D&D 4E My First 4E Game: Disappointing. Yours? (UPDATED with player feedback)

[Darkwolf71]

But the fear is irrational. <snip>

See, here's the thing. Why does it have to be a 'fear'? And an irrational one at that. Can't it just be an honest dislike for the flavor? There are many RPGs I do not play; RIFTS, HEROS, V:TM and it's many off-shoots. Not because I fear them, I just don't find them appealing. If I decide not to play 4e it will be because I don't like the changes, not because I 'fear' them.

I beta tested WoW, It was a fun game, at first. I played it after release for a few months and decided I didn't really like the feel of the system. Though I have played and enjoyed many other MMOs over the years. WoWRPG? Never gave it a thought because I expect it to 'feel' like WoW. If I get 4e and it has a similar 'feel'... well, we'll see.

But, it seems you want to look down on those not blindly jumping on the 4e bandwagon who don't share your view, so I guess you would label my concerns as 'irrational fear'?

Whatever.

 

[Xorn]

That seems a bit inflexible to me.

I've been playing RPGs since about 1977. After downsizing a bit, I still own about 60+ different RPGs. I don't try to force my fellow players to play any particular game or genre. If what I want to run isn't their cup of tea, I step aside and let someone else run a game.

Result: I'm playing a nice PC in a 3.0 RttToEE game, and I can create campaigns at my leisure. If/when someone likes the sound of a game I propose, I'll run it. I don't feel the need to antagonize players in order to play an RPG.

What exactly is antagonistic? Inflexible I get, I guess... that feels kind of like saying I shouldn't drive my friends to a movie in a Chevy Malibu because they don't like Malibu's. Ride the Fing bus, then.

I'm going to run a 4E campaign because I'm excited to run it. I'm not just DMing because I live to serve my players--I enjoy it. I don't enjoy running v3.5 past 6-10th level, but I'm very excited about 4E.

When I let my group know that I'm going to wrap up the 3.5 campaign before June 6th, and I'd be running 4E, I said I was sorry if anyone didn't like 4E, but that's what I'd be running.

If I had said, "Josh, you <explicative> <racial slur>, if you don't play 4E then you're a <disparaging remark>, and a <defamatory personality>." Then I'd be antagonistic.

But I said, "Josh, we're going to go see 300 in my car. If you don't like my car you can find your own way to the theater."

I'm not going to stop being friends with Josh if he doesn't play 4E. He just won't be in my 4E gaming group.

Since he played in every game I've ever run that he was around for, I'm pretty sure I'll still have a dwarf fighter named Omar Ironstout in my first 4E campaign.

 

[SteveC]

Isn't that what that new module is supposed to be?

Yep. I'd say base it on that, but only include the bare bones of conditions, powers and so forth. You could definitely do an 8 page "this is 4E" and get someone able to run a one-shot. I would think the rules supplement in H1 is going to be enough to run characters from levels 1-3...and hopefully have a lot more detail.

I was just going through my old Dragon magazines from around the launch of 3E (I stopped buying Dragon a long time before 3E: back at issue 100, but picked it up again for 3E) and the difference in how the editions were packaged was night and day. Almost as if WotC had a magazine staff working in addition to their game designers, so they had the necessary people to make preview material. Ugh!

In any case, the point will be moot in a couple months anyway, so there you go. I just think they're missing an opportunity now.

--Steve

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

But I said, "Josh, we're going to go see 300 in my car. If you don't like my car you can find your own way to the theater."

I would say a more apt analogy would be: you are planning on going to the theater to see 300. Josh wants to see Cloverfield, but since you are driving you feel you should decide what to see. If Josh doesn't want to see 300, he can find his own way to the theater.

 

[Lord Zardoz]

It does not matter which game you like. D&D (any edition), Paranoia, Call of Cthulhu, Shadowrun, or Exalted. If your players are not that interested in playing, than the game will suck. Also, it sounds like your friends went over more to play videogames than to give the 4th Edition light playtest a solid run.

I suggest trying the game out with a different group of players rather than your regular group. That does not mean you ought to abandon your regular group though. Try waiting until the full game is released, than try joining a game using the online tools.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[CleverNickName]

Try waiting until the full game is released, than try joining a game using the online tools.

I think this is what we have decided; we will probably give 4E another chance in a couple of months. That way, we will have the complete set of rules in our hands (which will cut down on arguments), and I will have had ample time to prepare an adventure that doesn't have statues in it. Because apparently, statues make these guys very paranoid. The online tools are already going to be a smash hit with these folks, and will probably be the biggest selling point for the whole dadgum system...they love to spend hours pimping out customizing and playing dress-up with their WoW characters. (EDIT: sometimes I don't think before typing.)

This weekend I am going to playtest my spellcasting houserule, with my online gaming group, so I won't be seeing these guys until the middle of next week. When we game with them again, I am going to just run my 3.5E game as if last week's gaming session never happened, and possibly toss in a few 4E mechanics that I liked (as other posts here have suggested).

