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

[Alzrius]

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

I'm sure I have no idea what you mean.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The first is Abnegation, the fun that comes from losing yourself in fantasy and getting away from the Real World.

Sounds like what in common parlance is called 'escapism' or 'escapist entertainment.' About right?

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.

I've heard this argument before, and it doesn't hold water for me, because it blows a very small aspect of TTRPG rules out of all possible proportion.

The issue is that the gulf between player and character in a TTRPG is already so vast, that the ability to overcome that gap and achieve immersion cannot possibly be consistently, irretrievably foiled by something as obscure and trivial as a 'dissociated mechanic.' I mean, if you're trying to get under the exoskeleton of your Thri-Kreen character in Dark Sun - to achieve 'immersion' in the imagined role of a giant insect slowly cooking to death under the brutal heat of an alien sun - while sitting around a table in an air-conditioned FLGS, sipping cold mountain dew, eating twizzlers and rolling dice with your fellow gamer geeks, and you actually /do/ it, you have one kick-ass imagination. And to claim that you /cant/ do so if your ability to unleash a flurry of claw attacks is 1/encounter instead of not existing at all, is more than a little implausible. It's like the suspension of an ATV being wrecked because, between off-roading over huge rocks, it hit a small pothole on a short stretch of paved road.

The second is Expression, the fun that comes from making something up and having others delight in it.

As in 'artistic expression,' I take it?

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.

Maybe. There are a lot of ways to express yourself in an RPG. If you're playing a pre-gen, it might be through interpreting the character like an actor given a role in a play. The amount of customization doesn't matter.

Games deliver on mutliple aesthetics, typically, especially successful ones.

Given that, it's surprising TTRPGs aren't more popular. By their very nature, they can deliver on either or both of these ideas in a big way.

...

While I think there's certainly some value in applying a theory like this to RPGs - and in developing RPG-specific theories like DNS - I don't think that value lies primarily in giving people thoughtful-sounding excuses for dumping on games other folks are enjoying. It was sad seeing this sort of stuff abused in the edition war. It'd be nice to see it used more positively in 5e...

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

Absolutely.

 

[Ratskinner]

It is exactly the definition I've been using.
And I still completely stick to the point that "story telling" defined as having powers outside those of the character is different than "roleplaying" defined as "having exactly the powers of the character".

I abandon nothing here.

Isn't this just a matter of scope? I mean, a written story contains bits that are within a character's agency (for lack of a better word) as well as those bits without. The author is still "storytelling" whether the sentence he's writing is in that scope or not. In this way, "roleplaying" is a subset of "storytelling", I would think.

That doesn't change the fact that RPGs differ in the scope of authority that individual players are permitted within and without their character's agency. Which is a perfectly valid justification for liking or disliking a game, IMO.

 

[Nagol]

Sounds like what in common parlance is called 'escapism' or 'escapist entertainment.' About right?

I've heard this argument before, and it doesn't hold water for me, because it blows a very small aspect of TTRPG rules out of all possible proportion.

The issue is that the gulf between player and character in a TTRPG is already so vast, that the ability to overcome that gap and achieve immersion cannot possibly be consistently, irretrievably foiled by something as obscure and trivial as a 'dissociated mechanic.' I mean, if you're trying to get under the exoskeleton of your Thri-Kreen character in Dark Sun - to achieve 'immersion' in the imagined role of a giant insect slowly cooking to death under the brutal heat of an alien sun - while sitting around a table in an air-conditioned FLGS, sipping cold mountain due, eating twizzlers and rolling dice with your fellow gamer geeks, and you actually /do/ it, you have one kick-ass imagination. And to claim that you /cant/ do so if your ability to unleash a flurry of claw attacks is 1/encounter instead of not existing at all, is more than a little implausible. It's like the suspension of an ATV being wrecked because, between off-roading over huge rocks, it hit a small pothole on a short stretch of paved road.

<snip>

It most certainly can for me. Please stop saying I'm wrong about how I feel.

 

[tuxgeo]

< snip > . . .
The issue is that the gulf between player and character in a TTRPG is already so vast, that the ability to overcome that gap and achieve immersion cannot possibly be consistently, irretrievably foiled by something as obscure and trivial as a 'dissociated mechanic.' I mean, if you're trying to get under the exoskeleton of your Thri-Kreen character in Dark Sun - to achieve 'immersion' in the imagined role of a giant insect slowly cooking to death under the brutal heat of an alien sun - while sitting around a table in an air-conditioned FLGS, sipping cold mountain due, . . .

Um, "Mountain Dew," right? That brand-name is spelled with a "W," not with a "U." [ Spell-checking won't catch that for you, because "due" is a legal word -- unfortunately, not the same particular legal word that you seemingly meant. ]

[No, I'm not going to get into the incessant bickering about play-styles. This thread already has a surfeit of that, and it doesn't need any similar contribution from me.]

 

[Nergal Pendragon]

And now I'm imagining Tony Vargas sitting around a table, sipping wine from a IOU signed by a mountain.

 

[Tony Vargas]

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.

