Is 4th edition getting soft? - edited for friendly content :)

[Mallus]

It's like forcing someone to stop using the car in Monopoly and giving him the shoe instead.

That's beautiful, shil.

It's also irrefutable proof that one funny line is worth more than a thousand posts full of dubious logic. Especially if the logic has numbers mixed into it.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

Hard-ass USMC-style D&D play is when you take away a player's playing piece, because the fear of losing your playing piece apparently creates excitement, builds character, and puts hair on our chests. Even though the playing piece is either returned almost immediately, or you're given a new one. It's like forcing someone to stop using the car in Monopoly and giving him the shoe instead. Because that makes you hard and tough and a real man.

And then there's actually people who try to explain their point of view on a topic, and how they arrived there, to their fellow gamers in order to create an exchange of opinions instead of simply mocking those with a different opinion than their own.

 

[Mallus]

And then there's actually people who try to explain their point of view on a topic, and how they arrived there, to their fellow gamers in order to create an exchange of opinions instead of simply mocking those with a different opinion than their own.

Psst... he wasn't 'simply mocking'. There's a cogent argument in what shilsen posted. It's just in the form of a wisecrack and not a pageful of rhetoric.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

Save or Die not as a "generic spell effect", but as a plot device seems okay with me. If there was a fair warning about it (probably not: "Oh, and behind the next door, there will probably be a Medusa Paragon that turns you to stone, no save, forever", but "The Labyrinth of Stones is commanded by the first Medusa of the world. A Demon Cult is trying to free her from her prison to destroy this world once and for all. Stop them *several adventures later* Just as you enter the room, the Demon Cultist Leader is beginning to unlock the last locks of the First Meduas prison. Stop him now, or prepared to literally end up as a monument of failure." (That's obviously the "Epic Approach" to Save or Die - exaggerated to emphasize the story)

For example.
But even a slightly lower-level adventure could start with somebody hiring the group to go into the dungeon of Thrax the Defiler and retrieve the Tear of Gaia, but to beware the Garden of Silent Screams unless you want to become part of the menagerie. From there, research and rumors will do the rest.

I think it only showed that the current system can't really be scaled beyond certain levels. The main problem was that the difference between a character focussing on some kind of check, save or roll and that of a unfocussed character became so high that the d20 could just not bridge the gap. If you keep some care to avoid this happening, you can extend the lifetime a lot. At some points, abilities shouldn't give "pluses" any more, they need just to give options. Though at high levels, you might end up with a Storyteller or Shadowrun System, except with a d20 instead of a d10 or d6 (at least if we're following the Starwars trend with adding rerolls as one type of benefit that doesn't just add modifiers). At least if you're not careful. And I guess at some point it's just no longer interesting to advance further. (What comes behind Epic? Maybe Gods? Okay, but what's beyond that?)

Well, at SOME point I'd recommend retiring the character and starting a new one.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Hard-ass USMC-style D&D play is when you take away a player's playing piece, because the fear of losing your playing piece apparently creates excitement, builds character, and puts hair on our chests. Even though the playing piece is either returned almost immediately, or you're given a new one. It's like forcing someone to stop using the car in Monopoly and giving him the shoe instead. Because that makes you hard and tough and a real man.

Nice. This is well-conceived argument by analogy, in case anyone's taking notes.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Nice. This is well-conceived argument by analogy, in case anyone's taking notes.

Not a very good analogy at all, IMHO.

A better analogy would be circumstances in which you can lose property or money -- the real indications of "who you are" in Monopoly. And, not so oddly enough, the game has rules for both.

RC

 

[Mallus]

Not a very good analogy at all, IMHO.

Too short?

A better analogy would be circumstances in which you can lose property or money -- the real indications of "who you are" in Monopoly.

That's pretty pithy RC. You're now baffling me with single sentences.

Can you explain why the 'thing that I control in the game space' isn't analogous to the 'thing that I control in the game space'?

 

[Raven Crowking]

Can you explain why the 'thing that I control in the game space' isn't analogous to the 'thing that I control in the game space'?

Because, in D&D, your character is not the mini. If you were fighting using a battlemat, and the DM swapped your mini for another, that would be analagous to swapping the hat for the shoe in Monopoly.

In D&D, what you control in that gamespace is made up of qualities, such as ability scores, skills, feats, etc. Likewise, what you control in Monopoly is your money, your property, your house & hotels, and your position on the board. The hat, shoe, dog, or rolls is just a marker....not unlike your mini.

Claiming otherwise is disingenious at best. Claiming that the difference between a marker and what a marker represents baffles you.....well, good luck with that!

RC

 

[Anthtriel]

Hard-ass USMC-style D&D play is when you take away a player's playing piece, because the fear of losing your playing piece apparently creates excitement, builds character, and puts hair on our chests. Even though the playing piece is either returned almost immediately, or you're given a new one. It's like forcing someone to stop using the car in Monopoly and giving him the shoe instead. Because that makes you hard and tough and a real man.

As much as I love this analogy, it only covers one side, D&D as a Wargame/CRPG with a faceless avatar that gets killed off and immediately replaced with another character (often a clone).

It's quite different for the other extreme, the storytelling game. In that case, killing off a PC (without player input, i.e. save or death) is like writing a book with a group of people, and then suddenly ripping out the part written by the player and setting it on fire.

It's easy to see in which style of play the player's loss is greater, and why groups with frequent character deaths tend to have flat, faceless player avatars, much like computer games. In my experience, the less often character die, the more attached players get to them, and are more willing to flesh them out, to make the game, you know, a roleplaying game.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

As much as I love this analogy, it only covers one side, D&D as a Wargame/CRPG with a faceless avatar that gets killed off and immediately replaced with another character (often a clone).

It's quite different for the other extreme, the storytelling game. In that case, killing off a PC (without player input, i.e. save or death) is like writing a book with a group of people, and then suddenly ripping out the part written by the player and setting it on fire.

It's funny how both analogies end up making the same point, isn't it?