D&D 4E Former 4E doubter , I have high hopes now

[BryonD]

I don't play D&D as an exercise in simulating medieval life/combat (I do SCA for that). I play it because it's fun to sit around a table with friends and go on epic adventures together, killing monsters and taking their stuff.

You have not accurately described the alternative side when you frame it as an SCA-like exercise in simulating medieval life/combat. People who want that probably are playing something like GURPS or even Harn rather than D&D anyway.

As someone who sees himself as very much a simulationist at times, I don't at all try simulate medieval life. I try to simulate a self consistent and deeply Immersive D&D world that just happens to be loosely based on a wide variety of highly romanticized versions of historic Earth cultures. But the key is in the self consistent and immersive.

When the world starts building itself around the character, then it immediately stops being "real". The character becomes just a token and the rules are rubbing it in my face.

After all, you can sit around a table with friends and go on epic adventures together, killing monsters and taking their stuff while playing Descent. I'm not saying that this would be adequate for you or that 4E is that simple. But it meets the standard you established. And it shows that there are rather extreme shades of gray available for how deep the game can be.

I enjoy Descent. But I never feel like I am character. I'm just playing a game.

When I read a good book I never feel like I can control the world. I'm stuck as a passive observer. (As a player my character is stunned from page 1 to The End) But I'm immersed in the action and enjoying every second of it. That is current D&D for me - at its very worst. When I can't act as a player, I'm still just as immersed.

For me, this type of gamist change will move D&D sharply through the grays toward Descent. I don't want that. The gain in action will be negligible because the fun is not shackled to the actions. But the loss in the book-like involvement will be significant. Because the fun is defined by the immersion.

None of that has anything to do with accurate simulation of medieval anything.

 

[Voss]

Well said, ByronD. I've tried to get the same point across with a boardgame metaphor, but not as well or as eloquently.

A couple of the rules had me twitching, because they addressed the players rather than the characters, but the new magic items article really pushes the character to one side and almost entirely engages the player. Not a good thing for an RPG.

I could ignore my aggravation with the poor fluff, since I knew going in that I wasn't going to use most of it anyway. Poor rules are a lot harder to deal with. WotC's advertising is pushing me away.

 

[Zaruthustran]

Yes, well said BryonD. And just as a BTW, if it wasn't clear, I don't mean to suggest that the way I enjoy D&D is the only way/the "right" way for everyone to enjoy D&D.

Your Descent example is very illustrative, and I see where you're getting at. I've had lots of fun playing Descent but the limited choices and board-game nature of the game tend to put a limit on immersion. I suppose the 4E changes, to me, make the experience more like the 1980s fantasy books and movies I grew up with. Very open ended, do anything kind of game--but with rules that are just consistent enough to keep things from spiraling out of control. That's essentially what I'm hoping for: the kind of experience I had playing OD&D, AD&D, and 2E as a kid. Those games were always great with your core gaming group but tended to get weird/out of control when played with strangers, since everyone had their own peculiar house rules/emphasis. 4E seems more consistent, and to me that seems like a Good Thing for the hobby as a whole.

Anyway, I strongly agree with this statement:

The fun is defined by the immersion.

None of that has anything to do with accurate simulation of medieval anything.

Totally true. Immersion is ultimately created by you and your fellow players, and--so long as you're playing an RPG and not a board game--has little to do with whatever RPG ruleset you happen to be using.

 

[BryonD]

Totally true. Immersion is ultimately created by you and your fellow players, and--so long as you're playing an RPG and not a board game--has little to do with whatever RPG ruleset you happen to be using.

Thanks

However, I do find that rulesets can to a small degree support immersion and, potentially, to a large degree hinder it. After all, you could roleplay Descent. But the ruleset hinders it very greatly.
Many of the 4E changes bring big neon "ITS A GAME" signs with them as an implicit part of simplification. Me and my fellow players don't like it when the signs start flashing.
3X has some signs, and sometimes they flash. But it hides them better than any other RPG I've played.

Or like I said, it not a question of am I playing an RPG or a board game, but rather where in the shades of gray am I?

