D&D 4E Is there a "Cliffs Notes" summary of the entire 4E experience?

[Lalato]

You're wrong!

No... You're wrong!

You are!

You are!

You are!

You are!

 

[TwoSix]

Check out the forums for Onyx Path (the people currently contracted to produce WoD books). It's mostly settled now, but it comes up.

Ahh. I check the blog posts there, but haven't delved into their forums. Is the settlement an agree to disagree thing, or are most people now in favor of the new rules?

 

[I'm A Banana]

Where are you getting "Abnegation vs. Expression" from? I can't find definitions which seem to match up with the way you're using them. Is this some Forgist or academic thing?

It's academic.

[sblock=design wankery]
Fundamentally, the idea is that different games appeal to us for different emotional reasons in much the same way that any media appeals to us. We go to horror movies to be scared, we go to comedies to laugh, we go to tragedies for the FEELS. This is posited to also be true in games: what we seek in a game of Mario Kart is different than what we seek in a game of Settlers of Cattan, or a game of Solitaire. We seek out these different games for the different emotional states they can put us in. When we're in the mood for one, the other will not do, because we are looking for a particular emotional state.

Those emotional states are categorized and labelled as various types of "aesthetics." The list is still subject to some editing and pruning and whatnot, but for our purposes here, I'm talking about two different emotional goals in D&D specifically:

The first is Abnegation, the fun that comes from losing yourself in fantasy and getting away from the Real World. Zoning out to do a sudoku puzzle tones out the jerks on the train around you, so that delivers abnegation. If the puzzle was too easy or too hard, it wouldn't deliver that as well -- it'd be too easy to engage you, or so hard that you couldn't sort of turn on auto-pilot. D&D delivers a HUGE dose of that through playing a role, that is, the goal being to lose yourself in some other character. The cares of your life fade away in the face of talking in funny voices and stabbin' some goblins.

It could follow that those who seek this goal are especially sensitive to "dissociative" or "metagame" methods -- things that don't flow from the character's viewpoint as the character is being played. It wrecks their fun because it stops them from losing themselves in the character. In some cases, in some doses, for some people, in certain situations, maybe it's fine, but when you use a method like that, you're at risk of alienating this kind of player.

The second is Expression, the fun that comes from making something up and having others delight in it. When you build an awesome structure in Minecraft (or the analog Minecraft, Legos!), or when you make a card tower or build a sandcastle or dink around with your Sims, these deliver Expression. If the Legos only fit together to make one particular structure or if Minecraft forced you to build according to someone else's plans, this would weaken the Expression-fun those toys are able to deliver, and create an experience that wouldn't work for someone looking for Expression in their passtime. D&D delivers Expression in its character building (and in using those things you've built your character with) and especially in DMing. A lot of the "player narrative control" methods in "modern" games are mostly about giving the players some of that Expression fun, too.

It could follow that those who seek this goal would be especially enthusiastic about methods that enable narrative control or that allow greater character variety and customization Similarly, they would have their fun wrecked by things that take that control and customization away. In some cases, in some doses, for some people, in certain situations, maybe it's fine, but when you use a method like that, you're at risk of alienating this kind of player.

Games deliver on mutliple aesthetics, typically, especially successful ones. Sudoku, for instance, isn't pure abnegation because it also delivers the hedonic pleasure of seeing a void filled, and the challenge pleasure of holding all those variables in your head at once.

Now, psychologists understand that emotions are discrete physiological states, but I don't need to dip into Ekman and emotion research here in particular. It's probably enough to point out that there are some game methods that deliver Expression that are in conflict with the goal of Abnegation.

Like, when you're playing Cops & Robbers, that kid who pretends to be an alien with a Death Star is farting on your fun of inhabiting these roles. It's outside-the-box creativity, but that's not really the kind of thing you signed up for. It's not the "Listen to Jimmy's Cool Laser Sounds" time, its "Lets all talk tough and wear fake beards" time.
[MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION] referenced a time where he asked for a cursed item for his character 'cuz it would be fun. When he did that, he wasn't inhabiting the role of the character, he was making an interesting story for him, the player, to go through. In this respect, the item wishlist delivered on good Expression play (it created an interesting story!), but bad Abnegation play (it wasn't "losing yourself in the character.")

I'm sure it happens vice-versa, too, where Abnegation play might step all over Expression play (imagine playing with LEGOs but RPing as an architect and having to take into account ambitious designers and overzealous safety planners and local zoning boards, or playing Minecraft in a world where your family's financial history defined what you could build).

The criticism of "dissociative" seems to me to be specifically related to mechanics that conflict with a player's goal of being in-character. That is, someone who wants to have fun like THIS encounters a game that tells them the way to have fun is like THAT. And those two things conflict with each other sometimes.

And 4e was mostly "When you feel that conflict, that must suck for you, because we're doing it THIS WAY, and that is the way it is. If you don't like it, go play Pathfinder."

Come to think of it, that probably was especially problematic in light of some of the early marketing materials being critical of 3e. Not only was 4e saying "we're doing it THIS WAY," but also "Your way is not as good."
[/sblock]

And all of this just reinforces my mantra that 5e should be as accepting and accommodating as it can be.

 

[Nergal Pendragon]

Ahh. I check the blog posts there, but haven't delved into their forums. Is the settlement an agree to disagree thing, or are most people now in favor of the new rules?

