D&D 4E Presentation vs design... vs philosophy

[Lanefan]

And almost certain that without something to help mine would be utterly different than yours... we have humans that think elder berries reduce aging because they are antioxidants

None of which matters a whit as long as your own experience as a Human helps you make consistent rulings at your table.

Consistent with themselves, that is. Whether they're consistent with Charlaquin's rulings or Neonchameleon's rulings or my rulings is utterly irrelevant.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I think you portray sinister motives where they didn't exist. I think you portray fear about something that no one had any fear about. Sounds more like a fanboy talking point than a real argument.

No one thought WOTC ninja's would steal their books. No one started hating 4e out of enjoyment. No one continued doing so out of enjoyment either.

So the games weren't under any threat.

Therefore there was no reason at all to spend time actively hating 4e. Which means that people must have done so because they wanted to.

I don't think that's the full story. I think if you though that expressing your dislike of 5e (i'm not sure if it goes all the way up to hatred for you) could make a difference in you getting a new game in the style you more enjoy that you would do it. But that boat has sailed. IMO.

And I'm going to tell you that you are committing a huge category error. There are dozens of games around already. I'm amazed that the WotC design team ever produced something as daring as 4e. And hatred is not and has never been the way to get new stuff I like. Support of those doing good things is. Which is another reason to focus on the games I love and more or less ignore the ones I hate unless I'm trying to deconstruct them to work out why they do what they do and what good parts I can find to borrow.

 

[Neonchameleon]

The healthy reaction is to express your emotions.

Bull.

The healthy reaction is to deal with your emotions. This can involve expressing them. When you're angry often the best thing to do is to count to ten and let yourself calm down. Expressing "I'm angry enough to hit you" directly for example is unhealthy - and leads to a feedback loop.

By the time it reaches hatred it's already inherently toxic and something has gone badly wrong somewhere. If it's over a game then it's in the way you deal with your emotions.

 

[Charlaquin]

Hating a game isn't toxic.

It kinda is though, dawg.

 

[Garthanos]

And so, skills would probably be able to achieve different results in your game than in mine.

Yes and you have no tools to describe or allow me to know ahead of time. And that this undermines my ability to play a character strategically shrug. UNLESS I play a spell caster then I have predictable quantifiable abilities but flank anyone else.

It’s your game, do with it as you will.

Speaking of which
As a DM -- I want rough parity between the non-combat ability of non-magicals and magicals ie the skilled character needs to be able to invest as much in it as the caster can and achieve roughly analog amounts and what tools did this game give me to achieve this? The amount of skill advancement is squashed so extensively shrug (those numbers are pretty damn paltry )

I know how long an average person can really hold their breath and legendary like Beowulf is absolutely not reasonable by any shake of a lambs tail so I do not even like the base heuristic you mentioned about human ability. I actually do want things to go off the charts and in fact think if you are beating up some of these monsters physically at high levels it doesn't make sense unless you really do.

 

[Sadras]

In 5e I feel significantly less empowered than I am in 4e.

Whereas I felt significantly less empowered DMing 4e than I do DMing 5e. And I say this as a diehard 4e supporter.

I can understand both your perspectives hence me XPing both posts - and this is coming from a strong 5e supporter. Personally I side with Charlaquin on this primarily because I'm a tinkerer. However I can also understand Neonchameleon's frustration with lack of environmental and monster kinetic effects. It certainly does feel like we need an advanced monsters' manual, where an ogre may sacrifice x hit point damage inflicted on their opponent to force them to make a STR check or be pushed or that every miss by a giant creates a 5 foot square of difficult terrain around them or how the movement of a green dragon in a forest may force DEX saves/ACROBATIC checks to avoid falling foliage which causes x effect.

As an avid tinkerer and relatively experienced DM I do not mind so much redesigning the monsters as I see fit.

 

[Charlaquin]

I don’t think so.

Well, there is. “I hate banana popsicles” is what’s called an “I statement.” It clearly frames your objection in terms of your personal feelings and preferences. “Banana popsicles are disgusting” is an assertion. It puts forward the idea that banana popsicles are, by their essential nature, repellent, thereby implicitly suggesting that anyone who likes them is somehow wrong. “Banana popsicles disgust me” is a little better, but I statements are always preferable when it comes to discussing contentious issues.

