Is 4E charmless?

[Glyfair]

Honestly, I haven't felt charm about an RPG since the early 80s, with the exception of when I picked up Prince Valiant a couple of years ago (an RPG by Greg Stafford from the 80s).

Charm for me is not about system, although system can affect it to a small extent.

 

[Ourph]

I'm finding 4e to be very charming. I'm currently running a 4e Ptolus campaign and at first, I was afraid the change in mechanics would drastically change the feel of the Ptolus setting. What I'm find is that, if anything, the smooth game-play makes room for the charm of the setting and the unfolding campaign events to shine through even more. I would never even have attempted to run a Ptolus 3e campaign because all of the high-level mechanical complexity of the characters, NPCs and monsters would have driven me crazy and distracted me from breathing life into the city.

 

[Truename]

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.

I felt this way at first too, but now I'm really enjoying it. I don't know if it was intentional, but 4e seems to invite DM creation--even in books like MoTP, what little fluff they have is just the opening paragraphs. You have to fill in the details.

At first this irritated me (MoTP is thin!) but now I'm loving how I can put my own stamp on things. My orcs are hopped up on a viciously addictive leaf (that my players are experimenting with but haven't yet figured out, heh heh), my Feywild is modeled after Jim Butcher, and my dwarves have a fundamentalist "deep dwarf" sect. Many of these things were made up in the shower and have taken me all of 10 minutes each to flesh out enough to put in the game.

Sure, I could do this in other games, but something about 4e just makes it easier for me. I think it's because I'm forced to--I can't look it up, so I have to make it up, and that's just fun. (Sure, I could have done this anyway, but I'm a new DM and I wouldn't have.) Also, it's mine, and so I can actually remember the fluff.

Another thing that I'm enjoying is that the straightforward mechanics give me the opportunity to mess with the players. They're so used to being able to identify magic items with a 5-minute short rest that they assume they know everything about everything they find. So I tell them part of the truth and when the big reveal comes, it will be even more surprising. Now the things that are truly significant can be mysteries and the rest just chugs along.

 

[Darrin Drader]

It has the charm of a Uwe Boll movie.

 

[Remathilis]

It has the charm of a Uwe Boll movie.

That's LOW Darrin, even for you!

 

[NilesB]

I disagree, second edition is the most charmless D&D.

 

[Aus_Snow]

A lack of 'charm' isn't at the top of my list, when it comes to the reasons why I really don't like the game, or certain things related to it.

No, not even close. But still, I can kind of sympathise. For me, 4e is indeed the most lacking in that way, followed by AD&D 2e. The 'most charm' award (for me, and yes, it's entirely subjective) would go to AD&D 1e, or maybe BECMI, though in the latter case that might be coloured by the fact that it was the first RPG I played. With other people, anyway. I don't think gamebooks and the like really count.

But whatever. I'm sure 4e has its own charm for some folks, and that's great. Whatever works for each group; that's what matters. If I could suggest a course of action to gamers in general, it would be to research, read, ask questions, discuss, experiment, give totally different systems a go (whatever the most familiar one might be for you) if you get the opportunity. But even then, that's optional too.

*shrug* As far as complaints go, it's not the weirdest I've come across.

 

[Darrin Drader]

That's LOW Darrin, even for you!

But Uwe Boll is a great film maker! In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Sige Tale is the best fantasy movie ever made! It's faster than Lord of the Rings, has more combat powers than Conan the Barbarian, and even has an all new magic system. Peter Jackson sucks, I'm enshrining In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale in my DVD collection.

 

[Oldtimer]

That's LOW Darrin, even for you!

He could have done worse - he could have compared it to an Ulli Lommel movie...

 

[rounser]

I disagree, second edition is the most charmless D&D.

Sorry, 2E has the most charming campaign settings and monster manual material of any edition. 4E can't even provide a decent implied setting, if it can be called D&D at all. It can't even offer suspension of disbelief IMO, let alone magic that feels magical, or suggest a world for it's PCs beyond the combat grid. And when you put it all together it's the model of a charmless game.