I've downloaded the sample stuff for Pathfinder, and like 4E, I'm pretty excited about it. (I'd like to state for the record, that my excitement about Pathfinder does not make me an "anti-4E" gamer.) I will pitch it to the local group in a couple of weeks and see if they want to give it a try.

 

[Xorn]

I would say a more apt analogy would be: you are planning on going to the theater to see 300. Josh wants to see Cloverfield, but since you are driving you feel you should decide what to see. If Josh doesn't want to see 300, he can find his own way to the theater.

300 represents the roleplaying experience in general. The car is the system we use to get there. So my analogy better represents how I presented. We both want to have the roleplaying experience (and both want to see 300. 300 vs Cloverfield? That's a joke, right?), and I want to experience that through 4E. Since I'm the one running the game (driving us there), you can play 4E (ride in my car) or find your own way to the movie (experience) we both want to see (feel). So if 4E (the car) is not a satisfactory way to get to the movie (the TRPG fun you desire) then you'll have to find another way to the theater. (Run your own Fing game.)

At no point is this antagonistic, either. It's just life. I don't care how much fun it would be to be for my players if I did math homework for 4-6 hours while trying to run the game (that's a transparent reference to 3.X), I'm not going to, because it's not fun for me, at all.

You kind of lost me at Cloverfield, though.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

I've downloaded the sample stuff for Pathfinder, and like 4E, I'm pretty excited about it. (I'd like to state for the record, that my excitement about Pathfinder does not make me an "anti-4E" gamer.) I will pitch it to the local group in a couple of weeks and see if they want to give it a try.

[Seinfeld]So, you're into both 4e and Pathfinder, huh? Not that there anything wrong with that. [/Seinfeld]

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

See, here's the thing. Why does it have to be a 'fear'? And an irrational one at that. Can't it just be an honest dislike for the flavor? There are many RPGs I do not play; RIFTS, HEROS, V:TM and it's many off-shoots. Not because I fear them, I just don't find them appealing. If I decide not to play 4e it will be because I don't like the changes, not because I 'fear' them.

I beta tested WoW, It was a fun game, at first. I played it after release for a few months and decided I didn't really like the feel of the system. Though I have played and enjoyed many other MMOs over the years. WoWRPG? Never gave it a thought because I expect it to 'feel' like WoW. If I get 4e and it has a similar 'feel'... well, we'll see.

But, it seems you want to look down on those not blindly jumping on the 4e bandwagon who don't share your view, so I guess you would label my concerns as 'irrational fear'?

Whatever.

I have little problem with people saying 4E is not their game. But I have a problem saying that something in 4E is like in a video-game and believing that this
a) is true
b) must be bad.
c) without giving me a reasonable explanation how this negatively affects the game and turns it into something "less" then a role playing game.

[hyperbole=Promise that the post will be getting better after this paragraph]
Uh-oh, D&D has classes. WoW also has classes! D&D is so video-gamey! It's not a roleplaying game anymore, it's just a computer game. The DM will be unable to react to the players and can only follow the predetermined script set out by the intial game designers! I will never again be able to roleplay my character flirting with the bar wench! Probably D&D 5 will also require Direct X 10!
D&D has elementals! Shadowrun has Elementals! D&D is no longer medieval fantasy, it will become instead a cyberpunk/fantasy mix! I don't want to play a Hacker, or being fracked (twice) by Mr. Johnson!
(Better yet: D&D has elementals! Battletech also has Elementals! I don#t want to be a Mech Pilot! D&D is turning to a board-game!)
[/hyperbole]

Don't dare to use "it's video-gamey" or "it's like Wow". Tell me how it is bad or not to your liking because it uses a specific mechanic. Tell me something like "Marks are an artifical concept, similar to WoW Aggro. It's a meta-game mechanic that exists just to key special abilities off of it and force tactical decisions for it. I don't like it, because I don't feel like I can describe it in game, especially with the "Mark superseding" rule!" That' an approach I can accept. I might still value the gameplay effect higher then the "feel" of the rules, but I can understand where you're coming from.
Off course, I can also understand where people are coming from if they just say "It's like WoW!". But this kind of "understanding" doesn't put the person in a bad light, and doesn't contribute to the discussion.

 

[Zil]

You kind of lost me at Cloverfield, though.

I think the point was that if some people in your group don't want to play 4E and instead want to play something else, then perhaps you should try to accommodate what they want sometimes. Perhaps you could let them run what they want on alternating weeks, or every third week, etc.

In our gaming group, we used to rotate between DMs/Campaigns. Sure, we'd play my long running Planescape game most of the time, but sometimes we would play a Rifts game or a Night Below game run by another GM other weeks. These games were all held at my place even when I wasn't running the game. Even though I personally do not care for Rifts, I was more than willing to play because one of the players was really excited about it. There's a give and take in most long lived gaming groups.

So Cloverfield represents someone in your gaming group who wants to run/play something other than 4E from time to time. It could be Rifts, 3.x, Pathfinder, d20 Traveller, original Traveller, d6 Star Wars, CoC or maybe even the Cloverfield RPG (assuming there was such a beast).