History repeats itself

[Vayden]

Now, I'll admit that 4e doesn't excite me like 3e did. My entire group was chomping at the bit for 3e, and in fact stopped playing 2e and switched exclusively to white wolf for the last few months before it released. After that we played 3e pretty much exclusively for the last 8 years or so. But that's because 2e really was a bad game (remember kits? Bard kits weaker than fighter kits weaker than elf kits weaker than dwarf kits etc). It was just a game that all of us knew. 3e was a better game, and 4e looks to be a better game than 3.

Different experiences I guess. My entire group is chomping at the bit for 4E, and we've switched over to SWSE and White Wolf until it comes out. Can't really get up any enthusiasm for a 3E game at the moment.

 

[fnwc]

I used the verb "mock" consciounsly. It's quite different to saying "We're trying to fix the grapple rules" than filming the "-I grapple. -Oh, why did you have to do that?" sketch.

I think the grapple example was funny. It also illustrates a rule in 3.0/3.5 that is generally accepted as relatively confusing.

If people think that WotC is "mocking" players who like this rule, then they're probably taking it the wrong way. It's a humorous example the design team was showing to illustrate some of the points they'd like to address in 4th edition.

 

[Betote]

A fair amount of people in San Diego are insulted by a war-time memorial that bears a cross that is on public land (which was formerly private land until the land was given to the city, free of charge). That doesn't make the memorial insulting, it makes those people overly sensitive to the point where they seem to actively search out things to "insult" them so they can get riled up.

Sorry, my mom raised me to be polite and try to respect other people's feelings, not to say "you are just a crybaby" whenever anything I do or say offends someone.

Different weapons don't change the "full attack is the only real effective option" problem.
Flanking doesn't either.
Nor does Aid Another (giving someone else a +2 bonus on a roll doesn't help me fill my role).
Disarm and trip and grapple are not as effective as they should be, and are usually not worth the effort required to be effective at them.
Two-handed weapons fall under different weapons, and thus offer no additional options during play.
Mounted Combat is just another way of fulfilling a role, one which most players don't go for because of the extra things involved with dealing with a mount.
Reach Weapons fall under different weapons.
Whirlwind Attack is useless in most situations, since you're not often surrounded by enemies. Plus it's overly expensive for what it does.
Cleave is okay, but is still a "proc" off of something else (not an ability to choose to activate on your turn).
Stunning Blow is pretty awful for non-monks.
Tactical feats aren't part of the core.

You're playing a different D&D than me, I'm afraid. Because those are always thought as real options at my table, and it's full of tactics-loving players (former M:tG pro players and such).

And, if you oversimplify fighters' options, I can do the same and say that, in that case, wizards only have one real option in combat, being it "cast a spell".

I take the designers at their word, and these are all things they have expressed. I don't see any reason to take the speculation seriously unless it's backed up by statements from the people doing the work.

No, you took just one vague statement like "combat will be cool" or "every one will have something cool to do every turn" and you elaborated your opinion based on assuptions. When you say "4E is going to be the Avatar of Awesomeness", you're just as misinformed as when a 4E-hater says "4E is going to be WoW up to 11".

 

[Vradna]

No, you took just one vague statement like "combat will be cool" or "every one will have something cool to do every turn" and you elaborated your opinion based on assuptions. When you say "4E is going to be the Avatar of Awesomeness", you're just as misinformed as when a 4E-hater says "4E is going to be WoW up to 11".

No No, let Mourn back up what he says. I imagine he may work for Wizards or is a playtester. Mourn? Care to elaborate? Just a simple yes or no.

 

[Corinth]

I'd buy the argument if it weren't for World of Warcraft and its 10 million subscribers.

No, really, World of Warcraft really did change everything. For decades now we've talked, joked, mocked, derided, etc. the idea that someday the folks working in the far more popular and profitable console and PC RPG market would find a way to deliver the fundamental D&D gameplay experience in a manner that could--and, in time, would--kill D&D (and take tabletop RPGs, for all intents and purposes, with them). Folks, that time came and went a couple of years ago; what we're experiencing now is the shockwave of that event finally hitting us.