Possibly on an objective level - but not on an emotional one. And probably not even completely on an objective level. As we all understand, playing fairly unpopular rulesets makes it extradionarily hard to find players to play that ruleset with. By moving to a vastly different new version that player X didn't like - such a player could take the view that such a game and direction was an existential threat to him being able to play his preferred game, especially if it grew popular enough.

Such a player would be significantly overreacting to the situation.

I think the lashing out was justified.

It wasn’t.

That's why I blame the game - it was not designed to accommodate such players at all - which is what drove the extreme hatred that we seen at that time. IMO.

No game can be designed to accommodate all players, nor should it be. It is not the game’s fault that the players it didn’t happen to accommodate took it so intensely personally.

To them it's a tale of caution.

And it’s pretty insulting when a thing you love is treated as a tale of caution by people who never lacked the option not to play it, and whose campaign of hate against it successfully resulted in support for it being withdrawn.

But more importantly - not everyone who looks back at 4e and admits things weren't perfect is a 4e detractor. I liked 4e. It was a great game for it's time and very innovative. In hindsight it's easier to see flaws though, but just because I can see flaws in it doesn't mean I don't think it was a good game.

Ok, great? I don’t really care who is or isn’t a 4e detractor or a 4e fan, or whatever else. It’s still extremely rude to trash on something someone else genuinely enjoys.

 

[pemerton]

When 4e came along, I appreciated how much more usable it was for me as a player, enough so that I decided to dip my toe into the DMing water. But, the precise balance and tight guidelines gave me constant anxiety that I was going to do something wrong and the game would be ruined because I didn’t give the players the right magic items at the right levels, or the encounter I designed was too hard or too easy, or I put in too many encounters or not enough, or I forgot some important rule. I DMed mostly because none of my other friends would, but I didn’t enjoy doing it.

There are pages and pages of this thread I haven't read, and so my replies are to particular posts that caught my eye. This was one.

I think that what you say reveals a major weakness in the 4e DMGs. It's common to see those books praised, but I don't share that view. Yes, they have some good technical advice around encounter design and resolution. But in my view they don't have good advice on more general GMing techniques. And they sometimes use unhelpful terminology (eg identifying treasure or XP as "rewards" when, by default in 4e, the former is really an element of PC build and the latter a core element of campaign pacing). And they don't talk in a "meta" way about key features of the system, like:

* the rapid scaling of magic item pricing means that a Monty Haul mistake at one level will be self-correcting within a couple of levels, perhaps sooner;

* the extreme depth of PC capability, especially from mid-heroic on, means that it's almost impossible to accidentally build an encounter that's too hard; and if it happens, the zero hp = unconsciousness rule provides an easy out (make it some sort of "campaign loss" instead - that's what I did following a 2nd level "TPK");

* if an encounter is too easy, it can either be allowed to end itself naturally and quickly (self-correction at work) or else the GM can just bring in some new elements (reinforcements or whatever) - whereas that would be "cheating" in Gygax/Moldvay D&D, it is de rigeur for 4e because it is the encounter, not the dungeon or adventuring day that is the basic unit of play;

* etc.​

This sort of thing would be fare more useful, in my view, than the stuff in the 4e DMG on adventure design, locations etc which is mostly generic stuff and not terribly well suited to 4e play at all.

 

[Garthanos]

As an avid tinkerer and relatively experienced DM I do not mind so much redesigning the monsters as I see fit.

I see 5e as a potentially wobbly foundation i have urges to fix before I can tinker to make the new thing 4e had solid foundations but fewer things I needed to add as well (although it did fail to follow through on some of its ideas like martial practices). For example in 5e To make a cool Warlord I find myself wanting to fix the Battlemaster balancing its maneuvers making them flexible useable more frequently (at a price) and having level gated greater effects (It's the closest class in story and has flexible bits and even named right)

 

[pemerton]

Many people felt that 4E was a pretty radical departure from previous editions in style and implementation. That's just a simple fact.

Another simple fact is that many people did not feel this. And some - like me - felt that 4e D&D was the first version to take what is distinctive about D&D as a RPG (it's class + race PC build framework; it's metagame-y hit points and saving throws; it's narrative trajectory from beating on kobolds to killing Orcus; etc) and use that to produce a compelling RPG experience.

Finally there was a version of D&D whose answer to "Why aren't we playing Runequest" was something better than hit points produce less of a death spiral than hit locations, and we can bolt on a bit of a skill system.