Hope?

[Celebrim]

Are you talking about me or them?

Every DM that has ever lived. This is just the first time a DM has ever had the oppurtunity to impose his homebrew on the core game without restriction. It would be like if Monte had written AU to be the PH, and not merely an alternative one. AU has some cool ideas, but its clearly not a direct inheritor of what came before.

Neither is 4e.

 

[Keefe the Thief]

Well, people habe been saying the same thing about 3e for years, so it seems that everything stays the same.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

The end result of resolving everything mechanically by examining the character's abilities is removing the player from the game to the point that a computer script might as well be playing the character for you.

I'd argue that the end result is that the Player and the DM have more parity as both are now required to generate and interpret numbers as opposed to DM Fiat systems which result in everything relying on the DM's goodwill and personality.

This is exactly why social skills are very important.

And you certainly don't have to have pure number and rule mechanics either. The way a character describes a stunt has a major effect, in a good system, on how the rules are applied in combat. The same is equally true regarding a decent argument and a social scene.

The end goal isn't to get rid of the player it's to free the DM/free us from the DM.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

AU has some cool ideas, but its clearly not a direct inheritor of what came before.

Neither is 4e.

Honestly, I find this to be an intuitively untenable statement, if not simply an invention of pure rhetoric.

An inheritor has a legacy from her ancestor, but should, by definition, be a different creature.

And I would not hesitate to say that for every point of difference you could expound between 4E and 3E I could reference at least two points of similarity.

Facetiously, a 1/3 rate of difference to a 2/3 rate of similarity would be significantly higher than the absolute minimum 1 for 1 rate of differentiation one would find in an actual genetic heir would it not?

Now, you could win this hypothetical contest, though I wouldn't bet on it. And I certainly couldn't evaluate the value to you of the differences you could name, but until you win it I and even after I won it, should that happen, I really only think you could claim that 4E, at this point, has failed to inherit your love of the prior edition.

But even at this intuitive level I just don't think you have the grounds to honestly make this claim from anything but a personal perspective, when, from all we've seen, 4E seems like a much closer heir to 3E than 3E was to 2E.

I should specify I'm not trying to diss on anyone here, just to make a plea for some fairness and rigor.

 

[Celebrim]

I should specify I'm not trying to diss on anyone here, just to make a plea for some fairness and rigor.

You can diss on me if you want. I'm not going to be hurt. However, I don't think you've actually demonstrated rigor or fairness, so your grounds for doing so might be a little shaky. All you've actually said is that by your subjective, intuitive, measurement of what constitutes change, the change is small. But there is no attempt at rigor or fairness, so don't pretend that there is merely because it is an nice rhetorical invention.

 

[wgreen]

Also: "social skills" don't belong in the game, AFAIAC. You can have mechanics for leadership and morale and such, but if a player can't squeak out a decent argument, he shouldn't be playing a diplomatic PC.

See, that's how I feel about combat, too. If a player can't beat me in a simple arm-wrestling contest, she shouldn't be playing a fighter. Get to the gym, you lazy punks.

And fun. Rolling dice is generally not fun.

man what

-Will

 

[Reynard]

man what

-Will

Psst. There were more words and stuff after the part you quoted.

 

[wgreen]

Psst. There were more words and stuff after the part you quoted.

But none of them supported the statement that "rolling dice is generally not fun." IMO.

-Will

 

[Celebrim]

I'd argue that the end result is that the Player and the DM have more parity...

I'm with Monte on this. DM and player parity isn't necessarily good for the game. Good DM's are good for the game. Rules that attempt parity don't actually mitigate the problems of a poor or inexperienced DM, which is what they are trying to do.

...as both are now required to generate and interpret numbers as opposed to DM Fiat systems which result in everything relying on the DM's goodwill and personality.

This is the sort of anti-DM sentiment that I find extremely destructive to the game. If you can't trust the DM, having some rules to bash him over the head with won't fix your game.

This is exactly why social skills are very important.

Social skills can have a role, but a system that replaces roleplay with systematic mechanical rollplay makes for a very uninteresting game. I want to have conversations in character with the DM in the role of an NPC and with my fellow players. I want to as the DM bring to life richly detailed and memorable NPC's and I don't want them to do completely illogical and out of character things just because the player rolled a dice and the diplomacy mechanics says that he should.

See, the thing about social skills is that the sort of players that clamor for them NEVER believe that what is good for the goose is good for the gander. The sort of players that clamor for hard and fast social rules would throw a fit if my NPC's used skill roles to override player choice. They would (rightfully, I think) become outraged if I began to play thier characters for them and told them what thier characters did just because the NPC had a +20 bonus in intimidate, bluff, or diplomacy. For all the pretensions that player crowd has for DM/player parity, they aren't really interested in true simulation or PC/NPC parity.

And you certainly don't have to have pure number and rule mechanics either. The way a character describes a stunt has a major effect, in a good system, on how the rules are applied in combat. The same is equally true regarding a decent argument and a social scene.

Sure, but then you are back to DM fiat again. You've just disguised it.

The end goal isn't to get rid of the player it's to free the DM/free us from the DM.

If you think that you are slaves to the DM, it's a problem with the DM or player that the rules can't fix.

 

[Celebrim]

But none of them supported the statement that "rolling dice is generally not fun." IMO.

-Will

Emmm... 'rolling dice is generally not fun' is a statement of such obvious truth that I don't see why it needs an elaborate explanation. 'Rolling dice' is the reason D&D tends to crowd 20 minutes of fun into 4 hours of play. Mechanical resolution is a necessary part of an RPG, but the actual mechanics of resolving it aren't in and of themselves fun - only the scenarios and outcomes. This is the reason that high realism games tend to lose out to 'rules medium' games. The high realism game just ends up with so much dice rolling and table lookups and math, that the enjoyment of the outcome is overwhelmed by the tedium of figuring out what that outcome is.

Ideally, mechanics would resolve themselves almost instantly.

Have you ever played the board game 'Risk'? Can be fun, but with six people it takes 6-8 hours to resolve. If you ever played Risk on a computer interface that rolls the dice for you, what you discover is that a 6 player game can be resolved in 40 minutes. That's 40 minutes of fun crammed into 6-8 hours of play. That 5 hours and 20 minutes of dice rolling is the tedious part. The fun is deciding what to do and seeing what happens.