I think I have finally "put my finger on it"

[Irda Ranger]

Finger number one: Despite the apparent emphsis on "party roles" when I try to figure out how they are going to do this, ... it sounds to me like they are moving away, but by no means abandoning, the importance of "the party".

Hogwash.

"Why?", I guess your asking. Well, to me, a party needs each other.

Exactly. This is why your above comment is hogwash. To use the 4e-isms, a party without Defenders will get crushed by a melee onslaught. A party without Controllers will never be able to bring their power to bear.

You need the mage to counter the mages or clerics of your opponents. You need the Cleric to counter the clerics or mages of your opponents and to help your party quickly recover for the next battle. You need the fighter types to keep people off of the spellcasters while they cast their spells to bring down the enemy, and if the opportunity arises, interfere with enemy spellcasters trying to do the same to your group. Thieves are needed to safely travel through highly secured and well guarded locations.

And what, in 4e, suggests any of the above will be different? I've been following the news as closely as anyone (except Glyfair), and as far as I can tell the above will be 100% true in 4e too.

So in 4E I am concerned their attempts to "equalize the classes" will go so far that the importance of the group will almost dissappear. Hopefully these WOTC game designers are brilliant enough to achieve "class equality" without sacrificing "the party" too much.

Yeah, it's called "roles". There's no class in 4e that can do everything. The whole point of the "roles" idea is just to make sure that every class has a clear place in the party; not that he can live without all of the others. There's no role titled "superman."

Finger number two: Prep time. I still don't believe the DM work load is going to be substantially reduced enough to make me happy to DM 4E.

Now you're just looking for things to complain about. There's simply no way you can have an informed opinions on this matter.

Finger number 3, and my biggest over all problem. 4E is sounding less and less like what D&D fantasy is to me. The way it is sounding to me I already have 4E. Its called "Exalted" or "Big Eyes Small Mouth". So if 4E is indeed moving towards the flavor and feel of these types of fantasy then it is definitely moving beyond me. I play D&D for a specific flavor with specific "tropes"; I think is how it is referred to.

Fair point. Things change. This is the way of the world.

Yes, I am sure I could ignore, or house rule, what ruins 4E for me, but why bother? Why buy another system that I would have to ignore a significant portion of to get the kind of game I want? Especially since I already own them?

Because the underlying mechanics are better. That's why I ran Dragonlance using d20, and later converted a Dragonlance campaign to Grim Tales. It's why I am a player in an Iron Heroes campaign that takes place in Waterdeep. 3.x is simply better than AD&D, mechanically. I expect 4e will be better too. You can strip down the flavor and replace it with your own, and this saves you all of the work and effort of coming up with the underlying game engine (by far the harder part).

 

[Thundershield]

Genius.

Yeah, 1970s D&D was a pop culture melange of contemporary influences - Hammer horror films, swamp monster comic books, David Carradine's Kung Fu, Space: 1999. And Lord of the Rings, which had become popular relatively recently.

Couldn't have said this any better myself.

Indeed, when designing a game, you have to know something about contemporary pop culture. If you design a Wizard based on what the community considered a Wizard 10 or 20 or even 30 years ago, you'd end up with something wholly unrecognizable or just plain wrong.

I mean, just look at how the Monk ended up being a Shaolin Kung-Fu Master in a Euro-centric fantasy setting. Similarly, one could argue that today's idea of an Archer is heavily inspired by Lord of the Rings' Legolas, the Wizard by Gandalf and various romantizations of Merlin, etc.

D&D couldn't be more comtemporarily true to its original design than it is today (maybe apart from the drastic changes to Forgotten Realms, but we'll see what happens - Sorry, Ed).

 

[Aage]

Exactly. This is why your above comment is hogwash. To use the 4e-isms, a party without Defenders will get crushed by a melee onslaught. A party without Controllers will never be able to bring their power to bear.

In a sense, I hope you're wrong here.. I mean, sure, a party without a controller should be at disadvantage; likewise should a party missing another role...
But I seriously hope that no role will be crucial for party survival. Fortunately, they have said that it will not be so. The worst thing I know is forcing a player to play something he does not want because "that's what we need" (most often this applies to cleric in 3.5)

 

[Rechan]

Genius.

Yeah, 1970s D&D was a pop culture melange of contemporary influences - Hammer horror films, swamp monster comic books, David Carradine's Kung Fu, Space: 1999. And Lord of the Rings, which had become popular relatively recently.

For this to be true, then wouldn't 1e have been influenced heavily by Star Wars, given how it was taking off in the late 70s?

