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

[Dire Lemming]

That's interesting; I am from more or less the same camp as you are but I like what I have seen of 4e for the same reasons. I don't think about it as "dumbing down" but more as stripping things down to what is needed for an enjoyable experience while doing away with the unnecessary.

I started out with a guarded optimism and I have grown to like what I see more and more. I think I'm different than many here in that I'm extatic to see the old fluff go

OT: I agree with you that I don't like Oblivion as much as Morrowind but that's because of the scaling opponents and weaker story line.

Oh, I hate that about Oblivion too, I just didn't mention everything I dislike about the game because most of it has nothing to do with Fourth Edition D&D. Trust me, it's more than you, I've played everygame in the series.

The thing is, "dumbing down" is just a less politically correct way of saying exactly what you are saying. They are stripping down everything about the game to it's bare essentials in order to appeal to those who can't handle the complexity of the current game, and refuse correct their problems themselves by simply not using the parts they don't understand. Then they add a bunch of badly thought out gimmicks and buzzwords to make it "cool". It's the most common design in gaming these days.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Oh, I hate that about Oblivion too, I just didn't mention everything I dislike about the game because most of it has nothing to do with Fourth Edition D&D. Trust me, it's more than you, I've played everygame in the series.

The thing is, "dumbing down" is just a less politically correct way of saying exactly what you are saying. They are stripping down everything about the game to it's bare essentials in order to appeal to those who can't handle the complexity of the current game, and refuse correct their problems themselves by simply not using the parts they don't understand. Then they add a bunch of badly thought out gimmicks and buzzwords to make it "cool". It's the most common design in gaming these days.

No, i think dumbing down is not what they do.
Every class gets powers, that you have to pick upon advancing/creating the character, and you have to choose which one to use in any given combat round. That's not a dumbed down version of the Fighters "I make a full attack" or the Rogues "I tumble into flanking position and make a sneak attack".

Removing the 3rd style of monster and NPC advancement is not about dumbing down if it makes things faster to run, and (nearly as important) more precise in regards to gauging challenges.

 

[Dire Lemming]

I personally don't believe that just that one thing makes up for all the other things they've dumbed down. Pretty much every MMORPG has weird class based special abilities.

It could well be one of the few things they add. Or it could just be a rip off of WoW or Diablo 2. I'd really like to see some of these special abilities and find out.

 

[Wolfspider]

I've never been a doubter at all about 4e... I'm going to purchase it with open arms and run the game of D&D that i've always wanted to run.

How did you get advanced copies of the rulebooks? Lucky so-and-so.

Good by 3.xe, and good riddance. No going back to you. Nope. Into the trash heep you go.

Trash heap!

Oh dear! Please send the books to me, and I will gladly pay postage. Or give them to a local library. Just don't throw them away. Please!

PM me and we'll discuss this.

Trash heap!

 

[Wolfspider]

As far as my doubts about 4e go, I'm afraid they are still rampant. I will probably end up buying the core books, but just so that I can pillage them for my v3.5 game. I like many of the rule changes that I've read about so far, like the reduced skill list and racial feats--but I can do all that and more in v3.5 with just a bit of tinkering. I'm interested in seeing what 4e will do with grappling; I admit that the grappling rules in v3.5 are not so great.

In any case, my group of players have no interest at all in 4e, so I guess I couldn't play it if I wanted to.

Which I don't. From Golden Wyvern Adepts to dragon boobies to wimpy pit fiends with exploding electric-slide minions, Dungeons and Dragons 4e just doesn't seem the game for me.

The game HAS NOT remained the same.

 

[Keefe the Thief]

Wew, thank god. I already own the old one.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I personally don't believe that just that one thing makes up for all the other things they've dumbed down. Pretty much every MMORPG has weird class based special abilities.

The latter part might be right, but maybe the idea that MMORPGs are "dumbed down" in their mechanics is wrong? I am pretty sure people playing WoW will tell you how difficult it can be to be part of such a mass raid and do your supposed job without getting them all killed. (But I don't really know, I never played it.)

