D&D 4E Is 4E doing it for you?

[Raven Crowking]

my answer is here:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...players-not-characters-stats.html#post4498843

Good answer.



RC

 

[El Mahdi]

NOPE!






And that's all I've got to say about that.

 

[Fenes]

We play 3E without battle map/minis, but with AoOs and Flanking. Usually, it is easy enough to handle. "Can I flank him" "yes, but you'll take an AoO moving there by his guards" "I tumble". And so on.

 

[pemerton]

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.

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.

You can roleplay in Monopoly, but that doesn't make Monopoly the best role-playing vehicle available.

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.

Unlike Monopoly, solitaire or golf the 4e rulebooks are chockfull of mechanics to support a roleplaying game.

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.

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?)

In many interesting ways 4e resembles such RPGs as HeroWars/Quest or The Riddle of Steel. In many interesting ways it differs from such RPGs as Rolemaster, Runequest or 3E D&D. These are the meanignful comparitors for any discussion of the implications, for roleplaying, of the 4e mechanics.

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.

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.

Now, unless someone is going to either (i) show that this is not so, or else (ii) show that this is a flawed conception of roleplaying, then the claim that 4e is inadequate as a roleplaying vehicle (and the hint that it is as much an RPG as is chess or Monopoly) has been refuted for at least some conceptions of roleplaying.

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.

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.

To put it bluntly: anyone who is remotely familiar with Lost Soul's posting history has no credible basis for suggesting that s/he is not a sophisticated roleplayer who is eminently capable of judging whether or not 4e offers good support for the sort of roleplaying s/he is interested in.

It's obvious that some RPGers do not like the sort of highly self-conscious, metagame-heavy approach to roleplaying that is part-and-parcel of a game like 4e. And it's obvious that, for those players, 4e will not do it for them. But I don't see that those players therefore have licence to say that the sort of play 4e supports is not (real, complex, sophisticated) roleplaying.

 

[Hussar]

Y'know, I'll never, ever understand this compulsive need people have to justify why they don't like something. If you don't like it fine. That's not a problem. I completely respect someone like Fenes stepping up and simply stating,

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".

Perfectly fine. I might disagree on some of the detail, but, nowhere does he make any value judgements other than, "I don't like it."

Why does a person's dislike of something turn into this compulsive need to prove that that something must therefore be bad?

It just boggles my mind.

 

[Mr. Wilson]

This thread is TL, DR so I'm just going to answer the title:

Yeah, 4E is doing it for me. I like how it openly rewards teamwork instead of leaning towards the CoDzilla type play of 3.X.

I miss a few things about 3.X (crafting, etc), but in general I think I like this system more than any prior DnD (AD&D is where I started).

 

[Zustiur]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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".

QFT.

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.

'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.

What I'm finding at the moment is that I'm happy to play 4E, so long as I think of it as 'advanced hero quest', instead of 'dungeons and dragons'. As soon as I try to put it in the DnD 'box' something in me rebels against it.
Even the concept that 'everything you need to know is on your character sheet or power cards' lends itself to the Hero Quest feel - where you're handed a single card with all your stats and dice rolls on it, and you never think outside of that card.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

Mhmm, I guess the difference is how one views the separation of things then. This is definitely something that goes beyond rules, editions, etc. and more based on playstyles/personal views.

For myself, the board and rules I view as "out-of-game" in that they do not have any actual bearing on the in-game reality, etc. They are simply a tool to easily adjudicate and process what is happening. "In-game" is where the imagination goes wild, while on the board the PCs are simply standing there. "In-Game" their running all over the map, continuously fighting even on someone else's turn, tripping, falling, etc, etc.

Essentially mechanics are simply a peep-hole into the world from which one can decide key points of the narrative flow, while the actual world, PCs, etc, etc. are all simply imagination and narrative back-and-forth between the players and DM.

This is probably why things "shift", using a board (though we only use it for key combat, rest of the time we just do combat without), etc. isn't an issue. So yeah that is the difference probably why we each have different view of it, yet still view story as being most important

 

[Raven Crowking]

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.

Can you quote that?

I'll leave the rest of your post alone, because it has been hashed to death in the past. You agree that Monopoly isn't an rpg, and you agree that this is because of the mechanics the game presents. It therefore follows that the mechanics the game presents impact on how rping can be accomplished within that game system. It also therefore follows that this is meaningful to discuss in other, less obvious, contexts.

Which was my point.


RC

 

[Halivar]

He is making a statement that 4e is objectively not the best role-playing vehicle available.

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.