Is D&D a setting or a toolbox?

[Hussar]

But can you run a 4E campaign based on the "Desperate Hosewifes" show? If not, then it's no toolbox in my eyes!

Desperate "Hosewifes"? Man, now THERE'S a show I wanna see. Go go Netflix!!!

 

[MichaelSomething]

Desperate "Hosewifes"? Man, now THERE'S a show I wanna see. Go go Netflix!!!

I mean Desperate Housewives D:

 

[Hussar]

Booo. I want hosewives. Way, way more entertaining.

 

[Iosue]

I really don't know why people have this insistence on believing that 4e isn't super hackable.

Let's start by saying I don't want to argue for people I may not have ever met nor may not agree with. So let's leave those "people" to their arguments and only focus on what I, myself, have said in my own words.

I've seen slasher horror, Star Wars, and a Science Fantasy game all done using 4e with NO MODIFICATIONS TO THE RULES AT ALL, nothing but reflavoring. For instance there's this little gem out there http://dungeonsmaster.com/2012/07/star-wars-pre-gens-for-dd-encounters/ which is a very sweet demonstration of the sheer flexibility of the system.

Yes, but that all falls under "configurability", rather than hacking. That's why the analogy fits, precisely because "reskinning" is just the kind of thing Mac OS lets you do, quite easily, but I don't think anyone would consider changing a desktop theme as "hacking".

Beyond that 4e doesn't break easily. It is a VERY transparent system, far more so than previous editions, so you can pretty tell right off what your homebrew stuff is going to do. At worst you're no worse off than in any other edition. Actually I didn't find AD&D easy to hack at all. You could do it of course, but the results were HIGHLY variable and it has far more assumptions built into it about healing, character advancement, etc than 4e does.

You seem to have taken my statement that hacking is not a feature of 4e as some kind of criticism. It is not. What I'm talking about with hacking is removing whole bits of the system. Tacking on systems from whole other games. Writing up your own systems and sticking them on. What makes AD&D/Classic D&D amenable to this is that they are made up of non-integrated systems, so hacking one sub-system is less likely to have knock-on effects. This is essentially why you had fantasy heartbreakers: a D&D kernel onto which new sub-systems had been hacked, which is also what you see with retro-clones.

Over two boards now, whenever I've suggested the simplest of hacks -- removing a disliked sub-system, such as healing surges or powers, the response from 4e players has always been that that would be a very bad idea, and that such changes would have to be done with someone who really understood the system and had a good grasp of the math-interactions of HP and damage for both monsters and PCs. That's not easy to hack. That doesn't mean it can't be done, any more than a Mac OS can't be hacked. It just means you need to know the system to do it right. 4e was designed to "work out-of-the-box". For the vast majority of gamers, hacking shouldn't even be necessary, because the game is so highly configurable. Just like the Mac OS, that's a strength of 4e, not a weakness. It's why many people love it. Other folks, who perhaps prefer to hack for the hack's own sake, don't take to it like they do to other systems, some of which have virtually no inherent configurability, but explicitly say, "Go ahead, hack this however you want." The high variability of hacks is the whole point.

Moreso than other editions, 4e is a feat of game engineering. It's integrated. It runs smooth and elegant. Doing great violence to the system would affect that integration, and affect that elegance. It's no slight to say that 4e is not as easy to hack as other editions -- it was made so you wouldn't have to hack it. That's a feature, not a bug. Many people have repeatedly declared their love 4e because they didn't have to hack it to get the game they wanted from D&D. 4e doesn't have to do everything as good as or better than other editions. It does what it was designed to do much better than any of them.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I mean Desperate Housewives D:

Isn't that Desecrated Hosewifes?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Let's start by saying I don't want to argue for people I may not have ever met nor may not agree with. So let's leave those "people" to their arguments and only focus on what I, myself, have said in my own words.


Yes, but that all falls under "configurability", rather than hacking. That's why the analogy fits, precisely because "reskinning" is just the kind of thing Mac OS lets you do, quite easily, but I don't think anyone would consider changing a desktop theme as "hacking".

Meh, your operating system analogy doesn't really work for me. I could care less HOW its achieved, if I can play Star Wars with my 4e game (and I can as the link I provided pretty well demonstrates) I would say that the fact that I can do that without even changing a single rule is a testament TO the flexibility of the system, not an argument AGAINST said flexibility.

You seem to have taken my statement that hacking is not a feature of 4e as some kind of criticism. It is not. What I'm talking about with hacking is removing whole bits of the system. Tacking on systems from whole other games. Writing up your own systems and sticking them on. What makes AD&D/Classic D&D amenable to this is that they are made up of non-integrated systems, so hacking one sub-system is less likely to have knock-on effects. This is essentially why you had fantasy heartbreakers: a D&D kernel onto which new sub-systems had been hacked, which is also what you see with retro-clones.

Yeah, I disagree. I think if you actually do it you'll find 4e is a very good platform for doing it.

Over two boards now, whenever I've suggested the simplest of hacks -- removing a disliked sub-system, such as healing surges or powers, the response from 4e players has always been that that would be a very bad idea, and that such changes would have to be done with someone who really understood the system and had a good grasp of the math-interactions of HP and damage for both monsters and PCs. That's not easy to hack. That doesn't mean it can't be done, any more than a Mac OS can't be hacked. It just means you need to know the system to do it right. 4e was designed to "work out-of-the-box". For the vast majority of gamers, hacking shouldn't even be necessary, because the game is so highly configurable. Just like the Mac OS, that's a strength of 4e, not a weakness. It's why many people love it. Other folks, who perhaps prefer to hack for the hack's own sake, don't take to it like they do to other systems, some of which have virtually no inherent configurability, but explicitly say, "Go ahead, hack this however you want." The high variability of hacks is the whole point.

