D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[AnotherGuy]

Then I take back that it was logical cause and effect.

I think failure on a check is bad enough (especially when bad things should happen because of the failure), I don't need to pile on. In some sessions we wouldn't be doing much of anything other than dealing with the consequences of failure, in others it wouldn't come up once. I don't want people hesitating to do things that they know will require the roll of a die if they know it's going to lead to a consequence every time they fail. I want them poking and prodding the world, seeing what they can shake loose even if it doesn't always work.

Do I need to include a standard disclaimer? This is only for me, only my preference, only for the D&D game I happen to play and run and is not a reflection on other systems or other peoples preferences, yada, yada, yada.

All good!
I understand your preference.

 

[AlViking]

All good!
I understand your preference.

For what it's worth the disclaimer wasn't for you.

 

[TwoSix]

From my perspective the biggest departures seemed to be:

--- monsters that changed their stats based on who-what was fighting them (i.e. the same monster, Bob the Giant, could be a minion today against a 15th-level group and an elite tomorrow against a 3rd-level group)
--- general reduction of resolution granularity outside of combat in favour of catch-all skill challenges
--- hard-ish codification of character roles within the party, and classes then designed specifically around these roles
--- universal AEDU ability structure regardless of class
--- hard break from the idea that PCs and NPCs were at all the same mechanically
--- overall radical tone shift away from grittiness and toward big-damn-heroes even at the lowest PC levels

This is ignoring aesthetic concerns e.g. adventure presentation, art, and so on.

That’s a pretty solid list.

Big difference is that I saw all of those as good things.

 

[Micah Sweet]

That’s a pretty solid list.

Big difference is that I saw all of those as good things.

One's personal opinion of departures doesn't of course make them not departures.

 

[Maxperson]

So?

So?

 

[TwoSix]

What I presume you are trying to say now is that despite your expressed dissatisfaction with the prior to 4e editions of d&d for not living up to their promises, that you nevertheless still enjoyed them and still do? Is that the jist of it?

If I couldn’t like things despite recognizing them as flawed or somewhat dissatisfying, I would never go to family functions.

 

[TwoSix]

One's personal opinion of departures doesn't of course make them not departures.

<shrug> If you were paying attention to 3.5 era changes and the development of SW Saga edition, nothing in 4e was that surprising. Smuggling in some fail-forward and some fortune-in-the-middle mechanics is still just evolution, not revolution.

 

[Gimby]

<shrug> If you were paying attention to 3.5 era changes and the development of SW Saga edition, nothing in 4e was that surprising. Smuggling in some fail-forward and some fortune-in-the-middle mechanics is still just evolution, not revolution.

Absolutely, You can make a fairly passable 4e clone with 3e unearthed arcana, Bo9S, ToM and so on.

 

[Maxperson]

Of course, "metagaming" is often in the eye of the beholder.

I've frequently been told that in standard old-school play, "player knowledge" is perfectly acceptable in nearly every instance, even if the character simply should not know that trolls are weak to acid and fire (or whatever example is relevant). I know OSR isn't a monolith and such, but this has come up so many times that I'm reasonably convinced it was standard practice at most tables in the days of yore and remains standard practice at most "old school" tables today.

Further, it's pretty clearly blatant metagaming to have Bob IV, the cousin of the recently-deceased Bob III, just show up imprisoned in the next room of the dungeon, but this was a common behavior at many old-school tables because it meant getting right back into the action without having to do a bunch of (for that player) very tedious waiting.

It's interesting how many different ways the game was played back then. None of the games I was in would have done those things.

I remember one game where we were attacked by trolls at night and my character who had no knowledge of trolls ended up without a weapon due to a fumble chart, grabbed a burning brand from the campfire to use as a weapon. The DM challenged me on metagame knowledge, but relented when I pointed out that I had no weapon and the only thing to use to defend myself was a brand from the campfire, so we "discovered" the troll weakness that way.

As for new PCs, sometimes we waited hours for an appropriate moment to arrive to introduce a new PC. And very, very rarely, it didn't happen for the rest of that session and we waited for the next one. This is not metagaming, though. No out of character knowledge was used in character.

What often was(and still is) metagaming, though, is the nearly universal immediate acceptance of the new complete stranger PC into the party with near absolute trust, because the group knows it's the new character for the player whose character died.

And that's not even touching on things like a wizard who was named "Melf" because the player literally never wrote more on its top line than "M ELF", as in, a male elf, or that people just used literally their own name spelled backwards (e.g. Snilloc), or anagrammed, or whatever else. Or the near-endless plethora of silly """jokes""" peppered throughout the rules. Or the active "gotcha" game design Gygax would engage in if his players ever got, in his opinion, too comfortable with their SOPs and such, no matter how ridiculous the leaps required (I'm looking at you, Ear Seeker.)

This, however, I saw fairly often. It's not metagaming, though. It's just silliness.

"Metagaming" is so loose, so variable depending on who you talk to and what specific things you look at, that it's extremely difficult, borderline impossible, to have any kind of conversation about it. Things I would consider to be blatant and unacceptable metagaming, you might consider to be perfectly acceptable ordinary gaming, and vice-versa.

It's not really as loose as you think. It's simply using out of character knowledge in game. It's often misunderstood or misportrayed, though.

 

[Micah Sweet]

<shrug> If you were paying attention to 3.5 era changes and the development of SW Saga edition, nothing in 4e was that surprising. Smuggling in some fail-forward and some fortune-in-the-middle mechanics is still just evolution, not revolution.

I think it is clear that quite a lot of people weren't looking at continuing 3e development, and even if they were 4e's changes (and in particular its rather in-your-face IMO presentation shift) may very well be a significant and unwanted departure from the era of 3e development they preferred. As was mentioned above early 3e was intended among other things to allow fans of TSR's edition to play in a style similar to that with which they were familiar, even if the actual system allowed or even encouraged a different style of play. If that's what you wanted (it was what I wanted for the most part) 4e's paradigm would come across as an unwelcome shock.

Not saying your logic is wrong, just that people have reasons for their feelings, and no amount of said logic will reason folks out of them.