I definitely can see the influence of Conan comics.

 

[Remathilis]

For this to be true, then wouldn't 1e have been influenced heavily by Star Wars, given how it was taking off in the late 70s?

I definitely can see the influence of Conan comics.

Space Fantasy had little to offer at the time. 1e came out in 1977-1978, and Star Wars IV came out in 1977. Basically, it had not sank in enough as a cultural phenomenon to so quickly be written into a fantasy RPG. Its influence on Traveler however was remarkable...

 

[delericho]

Finger number one: Despite the apparent emphsis on "party roles" when I try to figure out how they are going to do this, based on the admittedly shaky/sketchy info, it sounds to me like they are moving away, but by no means abandoning, the importance of "the party".

Finger number two: Prep time. I still don't believe the DM work load is going to be substantially reduced enough to make me happy to DM 4E. If I still need to buy PC generators and other "DM tools" to significantly reduce Prep time, I'll still be staying away from 4E as a DM.

Hmm. I get the exact opposite impression from that they're saying. I'll concede that it is entirely possible that the prep time will be just as bad... but if so, it will be because their grand attempt to fix it has failed, not because that was their intent.

Finger number 3, and my biggest over all problem. 4E is sounding less and less like what D&D fantasy is to me.

I'm with you on this one. D&D means certain things to me, and if they move away from those things, or embrace other things too fully, then that would be bad (for me).

However, I agree with other posters that it is important to be somewhat flexible in this. If they turn D&D into Exalted, or Pokemon, or Harry Potter, I won't be happy. But if they take some of the good stuff from any or all of these (seriously, even Pokemon), and mix that in, while also including the older tropes as a base for the soup, then that is probably a good thing.

Ultimately, "wait and see" is the only sane thing to do. Apprehension is not unjustified, and neither is anticipation, but both absolute acceptance sight-unseen and absolute rejection sight-unseen are irrational responses.

 

[Rechan]

Finger number 3, and my biggest over all problem. 4E is sounding less and less like what D&D fantasy is to me. The way it is sounding to me I already have 4E. Its called "Exalted" or "Big Eyes Small Mouth". So if 4E is indeed moving towards the flavor and feel of these types of fantasy then it is definitely moving beyond me. I play D&D for a specific flavor with specific "tropes"; I think is how it is referred to.

More in general I find this attitude troubling. Allow me to use an analogy.

I imagine there are many fans of comics back in the 40s-50s - after all, that's when Superman/Batman got their start. However, someone who read comics in that era could pick up an issue of Punisher today, gasp, and say "This is not a superhero comic! Where has comics gone?"

Superhero comics evolved. There are various ages of super hero comics - the Golden Age (40s-50s), where it was very black and white Good and Evil; Captain America fighting Nazis. Conflict and issues were simple. In the Silver Age (Mid 50s-early 70s), science fiction elements and origins appeared, as well as more complex issues like Character Development and personal conflicts. The Bronze Age (Mid 70s-80s) was similar to the Silver Age, except darker elements and more mature storylines filtered into the comics. Finally the Modern Age (80s-Today), characters are darker and more psychologically complex.

So if you grabbed two comic books, one from the Golden Age and one from the Modern Age, you could see a huge gap in tone and theme, with the latter comic supporting a wider aray of stories. But you can't argue that the Modern age comics are not superhero comics. Because they all have the same qualities: people with powers or unique resources going into conflict with issues larger than themselves, and prevailing, and often they are doing it for a good or reasonable cause.

So too has D&D evolved. We should let other elements of fantasy in, otherwise D&D will stagnate, and discourage new blood, hinder new stories from being told, not new possibilities to be allowable under the rules.

 

[Treebore]

It's actually the exact opposite. The more you emphasize the importance of roles the more the focus is on the party and less on the individual.

The entire idea behind roles is to make sure everyone is good at something...and not the same something so everyone has to rely on each other in order to succeed.

In 3.5e it is possible to make up an entire party of characters who are good at everything. 4 of their members out of 5 could drop dead and they'd still be capable of dealing damage, controlling the enemies, taking damage, healing themselves, etc.

In 4e, each member of the party will become MORE important to the whole.

I hope your right. The thing that "throws me off" is how they are apparently trying to make the fighter into more of a "fighter mage", judging by the stuff in Book of 9 Swords. So if that is the direction they are taking the fighter, then I have to assume they are doing the same to all non-spellcasting classes. Which makes the absence of a Wizard or cleric less "costly".

Like I said in my OP, and others have repeated in this thread, info is still very sketchy, so hopefully when we see the "final version" they will have done a great job.


