Cynicism of an AD&D refugee

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

The failed premise is that a complete game is what you are told it is, rather than what you want out of it. If they remove Boardwalk and Park Place form monopoly and add in another Chance and Community Space, then it will not make everyone happy that they tried to replace their old game to still be able to play with something inferior that was not what they wanted.

But D&D 4 is explicitely marketed as D&D 4. If your proposed Monopoly 2.0 was just marketed as Monopoly, I would probably be bothered by changes, but if it's a "new edition", I wouldn't expect it to be new. But with a version identifier, I know to expect changes.

Well, at least me. Maybe I am reasonable like that.

D&D needs a firm core, and not all this wishy-washy crap.

D&D needs a solid rules foundation. If the foundation sucks, even supplements can't fix my game.

Make up your damn mind if monk's exist or not!

Why? Should I also decide now if I ever want to support Dark Sun or reserve that for later?

I just don't believe the splat books are core philosophy.

I think splat books and other rules supplements are fundamental. They are the only thing that will keep the producing corporation around. And they are the thing that will ensure that I will continue playing the game even if I have tried out all the 8 races and 8 classes, or if I have tried out all the 8 races and 12 classes.

If they are optional, then call them so, and stop trying to lie to consumers for whatever reason. I think they even said they left out classes to encourage people to buy the new books to get into the habit of a new PHB or DMG coming out each year.

That is just plain wrong on design, marketing, and ethics.

They are not calling them "PHB II, III" etc. despite being optional, they are calling them this because they provide more rules that you can drop into your game without breaking it, and with full ongoing support. So you know if the PHB II introduces 3 new arcane classes, people will still get support after that one. And that is important, because they already wanted the support (or at least the option for it) for the PHB I classes. Lack of support for base classes that were introduced in later books has always been a critique in 3E, and only towards the end of 3.5, WotC changed things - you could get new invocations for your Warlock from Complete Arcane in Complete Mage.

If you want consumers to buy new books, then make something of quality that they will want to buy, not by holding out things you:
a) didn't have time to finish because you rushed the product out
b) wanted to save for later to get someone to buy a new book
c) didn't want implications of rape in core material

You believe the Barbarian, the Bard or the Frost Giant will not be something of quality?

It's not about rushing a product out. It is about deciding when to be finished. You just can't wait till you have get everything nailed down perfectly. If everyone would try that, we would never get any book out. Heck, I would still be writing my diploma thesis!

They need to find a core, like other games did decades ago, and build onto that. Then D&D would be a much more stable game. Transition between editions would be much smoother for players. Maybe even make some more money for the company at the same time with a more confident player base about the product.

What other games? Torg only had one edition, I suppose, but it had lots of supplements that definitely replaced what you'd consider "COre" to Torg. Shadowrun? 3E only introduced Bioware and metamagic initiation in a later rulebook.

Be consistent. It is ok to have the same sort of material in the core, and have only one set of core, that make people comfortable about changing with things they know and are comfortable with, without resorting to tactics to get people to buy extra books to get what they had in the past like 2nd, 3rd, 4th all have done.

The flaw in your assumption is that a tactic cannot serve both purposes - continually selling people stuff, and making good products. Maybe it's because you just think of tactics, and not of strategy. The strategy is to create fully supported, fully tested, and well designed and developed supplements containing iconic D&D elements to ensure healthy sales.

You want the splat books to sell? Make it of the quality that people cannot resist!

Ah, well, then WotC is doing fine. I love my Adventurers Vault and I am looking forward to the Martial Power supplement.

 

[justanobody]

I'm offering my opinion that 4e meets the definition of a (reasonable) complete tool set for creating high-adventure fantasy campaigns

Well D&D 4th edition is a game, not the latest bulk collection by Black & Decker...ergo not a set of tools.

 

[Thasmodious]

This "less options" nonsense has to die. In 3e, most of those 'more options" were mechanically nonviable. They were terrible choices to make. They existed solely because of the "free" multiclassing system but without a heavy dose of rules mastery, novice and even experienced players could easily make mechanically terrible characters. And the means did not exist in the core books to fix it. Fighter/wizard? Eldritch Knight didn't come close to making that basic staple workable. It was years and splatbooks before 3e ever made that an actual mechanically viable build, and many would claim it never really got there. I was certainly never happy with its representation in 3e, as the fighter/mage was always among my favorites. Just because you could make a barbarian1/rogue1/fighter1/wizard1/sorcerer1/cleric1 does not mean it is anything approaching a viable choice. The very fact that a player could easily fail at the most basic element of an RPG game, character creation, simply by choosing poorly among the choices given is pretty serious design failure.

That doesn't happen in 4e. Out of the box, you simply can't make terrible choices built for your class. Sure, you could, if you qualify, buy a feat that does nothing for your class, but its clear the feat does nothing. It is not clear in core 3e that Alertness is a useless feat, that nimble fingers is a waste of the limited feat options for a rogue (despite being designed for a rogue), its not clear that the rogue has to hit the ground running with his feat selection if he is ever going to reach the best rogue feats, which lie at the end of feat chains.

3e didn't have an amazing array of options. Sourcebooks were mostly about finding ways to do basic options in better mechanical ways, not present wholly new options. Some fancy new caster is really just a flavor of an old caster only crafted into its own class. The concept is still the same. A hundred ways to do wizard/cleric with only 2 of them mechanically superior does not a wealth of options make.

3e had 11 base classes. Of those, certainly the fighter was the weakest and the sorcerer was artificially restricted and inferior to the wizard. It took sourcebooks to correct this. But nevermind that. Add to that 16 prestige classes and you're done. Sure, you can multiclass into thousands of combinations by purely statistical analysis, but only a tiny fraction of those combinations represent mechanically viability.