Edit: And I agree, I'm not trying to say right or wrong either. But I am going to stick to my guns for what *I* like.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Thanks

However, I do find that rulesets can to a small degree support immersion and, potentially, to a large degree hinder it. After all, you could roleplay Descent. But the ruleset hinders it very greatly.
Many of the 4E changes bring big neon "ITS A GAME" signs with them as an implicit part of simplification. Me and my fellow players don't like it when the signs start flashing.
3X has some signs, and sometimes they flash. But it hides them better than any other RPG I've played.

Or like I said, it not a question of am I playing an RPG or a board game, but rather where in the shades of gray am I?

I disagree with you on most things ByronD, but I agree with you on this, exactly the proportions too. Games can only encourage immersion a bit (and more with good consistent interesting fluff than rules), but the rules can easily break (or wildly change) immersion into little pieces by constantly screaming ITS A GAME!

Whilst I would never say 3.XE hides it's game nature well (even Chaosium's system does better), mostly due to it's super-tactical combat, it's clear that in 4E, as you say, the ITS A GAME signs will be all over. Oh well.

 

[Nifft]

I wrote that AFTER getting dog-piled.

That is correct. My point is: if you didn't have the protection of a mod, you'd be getting dog-piled AGAIN, and it would be deserved AGAIN.

Sorry if you feel only those who are happy with 4th edition have a right to post here but you're completely in the wrong in that regard.

If you remove your head from wherever it currently resides, things won't have such an easy time going over it.

Good luck, -- N

 

[Ipissimus]

After reading the previews of 4E, which I believe I approached with a healthy ammount of skepticism, I have to say I like what I see. I also like what alot of the devs have been saying pointing out the flaws they've encountered with 3.5 and how they've gone about fixing them. I've said to myself for a year or two that I had no idea how they were going to fix some of the problems without taking a wrecking ball to the system and starting from scratch, which appears to be exactly what they did. It seems to me that it is inevitable people were going to hate this move and I have to say that WOTC is showing some guts re-vamping the system the way they are.

As I said, I was skeptical of 4E, based purely off the 3.5 debacle. They could have printed an update splatbook and re-printed the original books with the changes, but no, they had to render the 30+ books my gaming table had already bought obsolete. Which was fine, they're a company that wants to make money after all and I simply downloaded the OSD and made some notes from my friend's copy. In the end, there weren't enough changes to really matter (especially since I had the OSD). They didn't really fix any of the major issues.

Maybe I'm in the minority but alot of what they are saying matches with my experience of the game. I've had new players who just couldn't get a handle on the game mechanics. Newbies encountering the system aren't likely to persevere if they can't get to grips with it in one session. It's supposed to be fun after all and if you're having problems remembering where everything is on your character sheet... it's no fun. I personally never had any problems but then I've played alot of RPGs with different systems so there was much less Information Overload for me and I'm suspecting alot of you.

Less mucking about with numbers seems like a good idea to me. One prospective player my group introduced to the game who quit after the first try was an accountant. She had troubles dealing with all the different numbers and how they were derived, so much so that she was more worried about rolling the dice and getting the additions right than in solving puzzles and interacting with the world. Most of my players commented that they couldn't be bothered using the skill system to it's greatest advantage since it seemed more like work than play, so they just dumped all their skill points into the major ones they used all the time.

The Wizard flat-out refused to do any item creation. I don't blame him, who wants to lose XP in bucketloads like that? Besides, taking the monster's cool stuff is half the fun (ok, maybe a quarter of the fun).

How many times have I had a mystery encounter ruined by the Paladin's Detect Evil? That has to be the grand-daddy of Gamist thinking, gone with 4E. And a great sigh of relief was had by DMs everywhere. But you couldn't just rip it out because without it, the Paladin's pretty much a useless class.

The Vancian magic system? I won't miss it. I won't miss my party working for half the day before sleeping and wrecking the momentum of the session. As a player, I won't miss my mage becoming useless after one or two spells at first level. It always seemed a bit contrived to me anyway.

Gnomes? Yeah, the wizard at my table's a gnome, not that it's ever really mattered. Neither of us are crying over the loss, honestly. I've never understood why Gnomes were there in the first place back in 1e, aren't Halflings (and hobbits) really inspired by legends of Gnomes?