Yeah, I disagree. 4e is nothing like 'Mac OS', but the whole analogy is terrible, so lets just let it die. I reject the opinion of these people on whatever boards that you've been talking to. Have they actually hacked on 4e? Have they actually removed HS? Do you think adding HS to say AD&D would be a minor tweak? This seems ridiculous to me. I know right on the face of it quite easily what happens with 4e when I do something. Depending on the overall effect I want to achieve maybe I do or maybe I don't want to change other things, but this would also be equally true in AD&D. I could slap classic Vancian casting into 4e for instance, lifted clean off the 2e rules, with how much effort? Basically none. If that's what I want, its very easy to do, but what makes it great is I will KNOW what the effects are going to be on 4e. Of course its going to make it a different game, but that would be the POINT, would it not?

Moreso than other editions, 4e is a feat of game engineering. It's integrated. It runs smooth and elegant. Doing great violence to the system would affect that integration, and affect that elegance. It's no slight to say that 4e is not as easy to hack as other editions -- it was made so you wouldn't have to hack it. That's a feature, not a bug. Many people have repeatedly declared their love 4e because they didn't have to hack it to get the game they wanted from D&D. 4e doesn't have to do everything as good as or better than other editions. It does what it was designed to do much better than any of them.

I don't think you have ever tried to hack 4e in any serious way and don't have an idea of what happens when you do hack it TBH. Actually try it, you will I am very certain quickly find your notions on the subject overturned. Its not that I strongly disagree that there isn't much point in hacking 4e's rules, for me at least, but I have no problem doing so, and I have based various one-off games and such on 4e's core, it was quite easy, very transparent, and did pretty much what I predicted it would do. Some other editions might do some things more easily, if they're closer to the genre and tone conventions you want, but 4e is not bad that way. It is built on more flexible principles than other editions overall IMHO.

 

[Iosue]

Meh, your operating system analogy doesn't really work for me.

I still don't think you've understood it, since now you've brought the term "flexibility" into the discussion, with the implication that I've said 4e doesn't have it, and your entire response is basically "4e can, too, be hacked," when I never said that it couldn't be, and in fact explicitly said that it could be. Then you say, "It's easy to hack," and all your examples are of the high level of configurability that I singled out as a strength of 4e.

As I feared, you see me as a 4e critic and are reading everything I say through that lens. You don't want to have a discussion with me, you want to tear down the arguments of 4e detractors. I don't think we can have a discussion here.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I still don't think you've understood it, since now you've brought the term "flexibility" into the discussion, with the implication that I've said 4e doesn't have it, and your entire response is basically "4e can, too, be hacked," when I never said that it couldn't be, and in fact explicitly said that it could be. Then you say, "It's easy to hack," and all your examples are of the high level of configurability that I singled out as a strength of 4e.

As I feared, you see me as a 4e critic and are reading everything I say through that lens. You don't want to have a discussion with me, you want to tear down the arguments of 4e detractors. I don't think we can have a discussion here.

I don't see you as a critic or a supporter or anything else especially. I thought I made it pretty clear, its easy to hack. Its also easy to reskin. I am not sure what "configurability" is. I don't know of any configuration that is done with 4e. Either you reskin things, or you 'homebrew'. I'd say there are a few types of it. There is simple addition, ranging from a new item all the way to adding a whole class. There is modification, changing some elements, and there is subtraction, removing some elements. Those types of homebrew are just taking things a bit further than reskinning, the core rules of the game stay the same. You can also add rules, subtract rules, and alter rules.

When it comes to changes to game elements I don't see it being any harder to add a class, race, feat, item, power, etc to 4e than it would be to add analogous elements to previous editions. Its uncommon in 4e to have a class refer to another class' power list, but not unheard of, and it isn't any less useful a technique than it was to borrow a spell list in 3e. If you allow for that, then I think 4e stuff is perfectly easy to homebrew. Removing stuff is of course trivial, and here 4e is rather ahead of most previous editions, even 3e, where deleting something like say clerics requires rather serious reworking of the rest of the system (IE DS started everyone at level 2 and gave all PCs psionics to make up for lack of healing).

Changing rules is of course always the most likely to break things. Yet I've heard of many alterations being done on 4e, and some have become quite widely practiced. I don't see any evidence that 4e accepts such changes any less easily than 3e, 2e, or OD&D did. Clearly there are various things you can do easily and other things that might be harder. Making 4e into a low power game with weak characters that die quickly would be kinda hard. OTOH it should be and is trivial to add many types of subsystems. I've seen reputation, code of honor, RP mechanics, different magic systems, etc all added on without any huge problem.

I think the thing that usually puzzles me is that you'll hear someone say its easy to add to 2e and then mention some horribly unbalanced nightmarish 2e supplement that IMHO is a poster child for "broken system addition" and then complain that you can't add anything to 4e because gosh it might add 1.5 DPR to some striker class.

 

[sheadunne]

Definitions?

Reskinning - All the rules stay the same, only the fluff changes
Configuring - Adding, changing, or subtracting a new class, feat, spell, power, etc
Hacking - Replacing an entire section of rules with a completely different set of rules. (Removing all classes of AEDU powers and giving the wizard and cleric Vancian spell casting might be an example).

 

[Viking Bastard]

I am not sure what "configurability" is. I don't know of any configuration that is done with 4e.

From reading both of yours posts, I think that what you envision as a "hack", [MENTION=6680772]Iosue[/MENTION] calls "configurability". By hack he means turning the 4e game into a different game–in the same way Dungeon World is a hack of Apocalypse World, but is still very much it's own game.