Forked Thread: Disappointed in 4e; 4e upgrade or new game??

[Fifth Element]

I can have both of these things while playing GURPS Fantasy so I guess thats D&D as its defined.

Methinks Thasmodious was being a tad facetious.

Or perhaps I should say "mehopes"?

 

[Irda Ranger]

why shoudn't one look at different editions of D&D as an upgrade?

Because they're each quite different? Not "Word of Darkness vs. Runequest" different, but certainly observably different.

For this discussion I want to mainly focus on 4e, it was advertised as "Ze game is still ze same" (which in retrospect seems an arguable assertion) and really just an improvement over the previous editions.

I disagree on both points. It is not "ze same", and it is not an overall improvement. Many aspects of the game were improved, but some were made quite a bit worse.

But obviously that's all subjective. Just IMO, as they say. Which is why no one should look at the games as "upgrades." They're different games, and each should be evaluated on its own merits.

Now with that type of marketing push, why shouldn't people have expected it to be an upgrade as opposed to expecting a brand new game?

There are people who actually believe marketing? Have they learned nothing from living in a modern society? Marketing exists for one purpose, and it isn't the discovery of Truth.

should D&D 4e have been marketed as a totally different game?

What is this "should" you speak of? "Should" for who? "Should" implies subjective preferences. Maybe they "should" have marketed it as a new game, from your point of view, but maybe they "should not" have marketed it as a new game from their shareholder's point of view. The belief among consumers that "ze game remains ze same" most likely increased sales.

Now, I'm not suggesting that WotC's customers were sold snake oil, but maybe they got a bait & switch. The customers may be happy with 4E once they tried it, but maybe if they thought it was a totally new game they never would have bought it in the first place.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Is Office 2008 an "upgrade" to Office 2003? Is Windows XP a new operating system or still Windows?

It is in "upgrade" in the sense it's the successor. It's a new game in terms of compatibility.
It's an upgrade to me in the sense like buying a new PC might be an upgrade - I could something better for myself, but, well, the old PC is no longer getting used. It might be an downgrade to someone else, noticing that all his 3.5 rules-heavy supplements are now useless.

Personally I think I'd treat every edition as a "new game" - based on the old, but with so many differences that it can only be merited on its own. And when comparing the merits, I might perceive an edition as an upgrade to me...

 

[Thasmodious]

Allow me to emphasize a part of my previous post -

Here's the list to determine if the version of D&D you are playing is, in fact, D&D (this list is definitive and cannot be contested in any court of law)-

Are there dungeons?
Are there dragons?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Now, I'm not suggesting that WotC's customers were sold snake oil, but maybe they got a bait & switch. The customers may be happy with 4E once they tried it, but maybe if they thought it was a totally new game they never would have bought it in the first place.

For me, 4Ed is New Coke, in a way.

I was looking forward to it, and had great expectations for it, almost none of which were met.

Now, I'm not saying that 4Ed is a bad game. It isn't. There are many things about it that I like. However, I can say that about a lot of FRPGs.

So why do I say its like New Coke? Because despite all of the things that I like about it, I hate the game. I hate 4Ed (New Coke) not because its a bad game (bad drink)- it clearly isn't (4Ed is well designed; New Coke had a lot of favorable taste tests)- but because it replaced 3.X (Coke- yeah, I know its an extremely flawed analogy- but it IS my favorite version of the game) with something that resembled it not at all...and clothed it in the same brand trappings as the original (the name, the rep, etc.).

IMHO, 4Ed chucked many of the things that helped distinguish D&D from other FRPGs I enjoy, making it just another FRPG, and not one I care to buy.

I'd play it, though.

 

[WayneLigon]

I'm curious about peoples thoughts on the above part of bagger245's statement... why shoudn't one look at different editions of D&D as an upgrade?

Another point I wanted to bring up is with other rpg's...I mean when a new edition comes out I don't expect a totally new game, I expect an upgrade of the game I have already purchased

So far, I've viewed each edition of D&D as an upgrade, a substantive introduction of elements that are measurable, readily-observable improvements to what was written before.

We have OD&D. People wanted more quantified rules. We got 1E.

2E took 1E and streamlined it mostly in ways that people were already doing. They didn't go as far as they should have, but they made baby steps in the direction that other games were going: they added more character customization and took away many of the limiting thing in 1E that most people never used anyway.

3E took it even further: much more customization, more player control, a fairly decent skill system, etc.

4E, I'm not so sure. The big advance here is, of course, the death of the Vancian casting. What it was replaced with is not really all that much better, though. And we still have classes, hit points, and several other things that other games have long since given up. So it's more like the 1e-2e tune-up upgrade in some respects than the much more substantive improvements between 1e and 3e.

I would say that at some point, most games have to make some primary changes to how they work in order to meet customer expectations of what a modern game is suppossed to be. In other words, to continue to make improvements, at some point a game has to become 'a new game'.

The only game I can think of that has made almost no core changes at all from 1st to 6th edition is Call of Cthulhu.