The new edition is a game that I think will play very well, enjoy considerable popularity and pay for itself. That doesn't mean that I think it's a good move for D&D as a TRPG, and I don't think so because everything that Mearls & company present as a strength is one that World of Warcraft does in a far superior manner with a far superior degree of omnipresence and convenience for a cheaper buy-in cost and an acceptable (if not cheaper) ongoing cost. Why? Because trying to make a tabletop game that attempts to play to the strengths of a different medium, instead of playing to those of its own medium is a sucker's game that always ends in failure. (Where's Eyebeams? He's said as much in his LJ account months ago.)

This is not 2000. This is not 1989. This is not 1977. This is not 1974. This is 2008, and the conditions of both the internal and external factors putting pressure on D&D are nothing like what existed at those prior points in time just before the release of a new edition of D&D. Toss out that 1999 market survey; the conditions then no longer apply, and haven't for years. What we have now, and have had for at least three years, is a truly viable threat to the supremacy of D&D in its own niche! What we have here is a game that does everything that D&D ever did, only faster and better with superior support from a stronger company. World of Warcraft is the first true threat, the first D&D Killer, to come along in the game's history. This is the true, historically-specific factor that too many here utterly fail to take seriously.

What should happen, and won't due to the nature of print publishing, is to refocus the game towards those things that can't be done better by either online networking or by automating the number-crunching. For tabletop RPGs as a business to survive, for the hobby to endure as a cultural force with influence disproportionate to its participants' numbers or its direct influence (and it does have that now) on other media, the game has to shift away from things better done by machines and towards things better done (or only done) by men--by people--and that means doing things like making the known logistical problem (getting a group of adults to agree to block out a set appointment of time, meet on time, work toward a single goal during that time, and do it regularly over an interval of once a week over a year on average) transform from a liability into an asset, or focusing the game away from physical conflict (not just combat, but also the tactical, strategic and logistical resource management aspects) and towards social/emotional conflict. So long as number-crunching and pawn-pushing dominates gameplay, tabletop RPGs are doomed to extinction because computers do all of that far better than people.

 

[Lizard]

I think the grapple example was funny. It also illustrates a rule in 3.0/3.5 that is generally accepted as relatively confusing.

If people think that WotC is "mocking" players who like this rule, then they're probably taking it the wrong way. It's a humorous example the design team was showing to illustrate some of the points they'd like to address in 4th edition.

Just to clarify, I don't think the video was mocking players of older versions; I think it was emblematic of the marketing decision to portray older versions as fatally flawed, promise us 4e fixes "everything", and then not actually telling us HOW. (Note that the 4e game isn't shown; none of the solutions to the 'problems' of older versions are presented, and I *still* want to know how 4e is going to magically keep me from having the "wrong" miniatures at my table...)

8 years from now, there WILL be a 4e segment in that video, leading to 5e. No one -- especially not the designers, who are neither incompetent nor stupid -- believes a product as complex as an RPG can be "bug free". So stop telling us it will be. We aren't believing it, you (WOTC marketing) know it's not true, and it makes you look like lairs who think we're idiots. Can we have honest hype, instead?

 

[Reynard]

I'd buy the argument if it weren't for World of Warcraft and its 10 million subscribers.

No, really, World of Warcraft really did change everything. For decades now we've talked, joked, mocked, derided, etc. the idea that someday the folks working in the far more popular and profitable console and PC RPG market would find a way to deliver the fundamental D&D gameplay experience in a manner that could--and, in time, would--kill D&D (and take tabletop RPGs, for all intents and purposes, with them). Folks, that time came and went a couple of years ago; what we're experiencing now is the shockwave of that event finally hitting us.

The new edition is a game that I think will play very well, enjoy considerable popularity and pay for itself. That doesn't mean that I think it's a good move for D&D as a TRPG, and I don't think so because everything that Mearls & company present as a strength is one that World of Warcraft does in a far superior manner with a far superior degree of omnipresence and convenience for a cheaper buy-in cost and an acceptable (if not cheaper) ongoing cost. Why? Because trying to make a tabletop game that attempts to play to the strengths of a different medium, instead of playing to those of its own medium is a sucker's game that always ends in failure. (Where's Eyebeams? He's said as much in his LJ account months ago.)

