Raven Crowking
First Post
Good answer.

RC
Actually he says that the roleplaying one gets with 3E is objectively more sophisticated than the roleplaying one gets from 4e. Which is a different, more contentious and more pejorative claim.But I fail to see where he is saying his preferences are objectively superior. He says 3e is objectively more complex than 4e in the T-ball analogy, but not objectively superior.
Saying you can roleplay in Monopoly is like saying you can roleplay in solitaire or you can roleplay in golf (the club is my sword, the ball is my foe's head . . . or something). It's a nonsense claim that sheds no light on the relationship between mechanics and roleplaying.You can roleplay in Monopoly, but that doesn't make Monopoly the best role-playing vehicle available.
From the perspective of RPGing, 4e in no very interesting way resembles chess, checkers, backgammon, ludo or any other boardgame which revolves around the movement of pieces on a board with the aim including the capture of another player's pieces. (Classic Traveller has rules for starship movement that (i) involves measurement of movement in more-or-less arbitrary numerical intervals, and (ii) cannot reasonably be applied in an episode of starship combat without the use of some sort of visual representation. Has anyone ever suggested that Traveller is really therefore a boardgame resembling chess?)He is making a statement that 4e is objectively not the best role-playing vehicle available. While you may disagree with that statement, it isn't a claim that 4e is objectively worse to play than any other game.
If you believe that the more chess-like a game becomes, the less adequate it is as a vehicle for role-playing, then it is reasonable to follow through that 4e is less adequate as a vehicle for role-playing than the editions that came before it. I happen to feel this way myself.
Lost Soul's point is that there is a certain approach to roleplaying - one which focuses on the use of game rules to resolve conflicts that emerge between elements of (frequently, but not always, characters in) a fictional world - and that 4e has more such rules than any earlier edition of D&D.Either the rules do not affect how you can role-play, in which case Monopoly or Chess is as adequate an rpg as 4e, or the rules do affect how you can role-play, in which case it is reasonable to put forward a case that 4e is a better role-playing vehicle than Monopoly....or that 3e is better than 4e in this regard....or that 4e is better than 3e.
What's insulting is the imputation that a certain sort of roleplaying is less sophisticated than BryonD's preferred approach to roleplaying, which imputation is compounded by discussions of roleplaying in 4e that compare it to non-roleplaying games such as chess or Monopoly rather than to the RPGs that obviously (and per the testimony of the designers actually) inspired 4e's design.Whether or not there actually is an objective difference is, of course, open to debate. Suggesting (or stating your belief) that there is an objective difference shouldn't be taken as insulting. It isn't the same as saying one is objectively better than the other.
As I said - there are the little things that add up. Drop by drop, they weigh down on the "not for me" scale.
No perform skill.
No crafting skills.
No profession skills.
Fireball now a daily instead of a staple.
Martial powers do not recharge as well as they do in Bot9S, causing a card game feeling.
Martial powers require too much mental gymnastics to make sense, or drop to "do not think about it"
Game terms and grid instead of real measurements for movement.
Too much "shift".
System is set for far more combats per day than I want.
Skill Challenge system was not playtested, and came out bugged.
Not enough classes.
Lizardfolk as core race.
Too much limiting fluff (tieflings restricted to one appearance, and one origin).
Game terms that remind me of MMOgs (Striker, defender etc.).
Powers not having enough power. I want crits that can one shot enemies, sword attacks that take down half the enemies' hit points. I want a barbarian that can kill an equal-levelled pit fiend in two rounds (Pouncing charge, finishing blow), not a game where we need to grind down enemies MMO-style.
And I guess more I don't recall right now.
All those points, for themselves, are solvable. But together they amount to far too much work for far too little gain for me, and make me consider 4E as clearly "not for me".
I was still discussing feel. It feels (to me at least) as though 4E was written as a rule set, and the fluff was added later. Whereas all previous editions feel (again, to me) as though they were creating fluff first, and attaching rules to 'describe' the fluff. When rules become more important than story, it stops being DnD to me.Zustiur, I can understand most of your points as just difference of opinion and such. But your last point about Powers confuses the heck out of me.
I don't understand where this, automatically one only describes the rules not the fluff comes from? For myself, having these Powers are extremely liberating in-terms of being descriptive and having more roleplaying in combat.
True - but compare the length of descriptions .. actually that's pretty hard, because in earlier editions the fluff and the mechanic were intermingled. Whereas 4E limits itself to 1 or 2 sentences, which are detached from the mechanic. They're even in a different colour so that you can more easily ignore the section you're not looking for. I find myself thinking 'which mechanic do I want to apply' and ignoring the name of the mechanic, rather than thinking 'which spell do I want to cast?' and then checking the effect. It might be faster but it doesn't give me the same immersion.In 4E too there's the description of the magic missile first, followed by the mechanics. That didn't change, although I agree that the feeling changed.
Exactly. Each mention of squares points to 'rules first, story later', and takes a little bit closer to board game/miniature game territory. Taking Warhammer 40,000 as an example I'm familiar with - You can play the game without ever reading the background, or you can read the background without ever playing the game. 4E is close to that same point where you can do one while ignoring the other, but earlier editions you could not, as it was all mixed together (to make a nicer cake if you will...)All those things work together in making the game less of a roleplaying game for me, since they all make it a bit harder to be immersed. Each time I say "shift" instead of "fall back", each time I "Move 2 squares" instead of "advance to the enemy", adds up.
QFT.All those points, for themselves, are solvable. But together they amount to far too much work for far too little gain for me, and make me consider 4E as clearly "not for me".
'5 foot step' is a reference to reality, '1 square' is a reference to rules alone. Yes the rule corresponds to the same thing, but you or I 'see' the grid first instead of seeing the (mental picture of the) dungeon first. Every single one of those moments takes me further away from the mental images/imagination, and closer to the board/grid. Individually, they don't make a difference, but en masse they're a problem.More, how does a simple change in phrase from "5 foot step" to "shift" make such a large difference? It could easily have been called, *place gibberish here* but the actual effect is no different, and thus has no actual impact on the game.
Actually he says that the roleplaying one gets with 3E is objectively more sophisticated than the roleplaying one gets from 4e. Which is a different, more contentious and more pejorative claim.
4E objectively has fewer roleplaying props than 3E. Some of us don't need them and never did. Sprinkling "story hour" with dice rolls doesn't suddenly cross a magical threshold that makes it "good" roleplay. Taking the dice rolls out of "story hour" and keeping them inside combat initiative doesn't suddenly make it "bad" roleplay.He is making a statement that 4e is objectively not the best role-playing vehicle available.