Monte Cook back at wizards

[AbdulAlhazred]

lol

 

[ourchair]

"Rawr! I hate when more games are made to cater to my tastes."

?

Exactly.

The only thing you can count overzealous fanboys to hate more than their favorite thing being changed is the very thing they oppose being changed to be more like their favorite thing.

I mean, do you know how many tech pundits and fanboys got upset each time Microsoft evolved Windows past version 1.0? The Mac users who said "PCs would be better if they were more like Macs," were all like, "They're copying Apple, HOW DARE THEY!" to say nothing of the DOS loyalists who thought, "Don't put this GUI in my PC!"

 

[wedgeski]

[MENTION=58416]Johnny3D3D[/MENTION] has made some excellent points on how the final game turned out versus the preview books. I never interpreted PoL as grim'n'gritty and low magic, however. That would've been incredibly unlikely in D&D's default setting.

I started my homebrew campaign with every intention of embracing the PoL concept, but it soon became clear to me that the more I made my campaign fit the idea of D&D that has grown in my head over the last couple of decades, the less like PoL it seemed to become. The points of light themselves were expanding, and the untamed wilderness between them was shrinking, and the truly dangerous bits of my campaign were now on the periphery of a civilized and stable land.

4E itself -- the mechanical framework and its assumptions -- still supports this type of game wonderfully, and we've had years of fun with the game, but the default setting as envisaged in the previous books didn't really came to fruition in my case.

 

[wedgeski]

That does not mean I am saying 4E should be more like 3E. Only that I think they should have taken more time to explore why the previous team made some of the decisions they in regards to the previous set of rules. Even if they looked at a previous rule and decided they felt it was total crap, I still feel as though taking that little bit of extra time to look at 3E in various stages of its life (beginning, middle, and end) would have lead to a more informed game design process behind 4E.

I don't think we can reasonably say whether this happened or not. They might have agonised over the bits of 3E they chucked out, or they might have done as you suggested, or more likely somewhere in between. (Feel free to quote the preview books at me on this, I haven't read them in a while. )

I also feel there are a lot of 4E ideas which work well, but aren't used enough. The disease track system is one of them. I feel that a lot of granularity could have been added to the game by using that model for more things. Imagine if a save against mind control was less yes/no; less binary than it currently is. Imagine if you instead had a starting position on a condition track -dazed for sake of example. On your turn you then make some sort of mental roll to resist; if you make the roll you improve; if you fail, perhaps you fall to being stunned.

Complexity doesn't inherently equal good design, but on the other hand I do believe 4E strayed too far from a model built for SW Saga that seemed to work extremely well.

Book-keeping *is* a problem in 4E combats (like many DM's I've had to develop my own little tools and methods for condition tracking), but it also gives you a lot of tactical options and excellent rewards for effective party strategy.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

@Johnny3D3D has made some excellent points on how the final game turned out versus the preview books. I never interpreted PoL as grim'n'gritty and low magic, however. That would've been incredibly unlikely in D&D's default setting.

I started my homebrew campaign with every intention of embracing the PoL concept, but it soon became clear to me that the more I made my campaign fit the idea of D&D that has grown in my head over the last couple of decades, the less like PoL it seemed to become. The points of light themselves were expanding, and the untamed wilderness between them was shrinking, and the truly dangerous bits of my campaign were now on the periphery of a civilized and stable land.

4E itself -- the mechanical framework and its assumptions -- still supports this type of game wonderfully, and we've had years of fun with the game, but the default setting as envisaged in the previous books didn't really came to fruition in my case.

Well, I think the PoL CONCEPT itself is best done in a grim kind of tone, and I think they did start out with that thought in mind. The problem was as a generic setting it kind of has to be something of a kitchen sink. Thus it is very hard to keep it true to any one theme. Personally my next project is going to be mapping out just such a setting, one where the darkness is DARK and starts at the eves of people's houses. A darkness that holds secrets, where nobody is sure if the next town even exists anymore, let alone people consider GOING there. I think that might be a little beyond what PoL started out as conceptually, but I think it is more robust than what it has evolved into.

And yeah, I think 4e will support this type of game quite well. Vastly better than 3.x would have overall. 3.5 does low level gritty OK, but it tends to fall apart pretty quickly, either the PCs are not up to facing down the dark, or they're running around with world shaking magic rewriting the concept. I think 4e will pull it off pretty well, grim but not hopeless, dark but if you're hardy and brave enough the destined heroes can make a path through it. 4e is also easier to fluff, so recasting powers a bit will be easy enough.

 

[Argyle King]

Complexity doesn't inherently equal good design, but on the other hand I do believe 4E strayed too far from a model built for SW Saga that seemed to work extremely well.

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Neither is simplicity inherently good.

As far as my disease track idea, I think the step up in complexity from multiple saves to a condition track is small; especially in comparison to what I feel the game would gain.

Mechanically, the game gains a way to incorporate elements of past editions without breaking the 4E model; in fact, it does so by embracing the 4E rules.

Fluffwise (because I do believe there is a connection between crunch and fluff,) the subtle change from saves as they are now to a condition track (in my opinion) creates the possibility of more dynamic and dramatic play. Instead of a PC being instantly dominated, there is a mental struggle between the PC and the enemy for control of his mind. Likewise, the party psion can combat a mindflayer; both locked in a struggle which can take steps forward and backwards instead of being so yes/no.

If I can touch on that last point again and again bring up mechanics, I think I also found a way to make the orb wizard as originally published a little less broken. Instead of being able to use the orb as an insta-win button which causes a target to go straight from save to suck, the orb acts as a way to penalize one of the target's rolls to recover from a condition. It would still need some work to get the bugs out of the system, but I believe it is a sound idea.

 

[MerricB]

I do believe 4E strayed too far from a model built for SW Saga that seemed to work extremely well.

Speaking as someone who played in a 1st-20th level campaign of SW Saga, and is running a campaign that has gone from 1st-27th level in 4E, Saga had a *lot* of problems which 4E doesn't have.

4E had the problem with the monsters vs character maths at higher levels (which is mostly fixed now), but Saga had a lot of character vs character issues that just got worse and worse. Saga really missed having healing surges; it was just too easy to take wounds you couldn't heal.

Towards the end of our Saga campaign, we really wished Saga had incorporated a lot more of 4E in its design. We haven't thought the opposite.

Cheers!

 

[Oldtimer]

4E had the problem with the monsters vs character maths at higher levels (which is mostly fixed now), but Saga had a lot of character vs character issues that just got worse and worse. Saga really missed having healing surges; it was just too easy to take wounds you couldn't heal.

This is exactly the same problem we had with SWSE. A fun game, but far too often grievious wounds forced the players to take a vacation mid-adventure.

If I should start a new campaign in SWSE, I would most definitely try to graft healing surges onto to the game.