My take.

[tsadkiel]

(Feng Shui has lots of butt kicking, but little detail; IIRC, gun damage is purely a function of narrative role. It's been a while since I read it, but I seem to recall it all comes down to 'describe a cool action, the cooler it is, the more butt you kick'. This is very different from 4e's plethora of detailed, crunchy, rules. Mmm....crunch....)

You do not RC. The main Feng Shui book has seven pages devoted to various gun stats (not counting the full pages of various gun silhouettes) and not one, not two, but six different types of crunchy combat power.

EDIT - you may actually be thinking of Wushu, which works just as you describe.

 

[Hussar]

Sherman, set the wayback machine to 1999.

Is this one iota different than the screeds we saw ten years ago before 3e hit the bricks? That the game would be the "death of roleplaying" and whatnot?

Y'know, roleplaying, like Science Fiction, has been on life support for so long, it's shocking that it's still kicking around. We've heard how this or that will be the death of roleplaying, how the new thing will only appeal to the lowest common denominator and how the latest thing will be the death of creativity so often and for so long it's amazing that we actually managed to do anything anymore.

You could hold up the OP side by side with any number of identical opinions spouted off ten years ago and, they'd be nearly identical.

And identically accurate as well.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

Yeah, but does anybody appreciate how much hard work has gone into keeping roleplaying alive despite the best and nastiest attempts of the industry? No. People treat it as if it's natural that people still roleplay with D&D, while it's the result of the sweat, blood and tears of countless DMs trying to wrangle some semblance of roleplaying from the cold, dry numbers of modern games.


...what?

 

[Falling Icicle]

I agree with the OP's opinion that 4e looks alot like a board game. 3e added alot of miniature emphasis to the combat, and 4e has taken that to the extreme. Pretty much everything we've seen are combat powers, with a heavy emphasis on squares, etc. Pretty much everything I've seen emphasises the board. When I started roleplaying, I never used any kind of board. It was all in our imagination, with an occasionally scribbled map for visual reference. Now, I can't even imagine trying to play 4e without a board. 4e really does seem to be a glorified version of the D&D miniatures game. Where's the social abilities? Where's any sense of roleplaying beyond naming your character?

And while I understand that any game must try to balance realism vs playability in its own way, 4e has pretty much abandoned any sense of reality at all. Hit points are now a complete abstraction that seem to have nothing whatsoever to do with a character's actual physical condition. Characters can spontaneously heal themselves every fight without magic. "Martial" characters, even at 1st level, can do very magical things (like causing their arrows to duplicate mid flight). Why even have different power sources when they all effectively do the same thing - magic? The difference seems to be nothing more than fluff.

And from a mechanical standpoint, I'm already very unhappy about alot of the things I've seen. Dex bonus to damage on ranged attacks? Con or Str for fortitude saves, Cha or Will for Will saves? Why should a ranger even bother getting Strength at all anymore? Why should a Warlock get wisdom? Heck, why should anyone but a Wizard get intelligence at all? Instead of resolving the "dump" attribute problem, they've compounded it, making it far easier to simply ignore the attributes that don't go with your cookie-cutter class. This is, to me, a leap in the wrong direction.

And skills? I absolutely hate the dumbed-down, 1/2 level to everything SWSE style skills. I'm not happy at all to see that system being used in 4e. I was never a great fan of 3e's skills, but the only real problem with them was that the skills were too narrow and characters got far too few skill points. But again, I think they went in the wrong direction here. Every character automatically gains ranks in EVERY skill as they level, even skills that make absolutely no sense for the class or character to have? The 20th level desert ranger is better at swimming than a 1st level islander? Really? And not only that, you have to take a feat to train in a skill after 1st level? If I do end up playing 4e, the skills will be the very first thing I houserule. I just hope that mechanic isn't so ingrained in the system that it would be nigh impossible to change it.

 

[BryonD]

And identically accurate as well.

Or it could be identically accurate to the screeds of 2e (which were different only in that mass internet hype part wasn't there).

There have been plenty of long discussions already about the fundamental differences between what happened at the time of 3E and what is happening there. Trying to whitewash everything as just a repeat might be a comfortable blurb, but it doesn't make it so.

 

[BryonD]

To be honest, D&D hasn't had this since the very beginning.

HP and the fact that a dagger strike at 1st level can kill while at 10th level it's but a mere scratch?

Armor that doesn't prevent you from being hurt, but protects you from being hit? (At least 1st edition had it that some weapons could penetrate armor better, but still... the binary Hit/Miss of AC is hardly 'authentic'.)

For any attempt at verisimilitude, D&D just isn't the game to be playing.

You post makes me think you don't actually know what the word really means.
If you add "4E" to your last sentence, then yeah, you are right.
But if you are claiming that it applies to what I've been doing in recent years, then you simply have no idea what you have been missing.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Actually, it's not. 3e had some very sketchy, but very key role-playing rules built into it. Part of that was the skill system (which 4e seems to be keeping but developing a little bit further). Part of that was the NPC system (which 4e is totally scrapping). Part of that was the monster system (which 4e is totally scrapping). Part of that was the system of spells and powers (which 4e is reimagining). Part of that was the system of treasures and rewards (which 4e is reimagining).