4e has 8 base classes. Only 3 less than 3e and well within the range of other PHBs from the low of 3 through 1es 5 base and 5 subclasses (and that was it). It has 31 paragon paths and 4 epic destinies. For those counting, thats 43 to 27 in favor of 4e versus 3e.

And in 4e, you can't accidentally make a bad PC. All those classes are balanced, all those paragon paths. And the rules, powers, and options are in place to play the whole game level 1-30. That is a complete game with a wealth of options, far more options than any edition of D&D before 3e and no mechanically terrible options like in 3e, where the core actually encouraged you to play multiclassed casters and give up caster levels.

 

[Obryn]

Then perhaps you shouldn't try to tell D&D players that 4e is a complete game for playing D&D rather than a complete "some-other-FRPG" suitable for your particular brand of adventuring.

Once again, you're using one definition of "complete" and trying to argue against other definitions of "complete" by extension, which really doesn't work.

If you're arguing that there's no 1:1 correspondence between 3e core and 4e core, well, gosh golly you're right. By this definition, though, 2e wasn't a complete game, either, since it eliminated half-orcs, assassins, and illusionists as a separate class.

If you're arguing that it's impossible to play a complete game of D&D using just the core rules, I beg to differ! I'm running a very complete game of D&D right now. It's a recognizable D&D game, complete with classes, races, levels, and magic missiles.

Incompleteness in one sense doesn't necessarily lead to incompleteness in another sense.

You yourself point out in your Post #35 that there are multiple definitions of "completeness" (good ones, I might add).

So far it doesn't look like it's being used just one way in this thread.

No, I agree - there's already 2 definitions of completeness floating around. My argument is that adding a third one (which is a relative comparison, rather than an absolute one) would probably not help resolve anything.

I think Mallus was simply pointing out the same kind of conflation - "doesn't have everything in previous editions" versus "doesn't allow a complete game to be played."

-O

 

[Cadfan]

Well, then let's be objective. The 4e core game offers fewer character types than core games of previous editions (no druids, bards, or barbarians, very limited enchantments, polymorphs, illusions). The 4e core game offers fewer mundane-style creatures suitable for lower-level challenges and for building a living world in the Monster Manual than previous editions.

4e is a less complete D&D, comparing core to core, than previous editions of D&D. Since I want to play D&D rather than some subset of D&D, 4e is therefore an incomplete game.

4e offers more character types than core games of previous editions (warlocks, warlords, vastly deeper options for fighters, rogues, paladins, and rangers). And it offers more mundane-style creatures suitable for lower-level challenges (multiple varieties of kobolds, goblins, etc, in addition to rules for building kobolds, goblins, etc using npc rules or class templates as per 3e). As for building a living world, I'm not sure what combat stats for a house cat have to do with that. Are you under some impression that house cats do not exist in D&D unless combat stats exist for them?

Look, seriously, we all know what the deal really is. 4e offers different options. For example, it focused on depth of class detail rather than variety of total classes in the PHB. You can disagree with that! But that doesn't make 4e an incomplete game, and saying so makes you sound silly.

 

[billd91]

Once again, you're using one definition of "complete" and trying to argue against other definitions of "complete" by extension, which really doesn't work.

<snip>
Incompleteness in one sense doesn't necessarily lead to incompleteness in another sense.

No, I agree - there's already 2 definitions of completeness floating around. My argument is that adding a third one (which is a relative comparison, rather than an absolute one) would probably not help resolve anything.

I think Mallus was simply pointing out the same kind of conflation - "doesn't have everything in previous editions" versus "doesn't allow a complete game to be played."

-O

The difference in definitions of "completeness" ultimately come from defining your purpose in shopping around for an edition of D&D. For some of us, there's filling the game niche of what we've come to know as D&D, something 4e falls short of in a core to core comparison, for others a playable RPG, something 4e accomplishes. Whether or not 4e is actually complete, depends more on which perspective is more important to you.

 

[avin]

More edition wars?

Where's my "ignore topic" function?

AD&D people ranted 3.0
3.5 people ranted 4.0
4.5 will rant about 5.0

 

[Mallus]

And that's why, in part, there can be no completely objective definition of whether or not 4e qualifies as a complete game in the AD&D strain.

Who said anything about a completely objective definition? All I'm after is a enough (temporary) agreement to allow for some discussion.

I have played a number of druid characters and have been able to do so with just the core, no splat books necessary, since 1st edition.

So? My first D&D character was a 1e half-orc fighter assassin (inexplicably named for the protagonist of the wonderful Book of the New Sun...). The fact I couldn't play him in 2e did not make 2e an incomplete game (whatever its other faults might be). 2e offered support for a wide enough variety of archetypal fantasy characters to qualify as complete --using a reasonably reasonable definition of the term-- my poor, oddly-named 1/2 orc fighter/assassin notwithstanding.

4e is incomplete if it is trying to be the successor to the game that has included such characters for over 25 years as part of its core.

Incomplete? Sure, I'll concede that. But all I'm after is reasonably complete (seeing as I far more likely to get that in a commercial product). I live in a paradise of diminished expectations.

 

[Mallus]

Well D&D 4th edition is a game, not the latest bulk collection by Black & Decker...ergo not a set of tools.

The Surgeon General has determined that being overly literal causes cancer.

 

[justanobody]

The Surgeon General has determined that being overly literal causes cancer.

They also claim that "Smoking these cigarettes are known to cause cancer in the state of California". So As long as I stay out of California I should be fine.