[forked thread] What constitutes an edition war?

[dagger]

I think that 4e tries to avoid the flaws I've identified in RM and 3E by going gonzo all the way, with both skills and combat, thereby ensuring that the lovingly-built and complex PCs get plenty of screen time to do whatever it is that they're going to do. That some dislike this play experience means that 4e is not the game for them, but I don't think it means therefore that 4e itself is flawed in being gonzo.

Well it still comes down to you thinking/feeling 3e is flawed and others not thinking/feeling the same way.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Let us turn it around.

4e is badly designed. It focuses over much on combat and the encounter, with a distinct feeling that all actions not pertaining to one or the other were tacked on at the last minute, and poorly tested (as evidenced by the massive errata pertaining to skills).

Does that feel like an attack? It is how I honestly feel about 4e, and what I can point out as a major failing of the game.

Now let me add - if you like 4e then you are wrong to do so. It is not a roleplaying game, but rather a combat and tactical game. That people are managing to use it for roleplaying games, in spite of its systems, is a major achievement.

snip interesting analysis....

The first statement is how you feel, I personally would not be too bothered about it but there are some who would definitely jump at that point.

The second one about being wrong in liking 4e is now an attack on me ( and others that like 4e) and would be much more likely to provoke an angry response.

There is elements in the first part where some of the more contensious parts of the edition war break out. If I were to take you on the the badly designed statement we could then have a long and bitter argument about it while both using different manings of the word "designed" and never actually communicating.

This seems to be quite common.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

My objections to edition wars (and similar things) have always been that they tend to drown out more useful critiques. So, somewhat contra pawsplay's earlier assertion, there have been useful criticisms of 4E--even heated, useful ones. If one poked around a bit, one could easily find them. There is one going on right now on the 4E board, and near as I can tell, all of the participants are generally pro-4E. However, there have also been a lot of sturm and drang over very poor criticisms, very poorly and repeatedly expressed. If those tend to register more strongly in some memories than others, I suggest a sample bias.

And just to be clear, I saw exactly the same thing with the 3E and 3.5. It seemed you couldn't have a decent discussion about 3E skills for five minutes in late 2000, without some bloke interrupting with how the monk/wizard multiclass was completely broken and anathema to everything that D&D stood for!

Though I'll grant that I'm in a distinct majority when it comes to criticism. As far as I'm concerned, design criticism is about discerning the intent of the designer, and then seeing how well the design is realized. While not entirely objective, it can have objective moments. Pemerton's discussion of RM above is one such example.

It seems to me that a lot of criticism, however, is founded on, "your design intent sucked; so sucks to be you." Not that anyone has to like something, merely because the design intent and implementation are well matched. I certainly don't always, and some things I've quite enjoyed have been rather poorly designed, when it comes to it. But I have found that the "sucks to be you" school of criticism does tend to blur the lines between what works versus what the speaker likes--frequently with the aforementioned symptom of making a lot of noise that drowns out the more pointed and useful criticisms. Not always, but often. (Every now and then, someone consciously takes a more holistic approach on the criticism of the design intent, and because it is conscious, does it well.)

 

[Raven Crowking]

As design intent will become a focus for future editions, it seems rational to me to express which design intents you are happy with, and which you are not. That is at least as important as how well the intent is met.

 

[Umbran]

As design intent will become a focus for future editions, it seems rational to me to express which design intents you are happy with, and which you are not. That is at least as important as how well the intent is met.

Since we are talking ostensibly about what constitutes an edition war...

Expressing which intents you like is fine, and attempting to communicate those ideas to the designers makes sense.

Flogging your fellow gamers with a campaign for your desired intents, and attempting to shout down or otherwise suppress the expressions of others, however, is apt to be problematic.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

As design intent will become a focus for future editions, it seems rational to me to express which design intents you are happy with, and which you are not. That is at least as important as how well the intent is met.

More important! If they turn 5E into D&D Meets Eldritch Horrors, it won't matter to me how well they design it.

Expressing preferences, even strong preferences, for certain design intents is entirely rational. Expressing such preferences mixed in with critiques of current design realizations often is irrational. It need not be (if consciously kept separate), but it often is. Mix in the usual problems of written communication, and it often seems even more irrational than perhaps the writer intends.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Since we are talking ostensibly about what constitutes an edition war...

Expressing which intents you like is fine, and attempting to communicate those ideas to the designers makes sense.

Flogging your fellow gamers with a campaign for your desired intents, and attempting to shout down or otherwise suppress the expressions of others, however, is apt to be problematic.

Fortunately, no one is actually claiming otherwise.

Right?

 

[Umbran]

Fortunately, no one is actually claiming otherwise.

Right?

I haven't seen anyone claim otherwise in this thread, no.

But we (the moderation staff) have seen folks try to justify poor behavior by claiming it is their right to communicate their desires to designers, and that EN World is a bully pulpit for such.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I haven't seen anyone claim otherwise in this thread, no.

But we (the moderation staff) have seen folks try to justify poor behavior by claiming it is their right to communicate their desires to designers, and that EN World is a bully pulpit for such.

Well, that may be so, but you (the moderation staff) do an excellent (and, I am sure, sometimes rather difficult) job of preventing that sort of thing from occurring. Or dealing with it when it does occur.

I just wanted to make sure that you were not implying that anything in this thread claimed otherwise. Such as the comment you were replying to!


RC

 

[TheAuldGrump]

The first statement is how you feel, I personally would not be too bothered about it but there are some who would definitely jump at that point.

The second one about being wrong in liking 4e is now an attack on me ( and others that like 4e) and would be much more likely to provoke an angry response.

There is elements in the first part where some of the more contensious parts of the edition war break out. If I were to take you on the the badly designed statement we could then have a long and bitter argument about it while both using different manings of the word "designed" and never actually communicating.

This seems to be quite common.

Exactly, which is why I tend to qualify it these days. (I will admit, the success of Pathfinder soothed some raw wounds. I was a trifle bitter, early on.)

For me the biggest problem with 4e was not the rules themselves, it was the seeming assumption that everyone would like those new rules, and that the earlier rules were inherently flawed.

Those preview books were particularly bad in this regard. There is at least one game designer involved who's books I will never seek out because of the way he addressed non combat encounters. (What if I want to go traipsing through the fairy gates to interact with the little people?)

I wonder now if some of the playtesters were, perhaps, overly zealous in defending the previous edition, and some of the poo flinging in the preview books was in part a response to that. I do know that some of the playtesters felt that they were not being listened to regarding the handling of skills, a feeling that was vindicated with the massive skill errata early on.

If the designers had focused the majority of their efforts on combat and encounters then they were likely feeling the time crunch by the time they got to skills, as the Death Bus rolled forward (and possibly toward the edge of a cliff). They did not have the attention to spare, which led to a very large errata.

The Auld Grump