Is 4E charmless?

[Kinneus]

Well the concept of 'charm' is pretty darn subjective, so I don't think you can really claim that 4e has less charm or more charm than 3.5. "It has 3.2 less charm units!" But, yeah, with that said, I can sort of see where you're coming from, but for me anyway, the important factor is this:

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.

When I first sat down and read through the 4e core rulebooks, I felt mildly disappointed for about an hour or so. In general, I expected a lot more fluff, a lot more of a sense of a fantastic world, instead of a bundle of mechanics.

But my disappointment blossomed into a growing excitement when I realized that I didn't need the fluff fed to me. I could make it up myself. In fact, I was supposed to. That's what 4e is all about; everything you want can fit into it, always say yes, improvise on the fly.

Right now, it's probably true that most games are more about the roll-play than the roleplay. But that's just because this edition is relatively young, and people are still getting used to the mechanics, still enjoying the basic pleasure of getting a critical hit with your fancy new Daily power. Once that excitement wears off, you'll find more and more people making up their own campaign settings or building modules that focus heavily on roleplay. And I think when that time comes (and it's sort of already coming now), people will find that 4e has plenty of space for that sort of thing. Plenty of space for 'charm'.

 

[Jasperak]

I agree with the OP; the mechanics do not inspire me to play the game.

 

[Byronic]

Hmm, it's kinda funny, call it charm, call it idiosyncrasy or call it whatever you want. But 3ed edition DnD had it more then 4th edition. And not because of its many splatbooks, but straight out of the box PHB. I got some ideas from reading parts of the book (although I could never bring myself from reading it from cover to cover). With 4th edition I got my ideas simply because I couldn't stand the fluff (although Open Grave and MotP are vast improvements)

Having said that White Wolf books had more of "it" then both of them combined and multiplied by ten. At the end I can't really say either of them are especially good at it and that an hour or two on wiki will probably give you much better stuff anyway.

 

[thedungeondelver]

It is charmless.

The way this game works forces a flattening and homogenizing of character classes, attributes, the focus on just going from combat to combat, the video-game like terminology and powers leave me feeling less like it's something that I can play and enjoy and more like something I switch on and switch off, like software.

The new DUNGEON MASTERS GUIDE is particularly egregious - where's the talk of poisons, of advancing to the point where you can build your own kingdom, and what it will cost to build a castle (and dungeons there beneath)? Where's the scoop on getting lost in the wilderness, on feeling out good players versus bad when awarding XP?

It's not there anymore. Hell, as much as I slammed 3e, I think in retrospect it had/has more charm than this game ever could hope to have.

Yeah, I'd say this game is charmless.

 

[Imaro]

I would have to say I agree with the OP. Like I've said before, it's not that I really dislike 4e ... I am just very meh about it and it doesn't inspire me to play it over a multitude of other games including 3.5. I think one of the things that, at least for me, diminishes it's "charm" is the homogenous nature of the powers. In other words, even though the effects are different, the system is the same for each and every one of them, in each and every class... While in 3.5 a psionicist had a different system than a wizard who had a different system than a swordsage who had a different system than a binder, etc. this gave it not only charm but new things to explore in the system.

Now I know 4e did this for accessibility reasons... but I think a nice portion of their consumer base enjoyed the feeling of individuality and the "exploration of the new" aspect of different subsystems. 4e doesn't really offer this. It's a preference thing, and unless I haven't been playing D&D for the past couple of years... has nothing to do with playability or not.

 

[Mercurius]

Funny, I remember people saying the same thing about 3e when it came out, especially with regard to the art (e.g. "Todd Lockwood is a good technician but his art has no life, no charm"). I'm not saying this is wrong, but it isn't much different then what we heard nine years ago.

Now if you are equating "charm" with idiosyncratic rules, I don't entirely agree. There are a few rules, or "sub-rules", that I would call idiosyncratic, like Saving Throws (everyone has a 55% chance of success?), Second Winds, even healing surges. And what about Paladins using Charisma for certain attack powers? There are plenty of idiosyncratic rules.

Now if we're using the 1st edition DMG as the benchmark then EVERY game is charmless. Every semi-serious gamer should own a copy, if only to stash in your bathroom magazine stack. Gary Gygax was truly the original mad genius.

 

[malraux]

And here I thought this was a rant about the lost of charm person/monster.

For me, I want board games to have charm. But for RPGs, the story and the other players are the charm. I also agree that idiosyncratic is not the same as charming, except that in general, idiosyncratic often becomes charming over time.

 

[Remathilis]

currently, yes. I'm assuming we'll have to wait at least until Arcane Power, if not the PHB with psionics, to get charm spells and effects beyond the simple ones in the MM.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Yes, absolutely. 4E is shameless.

 

[Nifft]

If you want charms, you should check out Exalted.

Cheers, -- N