Is 4E charmless?

[Hairfoot]

As a proud grognard, I was quite negative about 4E when it came out. I initially resented Hasbro for taking a shotgun to my most sacred gaming cows, but I'm quite sanguine about it now.

The important thing is 4E's survival. If the newest edition increase its popularity there will always be players, even for previous editions or campaigns which don't fit the implied play style of 4E.

So now that I'm over my hissy fit, and playing a 4E campaign, the only criticism I have left is that 4E is...charmless. For me, it's like the new Mini. It's technically brilliant, but it trades entirely on the coolness of its predecessor without adding any of its own.

4E plays very smoothly, but that smoothness seems like a Teflon quality that prevents it from pinging my awesome-dar.

Does anyone else feel like 4E is a sort of RPG Stepford Wife, or just me?

 

[Byronic]

Nope, I agree with you. Fortunately one can always make ones own charm.

 

[Kzach]

You couldn't have posted this in any one of a thousand other anti-4e threads?

 

[Oldtimer]

You couldn't have posted this in any one of a thousand other anti-4e threads?

I don't read the OP as anti-4e. I can certainly see where he's coming from - 4e runs smoothly, but at the cost of the quaint charm of its predecessors. It does have its own charm, though, but it will take some time to mature.

With an OGL and a good 3PP support it might had matured sooner...

 

[Final Attack]

I love 4e. I have felt that there is less charm. Reason for me is that the mechanics of this game are so GOOD and so INTERESTING that the story part/history takes up more of the back seat. In 3rd ed I really didn't know all the rules and in that I mainly ignored most of them. My stories got a 60-70% focus because mechanics were poor and better faked. Fastforward to 4e the mechanics are AWESOME. Now all I see is interesting battle situations, combinations, and how they all tie together. Story has lost ground because of improved mechanics.

Obscure rules invoke the imagination. Having simple concise rules doesn't get my imagination going at all.

This said I don't think I want to EVER touch 3.x again.

 

[Reynard]

Obscure rules invoke the imagination. Having simple concise rules doesn't get my imagination going at all.

I agree with this sentiment. I like wierd subsystems and strange rules. As a DM, they are fun to build situations and encounters around sometimes; as a player, they can be fun to invoke sometimes. That said, there is a kind of charm to a smoothly designed game system that tickles the nascent designer in me.

 

[FireLance]

I'm also a big fan of 4e and I do see where the OP is coming from.

To me, D&D pre-3e was kind of like improv theater. You had some basic idea or theme, but it was the creativity of the actors that took center stage. 4e is more like a staged play: the actors are pretty much expected to follow the script. In my personal view, 3e started out intending to be a staged play, but after a while, the actors got bored/thought the play could be improved/decided to creatively re-interpret the play and started ad-libbing. That last bit may be taking the analogy a little too far, though.

So yeah, improv theater and staged plays are superficially similar in that both of them have actors moving around on stage and delivering lines, but they have two rather different approaches. Similarly, you can have people engaged in the superficially similar activity of sitting around a table and rolling dice, but the fundamental approaches of different groups can vary enormously.

And which approach you prefer will very likely depend on whether you feel that the need to follow a script is a lamentable loss of creativity, or you feel that having a script allows you to channel your creativity elsewhere.

 

[Mallus]

I'm looking for playability in a rule system, not charm, so I'm not sure I'd notice if 4e was really lacking in that department (nor am I sure what previous editions of D&D had is rightly called 'charm' -- 'idiosyncrasy' might be better a better word). Besides, I vastly prefer the charm me and my friends bring to the game over the off-the-shelf variety.

Our 4e campaign is stuffed to gills with charm and flavor. As is our 3e campaign.

 

[Keefe the Thief]

As a proud grognard, I was quite negative about 4E when it came out. I initially resented Hasbro for taking a shotgun to my most sacred gaming cows, but I'm quite sanguine about it now.

The important thing is 4E's survival. If the newest edition increase its popularity there will always be players, even for previous editions or campaigns which don't fit the implied play style of 4E.

So now that I'm over my hissy fit, and playing a 4E campaign, the only criticism I have left is that 4E is...charmless. For me, it's like the new Mini. It's technically brilliant, but it trades entirely on the coolness of its predecessor without adding any of its own.

4E plays very smoothly, but that smoothness seems like a Teflon quality that prevents it from pinging my awesome-dar.

Does anyone else feel like 4E is a sort of RPG Stepford Wife, or just me?

Of course, having played a game for a couple of years can add a certain level of charm (cue the people telling me "no, as soon as i opened the first page of [insert edition of choice here] i felt the magic happen!").

Anyway, i hope you are not too angry if i see this as a low-aggression-way of 4e-kickin. Clearly, just as RPGs evolve (whatever that means), ways of saying "me not likey" evolve, too.

From "damn 4e you l$%"§$ my D&D" to "like a video game" to "without charm, don´t you agree?" to...

Hmm... "not enough depth" has already been used. What about "stiffles creativity with clearly defined rules"? No, that was implied in a thread yesterday. Or "ejects tradition without reason" - no, you get that over at Candlekeep already.

Who will be the successor?

 

[Reynard]

Of course, having played a game for a couple of years can add a certain level of charm (cue the people telling me "no, as soon as i opened the first page of [insert edition of choice here] i felt the magic happen!").

Anyway, i hope you are not too angry if i see this as a low-aggression-way of 4e-kickin. Clearly, just as RPGs evolve (whatever that means), ways of saying "me not likey" evolve, too.

From "damn 4e you l$%"§$ my D&D" to "like a video game" to "without charm, don´t you agree?" to...

Hmm... "not enough depth" has already been used. What about "stiffles creativity with clearly defined rules"? No, that was implied in a thread yesterday. Or "ejects tradition without reason" - no, you get that over at Candlekeep already.

Who will be the successor?

I find it interesting that the folks who seem most likely to decry the existence of an Edition War are the ones most likely to try and stir one up.

Being immediately dismissive of others opinions and labelling them as "4E kickin" serves no other purpose than to start an argument. Criticizing a thing or an aspect of a thing is not verboten, nor is it an immediate criticism of those who might prefer that thing or that aspect.

But thinly veiled insults, that's a whole different animal.