I like bards and yet Bards never really had a place in the 3.5 party. Yeah, i could boost all the others' rolls, but it gets boring quick. I like helping my party but occasionally I like doing something useful too, particularly in combat which takes up most of the game. Yeah, I'm sure alot of people love the interation and crafting a story and all that... but you don't need rules to do that. Ok, maybe a couple of skills, but interation and world-building is done by the DM and the Players with every little to do with stats.

In the end, the core of DnD is adventure. A big part of the appeal for me personally is going into a dungeon, kicking ass and looking cool doing it. Tieflings are a race I want to play. Dragonborn sound cool too, their females having breasts is a bonus. I mean, they'd look wierd without them. Male barbarians have breasts, keeping them from the lizard girls would seem churlish.

Honestly, I prefer a more simulationist game myself, but the vibe I'm getting isn't that 4E is going to be gamist. Choosing your feats, powers and skills as well as rolling attributes (even if they take that away, like that's gonna stop anyone from rolling) is going to make each character much different rather than the sameness that seems to pervade character creation in 3.5. I'm not saying 3.5 characters are flat, there's just a tendancy for people to go with certain options than others just to remain effective in the game. Right now, i feel spoiled for choice, I hope if I get the books (not a foregone conclusion just yet, but things look promising to me) I'll still feel spoiled for choice.

Really, what could spoil things for me down the road is 4.5, if it happens. If they pull that again I might just give the whole thing up.

 

[Gargoyle]

I'm completely undecided about 4e, because I just don't know enough about it. I haven't seen any "deal breakers" or "gotta have it's" yet.

That's pretty strange for me, because I've usually got an opinion one way or another, and what's even stranger is that I think I'm starting to look forward to the fluff in the new edition more than the crunch!

Anyone who knows me knows how odd that is.

At first I was excited because of Mike Mearl's leading the design, and because I've always felt 3.5 just didn't change the game far enough. 3E was great, but I saw the potential for a much better game, and books like PHB2 confirm my suspicions that they should have done more in 3.5. So I'm a bit of a rules junky...I like for WotC to write some great rules that I can use to build my worlds upon. I don't usually want a house, I want a foundation.

However I'm actually looking forward to the new cosmology and fluff about races, etc, more than the underlying mechanics. I do hope that the new crunch makes for a better "gameplay" element, but I certainly understand reasons for wanting a certain balance point between simulation and abstraction. It's a different type of sweet spot.

I guess at this point I know I'll buy the first books, but I'm not sure I'll actually run a campaign. I might just finish writing my own RPG instead. Then again, I'll be at GenCon this year, and will certainly run a game or two (or twelve) there, or at least play, and maybe it will change my mind. Definitely maybe.

 

[Siberys]

I'm pretty optimistic so far, but I only started out a little concerned, so it wasn't a big swing for me. I like alot of what I've seen so far, and the few things I don't like...I can easily change. That's what most DM's do anyways. I mean, how many of us play pure 3.5 RAW?

I'm pretty much in this boat.

Seriously, the stuff I've been most worried about were changes to the peripherals - the possible invalidation of a bunch of D&D Minis, the cancellation of Dungeon and Dragon, and the move to DI.

Also, I've been worried about 3rd party stuff... I've just started buying a ton here on ENWorld, but I hear sales've been dropping since the announcement. And just when I wanted to develop my OWN commercial d20 variant... . I've got Indy Publisher friends, and this hurts 'em a lot. But, in this business, you expect it every few years.

Anyways, mechanically, a lot of the changes I've seen were ones I was planning on implementing myself anyway, at least in some form, and fluff I don't like is easy to change. No real gripe here.

[EDIT - the only real thing that's grated me was the absence of Gnomes. I love the Eberron version of 'em, but if they're in the 4eECS or the MM, I'll be fine.]

Sto Exstasis

 

[pemerton]

If I've already got a pretty decent game that does something fairly well, I don't need another game that covers the same ground unless it does so in a majorly improved way.