That's an interesting way of putting it. Yes, i would consider the extraordinary exploits of a hero in a fantasy story to be among that story's fantastic elements. While, say, the abilities of the simple peasant folk he's protecting from the dragon, or the slaves he frees from a band of deurgar might be quite mundane (or might not be, if say, one of the peasants was a ritual caster or one of the slaves a gnome).

So, sure, you could allow that unimportant/undeveloped aspects of the fantasy world conform to familiar, mundane reality, and thus realism has a niche in fantasy, by default, and is not 'all or nothing.' That doesn't lay a foundation for applying realism to the 'redefined' elements, though - including the hero of the piece, wielding 'magic' by the nomenclature of that world or not.

 

[Ratskinner]

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.

I am not aware of any mechanics in any edition of D&D that would provide the kind of feedback you are suggesting the characters are aware. Other than random noise from the narration of the performance, there is no way to know whether a given attempt (attack, check, etc.) was performed with good form or bad.

 

[Tony Vargas]

It most certainly can for me. Please stop saying I'm wrong about how I feel.

I've never said anyone is wrong about how they feel. I just point out when the things they say about the object of those feelings are false (ok, or even just misleading or slanted) or the rationalizations they use to justify those feelings are invalid (ok, or suggestive of a less savory agenda). (And, I'm not saying I've done so in the case of any particular poster, here, I'm speaking broadly of the edition war, and I don't want anyone to feel attacked or insulted.) Or express my own feelings and my own reasons for them (and of course, get told that I don't know how to play the game, or am some kind of a wuss for holding such opinions). :shrug:


I like using automobile analogies ('cause I'm American, so it's either that or guns), so here's another one.

Say you have someone claiming that the Tesla Roadster isn't a real car, and they hate it. When you ask them why, they say because an electric car can never match the acceleration of a gas-powered one. When you point out that the Tesla actually out-accelerates equally high-priced gas-powered performance vehicles like Ferraris, he exclaims "You can't make me like it!"

Maybe he goes on to say that the Tesla isn't a real car, because the earliest automobiles were originally all gas-powered, and the electric car was a late-comer that couldn't match their performance. Again, you'd feel obliged to point out that the very earliest (before Ford assembled the first model T) automobiles included all-electric ones that performed quite well compared to the (then very primitive) internal combustion models. To which he rants "Stop saying I'm wrong about how I feel!"


It's absolutely OK not to like something. It's just provocative to say false or misleading things about it because you dislike it.

 

[tomBitonti]

It's academic.

... lots of text omitted ...

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

Interesting write-up. But, the problems that I have had with powers such as CAGI, and with player power interpretations are/were:

*) Adding interpretations is extra work, sometimes a lot. (That I consider this work and not fun is telling, I think, as this is fun to a lot of other folks);

*) The interpretations aren't shared (I saw this with manifesting displays in 3.5E Psionics: I added interesting displays to my powers, which were promptly ignored by the DM and the other players);

*) They seem to be irrelevant, since they have no bearing on the result achieved;

*) I have a hard time keeping my interpretations in order: Changing interpretations makes for a muddle for me to understand what is happening.

I find that the flavor text being meaningful adds a lot to my gaming experience: I get more of a shared experience, and there is more "imagination stuff" for me to work with in the game.

Approached from a different perspective, I enjoy the process of molding an ability's description to the actual result. Figuring out what will happen based on a framework (the default result) and on the particular circumstances of the use, to me is a lot of the fun of the game. Having that taken away rips away a lot of what is fun (to me).

Or from yet another perspective: Realistic or not, ability descriptions provide a model for an imagined world, with a lot of fun to be had adding detail to the descriptions. Then, the descriptions are a key value, together with the mechanical processes behind them. In my view, a lot of what wrong with 4E was that value was diminished. (And not only diminished, set aside very roughly as unimportant.)

I do not think that one can "try anything" in either 3.5E or 4E: If I asked my DM if I could try casting Fireball as a fighter, he would say no way. Or, even one extra time, as a mage. Or, say, stretch a 30' movement to a 35' movement (with some penalties to the followup attack). I very much doubt many DM's would allow CAGI to be used other than as a power. I wouldn't, although, I would allow a player to attempt a Taunt, with the target (or targets) reacting according to the player's Charisma, the value of the Taunt, and the strength of any opposing influences.

Anyways, to thumbnail my experience with 4E: I purchased a couple of monster books and adventures. Found them to be almost entirely unreadable, and lacking in "imagination fuel", and set them aside. The gaming group that I'm in stayed with 3.5E, to which we've allowed some parts of Pathfinder. As a whole, we looked at 4E, read through some of the books, then kept on with our long running 3.5E campaign. Too much investment in 3.5E; not enough compelling about 4E.

I did find the presentation of 4E to be off-putting, to say the least, and followed the failure of the virtual tabletop, as well as the ongoing licensing issues (mostly re: Necromancer Games, but also others whom I cannot recall).

I have no idea of whether we will shift to 5E, but I didn't think so: 3.5E still has a lot of play left in it. But, we haven't gotten a good enough view of 5E really to say.

Thx!

TomB