Gaming Pornography: Will 4th Edition lead to a more Realistic and Useful Game?

[SPoD]

As proof of my point I offer this observation, many of you seem unable to even imagine the idea of reality and the game co-existing. That they must be separate.

What I love about this last post is how bluntly it gets to the real point: "If you understood what I was saying, you would agree with me. Since you do not agree, therefore you must not be able to even imagine what I'm talking about."

Here's what you "seem unable to even imagine": That some of us are perfectly capable of imagining the scenario to which you cling, but don't want or need it in our game. That exploring the moral/humanist issues of the characters is in no way inherently better than, you know, NOT doing so. That your preferred method of play is the antithesis of everything I want out of D&D, and that doesn't make me somehow flawed or mentally deficient. I want escapism, not a humanities lesson, and if D&D doesn't give it to me, I will play something else, be it another roleplaying game or World of Warcraft or what have you.

In short, if the 4E books spend most of their pages telling me how essential it is to relate the adventures to critical issues of social and psychological importance, I will happily put the books back on the store shelves and continue playing 3.5 Edition. But then, I bet I spent more money than you on 3.X, so guess who they are going to tailor 4E toward?

So, to answer the title of your post: No, 4th Edition will not lead to anything that you would (using your own lenghty definitions) consider a more realistic or useful game, and many, many players prefer it that way.

 

[Lot]

I find that I like to ground my D&D in some kind of reality. Even if not the real world, I like my magical fantasy world to be consistent and to make sense by its own rules. Though I enjoy history, philosophy, theology and psychology, these are not the things that drive my game. I like to add depth to my games because it makes it more fun.

People have stated that they want some simple escapism from the real world and would not want any real issues to come up in their games. For me, the escapism works better when I become further immersed in the game. If I cannot remember the other player character's names or figure out where our characters fit in the world, it breaks the illusion. When that happens, I may as well be playing craps or balancing my checkbook.

My inspiration for gaming is enjoying stories like those I enjoy in literature and movies. At the same time, I enjoy the uncertainty,risk, and unpredictability that creative writing cannot achieve. I get to help make a fun, well-crafted story but I also experience much of the same fears and uncertainties of the character in the game. It's exciting, rewarding and fun.

I understand that 3e D&D does not especially push for strong character background, but it does nothing to take it away. I've played in some great, character-driven 3e games with intricate plots, court intrigue, and deep, personal roleplaying. This same game also had tons of tactical combat and powerful, commonly-seen magic. I like current game's larger than life characters because it allows the PCs to be movers and shakers in a well-realized world.

I agree that super-powerful characters going from dungeon to dungeon, gaining loot, experience, and super powers is boring to me. But there really is something great to characters you like and enjoy playing having amazing adventures in a rich, deep world full of danger in mystery. Once I was able to ignore illustrations of spiked armor and belt-buckle sleeves, I found 3e D&D capable of making the types of heroes able to survive in the exciting worlds I like to play in. I hope 4e can provide similar fun in a easier to use way. I am optimistic.

 

[haakon1]

1E also had intellect devourers, and beholders, and brain moles, and gelatinous cubes, and ropers, and carrion crawlers. EGG derived several monsters from small plastic toys, and many others from his own imagination. Where is the mythological basis for these creatures?

And then on the other side of the equation, 3E still has ghosts, and vampires, and wolves, and harpies, and dragons, and orcs.

Where is the difference again?

Perhaps a difference in the prevalence of flumphs?

 

[haakon1]

meh, I think you are overstating the case here, by cherry picking your examples.
In 3X there are ghosts and vampires and wolves and harpies and dragons orcs to fight.
In AD&D you had flumphs and modrons.

I'm not claiming 3X is better on this point. I'm just saying that your arugument can be turned on its head just by changing the cherry picking.

I've been playing 3X since it came out. I've seen plenty of spikey armor in books, but it has never once been a feature at the table. Certainly no more than my AD&D games were dominated by wandering prostitute checks.

I don't like warforged, but I just don't play in Eberron.

I don't believe that the changes you claim are in any way forced on you.

