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General Tabletop Discussion
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Mearls On D&D's Design Premises/Goals
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<blockquote data-quote="Jay Verkuilen" data-source="post: 7760661" data-attributes="member: 6873517"><p>I realized that the issue with 4E was that it had fallen into the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley" target="_blank">uncanny valley</a> a while ago in a discussion here. A ruleset is, even across editions, a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_resemblance" target="_blank">family resemblance</a>, meaning that a cumulation of many small changes, each of which would be relatively meaningless on its own, eventually moves too far away from the original to fit in the family. </p><p></p><p>I played it and at times had fun but I always found running it incredibly frustrating. I had a pretty good feel for all prior editions of the game but I really couldn't run 4E that way but was instead very much channeled into running things the way the designers wrote it, which I found disempowering as a DM. This came 100% home to me in 2013 when I ran, on the request of an old player, my old 2E with houserules game and immediately felt "THIS is what I remember!". I never wanted to run 4E again. 5E, no problem, it was pretty much back to normal. </p><p></p><p>In addition, the fact that D&D has a propensity to be the only game in town meant a lot of folks were more or less forced into playing it. </p><p></p><p>And don't get me wrong, 4E had <em>many</em> good ideas. A lot of folks really liked it and found what I considered "pinch points" to be comfortable.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Jay Verkuilen, post: 7760661, member: 6873517"] I realized that the issue with 4E was that it had fallen into the [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley"]uncanny valley[/URL] a while ago in a discussion here. A ruleset is, even across editions, a [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_resemblance"]family resemblance[/URL], meaning that a cumulation of many small changes, each of which would be relatively meaningless on its own, eventually moves too far away from the original to fit in the family. I played it and at times had fun but I always found running it incredibly frustrating. I had a pretty good feel for all prior editions of the game but I really couldn't run 4E that way but was instead very much channeled into running things the way the designers wrote it, which I found disempowering as a DM. This came 100% home to me in 2013 when I ran, on the request of an old player, my old 2E with houserules game and immediately felt "THIS is what I remember!". I never wanted to run 4E again. 5E, no problem, it was pretty much back to normal. In addition, the fact that D&D has a propensity to be the only game in town meant a lot of folks were more or less forced into playing it. And don't get me wrong, 4E had [I]many[/I] good ideas. A lot of folks really liked it and found what I considered "pinch points" to be comfortable. [/QUOTE]
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