 

[RFisher]

On the other hand, especially if the editions are aimed at different things - and I'm going to look at you real funny if you try to suggest the design goals of 2e, 3e, and 4e are the same - you're not creating "the old game, but better", you're creating a new game that looks or acts like an old game in some ways.

Right.

Bob creates X the RPG. X does everything Bob wanted it to do. Bob gets forced out, laid off, retires, &c.

Tom (another game designer at the company) feels X should do different things. Maybe he didn’t understand what Bob wanted it to do. Maybe Bob didn’t communicate his intentions well. Or maybe Tom doesn’t care; he just wants something different from the game. Or maybe the execs told Tom that X should do different things. In any case, Tom sees X as “broken” because it doesn’t do what he wants/needs it to, so he creates X the RPG, 2nd edition. To Tom (and any customers who think like Tom), this is an improvement. It’s an upgrade. To the people who think like Bob, it’s a different game and shouldn’t be called “2nd edition”.

Of course, if you know it's a problem, you can circumvent it by actually writing "to me".

Yeah. I used to do that. When I first got access to the Internet, I was immediately pointed to a netiquette document that I read before I ever posted. I’d spend a lot of time carefully crafting my posts with disclaimerish phrases. (Despite having been taught in school to explicitly mark facts rather than opinions.)

After 15 years or so of doing that and still having people always interpret my words in the worst possible way and ignore any “to me”, I’ve been trying to break those habits and go back to the way I was taught.

Here's the list to determine if the version of D&D you are playing is, in fact, D&D (this list is definitive and cannot be contested in any court of law)-

Are there dungeons?
Are there dragons?

If anyone understands that terms of art have meaning beyond the literal it’s the courts.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Let's all make sure that this potentially inflammatory subject doesn't need to be closed, eh? Don't get personal, and try to assume that everyone else is as smart and kind and clever as you are, and view their posts in the best possible light (not the worst possible).

Thanks

 

[Allister]

LEGO games provide a less painful D&D experience than the real thing nowadays, and at least they're designed by people who don't seem jaded with their IP. I mean, what the heck are eberron and 4E but trying to ape other genres, movies and games on different platforms and media? It's such a squandered opportunity. It will probably reach it's stride eventually, but I doubt it will be to much of a new audience.

Um, but original AD&D was built _ON_ what people thought were popular back then. D&D was always about aping what was popular.

Gygax himself stated many times he introduced many things not because he liked it but because of what he thought the audience expected. See his posts on LotR and the monk etc.


I'm not sure why 4E should be looked down upon because it tries to position itself along the same lines as the original version. Namely, present options and playstyles that the audience expects.

Like others have said, the audience for D&D are not fans of LotR novels. They _ARE_ fans of the LotR movies. D&D fans are no longer watching Saturday karate theatre with Kung-Fu as the lead-in. The D&D target audience are now congregating around forums discussing whether or not Crouching Tiger, Hidder Dragon was better than HERO.

Are you stating that D&D should NOT be trying to appeal to its audience even though this is what D&D originally did?

 

[justanobody]

Are you stating that D&D should NOT be trying to appeal to its audience even though this is what D&D originally did?

I think the question is more are you trying to appeal to the audience so much that you lose what D&D is?

Have people outgrown D&D?

What happens when fantasy is completely taken over by sci-fi, will D&D become a sci-fi game with lasers, phasers, teleporters, etc?

So what audience is it aiming for, and did the audience change, or did it change its target audience?

I don't think 12 year old boys was the original target audience as it was intended for older games, then college gamers, now what is the audience, and has it jumped so far that it disconnects with the game itself?

What if Star Trek through the years decide to become a western? Would that have been adapting with the audience if the audience started watching more westerns? I think it would have killed Star Trek, as its audience was one that liked the universe Star Trek is in, rather than Star Trek trying to keep up with popular trends.

Maybe that is the problem D&D has had over the years, where Warhammer has stayed mostly the same in WFB and WH40k, in that is keeps its games mostly focused on the same thing.

I don't think you can say that D&D has kept the same focus over the years, just by saying it is still based in fantasy as that is too broad a category to claim.

So 4th edition is a new game with the D&D name. What is so wrong with it having its own name to eclipse D&D?

Would people be as upset with the total death of D&D and this 4th edition being a new game as with 4th edition changing so much of what had been D&D for several decades?

So I don't think keeping up with the Jones' was/is ever the answer, but keeping your customers happy.

How much would it cost to make a new monster each month for each old D&D system, or make one monster a month and make it FOR each different D&D system?

I think that would give better hopes to keeping D&D alive when you can connect them all, than trying to discard the old that works for the flashy new shiny object just because it is flashy and new.

D&D doesn't have to keep up with current trends, it should be focused on what it does well, and let the other people falter with what doesn't work well.

Don't forget that in the beginning D&D was trying to be created and find out what it was, not trying to really keep up with trends, as most things didn't change save for a few classes moving in and out. The core 4 are still there.

Priest
Mage
Warrior
Rogue

Any variations thereof are just that.