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Sure if you've already decided you're not willing to accept an alternative viewpoint to your own, any explaination will fail under examination.
How Important is Magic to Dungeons and Dragons? - Third Edition vs Fourth Edition
- Thread starter Hexmage-EN
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Sure if you've already decided you're not willing to accept an alternative viewpoint to your own, any explaination will fail under examination.
ExploderWizard
Hero
Magic is defined by whats "normal" in the game world which can be very similar to or different from our own ( it IS a fantasy world) If telekinesis is common enough for the beings of the world to barely notice it then its mundane to them.
Fanaelialae
Legend
How does the "it's a gamist narrative trope" explanation fail?
Yes. Good example, too.
There are places where 4e certainly does resemble effects-based systems like HERO or Mutants and Masterminds. I can see why some people don't like them, but I love them, mainly because I get a lot of pleasure inventing my own 'fluff' to accompany the stated game mechanics.
I'm not sold on the idea that this kind of design is so out of place in D&D. I never thought D&D 'started with an imagined world'. I'd say it started with things that were very obviously game rules, ones which prioritized speed and ease-of-play over any kind of accurate simulation, with a fictional world hung over them awkwardly in most places, like a drop cloth over bulky furniture.
The imagined world shared by the players/DM arose mostly from their mutual agreement, not from the rule's algorithms (Really, algorithms? They were algorithms?).
There was always an inherent degree of tension between the rules and the 'world' created in play. Elements of 4e design put (several) new spins on this, but they're all of a familiar kind.
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Imaro
Legend
It's easy...narrative control is the new "martial"
Ultimately, these threads leave me more and more convinced that there are people who look at game rules in a way that is so incomprehensible to me that I'm not sure constructive discussion is even possible.
Yes, the mental contortions used to call something "not magic" are simply amazing.
I don't mean to quarrel RC (at least not today
), but you still haven't demonstrated that.(It fails only in that it doesn't jive with your assumptions. Operate from the different set of assumptions --like many of the posters in this thread-- and it works swimmingly).
So you are saying Kask that commander's strike, a warlord power in which you command an ally to hit an enemy is a magical ability? If not, why is it any different when someone compels an enemy to do something?
You are telling a story, only the players now have some input on how their enemies act during the combat scene. D&D has shifted from a storyteller game that had conceits of simulation (and it never did it at all well) to a purer storytelling game. The tactical combat side of the game doesn't try to simulate medieval fantasy warfare, it simply tries to be a cinematic scene.
Likewise, skills are not trying to simulate what an elf might have plausibly learned over the course of his life, it is trying to make available character archetypes who would have access to the skills needed for a particular scene. What do science officers on the Star Trek Enterprise, or characters in comic books know as a skill set? Whatever the scene requires them to know within their designated archetypal role on the team. Likewise it is the same for a 4e D&D party.
Now maybe you miss the conceit that D&D had rules for living a mundane existence with an overlay of rules for fantastic elements. I can understand why someone might think was the case, given that the D&D books of prior editions generally had that as one of their design goals. It was a poorly executed dismal failure, but it was a design goal.
But don't say that just because it is switching to a more narrative voice that it is a bad simulation. You're just missing the entire point of the design shift.
You are telling a story, only the players now have some input on how their enemies act during the combat scene. D&D has shifted from a storyteller game that had conceits of simulation (and it never did it at all well) to a purer storytelling game. The tactical combat side of the game doesn't try to simulate medieval fantasy warfare, it simply tries to be a cinematic scene.
Likewise, skills are not trying to simulate what an elf might have plausibly learned over the course of his life, it is trying to make available character archetypes who would have access to the skills needed for a particular scene. What do science officers on the Star Trek Enterprise, or characters in comic books know as a skill set? Whatever the scene requires them to know within their designated archetypal role on the team. Likewise it is the same for a 4e D&D party.
Now maybe you miss the conceit that D&D had rules for living a mundane existence with an overlay of rules for fantastic elements. I can understand why someone might think was the case, given that the D&D books of prior editions generally had that as one of their design goals. It was a poorly executed dismal failure, but it was a design goal.
But don't say that just because it is switching to a more narrative voice that it is a bad simulation. You're just missing the entire point of the design shift.
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