Okay so i guess online i dont have a place because i have been playing since 2e. and hated 3.5 (grognard i know, whatever that means) but i like most of what i heard of 4e. Now its not because its any closer to past editions, i gave up on older themes being supported years ago. I dont know why, i could make a list of guesses that would probably have 50 things on it if no one stopped me (but i cant point to 1 or 2 things that did it) but for what ever reason the super dangerous, PC's on constant edge of death wondering to themselves "why didnt i follow dad and work on the family farm?" style of play is dead. Not enough people want it anymore to maintain a campaign that way, at least not among d&d players, u have to go to other systems for that and have for years.
However i can credit 3x for making me a much better GM. It and the "lets find a system that sucks less in ways that are still good for the average newby gamer" shuffle made me a much better GM. There have been campaigns over the last 5 years where different players in the group bought 2 or 3 systems and we all made new characters week after week with new rules but the same storyline just to see what we liked. Half of the games i ran over the last decade i didnt even own the core book for. And that tought me that the rules are really not important. No matter what story u want to tell theres a way to do it.I have run heroic fantasy with White Wolf, Political campaignes full of ratcatchers and peasants with warhammer, and extremely low magic gritty Ravenloft games with 3.5 .
This isnt bragging this is a lesson, if u want to run a game, say a party of average soldier scouts all from the same region on thier way home after a short war who get ambushed and the survivors stick together to get payback and then get home to realise they have no skills but war anymore and theres a lot that needs to be done and the goverment isnt gonna do it. You can have any group of classes, they are all conscripts, and all were independent personalities. But the way u hit this same gritty down to earth game is a little different. Say with WW u would have those characters talk alot and get in a few fights where they focus on catching the enemy unawares or fooling a lackey into letting them into a position on the inside where they can make one fast lethal strike to take out leaders and make a quiet get way.
That same scenario with warhammer would play out with the characters fighting thier way through a hard ambush and the peasant classes go home to find problems of bandits, cultists and incompetent governence so that they need to use thier war skills to help thier freinds and nieghbors and go searching out thier war buddies to help. The nobles get home to find curruption and loss, or are simply out of the line of succession and need something to do, or to prove themselves. Wizards or middle class paths find themselves needing either a route of trade or an object owned by the bad guys or blocked by them ,and so they go looking for old war buddies.
With 3x the characters would get out of the war, head home knowing thier skills are military and they need to find something to do because they arent farmers and dont want to be but the government isnt paying them anymore. So they go to the bar and the watch stations and see what needs to be done.
No matter which rules set the there is a group of evil culitists in the woods that are using a two prongue approach with one group raiding killing and plundering along the roads, and another group infiltrating people with skills and magic into the towns thereaabouts to get new members and hamper official action agaisnt thier bandits.
No matter your system, your rules or your gripes, u could play that scenario as a good short campaign with tons of roleplay and combat. Fun for everyone. Add in that the leaders of the local group are just an arm of a bigger cult and u have a good long term campaign.
All the rules might encourage going about it in a different way, but all rules systems with a decent GM could have a good campaign with deep combat and heavy immersion roleplay. They might go at it with varying degrees of stealth depending on the lethality of the combat system, but thats the only difference.
And i think that is the key, not roleplay. Anyone who says per combat magic powers for a fighter makes them unable to roleplay isnt trying. Final fantasy did it fine with a dozen sequals and almost 2 decades. Magic and powers do not inhibit roleplay. Lack of creativity inhibits roleplay.
Sure theres issues, the "heal everything after 6 hours sleep" is downright retarded if your trying to do an earth setting. But if u say that theres lots of magic in the world, lots of positive energy and everyone heals or grows super fast it should'nt be hard to fit it in. Maybe if u keep that rule u cant do a grim and gritty war of attrition and fear based campaign. And those are some of the best, but thats what house rules are for.
I know i never ran a single 3x game without a stack of houserules which were mainly flavor based and changed from game to game and neither did most DM's i knew who ran 3x. So why should anyone assume that default 4x will make us not need to houserule our campaigns?
They have a high magic, high positive energy but the bad guys are winning and heroes are needed setting. Maybe that works maybe it doesnt. But thats a personal choice, maybe u want your "heroes needed" to be jason of the argonauts or robin hood, gritty folks in a gritty world, maybe u want them to be Beowulf or Hercules using super powers and inhuman abilities to slay the great evils and save the land. Both are valid, both can be good campaigns. but neither precludes roleplaying.
And thats what bothers me, it seems like some people are saying if you play the heroic side, the hercules/beowulf side, you cant possibly roleplay. The fact that both of these stories have lasted over a millenia give the lie to that. You can absolutely be heroic and roleplay, u can be wargamey in battle and roleplay.