This is not 2000. This is not 1989. This is not 1977. This is not 1974. This is 2008, and the conditions of both the internal and external factors putting pressure on D&D are nothing like what existed at those prior points in time just before the release of a new edition of D&D. Toss out that 1999 market survey; the conditions then no longer apply, and haven't for years. What we have now, and have had for at least three years, is a truly viable threat to the supremacy of D&D in its own niche! What we have here is a game that does everything that D&D ever did, only faster and better with superior support from a stronger company. World of Warcraft is the first true threat, the first D&D Killer, to come along in the game's history. This is the true, historically-specific factor that too many here utterly fail to take seriously.

What should happen, and won't due to the nature of print publishing, is to refocus the game towards those things that can't be done better by either online networking or by automating the number-crunching. For tabletop RPGs as a business to survive, for the hobby to endure as a cultural force with influence disproportionate to its participants' numbers or its direct influence (and it does have that now) on other media, the game has to shift away from things better done by machines and towards things better done (or only done) by men--by people--and that means doing things like making the known logistical problem (getting a group of adults to agree to block out a set appointment of time, meet on time, work toward a single goal during that time, and do it regularly over an interval of once a week over a year on average) transform from a liability into an asset, or focusing the game away from physical conflict (not just combat, but also the tactical, strategic and logistical resource management aspects) and towards social/emotional conflict. So long as number-crunching and pawn-pushing dominates gameplay, tabletop RPGs are doomed to extinction because computers do all of that far better than people.

I just wanted to express my hearty agreement before the inevitable dogpile you are about to suffer commences.

 

[The Ubbergeek]

Your assumption is flawed - you consider things in the corporation wil be the same years later.

Things change with time, in good or ill.

 

[pemerton]

The new edition is a game that I think will play very well, enjoy considerable popularity and pay for itself. That doesn't mean that I think it's a good move for D&D as a TRPG, and I don't think so because everything that Mearls & company present as a strength is one that World of Warcraft does in a far superior manner with a far superior degree of omnipresence and convenience for a cheaper buy-in cost and an acceptable (if not cheaper) ongoing cost. Why? Because trying to make a tabletop game that attempts to play to the strengths of a different medium, instead of playing to those of its own medium is a sucker's game that always ends in failure.

<snip>

What should happen, and won't due to the nature of print publishing, is to refocus the game towards those things that can't be done better by either online networking or by automating the number-crunching.

<snip>

focusing the game away from physical conflict (not just combat, but also the tactical, strategic and logistical resource management aspects) and towards social/emotional conflict. So long as number-crunching and pawn-pushing dominates gameplay, tabletop RPGs are doomed to extinction because computers do all of that far better than people.

Corinth, in a number of old and current threads I have posted that 4e is providing the tools to allow D&D for the first time to do just what you are asking for - allow players to take control of the game and use it to explore the thematic (ie socia/emotional) material that they want to, and bring an end to the notion (for which I think a certain interpretation of the AD&D rules has to be held responsible) that the game is simply one in which the players turn up and run their pieces through the set of challenges set up by the GM (which really would be little different from the WoW play experience).

It would be interesting to hear your resonse to some of the discussions in those threads (eg the DM-proofing thread, the Death of Simulation thread, or the Former Doubter thread).

Reynard, I know that you have a different vision of what AD&D can offer, in terms of player imagination and creativity and participation, from that which I have sketched above. But (without intending this as any disrespect) I believe that in the present era you are very much in the minority in terms of your interest in the style of AD&D play (roughly, Gygaxian long-term operational play) that delivers that sort of payoff.

 

[Lizard]

Corinth, in a number of old and current threads I have posted that 4e is providing the tools to allow D&D for the first time to do just what you are asking for - allow players to take control of the game and use it to explore the thematic (ie socia/emotional) material that they want to, and bring an end to the notion (for which I think a certain interpretation of the AD&D rules has to be held responsible) that the game is simply one in which the players turn up and run their pieces through the set of challenges set up by the GM (which really would be little different from the WoW play experience).

That's weird, since the precise opposite seems to be the design intent. Timing is based on 'encounters', not real-world equivalents, PCs are unique mechanically as well as for the fact they're player controlled (making them more obviously 'gamepieces' in my mind), non-combat skills are reduced to handwaving, player spotlights that allow one player to show special skills are discarded in favor of 'group activity', the vast increase in the detail level of the "assumed world" complete with history, racial relations, and so on, etc, etc, etc. Everything about the design is focused on "Play consists of a group of Heroes who walk through a sequence of Encounters which are moderated/refereed by the Dungeon Master."