D&D 4E Is 4E winning you or losing you?

[Li Shenron]

Where does the art suggest an anime/wuxia influence?

Oversized weapons and 1-foot-long ears are definitely anime IMHO.

I haven't yet seen much preview art tho, and I'm not saying that it's going that way... but WAR has sometimes the tendency to swords with a 10-to-1 blade/hilt ratio.

 

[Barastrondo]

Oversized weapons and 1-foot-long ears are definitely anime IMHO.

I haven't yet seen much preview art tho, and I'm not saying that it's going that way... but WAR has sometimes the tendency to swords with a 10-to-1 blade/hilt ratio.

If I were to try to peg Wayne Reynolds' inspiration, I would be far quicker to suggest he was inspired by 2000 AD comics. I have no idea if it's actually true, but when I saw his Kal Jericho comic for Games Workshop, it had a very similar vibe. Can't think of many anime that devote as much ink to grunge, detritus and random unsavory bits of crap as he does.

 

[RPG_Tweaker]

Hmm?

Where does the art suggest an anime/wuxia influence? Most anime characters in fantasy western fiction wear simple clothes (Slayers, Ruin Explorers, Record of Lodoss Wars etc).

Really, what ARE you guys basing this arguement on? I'm an old-school anime grognard (a.k.a, I was a member of rec.arts.anime(.misc) BEFORe DBZ/Pokemon/Sailor Moon) and the art released so far is definitely not close to anime standard fare.

I went back through the WotC galleries to back my claim... and realized I am "mostly" wrong.

The only anime-related element that I found (and consider crap) is a few over-sized "buster swords" here, here, here, and here.


Thinking further on it, I realize that my dread is more a fear of what may come rather than what has come. The growing anime influence in games, like the Lodoss elves in WoW, and elsewhere, coupled with the developers' claim that the wuxia-oriented ToB (which I dislike) is a tempate for 4E makes me fearful that my beloved Eurocentric-flavored D&D will head in an easterly direction.

So while my claim that there is too much anime influence is false, am still full of dread that that is where we are headed.

Because I really don't want D&D art to become like this. It's good art, it's just not D&D in my book.


---BTW---
The only art-wise issue that is true, as I see it, is the preponderance of bad layout/poses, and wildly unrealistic weapons/armor that permeates the current generation of D&D artwork.

 

[Gallo22]

>>>"Is 4E winning you or losing you?"

It lost me at "hello".

Because I don't care if it's great or not, the 3.5 game I've been running for five years is fun, fresh and exciting as day one and my players and I haven't even scratched the full potential of the game yet.

-DM Jeff

Double Dog Ditto!!!

Heck...my group is still using 3.0 rules with adding things, here and there, we liked from 3.5. We call it 3.25 and have a blast playing, once a week for the past 6-7 years or so.

If 4E works for some, great. However the group I play with is more concerned with putting food on the table and paying bills then getting another 20 D&D books or subcribing to some on-line thing. We just don't have the time or energy to continue to keep up with the Jones'. We have all discussed 4E (for about 3 minutes) and for the most part we don't care if it's coming out or not, as it does not affect us or our game play. We have enough books and adventures to last us until we die. Heck...most of us still create our own adventues...

 

[Shortman McLeod]

The funny thing about the metaphor of the sacred cow is that it's a double metaphor. First, there's the main idea that a sacred cow is something that people irrationally cling to, and which the silly irrational people go out of their way to do even though there are obviously better ways to do things. This metaphor comes from the British incredulity at the Indian people holding cows as objects of reverence and refusing to slaughter and eat them even when they were starving.

But then there's the other metaphor. Of the British colonialists who came in and saw a "backwards" people who wouldn't do obviously beneficial things because their primitive polytheistic culture forbade it. It did not occur to the British that perhaps the Hindus weren't stupid. Perhaps there was a reason that Hindu culture protected cows; perhaps the reason had been so long ago ingrained in the culture that people did not even remember what it was.

