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Message: <blockquote data-quote="eamon" data-source="post: 5523380" data-attributes="member: 51942">It's very hard to make a case for where 4e could be improved into a system that's more fun when any criticism is turned aside and assumed to be praise for 3e (despite my explicit exhortations to the contrary).Being only slightly worse than 3.5 is not exactly high praise in my book.  The fact that fluff is largely meaningless means that this is indeed harder than necessary in 4e: there's precisely zero help from the system.The characters are mechanically varied, and this results in a fun tactical game.  But there's nothing there beyond the mechanics.  If you're doing a close burst 1 that does damage and pushes 1, it doesn't matter how you do so - so much so that a power name is just some meaningless label to attach to a tactically interesting option.People aren't fireballing, they're doing an area burst attack that does damage.  Anybodies area burst attack will work almost the same; the powers are anodyne.  Almost all effects come from the standard shortlist and have a standard duration.  It doesn't matter what a power does it only matters what it's effects are...  So people ignore the fluff and end up focusing on the mechanics - bar the occasion descriptive outburst that less a sign of immersion and more simply a fun flourish.  Simple rules can have complex tactical games - witness go, or chess - so this limitation doesn't make gameplay uninteresting.  I just don't think it's conducive to immersion.  Fun - yes!  But not immersive.If you really want to, you don't have to ignore the fluff.  But 4e doesn't acctually support that.  If you strongly interact with the fluff - great!  That's a sign of a great group, not a sign of a great system.Right, that's actually a strength 4e: tactically it's rich. To reiterate; a tactical minis game is great fun.  I'm not saying 4e is bad!  I'm just saying it's not very immersive.  And I'm not saying 3.5 was better, it's just a handy yardstick to compare with because there are specific aspects that worked better in 3e.Uhm, not in any way whatsoever. I don't see where you're getting this; 4e gives virtually no support whatsoever.  It gives you encouragement saying: try this!  Then it leaves the DM completely in the dark, pretty much without any further hints...  There's a big difference between metagame game (of which there's lots) and in-game help.  I'd like more of the latter, I've got enough of the former.  i.e. there's no help whatsoever.  If you do everything yourself excellently, then it works - well, great, but I want a game system so I don't need to run a freeform game.  Pretty much every power in the game.  The very notion of marking (with which I have no problem in principle), to start with: where's the reasonable explanation?  There never is any, just a bit of flavor.  Yeah, that is great <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":-)" title="Smile    :-)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":-)" />.  More!  Hmm, no, the wishlist based system (if that's what you were referring to) or the death-by-a-thousand-cuts in general makes things easier for the game designer.  It makes things harder for the DM.  Now I need to both explain away wishlists and actually pick items (work and work), or in general expend more effort linking in-game to meta-game than if the system had done some of that for me.(Incidentally, the item-thingo is a pet peeve of mine; see sig).Anyhow... this is becoming pointless.  I'm trying to identify ways in which 4e can be improved upon.  I don't want an edition war, and I don't want to go back to 3e.  I just want improvement.  And why not?</blockquote>

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