Certainly I ignored the spikey armor. But some of the bizarro stuff in 3e had to be rooted out if you used published adventures. Like picking green peppers out of the lasagna -- it can be done, but it's simpler if they just cook it right in the first place.

 

[haakon1]

You know, in the real world, sympathetic characters don't wander into the wilderness, kill things that look scary, and take their stuff. They don't get into interesting tactical combat situations: instead, when they fight, the results are swift, brutal, and pretty random. In fact, that's why they don't fight much--they try to resolve their disagreements in much more complicated and subtle ways. They appreciate complexity and nuanced, and their lives are often, narratively, really interesting.

That's why I liked Boot Hill. A 6 on a d6 for damage means you're dead. That leads to either quick replacement characters (fun for a night of silliness) or a different style of play from D&D. And it's definitely important to hit first . . .

But D&D is a different game, with a different fun.

 

[(contact)]

For me, this si the root of the problem, and why I get frustrated with those people that adamantly deny that the game has changed over the decades and editions. I want a game that is as much about strategic exploration as it is about heroic battles and epic romances.

I agree with you that the game at large doesn't seem to be going that direction. What remains to be seen is will it be easier or more difficult to impliment your tastes in 4e.

I'm actually guessing that it will be easier:

I think that the increased categorization and modularization of player capabilites as the game evolves might make it much easier to rule-0 out of your campagin the effects that run against or nerf your preferred style of play.

Seriously.

 

[(contact)]

But whereas I can easily grasp your point, that the game is not the same as reality (something I also stated early on because it is obviously true), some of you seem almost totally unable to grasp my point, which is that they should at least be related for the game to be of real value.

I think most people here grasp your point, but some just disagree with your value proposition.

A lot of people think the value in D&D is its escapism, fun and dissasociaton from real-world themes. They will find edification elsewhere, and want D&D for something else entirely.

 

[haakon1]

I agree that super-powerful characters going from dungeon to dungeon, gaining loot, experience, and super powers is boring to me. But there really is something great to characters you like and enjoy playing having amazing adventures in a rich, deep world full of danger in mystery. Once I was able to ignore illustrations of spiked armor and belt-buckle sleeves, I found 3e D&D capable of making the types of heroes able to survive in the exciting worlds I like to play in. I hope 4e can provide similar fun in a easier to use way. I am optimistic.

As a DM, I agree. But in the game where I'm a player, we don't care about much more than killing things and taking their stuff, or more importantly, leveling up. Which kind of bugs me, but it could happen in any edition.

Overall, I'm OK with 3.5 (it has its charms, as did AD&D), enough so that I wish there was no 4e for now, and I'm cautious about the new edition.

The best old schoolers and people like me (Gygax fan, Greyhawk fan, liberal arts education, one of my majors in history, lived in the UK for 3 years including as many trips to castles and Roman ruins as I could easily fit in, read a lot of Shakespeare), it's unlike 4e will be an improvement . . . but it need not be worse, either.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

But I suspect that many of you reflexively failed to see my point precisely because the modern versions of the game (and perhaps to a degree this is always the case with such games, but I think the modern versions over-emphasize this point strongly) create a sort of either conscious or subconscious psychological mind-set of disconnection between game and reality which makes even the very idea of them co-existing mutually and beneficially so alien a concept that it is about the one and only thing you cannot imagine.

My personal experience of playing a very high-octane magical buttkicker with a grounded, meaningfully human psychology in a 3.5 D&D campaign demonstrates to me that your point is a load of crap.

I still contend that it's a matter of the people with whom you play the game. If they want to include philosophical elements in the game which stimulate discussion, they will do so. If they just want to blow of steam in an escapist dungeon-crawl, they will do that instead.

You had a high-minded First Edition group; I wasn't playing back then, but Dragon magazine's letter columns and anecdotes told on the Internet provide plenty of evidence, were it needed, that there were many First Edition groups who played the game for the game's sake, with no thought to more meaningful experiences than getting the most powerful character you could and killing your way through Deities and Demigods.

I completely understand your point, but you mistakenly believe that the root cause of the "problem" you perceive lies with the game, when it actually lies with individual groups of players.

 

[Nifft]

Perhaps a difference in the prevalence of flumphs?