Roleplaying is up to the GM. Not the rules. U could play a super heavy roleplay game, something like vampire or world of darkness, where its all set up to talk and talk and talk and never roll a dice, and have no roleplaying. Because everyone is a stereotype and everything can be decided with a die roll. Or u could play 3x and have everyone able to say what they want to say, make diplomacy a skill everyone has access to and give situation bonuses to rolls based on how well the player roleplayed the sitaution and use the skill roll to see how well it took and have heavy roll playing in a tactical game.
But no matter what roleplaying is up to the GM, Not the rules. If u cant roleplay and chat a scene then give a bonus to the rolls of anyone who did well and a penalty to anyone who did poorly, then u dont belong in the GMs chair. The rules are irrelevant to roleplay, they are only relevant to some themes of gaming.
I checked out of 3x when i saw the diplomacy and sense motive skills, I decided this isnt roleplaying, this this chatting enough to placate the DM and then rolling a dice to replace my roleplaying responsibilities. "roleplaying? Conversation? But i have 10 ranks in diplomacy and 4 bonus from CHA. and 6 ranks in sense motive and a high WIS. Lets just roll and see how good my character is". 3x was far and away the worst system for roleplaying ever. If u could have decent RP in 3x then u could just bring some friends over and play "make believe". Because there wasnt one thing encouraging roleplaying over dice rolling in 3x. At least 4x is admitting it.
Its like saying u love gas mileage, maybe u buy a prius and get 30 mpg, maybe u buy any similar car, get 25 mpg and show some creativity, go the dollar store, get an octane booster and get 28 mpg with a very similar car and dont pay the extra 20k. Sure u did some work but u got the car u liked with mileage u can afford.Damn shame u looked and shopped before buying. So if u cant shop some, think some, search and fix some, and deal with the consequences, u shouldnt be a GM.
I like 4e becauae it looks like it goes simple again, it looks like it reduces things the remember, and most importantly it looks like it puts the GM in control again.
Now do i like all the combat info put out? No. But do i think one damn thing they are putting out will effect my roleplay at all? No. Cause i will kick what i hate, explain what i like and justify the rest, just like every other setting that came before it. Will some players bitch and moan i am not following RAW? Yes they will, but i will tell them the same thing i allways have, "i dont like that rule and how it effects other things so i changed it. And if your gonna insist i run the game someone else wrote word for word i will ask u to leave now".
Because even in a small group i would rather have 1 good gamer with 2 characters, running them then well, having that extra crappy whiner player.
So i am wiling to try 4e because it looks easier to mod and change, because its bound to be different then 3e and most importantly because it looks like a different game. Different enough they should rename it but of course they wont for marketing reasons. But i will happily read it, and try it. And then change what i want to change. Thats what being a GM uis all about.
So who agrees with me that we should judge this as its own game, not as 4x or as D&D just as as a game, a roleplaying game with no history, no sacred cows, just as its own game on its own merits? Because so far, it looks pretty good on that score.
However i can credit 3x for making me a much better GM. It and the "lets find a system that sucks less in ways that are still good for the average newby gamer" shuffle made me a much better GM. There have been campaigns over the last 5 years where different players in the group bought 2 or 3 systems and we all made new characters week after week with new rules but the same storyline just to see what we liked. Half of the games i ran over the last decade i didnt even own the core book for. And that tought me that the rules are really not important. No matter what story u want to tell theres a way to do it.I have run heroic fantasy with White Wolf, Political campaignes full of ratcatchers and peasants with warhammer, and extremely low magic gritty Ravenloft games with 3.5 .
This isnt bragging this is a lesson, if u want to run a game, say a party of average soldier scouts all from the same region on thier way home after a short war who get ambushed and the survivors stick together to get payback and then get home to realise they have no skills but war anymore and theres a lot that needs to be done and the goverment isnt gonna do it. You can have any group of classes, they are all conscripts, and all were independent personalities. But the way u hit this same gritty down to earth game is a little different. Say with WW u would have those characters talk alot and get in a few fights where they focus on catching the enemy unawares or fooling a lackey into letting them into a position on the inside where they can make one fast lethal strike to take out leaders and make a quiet get way.
That same scenario with warhammer would play out with the characters fighting thier way through a hard ambush and the peasant classes go home to find problems of bandits, cultists and incompetent governence so that they need to use thier war skills to help thier freinds and nieghbors and go searching out thier war buddies to help. The nobles get home to find curruption and loss, or are simply out of the line of succession and need something to do, or to prove themselves. Wizards or middle class paths find themselves needing either a route of trade or an object owned by the bad guys or blocked by them ,and so they go looking for old war buddies.
With 3x the characters would get out of the war, head home knowing thier skills are military and they need to find something to do because they arent farmers and dont want to be but the government isnt paying them anymore. So they go to the bar and the watch stations and see what needs to be done.
No matter which rules set the there is a group of evil culitists in the woods that are using a two prongue approach with one group raiding killing and plundering along the roads, and another group infiltrating people with skills and magic into the towns thereaabouts to get new members and hamper official action agaisnt thier bandits.
