Pramas on 4E and New Gamers

[SSquirrel]

BTW I searched the pdfs of the core books and there are _2_ "see page XX" instances in the DMG and none in the PHB or DMG. Errors happen. Far less XX than older White Wolf

 

[Allensh]

BTW I searched the pdfs of the core books and there are _2_ "see page XX" instances in the DMG and none in the PHB or DMG. Errors happen. Far less XX than older White Wolf

Those PDFS are, as we are finding out, not the ones that actually went to press, as some errors that have been found in them do not exist in the printed books.

Allen

 

[Merlin the Tuna]

Now admittedly, I skipped a good chunk of this 400 post thread, but I have a question.

Why do we expect a game to be easy to grasp if we need three separate books to contain the core of the game? I mean, I do feel like 4E is more conducive to jumping right in than 3E was in a lot of respects, but I still wouldn't say either is particularly newbie friendly. I think we could stand to trim the core rules down to fewer than 800 pages before we start calling that a realistic expectation.

 

[Pramas]

For the record I did not say that you had to read all of Chapter 4 to play. I said it was "enormous and daunting." I did not go from page to page reading every power. I read some for each class to try to get a sense of what the powers were like and, as I said, my eyes soon glazed over.

If you've never played before, you'll probably want to get some idea of what each class can do before you pick one. To do that you have to deal with Chapter 4. We've already seen a bunch of experienced gamers in this very thread report that they had trouble with it. It would be even worse for total newbs. All of them? No, of course not, but why put up a barrier to new players when you don't have to?

As for online games, you could say I have some experience. I was a writer and world designer for the Pirates of the Burning Sea MMO, which launched this year.

 

[Maggan]

We've already seen a bunch of experienced gamers in this very thread report that they had trouble with it.

Have we seen reports of a bunch of inexperienced gamers having trouble with it? Because I'd take that information more seriously than a bunch of experienced gamers anyday when it comes to finding out how big a problem this is.

/M

 

[Fenes]

If you've never played before, you'll probably want to get some idea of what each class can do before you pick one. To do that you have to deal with Chapter 4. We've already seen a bunch of experienced gamers in this very thread report that they had trouble with it. It would be even worse for total newbs. All of them? No, of course not, but why put up a barrier to new players when you don't have to?

As for online games, you could say I have some experience. I was a writer and world designer for the Pirates of the Burning Sea MMO, which launched this year.

PotBS is a complex game, and illustrates my point well. Anyone who can play PotBS won't have trouble with D&D 4E.

Yes, there is a tutorial, but the real meat of the game is not explained there at all. There's no "easy" explanation of the purpose of the different stats, no easy lay out of the realm vs. realm system, no examples for tactics. Crowd control in AvCo is not explained, nor are the other aspects of AvCo (like "target the NPC captain and sick your crew on him"). It also had no layout of the different ship types.

 

[delericho]

Those PDFS are, as we are finding out, not the ones that actually went to press, as some errors that have been found in them do not exist in the printed books.

No, but those errors do exist in the printed DMG.

 

[Merlin the Tuna]

If you've never played before, you'll probably want to get some idea of what each class can do before you pick one. To do that you have to deal with Chapter 4.

I'm confused by this, because there are two instances prior to the Great Wall that include brief rundowns of what the classes do; one near the initial description of the 4 roles, and one slightly more specific one at the beginning of the class chapter. They are broad, but isn't that what we're going for here anyway? Give people some idea of what the classes do, then let them look at the class features that allow them to do it if they care about the class?

I really don't see what the issue is here. What would the alternative be?

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

For the record I did not say that you had to read all of Chapter 4 to play. I said it was "enormous and daunting." I did not go from page to page reading every power. I read some for each class to try to get a sense of what the powers were like and, as I said, my eyes soon glazed over.

If you've never played before, you'll probably want to get some idea of what each class can do before you pick one. To do that you have to deal with Chapter 4. We've already seen a bunch of experienced gamers in this very thread report that they had trouble with it. It would be even worse for total newbs. All of them? No, of course not, but why put up a barrier to new players when you don't have to?

As for online games, you could say I have some experience. I was a writer and world designer for the Pirates of the Burning Sea MMO, which launched this year.

I actually think that experienced gamers are going to have more problems then inexperienced gamers.

Decades of manuals for this game written according to a conventional but not necessarilly well concieved organizational paradigm have created some very bad habits in people.

It would be interesting to see some actual usability testing of the manual. I imagine it does pretty well. It certainly doesn't fly in the face of more contemporary manual writing paradigms in the manner of past editions.

 

[MerricB]

For the record I did not say that you had to read all of Chapter 4 to play. I said it was "enormous and daunting." I did not go from page to page reading every power. I read some for each class to try to get a sense of what the powers were like and, as I said, my eyes soon glazed over.

Chris, I just wanted to go on record that I completely agree with you on this point. I found myself losing track of where the classes were amongst the sea of powers. I'm enjoying 4e at present, but the presentation of classes and their powers could definitely be worked on.

As for the larger point of the 4E rulebooks not having a good entry class and thus not being a good entry point to the hobby... I have mixed feelings on this.

On one hand, beginning characters have a very small selection of powers, and will mostly be using "At Will" powers. I think this set-up helps new players get used to the basis of the game pretty well before they get extra powers and really have to start juggling when they use powers and which ones to choose.

On the other hand, they still have a lot of choices, and it's not like AD&D where your fighter basically has one choice: do I attack with longsword or longbow? (And the DM does most of the work in any case... as for beginning DMs, they've had it tough with pretty much every RPG ever made due to the additional demands of the job).

On the gripping hand, Wizards are bringing out a Basic Set later this year. If that does its job properly, perhaps new players will be able to have an easier task of learning the game and then move up to the "big leagues"...

I guess we'll see.

Good luck with all your upcoming and current projects, Chris!

Cheers!