All right!
Stop whatcha doin'
'cause I'm about to ruin
the flavor and the crunch that ya used to.

I look funny
but yo I'm makin' GP, see
so yo world I hope you're ready for me.

Now hear and hark,
I'm the new dog to bark
and my lair's laid down in the Underdark.
I drink up all the potions that ya got on ya shelf
so just let me introduce myself

Mah name is Flumph-D, pronounced wit a umph-ty,
Yo gnome boy, oh how I love to trump thee,
And all the races in the top ten--please allow me to bump thee.

I'm floatin' tall, y'all,
and just like Races of Destiny,
you're gonna fall when the supplements pump me.

I like to rhyme,
I like my builds funky,
I'm crunchy. I like my armor dungeon-punky.

I'm sick wit dis, straight up Sneak Attack,
but sometimes I get ridiculous
I'll eat up all your rations 'till I'm disabled.
Hey yo fat troll, c'mere--are ya flankable?
Yeah, I called ya fat.
Look at me, I'm Small
It never kept me from a dungeon crawl.

I'm an Aberration
I like the flumphs with gyration
I once got busy in Candlekeep's crenelation.
I'm Wis penalty.
Allow me to amaze thee.
They say I'm ugly but it just don't faze me.
I'm still gettin' in the Nymph's plants,
and I even got my own dance

{Chorus:}
The Flumphy Dance is your chance to do the flumph
Do the Flumphy Flumph, come on and do the Flumphy Flumph
Do the Flumphy Flumph, just watch me do the Flumphy Flumph
Do ya know what I'm doin', doin' the Flumphy Flumph
Do the Flumphy Flumph, do the Flumphy Flumph

Verse Two:
People say "Yo, Flumphy, you're really funny lookin'"
that's all right, my acid gets things cookin',
Ya Climb, ya Jump, ya constantly try to get in melee,
but ya can't get near me.

I give 'em more, see, and in the town, B,
all the girls know I'm Lawful G,
Oh yes, ladies, I'm really bein' sincere
'cause in a 69 my tentacles will tickle ya rear.

My spikes are big, uh-uh I'm not ashamed
Big like Final Fantasy, I'm still gettin' paid
I get ale from the barmaids, ya know I'm in charge,
both how I'm livin' and my spikes are large.

I get acidic, I shoot an arrow like Melf,
I use a word that don't mean nothin', like "Gelf".
I starred in the Folio, and if ya missed it,
I'm the one Good thing in that pack o' biscuits.

Also told ya that I like to flank
Well, yeah, I guess it's obvious, I also like to tank.
All ya had to do was give Flumphy a chance
and now I'm gonna do my dance.

{Chorus}
Breakdown:
Oh, yeah, that's the break, y'all
Let me hear a little bit of that Bard groove right here
Oh, yeah!
Now that I told ya a little bit about myself
let me tell ya a little bit about this dance
It's real easy to do--check it out

Verse Three:
First I float to the side like my speed was Clumsy
Shakin' and twitchin' kinda like I was mumsy
Crazy wack funky
People say ya fly like a jabberwocky on crack, Flumphy
That's all right 'cause my body's a saucer
It's supposed to look like enervation or Nausea
Anyone can play this game
This is my dance, y'all, Flumphy Flumph's my name
No two PCs will do it the same
Ya got it down when the DM seems to be in pain

Jumpin', Flankin', Tumblin',
jig around, spankin' tha chump,
and when the ogre Cha dump points a finger like a stump
tell him Sneak Attack, I'm doin' the Flumph.

{Chorus}
Humans, do the Flumphy Flumph, do the Flumphy Flumph
Dwarves, do the Humpty Hump, do the Flumphy Flumph
Elf subraces, do the Flumphy Flumph, just keep on doin' the Flumph
Halflings, do the Flumphy Flumph, do the Flumphy Flumph
Let's get stoopid!

{Chorus}
Oh, yeah, come on and break it down

Outro:
Once again, the Underdark is in the Core rules
I'd like to send a shout out to the whole world,
keep on doin' the Flumphy Dance,
and to the Dryads,
peace and flumphiness forever.

{Music and fade}