Doesn't sound like you will need to. From everything I've seen preparation will be reduced. If monsters abilities are made less complicated, easy to adjudicate and there aren't 10 abilities per creature, then I can just open to the proper page and run the monster even if I wasn't ready for an encounter with that creature. I can do that in 3rd ed, but if I haven't ran that creature before or if it's been a while I may need to take a couple of minutes break from the game to reread all their powers and make sure I have it right.


See, one of the biggest reasons I quit 3E was "prep time". Which is considerably more than I spend for other games I use, such as L5R, C&C, and Shadowrun. So 4E will have to reduce prep time considerably for me to be happy with it. Also consider that I am the type of DM that likes to be prepared for any direction the game goes in. So I did full write ups of NPC's and monsters, including treasure.

So as one of the posters have already said, it does sound like monsters will be easier to do, and with treasure being less of a focus that will be eased as well. Still, I'm not sure its going to be enough for my particular tates. Again, another wait and see until the final version is available.

This is a hard one without knowing exactly what you consider D&D. Everyone has a different opinion of that. Mine is simple: It is a game set in a pseudo-medieval fantasy world with various races where people who cast arcane and divine spells exist, and the players are larger than life characters who work together to defeat strange monsters.

In this aspect I don't see 4e being any less D&D than any of the previous editions. I see that other systems (like Hero or GURPS or BESM) could probably be used to play what I think of as D&D, but I don't like their mechanics, since most of them are designed to better suit other playstyles than the D&D one.

When I look at D&D in terms of mechanics, I hope that it encourages and helps facilitate the above definition of D&D. If it encourages teamwork over individual play, it's a good mechanic. If it encourages PCs to seek out and kill monsters, it's a good mechanic. If it increases the amount of fun the players have WHILE killing monsters, it's good. If it enables me to run in the above style smoothly and quickly, it's good.

As for my tastes for D&D, its much like yours, but i want it european in flavor. Book of 9 Swords indicates to me that we are going to have fighters, rangers, knights, rogues, etc... flying through the air, jumping 20 feet into the air to land on roof tops, and then leap 40 to 50 feet from roof top to roof top, or leaping from treee to tree on the tips of their toes, or call on their "chi" to perform other super human and magical feats.

So if that ends up being true in 4E, then it will no longer be my kind of D&D.
When I want that kind of fantasy I'll turn to BESM, or GURPS, or Exalted. Not to a game that I no longer consider to be the fantasy flavor that attracted me to D&D in the first place.

I already have 4 editions of D&D and the C&C rules sets to give me that.

So thats why I can't get excited about 4E, and why I pay less and less attention to all the "teaser" news. It will be better for me to wait and see the final and complete version. Instead of the next 5 to 7 months wondering if my relationship with the current version of D&D is going to be considerably weaker than ever before.

I mean look at things from my perspective. I am looking at parting ways with a game that I have spent 22 continuous years of my life playing regularly. A game that has helped me meet many good people. A game that allows me to spend many enjoyable hours gaming with my wife and kids. It would be very nice for me if I can stay connected to the current edition and community of that edition. If 4E is done in a way that turns me off, my ties to that game and community are going to go away.

That does not excite me.

I don't know, maybe 4E modules and other similiar support products will keep me connected enough. Still, I won't know that until after 4E gets here.

So until then I am going to feel like my relationship to D&D is up in the air. Not a fun or exciting feeling to have to look forward to for over 5 more months.

 

[Lanefan]

What does in the idea of party interdependence is unfettered multiclassing. If each character has a few levels in several different classes...and 3e allowed this and with PrC's, encouraged it...each becomes a one-person party. They can emphasize "roles" all they want with 4e, but if all-out multiclassing is still in the game it doesn't mean a thing.

Do away with multiclassing, and the roles become more distinct within each character. Party interdependence naturally follows.

Lanefan

 

[WayneLigon]

What does in the idea of party interdependence is unfettered multiclassing. If each character has a few levels in several different classes...and 3e allowed this and with PrC's, encouraged it...each becomes a one-person party. They can emphasize "roles" all they want with 4e, but if all-out multiclassing is still in the game it doesn't mean a thing.

That depends on how multiclassing works in 4E. Right now, if you multiclass you certainly do not become a 'one person party' - your skills and spells can't match normally expected DCs unless you are dealing with a couple of niches that deal with your character level rather than you class level.

If you cross far outside your main role, You get the abillity to aid the person really emphasizing that role, at best, or you gain a few tricks to keep up your sleeve. Otherwise, most multiclassing occurs within the role you're playing within the party.