<snip>

With the exception of its market position, 4e exactly fits the definition of "yet another fantasy heartbreaker."

I don't think this is at all true. 4e has virtually nothing in common with AD&D excpet for sharing a few fantasy tropes, and is a significant departure from 3E, bascially ditching all the lingering AD&Disms.

there's a lot of people saying that changes to the implied background mean that 4e isn't really going to be D&D any more, and that bothers me a lot more.

I'm a big supporter of 4e. But I do agree with those who say the changes in the edition are profound.

What surprises me about some of those complaints, however, is that they focus on somewhat minor issues (like Gnomes or Halflings - these are fairly easy to put back in or modify, surely, once one has a look at the PHB and the MM) and not on the fundamental design issues, which are huge.

The major changes from AD&D to 3E were two: sophisticated character build rules, and sophisticated action resolution rules. The first set of rules gave players lots of options they hitherto had lacked, thus transferring narrative control in the game from designers to players. The second set of rules brought an end to the GM's special role in AD&D as an arbiter of action success via direct negotiation with the players. This transferred narrative control from the GM to the players. (And there have been a lot of complaints about this.)

4e basically picks up where 3E left off - nearly every change from the previous editions is intended to transfer narrative control in one of these two directions. In particular, 4e:

*consolidates those aspects of 3E which empower the players over the GM (like character build and action resolution mechanics);

*further redistributes narrative control to the players, for example by:

*making Demons, Devils and other monsters more immediately recognisable to the players, and gives them distinctive tacics (thus allowing the players to recognise a monster and take account of its known and distinctive tactics in their play choices);

*rebalancing magic items and encounter build rules (to make players less vulnerable to accidentally unbalanced GMing);

*introducing Second Wind rules and making APs core;

*giving all PCs per-encounter abilities (which mean that players are no longer hostage to the GM's decisions about the overall passage of time in the gameworld);

*introducing the PoL assumption that PoLs are safehavens until the players choose to trigger adversity (see sidebar, p 20, W&M);​

*transfers narrative control from the designers to the players and GM together (removal of mechanical metaphysics of alignment, which allows the gaming group to answer moral questions in their own way, during the course of actual play);

*undoes imbalances of narrative controls between players (PoL eliminates a lot of campaign backstory, putting different players on an even footing in that respect).​

All of this facilitate gamist play, by stopping the GM and the game designers getting in the way of the players' pursuit of system excellence. Interesting, it also facilitates narrativist play, by making adversity in the game, and its resolution, something much more shared between players and GM in a potentially co-operative fashion, than something almost entirely under the GM's control (as was the case in AD&D to a significant extent).

Someone above posted that the rules are taking the game too far in a 'Gamist' direction.

<snip>

The thing is, a lot of 4E changes also help the simulationist cause.

Changing the way alignment works is potentially huge. Toning down transportation magic is huge, too.

But changing alignment reduces simulationism (because it forces the players to answer moral questions, rather than play out the game designers' pre-determined answer), it doesn't increase it. Transportation magic is a bit different - it can fit with a different type of simulation, or (as seems to be the intention of the designers) actually redistribute narrative control from the players back to the GM - an exception to the general trend discerned above, but also something which facilitiates the proper balancing of encounters.

A couple of the rules had me twitching, because they addressed the players rather than the characters, but the new magic items article really pushes the character to one side and almost entirely engages the player. Not a good thing for an RPG.

In one sense all game rules address the players, because they are written and read in the real world, not the gameworld. But I agree that the 4e rules are not simulationist (ie do not model ingame processes). I don't see why that is a problem - granting players narrative control (as non-simulationist rules do) can foster immersion as much as undermine it.

After all, in traditional quasi-simulationist D&D play, the GM has almost total narrative control. The GM determines the general degree and frequency (be it spatial and/or temporal) of adversity, whether by placing encounters in a dungeon or plotting up a series of events, and determines the level of reward (by awarding XP and loot), and resolves moral questions (by adjudicating alignment matters), and has a big say in action resolution (for example, by ignoring the dice if they would "get in the way of the fun"). But I've never heard it suggested that GMs don't have fun playing D&D, or are unable to immerse themselves in the game.