What is "dumbed down" in MMORPGs and most games is usually the story involvement/evolvement. MMORPGs can't give you personalized plots, and single player games usually lack the range of possibilities (games like KOTOR or NWN might give you two more or less binary choices).
You don't get much flexiblity on how to solve a problem in both cases. This incredible flexiblity (in pen & paper games) is only possible because the human DM can adapt his game (at least, most of the time) to react for it (sometimes by making up a lot of things on the fly), but a computer can't do that.

This flexiblity can also be the hardest part (not-dumb) part in pen & paper RPGs - their is not always a straigth path to the solution (difficult for the player to determine what to do) and sometimes there exist unexpected pathes (difficult for DMs to deal with).

But there's nothing that D&D 4 worsens in this regard. In fact, things like social encounter rules or easier monster design make this part easier to handle for the DM. The skill system with the level-based modifiers to all skills also helps players in trying out alternate options, because they know they have a reasonable chance trying something that's not part of their core character concept.

How did you get advanced copies of the rulebooks? Lucky so-and-so.



Trash heap!

Oh dear! Please send the books to me, and I will gladly pay postage. Or give them to a local library. Just don't throw them away. Please!

PM me and we'll discuss this.

Trash heap!

Throwing away books is like throwing away people!
Wolfspider, stop him!

 

[PeterWeller]

As someone who started out playing computer games before I really got into D&D. I'm finding myself increasingly dissatisfied with 4e. Every thing I see so far seems to be following the current trend in the video game industry of simplifying things and dumbing them down to appeal to a wider audience who doesn't like the kind of games that I do. D&D Fourth Edition constantly makes me think of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Which completely overhauled everything that was a hallmark of the series except for the names and the concept of a big open world, and made it all much more simplistic and generic. That's all I'm seeing so far with $E.

So in conclusion, I'm not optimistic about it.

I don't play tons of video games, so bear with me here, but how exactly have they been getting dumbed down? RTS games have incorporated increasingly sophisticated resource gathering and unit tactics. Empire building games have incorporated more and more facets of society into their models. For the greater part, Western RPGs have embraced the idea that your actions and decisions affect the plot, moving away from the JRPG "kill your way to the next cut-scene" model, but even those JRPGs have become more sophisticated, with greater levels of combat tactics and mini-games. Better AI has only made FPS games more difficult and tactically challenging. Heck, even action platformer games have become more sophisticated in their range of action and depth of puzzles.

I've read the complaints about Oblivion, and it does seem like a step back for the series, but nothing I heard led me to believe it had been dumbed down, just kind of worse overall. Now, if you're saying that the golden age of Western CRPGs is over, I'm going to have to agree with you, but I don't think that's because games have been getting dumbed down; I think it's because Black Isle, Interplay, and Troika are out of business.

 

[pemerton]

Don't see this at all. Recognizable to the players is not recognizable to the characters unless the characters have encountered said creature before. There is no meta-gaming at my table so memorizing a monster manual won't save you. If I catch someone overtly and shamelessly metagaming I will severely dock them EXP.

This is already changing the rules (there will be no rules for XP-docking in the DMG, I'm pretty sure). I was really talking about the RAW (as I am predicting them to be, based on information available so far).

Of course, if you really forbid metagaming then you will also have to drop APs from the game, at least, and also other aspects as well (like the default assumption that PCs are safe in a PoL if their players have not chosen to seek adversity).

This isn't going to be Elder Scrolls Oblivion where no matter what's going on outside, the town is going to be a safe zone. That is pure videogame conceit and has no place in an PRing game that presumes an interactive setting with proportionate action and reaction.

Ah, I see you are also intending to abandon that default assumption.

Moral questions are posed in the context of events and situations set up by the DM often as a consequence of PCs actions or inaction.

