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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5763283" data-attributes="member: 54877">I think it is limited awareness of the range and depth of a lot of subjective feelings, across gamers. Look, nothing against Karin's Dad or me, but I bet if we tried to play any game together, we'd be at each others' throats within 2 hours. I've read enough of these posts to understand that his idea of what is "realistic" and mine simply aren't compatible at the same table. But I think there is a tendency to conflate the overall drift and focus of a game with some its particulars. And in fairness, with feelings, you can't always completely control that. For example, do I think that there are serious problems with the 3E skill system, that interfere with my ability to accept the game world as somehow consistent or sensible? Why, yes, I do. However, as a first cut for 3E, it really isn't that bad. I made it work and had a lot of fun with it for a 3 year campaign. Sure, sometimes that was in spite of the skill system, but it wasn't so awful that we couldn't live with it and move on. I wasted some time trying to tweak it to my tastes, but that was my own fault, and didn't damage play at the table one whit. So I have criticisms of the system, but I'm not emotionally invested in being an "anti 3E skill system" guy. OTOH, take things like double-bladed swords, weapon weights in general, and the 3E crafting system. My objections to them are two part. I have thoughtful reasons for disliking them, and those can be discussed and argued. But I also have an emotional reaction against them which I can explain, and you might understand, but you can't talk me out of.  Every system has things that provoke those kind of dual reactions, and people aren't always aware that the reactions are dual. And a lot of times, it doesn't really matter. You don't like something, whether critically or emotionally. So you don't use it, and that's that. Where 4E was different was that it is really in your face on the changes. That makes it harder for people to ignore elements that they dislike. This is more than merely the 4E "bad marketing" of telling people that a lot of stuff would be "fixed"--though that is part of it. Dropping all pretense of simulation, including some deliberate and central metagaming mechanics, reining in magic while expanding mundane means--all of these combine to make it suddenly hard to ignore. It was brutally honest about what it was doing. It doesn't bother me, and I get along better with 4E than 3E/3.5/PF, in part because I like brutal honesty in my game materials. Some people don't like that kind of brutal honesty at all. And others don't mind it, but the changes are just to big to ignore. And still others really have no concept whatsoever how D&D is played at other tables, and this narrows the range of their acceptance. They can't possibly imagine how feature X or rule Y could be catering to anything involving "good roleplaying". When it was just hit points or Armor making you harder to hit, they could survive on the occasional drive by slam, and then go back to ignoring it.  "Come and Get It" to them is like you suddenly saw a pair of monkeys in tuxedos. There probably is a good reason (or chain of reasons) for it, and it probably involves someone's idea of "fun", but chances are you aren't going to understand it, possibly not even after an explanation. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /></blockquote>

Verification