Actually, I think both sides are frustrated; God Machine-supporters are frustrated by the stuff that didn't get converted to God Machine rules but are still necessary to run elements of the game and God Machine-opposers are frustrated that the new material is being printed post-God Machine. It doesn't help that some things, such as Mummy, are entirely pre-God Machine while ones like Demon are entirely post-God Machine.

So, overall, it seems everyone has stopped fighting because everyone agrees the system isn't working as is.

 

[TwoSix]

Actually, I think both sides are frustrated; God Machine-supporters are frustrated by the stuff that didn't get converted to God Machine rules but are still necessary to run elements of the game and God Machine-opposers are frustrated that the new material is being printed post-God Machine. It doesn't help that some things, such as Mummy, are entirely pre-God Machine while ones like Demon are entirely post-God Machine.

So, overall, it seems everyone has stopped fighting because everyone agrees the system isn't working as is.

Huh. Well, hopefully that stuff gets sorted out by the time Fallen World Chronicle comes out, since that's the one I really care about. But I trust Dave Brookshaw, that guy's awesome.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Incorrect. Martial powers in 4E are presented as dissociated mechanics, because their encounter and daily powers are explained as "deep reserves," without that explaining how their usage translates into an in-character understanding, due to the fact that these are implicitly presented as physical reserves, and that's not how exhausting physical reservoirs of effort function.

For the nth time, there are martial powers that aren't strictly 'physical,' so there is no implicit presentation of these 'deep reserves' as purely-physical, nor am I trying to define them as purely-non-physical. The PH1 /does/ explain how characters relate to their limited-use abilities, source-by-source, via said exhaustion-of-deep-reserves rationale. That makes it associative. To make it dissociative, you resort to a fallacious appeal to realism, and add restrictive language to the explanation that is neither present nor implied.

On the contrary, you're the one who's decided that "deep reserves" are not physical, in an attempt to get away from the limitations of realism, which has necessarily undercut your argument (despite my telling you repeatedly that if you want to just say that they're some sort of non-natural power, that solves the entire problem).

Realism is not a valid criterion for a fantasy game. Realism denies magic, monsters, fantasy races, superhuman feats of heroism - the entire genre. Realistically, a humanoid giant couldn't support it's own weight, a dragon couldn't fly (let alone breathe fire), 6" tall winged humanoids couldn't be sentient, amoebas the size of buicks would just deliquesce, warriors in battle don't know when they're 'down to 3hps,' and people who claim to 'cast spells' are either professing an article of religious faith, lunatics or charlatans.

Realistically.

 

[Alzrius]

For the nth time, there are martial powers that aren't strictly 'physical,' so there is no implicit presentation of these 'deep reserves' as purely-physical, nor am I trying to define them as purely-non-physical. The PH1 /does/ explain how characters relate to their limited-use abilities, source-by-source, via said exhaustion-of-deep-reserves rationale. That makes it associative. To make it dissociative, you resort to a fallacious appeal to realism, and add restrictive language to the explanation that is neither present nor implied.

Likewise for the nth time, if you want to say that the "deep reserves" that power martial abilities are some sort of non-natural "super powers," that's a perfectly valid explanation that avoids the problems of dissociated mechanics, since it necessarily divorces it from the presumption of reality that otherwise is implicit in how physical abilities work. I question if the 4E rules necessarily make that correlation, but if they do then it's not problematic. Your obsession with the terminology behind "purely physical" meaning "non-natural super power" is, at this point, creating problems where you otherwise have none.

Realism is not a valid criterion for a fantasy game. Realism denies magic, monsters, fantasy races, superhuman feats of heroism - the entire genre.

This only applies if you take an all-or-nothing approach to aspects of realism in fantasy. You don't seem to understand that you can presume realistic explanations for things that have real-world analogues and are otherwise not redefined, while fantastic elements sit right alongside them.

Realistically, a humanoid giant couldn't support it's own weight, a dragon couldn't fly (let alone breathe fire), 6" tall winged humanoids couldn't be sentient, amoebas the size of buicks would just deliquesce, warriors in battle don't know when they're 'down to 3hps,' and people who claim to 'cast spells' are either professing an article of religious faith, lunatics or charlatans.

Realistically.

See above. There's nothing remotely realistic about your definition of realism.

 

[Ratskinner]

You're misunderstanding - it's not that he has knowledge of his probability of success, it's that he has knowledge of how well he's performing the ability compared to how well he has in the immediate past. He knows that his attempt is not being made as well as it just was; he just doesn't know why.

I can't speak for anybody else, but that seems totally accurate to my experiences with athletic performance. Otherwise, I'd never miss a shot. So, the only way to judge your performance is statistically. Which is why the whole probability thing shows up.

 

[Alzrius]

I can't speak for anybody else, but that seems totally accurate to my experiences with athletic performance. Otherwise, I'd never miss a shot. So, the only way to judge your performance is statistically. Which is why the whole probability thing shows up.

In the course of an "encounter" or a single day, it's pretty easy for you to tell when you've made a shot with great form, and when you've flubbed it before the ball has even left your hands.

That's separate from the issues of success, of course. You can make a shot with great form that still misses, the same way that you can make one with terrible form that still makes it in the basket - that's because the target number isn't always the same, and your modifiers will vary, etc. But you'll still be able to tell when you've screwed up the attempt in and of itself.

 

[wedgeski]

So you think that dragons, elves, and wizards have real-world analogues that they can be compared to? You might want to see someone about that.

You always know a thread has disintegrated when people are quoting others by the sentence.