In many RPGs the players also get to establish context, events and situations, and determine what counts as a successful resolution of them.

The DM still contains the key to the cosmology

Well, the RAW describe a cosmology for the game. Of course any given group might choose to play with a different cosmology.

The PCs can decide that eating babies is good and that rescuing innocents is evil but that won't stop the rest of the world from differing on these points if the DM has decided that eating babies is evil and aiding the innocent is good.

<snip>

Moral ambiguity can add great depth to a game however once things cross into either good or evil, it is the DM who will show the players how the setting (and its folk and mortals) reacts to their actions. A lack of alignment mechanics does not shift all good and evil into a state of post modern subjectivism.

The history of moral philosophy is really OT, but I would note that the greatest moral subjectivist in European philosophy are Thrasymchus (a protagonist in the Republic) and Hume (an eightenth century Scottish philosopher) - neither is a postmodernist.

On the substantive point, I don't see what the relationship is between the GM controlling the moral universe of the game, and avoiding ambiguity or subjectivism. To me, all this would seem to guarantee is that the players are hostage to the GM's subjective (and potentially ambiguous) moral sensibility.

Btw, part of the logic of mechanics like those for social challenge resolution is that the GM does not have sole control of NPC reactions in the game world.

POL is not a campaign setting, it is a design philosophy.

Yes.

Players are on equal footing by reading up on the setting they are playing in and getting a sense of the setting.

This is not really consistent with the PoL design philosophy.

Getting in the way of player excellence!?!?! I never realized how much my 23+yrs of DMing has been the history of shattering the dreams, hopes and ambitions of my poor players. I guess I should just tell them that I am hanging up my exclusive DMing cap so as to do a little more narrative cooperativism.

You seem to have misunderstood my post. I have never met you, as far as I know. I have no idea how you GM, nor what your players make of it. Indeed, with respect, I have little interest in these things.

I am doing my best to desribe the design logic, and implications for play, of 4e. Part of that is the support, by the game, of mastery of system excellence (this contrasts with the notion of "excellent play" that Gygax elaborates in the 1st ed AD&D rulebooks, which is linked no to system mastery but rather skill in operational play).

System excellence is something that the designers should worry about. IMO players working toward system excellence sounds like code for munchkin "beat the system" gaming which is another thing I will not tolerate at the gaming table.

I'm not sure what you think complex character build and action resolution rules (of the sort that 3E introduced into D&D) bring to the game. But rules mastery, and play based on that rules mastery (or system excellence, as I put it in my earlier post) is one natural such thing.

I will always determine the degree and frequency of adversity,

OK. This is not what W&M (sidebar, p 20) indicates to be the norm for PoL in 4e.

placement of encounters

Subject to the above, this will mostly be under the GM's control in 4e, although there are complications (eg the players, by choosing to engage a situation in a certain way, may be able to transform it from mere background or backdrop into an encounter).

levelling frequency

In 4e, as in 3E, there will be detailed rules for XP per challenge, and XP required per level.

the use of dice or role-playing in order to overcome challenges

In 4e, as in 3E, there will be detailed action-resolution rules. Btw, how do you use "role-playing", as opposed to dice, to resolve combat in 3E?

Rule 0, the penultimate rule of the game allows me to do supercede anything in the rules to the benefit of my (and my player's) campaign and preferred playstyle.

What do you regard as the ultimate rule?

And I'd note that not every gaming group allows the GM sole prerogative to determine what ruleset will be used to RPG.

I don't see where you are getting your conclusions.

Well, I've indicated all the features of the game I'm inferring from. These have all been stated publicly, either in W&M or in the various blogs and so on cited on the ENworld newspage.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

I think one of the reasons I'm pro 4E is that the elements you pointed out (more gamist, moving to squares, etc.) are very appealing to me. Even the "be all you can be" bits; I believe that entertainment games (as opposed to educational/simulation games) are essentially wish-fulfillment.

You are very wrong, but if that's how you play, cool.