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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9109665" data-attributes="member: 6790260">So...this one was a bit weird for me. I'm sure for anyone that's seen me post for any length of time, I'm a big 4e fan and unapologetic about it.That wasn't always the case. Indeed, originally, I was a dyed-in-the-wool 4e hater.My original exposure to it was through (now-former) friends...who hated it. Openly loathed it. I'm pretty sure they'd never even cracked the books open. They condemned it as a cash grab (as though the 3.5e "revision" wasn't), as being antagonistic to story and RP, an MMO on paper, a boardgame not an RPG, a rollplaying game not a roleplaying game...basically, if there was a screed you could shout at it that didn't actually require you to know anything about it, they said it. And I believed them. What reason would I have to doubt their word?So I stuck with 3.5e--because I thought it was merely an imperfect implementation of a wonderful idea. Because I thought if I could just find the right little bit of homebrew or house-rule or combination of ACFs or (etc., etc.), that I could get from it the experience I wanted. I wasn't satisfied with it, but I simply assumed that that was on me. That I was just looking for the right angle, and if I could find it, I'd truly be completely content with 3.5e.Of course, there were discussions, and I parroted the things I had heard from others I trusted (at the time, anyway.) I gave my two bits. Eventually, at some point, I made an argument, and someone pushed against it--with citations. That of course required that I actually sit down and read the text, right? Can't meaningfully respond to citations unless you actually know what's being cited. So I did.And the more I read, the more I realized I loved what I was seeing.4e wasn't a cash-grab. In fact, it wasn't any of the things I'd been told it was. It was a game that married both serious design--with actual testing, and sometimes really quite clever solutions--and loving design--with heart, and sincerity, and a genuine desire to make something bursting at the seams with flavor and mythic resonance and pure potential. Moreover, as I read it, I realized precisely why I'd been so frustrated with 3.X for so long with no end in sight. I wanted something the game categorically couldn't provide.I could go into deeper detail, but the point here isn't to crap on 3e, it's to celebrate 4e. 4e truly offers a game where teamwork actually matters, you can't afford to not use teamwork. A game where cold, bloodless calculation is actually not that useful, and flavor-first choices can be perfectly acceptable, even good. A game where you can stop worrying about whether you're hyper-optimized (because it is well-balanced), and instead focus on what makes sense for your character. A game where you can try weird combinations and funky builds without fear that you'll hold your party back. A game that rewards lateral thinking, non-combat tasks, setting and completing personal goals.And, of course, I'd be remiss if I didn't say, it's the game that gave us not just in-the-PHB-dragonborn, but specifically Arkhosia and the story thereof. It gave us the Raven Queen, and Erathis, and the Dawn War and War of Winter, the Feywild and Shadowfell, and a zillion other brilliant lore and cosmology elements. All of which are designed for how useful they are as part of play, not just as navel-gazing academic cosmology construction that couldn't even in principle have an impact on 99% of campaigns.All those things combined are why I stick with 4e. Or, at least, I would if I could find people playing it. Because that's the price I pay here. I haven't had a game of 4e at all in something like four years, and I haven't had a really good game of 4e in something like six years. Even then, games were few and far between.It's frankly pretty miserable, loving something so much and being just genuinely unable to ever get it, and having most people happily and eagerly $#!+ all over it and tell me to my (digital) face what badwrongfun it was. I would love to love 5e. I would love to be able to look at it and say, "Awesome, this is something that can at least get me part of what I want." But it doesn't. It constantly reminds me just how much it repudiates the things I love. Again, I'd rather not digress into talking about something I don't love, so I'll just leave it at what I've said before: "5e was supposed to be the 'big tent,' but I've always felt like that so-called 'big tent' pointedly excluded my interests."</blockquote>

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