Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Willie the Duck" data-source="post: 9843475" data-attributes="member: 6799660">Perhaps, but it can be in terms of aesthetics or tone or presentation or yes potentially mechanics. That does not mean that a given mechanic was inspired or attempting to emulate a mechanic of the thing whose audience an edition that introduced the mechanic was trying to capture. Additional causal evidence is required. That is (all) that I am saying. That any given thing was in 4e and that 4e was trying to capture the WoW market does not mean any given 4e thing was WoW-based. Alzrius did it right. He brought his receipts. Apparently AEDU was an attempt to capture cooldown (although I reiterate that the effect that both encapsulate has been a longstanding concern for some who play D&D for a very long time). I'm a little surprised (since, as EzekielRaiden stated, AEDU and cooldowns aren't incredibly similar and distinct from what has come before and elsewhere; and because 5/15 minute workdays had been a major concern for quite a while), but there is the evidence. For my money, what 4e did that was very WoW-ish was presentation (the 4e books look a lot like computer game manuals of the time), a focus on set piece encounters, just a focus one tactical combat gameplay at that specific time (not unique to either, but certainly a notable concurrence), and the whole striker/etc. roles sounding a lot like MMO roles. I still dink around with a port (to the Unity system) of Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall. It seems to be a pretty strong approximation of a TSR-era dungeon-crawl. Certainly Ultima, Wizardry, Bard's Tale, Final Fantasy, and Gauntlet are all D&D-like. I think that's why I always find the adjective 'video-gamey' as a descriptor of an RPG to be too vague to be of use. What makes it video-gamey?There certainly is some of that happening. Mind you, I started with BX/BECMI and being a small race just meant a penalty on polearms and a few other bits and bobs like that (no attribute penalty or slower speed), so I don't know if it is a directional evolution (so hey, more like actual evolution). I'm not really seeing the shift from practical to narrative/conceptual in this example, though. I'm just seeing a practical consequence of reduced impact. Wouldn't a conceptual or narrative one be more like halflings won't choose to wield heavy weapons or there won't be kits or PrCs or premade characters designed around gnomish maul-users or the like?</blockquote>

Verification