As it turned out, there was a good reason. If you keep your cows alive, you can get milk out of them. The benefits of long-term milk production outweigh the benefits of short-term meat availability. Since people have a hard time thinking in the long term, the culture stepped in with a religious prohibition that resulted in a net long-term gain in prosperity. When viewed in terms of net benefit, sacred cows simply make sense.

But when you view the metaphor from that angle, does the gusto of those who kill sacred cows for the sake of killing them make sense? Was there a good reason that they were made sacred in the first place?

Just a thought.

Ummm . . . anyway, back to the D&D discussion!


Shortman

 

[Barastrondo]

The only anime-related element that I found (and consider crap) is a few over-sized "buster swords"

Also probably not entirely anime-related. "Buster swords" have been gaining ground in the fantasy miniatures market for at least a decade. Games Workshop does huge swords all the time, particularly for "hero characters." They're less realistic, but the advantages are that they stand out more on the battlefield, and they're more durable in handling. The visibility issue is also probably the core of why weapons (and shoulderpads) get so big and gaudy in World of Warcraft and other places; they're supposed to jump out at you even from across the battlefield/auction house. And make you want to get some for yourself.

Giant weapons make a character seem powerful at a glance; they "pop" visually. They definitely don't say "we're going for realism here," but I would not be surprised if some D&D artists play with them for the same reasons that some anime artists, some miniatures manufacturers and some video game studios play with them. Maybe there's some level of "it's what the kids expect in their fantasy these days," but I doubt that's all there is, or even if it's the primary consideration.

 

[Son_of_Thunder]

It lost me too.

The previews for 4e have done nothing to make me want to buy. I sold 100% of my 3.x books about 6 months ago and returned to 2e, which we were playing quite happily when 3e was announced. We're still happily playing 2e and I don't see that changing.

Rolemaster Classic and the Deluxe BRP book are going to see my gaming money.

 

[Grog]

coupled with the developers' claim that the wuxia-oriented ToB (which I dislike) is a tempate for 4E makes me fearful that my beloved Eurocentric-flavored D&D will head in an easterly direction.

The designers have said that, while some elements of 4E may be mechanically similar to parts of ToB, they will not have the same flavor.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Ummm . . . anyway, back to the D&D discussion!


Shortman

You do realize that my entire post was itself an edition wars metaphor, right? Someone's already agreed above with the point made therein that perhaps the designers of older editions weren't just "primitive," backwards designers, but that perhaps their design decisions made sense given the problems they were trying to solve.

 

[RPG_Tweaker]

Also probably not entirely anime-related. "Buster swords" have been gaining ground in the fantasy miniatures market for at least a decade. Games Workshop does huge swords all the time, particularly for "hero characters." They're less realistic, but the advantages are that they stand out more on the battlefield, and they're more durable in handling. The visibility issue is also probably the core of why weapons (and shoulderpads) get so big and gaudy in World of Warcraft and other places; they're supposed to jump out at you even from across the battlefield/auction house. And make you want to get some for yourself.

WH40K marines have had oversized shoulderpads, blades, gloves, etc. since the beginning. I understand it on minis where the piece is an inch high and needs to be break-resistant.

Giant weapons make a character seem powerful at a glance; they "pop" visually. They definitely don't say "we're going for realism here," but I would not be surprised if some D&D artists play with them for the same reasons that some anime artists, some miniatures manufacturers and some video game studios play with them. Maybe there's some level of "it's what the kids expect in their fantasy these days," but I doubt that's all there is, or even if it's the primary consideration.

From my perspective it doesn't make them powerful at a glance, it makes them goofy; disproportionate to a ridiculous degree. Like little guys that drive super-sized lifted trucks, compensating for other... shortcomings. These absurdly huge weapons and super-saiyan power attacks are juvenile power-fantasy dross.

If you want to play super-hero fantasy, play Exalted, but I would prefer D&D to stay in the realm of mere heroic fantasy.