No matter your system, your rules or your gripes, u could play that scenario as a good short campaign with tons of roleplay and combat. Fun for everyone. Add in that the leaders of the local group are just an arm of a bigger cult and u have a good long term campaign.
All the rules might encourage going about it in a different way, but all rules systems with a decent GM could have a good campaign with deep combat and heavy immersion roleplay. They might go at it with varying degrees of stealth depending on the lethality of the combat system, but thats the only difference.
And i think that is the key, not roleplay. Anyone who says per combat magic powers for a fighter makes them unable to roleplay isnt trying. Final fantasy did it fine with a dozen sequals and almost 2 decades. Magic and powers do not inhibit roleplay. Lack of creativity inhibits roleplay.
Sure theres issues, the "heal everything after 6 hours sleep" is downright retarded if your trying to do an earth setting. But if u say that theres lots of magic in the world, lots of positive energy and everyone heals or grows super fast it should'nt be hard to fit it in. Maybe if u keep that rule u cant do a grim and gritty war of attrition and fear based campaign. And those are some of the best, but thats what house rules are for.
I know i never ran a single 3x game without a stack of houserules which were mainly flavor based and changed from game to game and neither did most DM's i knew who ran 3x. So why should anyone assume that default 4x will make us not need to houserule our campaigns?
They have a high magic, high positive energy but the bad guys are winning and heroes are needed setting. Maybe that works maybe it doesnt. But thats a personal choice, maybe u want your "heroes needed" to be jason of the argonauts or robin hood, gritty folks in a gritty world, maybe u want them to be Beowulf or Hercules using super powers and inhuman abilities to slay the great evils and save the land. Both are valid, both can be good campaigns. but neither precludes roleplaying.
And thats what bothers me, it seems like some people are saying if you play the heroic side, the hercules/beowulf side, you cant possibly roleplay. The fact that both of these stories have lasted over a millenia give the lie to that. You can absolutely be heroic and roleplay, u can be wargamey in battle and roleplay.
Roleplaying is up to the GM. Not the rules. U could play a super heavy roleplay game, something like vampire or world of darkness, where its all set up to talk and talk and talk and never roll a dice, and have no roleplaying. Because everyone is a stereotype and everything can be decided with a die roll. Or u could play 3x and have everyone able to say what they want to say, make diplomacy a skill everyone has access to and give situation bonuses to rolls based on how well the player roleplayed the sitaution and use the skill roll to see how well it took and have heavy roll playing in a tactical game.
But no matter what roleplaying is up to the GM, Not the rules. If u cant roleplay and chat a scene then give a bonus to the rolls of anyone who did well and a penalty to anyone who did poorly, then u dont belong in the GMs chair. The rules are irrelevant to roleplay, they are only relevant to some themes of gaming.
I checked out of 3x when i saw the diplomacy and sense motive skills, I decided this isnt roleplaying, this this chatting enough to placate the DM and then rolling a dice to replace my roleplaying responsibilities. "roleplaying? Conversation? But i have 10 ranks in diplomacy and 4 bonus from CHA. and 6 ranks in sense motive and a high WIS. Lets just roll and see how good my character is". 3x was far and away the worst system for roleplaying ever. If u could have decent RP in 3x then u could just bring some friends over and play "make believe". Because there wasnt one thing encouraging roleplaying over dice rolling in 3x. At least 4x is admitting it.
Its like saying u love gas mileage, maybe u buy a prius and get 30 mpg, maybe u buy any similar car, get 25 mpg and show some creativity, go the dollar store, get an octane booster and get 28 mpg with a very similar car and dont pay the extra 20k. Sure u did some work but u got the car u liked with mileage u can afford.Damn shame u looked and shopped before buying. So if u cant shop some, think some, search and fix some, and deal with the consequences, u shouldnt be a GM.
I like 4e becauae it looks like it goes simple again, it looks like it reduces things the remember, and most importantly it looks like it puts the GM in control again.
Now do i like all the combat info put out? No. But do i think one damn thing they are putting out will effect my roleplay at all? No. Cause i will kick what i hate, explain what i like and justify the rest, just like every other setting that came before it. Will some players bitch and moan i am not following RAW? Yes they will, but i will tell them the same thing i allways have, "i dont like that rule and how it effects other things so i changed it. And if your gonna insist i run the game someone else wrote word for word i will ask u to leave now".
Because even in a small group i would rather have 1 good gamer with 2 characters, running them then well, having that extra crappy whiner player.
So i am wiling to try 4e because it looks easier to mod and change, because its bound to be different then 3e and most importantly because it looks like a different game. Different enough they should rename it but of course they wont for marketing reasons. But i will happily read it, and try it. And then change what i want to change. Thats what being a GM uis all about.
So who agrees with me that we should judge this as its own game, not as 4x or as D&D just as as a game, a roleplaying game with no history, no sacred cows, just as its own game on its own merits? Because so far, it looks pretty good on that score.
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