How incredible.

The original game seems to work just fine with a little creativity. You don't have a creativity problem do you.

I just wanted to respond to this point: you can have all the creativity in the world, but if your attack just does 1D6 damage, you're really not doing anything other than mental ... gymnastics ... that's a word that I think Eric's Grandmother would approve of if you get my drift. As someone who played the game back in those days, I found myself leaving D&D precisely because of the lack of all options. Comparing a combat from OD&D or AD&D1 to, say, Fantasy Hero, shows off the differences quite well.

Now with the advent of 3E I came back to D&D because a lot of what I was doing in other games was back in the system. I had options again! With 4E this situation becomes (in my opinion) even better.

So as far as I'm concerned, that little booklet didn't arrive at the same results at all. I have no problem with folks that believe otherwise ... let them have fun, but for me, no thanks any longer!

--Steve

 

[joethelawyer]

The OS comparison is interesting. Recently I had the thought that 4e (and most editions of D&D) doesn't know whether it's a system or a game.

If it's a game, it needs to be tightly focused on one thing. Mario doesn't need to be able to engage in zombie survival horror. If you're playing Metriod, you don't need to worry about recruiting the right quarterback. A game that tries to branch out and give you more diversity usually suffers for it, but a game that is tight and specific often benefits from it.

4e is fairly focused around minis combat, but it's not quite a pure minis combat game.

If it's a system, it needs to be able to cover a broad amount of things. No one expects the hardware to cover everything, but the Wii should be able to do an FPS, an RPG, it should be able to cover Mario and Metroid and Zelda and a variety of other games.

4e is certainly not broad enough to be a system.

4e isn't a system you plug games into, and it's not a game that you have a devoted single-issue support for. It can't figure itself out, in so many ways, so people who want one thing or the other aren't happy.

I'd say it's more of a game than a system, but it's still not a very focused game (half of the core books will go unused by most gamers, for instance).

that's damn interesting to think about

 

[pemerton]

Not quite. Coming up with BS reasons to cover up lazy game design does not make someone more imaginative.

I can entirely understand people disliking the power structure of 4e. There is no doubt that it is the single biggest change and not everyone will be on board for something like that. It's a different matter to tell 4e players that the things they are doing cannot be explained as anything but lazy design and gamist nonsense, unexplainable in-game. That I will respond to.

I'm with Thasmodious on this one. If 4e were the first-ever game to use these sorts of narrativist-oriented, fortune-in-the-middle mechanics, it might be different. But games like HeroWars/Quest and The Dying Earth - game written by such major figures as Greg Stafford and Robin Laws - have been around for years. Do those who call 4e's mechanics "lazy" and "bad design" really mean to imply that these other games, from which 4e's mechanics appear to draw signficiant inspiration, are lazy and badly designed too?

By all means express your dislike of a certain sort of RPG. But at least demonstrate some understanding of where that RPG's design comes from, and what sort of play it is intended to support.

 

[I'm A Banana]

True. But then, a 4E player switching to 3E might complain that "we don't have one book that contains warlocks and warlords and tieflings and dragonborn."

Well, because that's entirely backwards, that's not a very fair comparison. Games evolve with time, and while the idea of a new version containing everything the old did is a fairly reasonable expectation to have, expecting an old version to contain everything the new version does is challenging the time-space continuum.

 

[billd91]

I'm with Thasmodious on this one. If 4e were the first-ever game to use these sorts of narrativist-oriented, fortune-in-the-middle mechanics, it might be different. But games like HeroWars/Quest and The Dying Earth - game written by such major figures as Greg Stafford and Robin Laws - have been around for years. Do those who call 4e's mechanics "lazy" and "bad design" really mean to imply that these other games, from which 4e's mechanics appear to draw signficiant inspiration, are lazy and badly designed too?

By all means express your dislike of a certain sort of RPG. But at least demonstrate some understanding of where that RPG's design comes from, and what sort of play it is intended to support.

That doesn't necessarily imply that the design of 4e and its powers isn't lazy and badly designed. Keep in mind that games that went with the narrativist-oriented, fortune-in-the-middle for a reason: to serve the needs of the game flavor they wanted (and probably to be not-too-D&D-like).

Now along comes 4e onto the turf they may have staked out in contrast to D&D.

I'm not about to say that I think the 4e power structure is either lazy or badly designed. But I can see how someone could think it's not necessarily good design... for D&D.

 

[pemerton]

I'm not about to say that I think the 4e power structure is either lazy or badly designed. But I can see how someone could think it's not necessarily good design... for D&D.

Fair enough. This still doesn't show that it's lazy - if anything, I'm impressed by the energy and inventiveness required to reconceive of the D&D mechanics along these sorts of lines!

But to be blunt, I get the sense that many of the "lazy design" critics are not arguing with the design decision to take D&D in a more narrativist direction, but rather are not very familiar with some of the RPGs that have influenced its design. But maybe I'm not just reading their posts charitably enough.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Well, because that's entirely backwards, that's not a very fair comparison. Games evolve with time, and while the idea of a new version containing everything the old did is a fairly reasonable expectation to have, expecting an old version to contain everything the new version does is challenging the time-space continuum.

Well, if you say "evolve" - sometimes evolution means that things die out (overpowered spellcaster?). Or that they have to move into a smaller niche (Gnome in the MM or in a later PHB?).

 

[Raven Crowking]

Well, because that's entirely backwards, that's not a very fair comparison. Games evolve with time, and while the idea of a new version containing everything the old did is a fairly reasonable expectation to have, expecting an old version to contain everything the new version does is challenging the time-space continuum.

And thus only happens in Doctor Who rpgs......

 

[ExploderWizard]

Fair enough. This still doesn't show that it's lazy - if anything, I'm impressed by the energy and inventiveness required to reconceive of the D&D mechanics along these sorts of lines!

But to be blunt, I get the sense that many of the "lazy design" critics are not arguing with the design decision to take D&D in a more narrativist direction, but rather are not very familiar with some of the RPGs that have influenced its design. But maybe I'm not just reading their posts charitably enough.

You may have a point. Lazy would imply a lack of effort. Perhaps the current rules were a best effort given the time and development budget to work with. In that case it was a mistake to rush a product to market that needed more time in the oven. The skill challenge fiasco alone showed everyone that much.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Well, if you say "evolve" - sometimes evolution means that things die out (overpowered spellcaster?). Or that they have to move into a smaller niche (Gnome in the MM or in a later PHB?).

You betcha! Some things definitely die out or get punted to the sidelines.

But entire character concepts being nixed or told to wait on it (understand that the gnome in he MM is for NPC's, not for PC's) is a valid complaint.

And reforming the Powers system to be something a little less page-consuming and unwieldy would have given the designers more room to address that complaint. I'm sure the PH was limited more by pagecount than by cool ideas.