D&D General New Interview with Rob Heinsoo About 4E

[Cordwainer Fish]

I would recommend to do not point and scream "dissociated" at everything that moves in the near future just because the word annoys you.

 

[Aldarc]

Yes, it does explain (to some extent) 4e.

You can pretend to please people, while fixing nothing. Or you can fix things, and necessarily piss some people off. Pick your poison.

When coupled with the other, actually irrational positions (like the need for Wizards to always be the best class in the game, as Heinsoo himself reported following 4e's launch), explosive responses are guaranteed.

This was actually also an issue in the switch from PF1 to PF2. There were a lot of designers at Paizo who were apparently kicking and screaming about the wizard's power being tuned down any or not having "all the spells," especially when it came to curtailing the Arcane spell list. Whether they succeeded in appropriately balancing the Wizard is certainly debatable, as the community still does, but the point stands.

What do you think of PF2?

It feels between PF1 moving towards 4e but not necessarily between 4e and 5e. Even then, I think that the problem is that sometimes PF2 rubs me the wrong way when/where PF2 is like PF1/3e and when/where it's more like 4e. In some ways, PF2 still feels "cowardly" in a reluctance to embrace anything that could be perceived as "too 4e," likely in how the PF brand and its audience was initially rooted in anti-4e sentiment. I think that it's a good game that is well-designed, but I don't think that it's quite for me.

 

[Kaiyanwang]

This was actually also an issue in the switch from PF1 to PF2. There were a lot of designers at Paizo who were apparently kicking and screaming about the wizard's power being tuned down any or not having "all the spells,"

Source?

 

[MichaelSomething]

It’s wild how willfully blind people choose to be. Basic math shows the wizard is the most powerful. Basic system knowledge shows the wizard is the most powerful. The designers of the game flat-out say the wizard is the most powerful. And yet people still refuse to acknowledge it. So weird. They must be getting something out of the charade. Otherwise they wouldn’t keep it up.

Don't you know many people ignore vast amounts of rules and math in D&D and rely on the fiction and DM judgement??

 

[Vaalingrade]

The tone is due to ragged frustration from over a decade of a misinformation campaign that can't be properly countered due to the post-edition war tontine.

 

[Aldarc]

And I also don't think that dismissing Dissociated mechanics or attempting to call everything D.M. to dilute their meaning is an earnest way to approach things.

Dissociated mechanics was a term created to crap-talk 4e, and the Alexandrian was fairly self-aware in later posts on the subject that they were engaging in special pleading about when and how they selectively applied the term. (Often it wasn't D.A. when it was a game they liked, but the mechanics were D.A. when it was a game they didn't like.)

 

[payn]

It feels between PF1 moving towards 4e but not necessarily between 4e and 5e. Even then, I think that the problem is that sometimes PF2 rubs me the wrong way when/where PF2 is like PF1/3e and when/where it's more like 4e. In some ways, PF2 still feels "cowardly" in a reluctance to embrace anything that could be perceived as "too 4e," likely in how the PF brand and its audience was initially rooted in anti-4e sentiment. I think that it's a good game that is well-designed, but I don't think that it's quite for me.

Interesting, I don't see much of any 3E/PF1 in PF2, which is why I dont enjoy it much. Any notion that PF2 is traditional D&D is thinly veiled. Make no mistake this is an encounters based game. It might feel cowardly to you, but damn if it didnt take courage to take the direction it did with its current fan base at the time. While PF2 not being for me, I still admire Paizo.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

While I enjoyed our direct discussion about wotc, the tone of other indirect posts, toward me or other I don't know, could be interpreted as passive-aggressive and hampering the discussion, quite frankly.
And I also don't think that dismissing Dissociated mechanics or attempting to call everything D.M. to dilute their meaning is an earnest way to approach things.

I genuinely don't believe "dissociated mechanics" are, or have ever been, an earnest argument to begin with. That is dismissive because I believe dismissive is what that argument deserves. It is fundamentally a reification of mere preference as though it were a logical necessity.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Dissociated mechanics was a term created to crap-talk 4e, and the Alexandrian was fairly self-aware in later posts on the subject that they were engaging in special pleading about when and how they selectively applied the term. (Often it wasn't D.A. when it was a game they liked, but the mechanics were D.A. when it was a game they didn't like.)

Exactly. Indeed, when they first argued the position, they claimed "dissociated" mechanics were in fact exactly the antithesis of roleplay. This is not an exaggeration. They were exceedingly clear about this point.

But then, when The Alexandrian absolutely GUSHED over GM intrusions, the single most blatantly dissociated mechanic I've ever seen, suddenly dissociated mechanics had to be judged by whether they were beneficial or not, and also they could totally be fostering excellent and amazing roleplay.

The argument was never serious to begin with. It was always, from top to bottom, a way to transmute lead preference into gold logic.

 

[Kaiyanwang]

The tone is due to ragged frustration from over a decade of a misinformation campaign that can't be properly countered due to the post-edition war tontine.

I could say the same thing about the absolutely preposterous takes I read here about 3e. But I try to address the specific point when possible I don't post that "people get angry". The reason I started to post directly here was exactly because a lot of statements were made which I considered baseless.
The reason why D.A. was created and how well was used or badly misused doesn't mean that cannot be used to describe a specific disconnection between rules and gameworld and their immersion breaking effect.
In the same way, if people have this reaction to a certain ruleset that can be described in this way, or in the many way people described them in the thread, doens't mean that they are inherently wrong, irrational, or any other thing I have seen misinterpreted or outright misconstrued here.