The Storyteller system has rules for morality.

To me, having rules for playing the role is the very essence of a roleplaying game.

Now, I know, especially with D&D, that part of the role I'm playing is a combat part. That's awesome and I'd embrace that fully for what it is.

But the reason I actually enjoy D&D is not because of the combat. It's because I get to be Achilles or King Arthur or Indiana Jones or Harry Potter or whatever. That's the essence, for me, of a heroic role-playing game.

D&D4e has shown that it's definatley going to let me play the role of a Striker or a Defender or a Controller or a Leader. Heck yeah it will!

But it hasn't shown me that it will let me play as these character archetypes.

Because these archetypes involve combat, oh yes, they definately do, and it's important to have that.

But they're not JUST combat, that's not the focus, that's not the reason.

There can and should be mechanics for these archetypes outside of combat.

The 3e skill system let me be an amazing diplomat or an intimidating warrior or a master crafter or a lore-filled sage or a master of exotic dance, and it let me do that mechanically. The 3e NPC system let me be uniquely powerful, above and beyond what the other people of the world could do, and it let me do that mechanically. The Storyteller system lets me fall from grace or struggle with sin, and it lets me do it mechanically.

It might just be that we haven't seen it all yet, but there's going to have to be a LOT more that they're not showing us to smooth this perception over.

It's not roleplaying to roll your "Perform (Exotic Dance)" skill. It is role-playing to decide to use it, to describe what your character wants to dance. That is the "real" roleplaying part.

Does it become more role-playing if you can dance an exotic dance and use your "per dance" power "Stunning Jump" that causes the audience to take 1d6+CHA points of impression damage?

I agree that such skills should exist in a game, and that the rules should work for it. But it makes little sense in making the rules more complex for them and pretending that means you have more role-playing now. You have just using people using a different part of your game system more. (I'd say it's okay to want making the rules for them more complex - if that makes the game mechanically more interesting. But I'd say that from all mechanical systems, combat systems are probably the most useful for a game that is played with multiple players that want to share the mechanical game experience)

 

[Carnivorous_Bean]

If I'm not mistaken, early editions didn't even *have* rules for any kind of social encounters or even skills really. I guess there was some table for a 'background' thing like Carpenter or Farmer, but NWPs weren't introduced for a while.

Yet, somehow, people managed to -*gasp*- roleplay.

I really do see the fallacy of "The more structured a game's combat mechanics are the worse the RP is going to be". That just doesn't wash. Not one bit.

I concur. Logically, poor combat rules =/= good roleplaying, nor do good combat rules = bad roleplaying. And there's little objective evidence that 1st edition was anything but a tactical wargame with a lot of horrendously mismatched rules. Heck, it was a long time before 1st edition AD&D even acknowledged that anything outside the dungeon existed, other than as a vague place you went to sell your loot, and once outside stuff did appear, it was mostly charts for overland travel rates, IIRC, and how frequently you should roll for random combat encounters.

If combat rules were contrary to roleplaying, then the most successful roleplaying game would simply consist of role-playing rules and would have a combat system that consisted of "high roll wins." Except that then, people would complain about the RPG rules interfering with their roleplaying.

Personally, I've always run campaigns that are probably 80-90% roleplaying, and 10-20% combat. But it's nice to know that the combat portions of my games will no longer be the tedious slugfests that they have always been before in D&D. I bought Bo9S and loved the maneuvers in it, but they only served to make two types interesting in combat -- fighter types and wizard types. Now, it finally looks like rogues and rangers -- in fact, every class -- are going to be able to use maneuvers that will add some interest to the "I hit, I miss, I hit, I miss" b.s. that combat used to consist of.

Oh, yes, and maybe fights will be memorable. "Hey, do you remember that time Fred the Fierce shoved the evil overlord backwards into his own trap using his tide of iron .... " After all, who remembers, "I hit the evil overlord. I missed the evil overlord. I hit the evil overlord. I missed the evil overlord." And that will add to the roleplaying richness of the situation -- after all, warriors' tales of their exploits really are part of who they are!

 

[Hussar]

Or it could be identically accurate to the screeds of 2e (which were different only in that mass internet hype part wasn't there).

There have been plenty of long discussions already about the fundamental differences between what happened at the time of 3E and what is happening there. Trying to whitewash everything as just a repeat might be a comfortable blurb, but it doesn't make it so.

And blowing off comments comparing the similarities between the rants over 3e and 4e is equally comforting I'm sure.

Are you honestly saying that you NEVER saw anyone talk about 3e as being too much of a board game, taking away too much creative power from the DM and too difficult to "truly" role play in? Gimme a break.

Heck, you yourself are guilty of claiming that "truly creative" DM's won't play 4e.

 

[Delta]

Heck, it was a long time before 1st edition AD&D even acknowledged that anything outside the dungeon existed, other than as a vague place you went to sell your loot, and once outside stuff did appear, it was mostly charts for overland travel rates, IIRC, and how frequently you should roll for random combat encounters.

You might have to clarify what you mean by "a long time". The original OD&D boxed set had rules for dungeons, wilderness, ships, and castles all in the same volume. The 1E DMG expanded on all the same stuff. I see a lot less of that in 3E/4E materials.