Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Simon Atavax" data-source="post: 4485107" data-attributes="member: 59171">I was highly resistant to 4e at first, not for any solid reasons (hadn't read the PHB at all) but for three (relatively) minor gripes: 1. I initially thought the game was too high-powered. (CON score = starting HP + bonus????) 2. I initially hated the idea of "powers". (Bah! Just a supers game!) 3. I initially hated Dragonborn and Tieflings (Bah! Demon Men and Dragon Men!) But then I started to read the PHB in depth, and a few things gelled, inspired largely by two games I have loved over the years: Gamma World (1978) 1st Edition and GURPS (3rd edition). 1. In Gamma World (1978; see my avatar) PCs start very high-powered. Their CON score is, in fact, starting HP, almost exactly like D&D 4e. Yet Back In The Day I never once felt that Gamma World was "too high powered." The reason? The monsters you face in GW are truly frightening. As I read through my 4e PHB I kept thinking, "Kind of like old-school Gamma World." <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/laugh.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":lol:" title="Laughing    :lol:" data-shortname=":lol:" /> Then, thinking as a DM, I thought, "If the PCs in this 4e game are 'too powerful', I'll just amp up the monsters. Just like back in the days of Gamma World." 2. In Gamma World (and, for that matter, Rifts), it was usually the case that you would play a "dragon man" or something of the sort (mutant animals especially). I stopped hating Dragonborn and Tieflings almost immediately as I harkened back to the Good Old Days of Gamma World 1e, where we routinely had mutant alligators, mutant rabbits, mutant wolves, and mutant nothing-in-particular-freaks as PCs. It was both heroic and old school.  3. As for my "powers" hatred, I soon realized, upon reading the PHB, that "Powers" is just a word. I realized that GURPS has done the same thing for years, just using the word "Skills." Perhaps that's why the PHB described Fighter powers as "Exploits" and Wizard powers as "Spells", etc. The GURPSyness of this approach really drew me in. Anyway, I know that my reflections on Gamma World and GURPS aren't going to help anyone else embrace 4e, but I just thought I'd throw it out there as a personal mini-epiphany. It was funny to me that some of my objections to 4e were that it was "teh new shinny MMO!!1!one1!" when in fact it ended up rthat as I read through the PHB for 4e it more and more reminded me of the good times I've had with GURPS 3e, and the amazingly good times, tinged with nostalgia, that I had WAAAAY back in the late 70s/early 80's with (sob, sniff) Gamma World 1e. Has anyone else found that something in other games has helped you appreciate what 4e is doing?</blockquote>

Verification