If you love 3.5 so much....go DM it!

[Steely Dan]

1.) I've found your theory to generally be the complete opposite of what I've experienced.

2.) Many of the pro-4e folks I've seen have been players that don't care that world building and the toolkit have both ben drastically reduced

3.) It's the DMs that enjoy DMing that so "Now wait one minute" when they find that it's now up to them to fiat 99% of the game.

1.) Well, that's what makes the world go round, I mean how boring would it be if we all had the same opinions/experiences in this crazy merry-go-round existence.

2.) I'm a DM of 21 years, and have been running a Planescape campaign the last 3 years, and 4th Ed is making it so I can even better realize the Cosmology, and build my little ass off.

3.) In 1st/2nd Ed, sure.

 

[Steely Dan]

THREAD OVER!

FOR YOU!

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

ProfessorCirno,
I never said "you cannot enjoy 3.5!! It is evil, a con game to get more money from us, the females' boobies are too big, it's a MMORPG clone!" etc, did I?

If you like 3.5, fine, go enjoy

I'm just fed up with folk bashing 4th ed because:

a) they've never bothered really trying it.
b) Min/Maxing casters who don't care about other players and don't want their tricks nerfed.
c) Don't have a clue how annoying 3.5 is to DM vs 1st and 2nd. If you DM and like it, fine, me and most I know, don't. It's just over complex, and I perosnally don't like how horribly little melee types have to do.
d) Complain about 4th ed some how having no roleplaying...eh, RP is not and never should be what most of the game rules are about. RP is whole other ball game and can be attached to many games if you wish to make up a way to do it.
Social skills in 4th ed work fine for me.

Some folk just don't get how lucky they are to be able to HAVE a 4th ed and play games

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I've found your theory to generally be the complete opposite of what I've experienced. Many of the pro-4e folks I've seen have been players that don't care that world building and the toolkit have both ben drastically reduced, because to them, a game is a game. It's the DMs that enjoy DMing that so "Now wait one minute" when they find that it's now up to them to fiat 99% of the game.

There's no way you can tell me that the 4e rules make you fiat 99% of the game. I can run an entire campaign of 4e without fiating anything at all. Same thing I could do in 3e BTW, I'm not saying there is a difference in this regard.

I'm saying that in 3e, I ran a game and it by default took play in Greyhawk in a town somewhere and you went into dungeons, killed monsters and took their stuff. While running the game, I'd have to deal with constant rules discussions about whether or not you were allowed to use Animated Shields while using the Dervish Dance(No shields allowed in the dance, but then you don't have to hold an animated shield) or whether you could move to flank an enemy while raging(can't use any skill that requires concentration or skill, you are so angry, would you use tactics at all?) or whether a charmed creature would attack their allies or not(does being your best friend make them willing to do things like that?) or whether the monster would run away if you made a silent image of a dragon(does it notice there is no sound? Is it afraid of a dragon even if it doesn't?) or can you stop dervish dancing for a round and then start again the next round without using up another use of the power or can you put frost and flaming on the same weapon or can someone who is under the effect of a blur spell hide while being watched(they have concealment) and so on. All of these rules discussions require fiat on my part in order to decide how the rules actually work. Since there is no clear answer, now I have to be called upon to decide.

In 4e, I run a game that takes place in a nameless "assumed world" setting, where I can start the PCs in any town and call it whatever I want. I can make up any plot because it won't go against any canon or contradict fluff in the MM. I don't have to make up any rules or rarely make rules decisions since the powers are laid out clearly enough that no one misunderstands them("Can I use this power right now?" "What does it say?" "Standard action: shift 3 then str attack vs AC for 1[w]+str" "Do you have a Standard Action?" "Yes" "Then you can").

Does 4e make me come up with more of my own world rather than read through the MM and just build a world around all the fluff in there? Yes. Does it require more work interpreting the rules in order to run the game? Not at all.

Is there no way to make a creature who is a Shadow, Half Iron Golem, Far Realm Pit Fiend of Legacy in 4e? Yes, but that means I don't ever have to deal with the confusion and rules problems that would be caused from trying to combine so many things together(either as a player or a DM). Does this mean the "toolkit" has been reduced? Depends on how you look at it. In 4e, I can fairly easily make a creature with the THEME of that creature in 5 minutes that causes no rules problems and is easy to run. However, the game doesn't tell me word for word in a step by step process how to do it. So, it is rather liberating in terms of imagination.

 

[Steely Dan]

d) Complain about 4th ed some how having no roleplaying...eh, RP is not and never should be what most of the game rules are about. RP is whole other ball game and can be attached to many games if you wish to make up a way to do it.

Yeah, I experienced a guy role-playing his ass off in Monopoly, better than most people I've witnessed in an official "RPG".

…It was rather painful, though.

 

[Aus_Snow]

If you like 3.5, fine, go enjoy

If you like 4e, fine, go enjoy

 

[Steely Dan]

If you like 4e, fine, go enjoy

Oh come on, you can do better than that (parroting).

 

[Heselbine]

just a point, as I see so many folk who complain about 4th ed, are only *players*, not DMs.

Several times during running D&D 3rd edition campaigns I experienced 'burnout' because of the excessive requirement to prepare for games.

My suspicion is that 4th edition will mitigate this significantly, but only time will tell I guess.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

'Interesting' theories, particularly as most of those actually posting about their intentions to *not do 4e*, and instead use other systems, are in fact DMs. You can tell, because they're talking about what they're going to *run*, not just play.

In fact, IIRC, the majority of posters on EN World are in fact DMs, of whatever system(s). So, regarding the OP. . . just no.

Well, for anecdotical evidence
I am a DM in my group. I fully plan on running 4E, and never go back to 3.x. I DMed Iron Heroes, Arcana Evolved and 3E before.

Another DM in my group (and far better then me, in my opinion) is currently running Savage Tides. We recently converted to Pathfinder. But he seriously considers converting again - despite all the work probably involved - to 4E.

The rest of my group will probably continue to DM their current 3.x campaigns (if they have any), since they're using published DMs, and they are not very experienced (and one also not very good at all) with the DM job. And no one of us really has all the time to do a lot of home-brewing.

So, my guess is something like that:
- People that homebrew a lot and have the time to do so, they might prefer 3.x or Pathfinder.

- People that are time-constrained and often run published adventures will prefer 4E.

But it could also be
- The above is just wrong and actually, it differs from person to person, and there is no pattern to make sense of it.

 

[Nightchilde-2]

I'm just fed up with folk bashing 4th ed because:

a) they've never bothered really trying it.
b) Min/Maxing casters who don't care about other players and don't want their tricks nerfed.
c) Don't have a clue how annoying 3.5 is to DM vs 1st and 2nd. If you DM and like it, fine, me and most I know, don't. It's just over complex, and I perosnally don't like how horribly little melee types have to do.
d) Complain about 4th ed some how having no roleplaying...eh, RP is not and never should be what most of the game rules are about. RP is whole other ball game and can be attached to many games if you wish to make up a way to do it.
Social skills in 4th ed work fine for me.

A-frickin-men. Preach on brother.

Also, that chart in the 4e DMG on pg 42 is almost worth the price of the book BY ITSELF. Yeah, I could always pull numbers out of my pants, but it's nice to have guidelines. You could pretty much run an entire game off-the-cuff with that chart...