clearstream
(He, Him)
Exactly, and a difference between readings is that between "no longer relevant to play" and "no longer relevant to combat".
D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.
- Thread starter Reynard
- Start date
clearstream
(He, Him)
Huh? Who defined it that way?Probably because they didn't think that anyone would ever define destroyed in such a way to preclude killed or unalived.
EDIT what I did say is that "destroyed" should preclude "unconscious". So that a minion is destroyed when it takes any damage is not satisfied by a minion is unconscious when it takes any damage. That still seems right to me (and I wonder if the 2008 designer intent is really the same as the 2010 in that regard).
If only I had been offered better counter-arguments sooner! As for bizarre, some of those sentence parsings around the conditional "when this then that" relationship really fit the bill.
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You are, though one could understand why you might be a little unsure: People have, almost 2 decades later, found a new way to criticize 4e. One would have thought it impossible, but here we are.
clearstream
(He, Him)
While I'm critical of Minions for reasons I have explained upthread, I am not critical of 4e overall. I loved the Book of Nine Swords when it first appeared, and quickly embraced 4e when it was published. It may even stand the test of time better than 5e.
It seems strange to me to conflate criticism of one feature with criticism of an entire edition comprising hundreds of features. I've often praised 5e for example, but I don't use the Rest rules as printed. They frankly worsen the game. The designers could also have both simplified and improved the encounter construction guidelines. Failing to give Eldritch Knights their weapon as a spell focus also seems like a designer error.
And so on. TTRPG texts are very often extensive and complex. I find it hard to picture that any should be counted perfect.
Older Beholder
Hero
How this thread feels as someone that never played 4E
(I'm not really having a go at anyone, just amazed at the lack of Minion gifs given the conversations)
(I'm not really having a go at anyone, just amazed at the lack of Minion gifs given the conversations)
Good luck answering a question about a version of the game that many (most?) of us haven't played for nearly a decade with actual rules. We have opinions, important opinions which we must repeat for hundreds of posts!
Cergorach
The Laughing One
People have been playing D&D for 50+ years, some started 51 years ago, others yesterday, most of us somewhere in between. For a lot of people D&D was the first pnp RPG they ever played, for others it was a 'better' option at the time.
For me I started pnp RPGs with the Dutch version of The Dark Eye back around '87 (via Scouting), the amount of products for it was limited and our DM was already a collector of D&D and getting more TDE products would be in German (which I suck at), so we moved to the Dutch version of the D&D Red Box (1988), and eventually to the English version of AD&D 2e when it came out.
A new players group at school, we started with the Dutch version HeroQuest and eventually moved on to one of those D&D boxes that came out in 1992 “The Haunted Tower” or “The Goblin’s Lair”, we then moved directly into AD&D2e and played that for a LONG time. We started playing D&D3e even before it was released, just through the rumours compiles by Eric Noah on the ancient forebearer of this site. We skipped D&D4e all together, started playing a bit of D&D5e when it came out, didn't play for years and for the last couple of years picked up D&D5e again and moved late last year to D&D5e 2024.
It isn't that we didn't play anything else during those decades, we played Shadowrun, Vampire, Kids on Bikes, and probably some stuff I missed, not to mention the oodles of RPGs that inhabit my bookshelves unplayed. But D&D has always been our comfort zone, more so for some then others. Just before we adopted D&D5e 2024, I seriously considered moving us to Pathfinder 2e ('refurbished' edition) as I was highly skeptical of D&D5e 2024.
There have always been better 'tools' in the pnp RPG toolbox then D&D. But D&D has always had better support with official products (and unofficial/compatible products) then most of the competition in most of it's lifetime. So it's never been about D&D being the better game, initially it was the better option as it had more products in a language I could actually read (compared to TDE). But when I started going to a game store that had more then the Dutch products the toy stores carried, there were far more options that did many parts better then D&D ever did. We never moved permanently to those systems, heck we even skipped D&D4e because it didn't feel like D&D to us.
We like many of the rules 'improvements' of D&D5e 2014 and D&D5e 2024, mind you not all of them, but we can appreciate it for what it is. I miss the modularity and options that D&D3.5e gave a DM to create monsters and NPCs, I understand why there's a limit to the attunned magical items, but I sometimes miss the ability to give people a christmas tree of magical items... I do give critisism to the new core books, as they often feel like the rules were developed by different teams and not much communication happened between the teams.
I dislike most of the new illustrations in the new 2024 core books, and quite a bit of the illustrations in some of the books that were released in the last couple of years. I dislike the direction of the new Planescape and Spelljammer supplements. Part of the issue is how a Dutch person sees the world vs. how a US company sees the US and catering to that political environment. We see illustrations and products that are more about a political statement then it's about a D&D game. It even went so far as with the Radiant Citadel came out, I didn't know what the adventures were actually about or what the Radiant Citadel was, what I did know was that it was written by a very differse writing/illustration team. With the Spelljammer product, most of the press coverage was about it fixing certain insensitive subjects...
I like a lot of the the old illustrations, but certainly not all illustrations, from 2e/3e. I love the illustration esthetic of the 2e Planescape by Tony DiTerlizzi, or the 2e illustrations of Keith Parkinson, Jeff Easley, Clyde Caldwell, and Larry Elmore. Some of the new illustrations I like, but not in D&D either to WoWie, too political, etc. Or illustrations I think shouldn't be in a D&D book, like illustrations of players, I know what people look like, I know what people look like playing a (pnp RPG) game...
It's not about conservationism, it's what we like and what we do not. There's a TON of 80s/90s music I do not like, and there is some current music I do like. The same with illustrations, some of the old illustrations are horrible, some of the new illustrations are beautiful or just 'OK' (just as it was back in the old days). And it's not just D&D, Vampire (and the other WoD systems) lost something when they moved to color illustrations, they couldn't capture the same grittyness.
Not every change is an advancement, nor is every advancement needed/wanted. Just like someone who rides horses for sport/hobby doesn't want to suddenly drive cars for sport/hobby. Someone that enjoys building with handtools suddenly wanting to move to powertools. Sometimes something is about the journey, sometimes it's about the destination. For us D&D is about the journey, which holds a healthy dose of nostalgia. Yes we've changed over the decades, that doesn't mean that D&D has changed in the same direction we have.
We have to realize that products don't have to be made for us. But we don't have to accept that quietly, we can complain about the stuff we don't like. Especially those of us who have paid for where D&D is now with the contents of our wallets (having most of the 2e/3e/4e products in physical form). That doesn't make us right, just old and grumpy! But just because D&D has changed, doesn't make the folks making the changes, accepting the changes, or liking the changes right. Different people can hold different opinions without actually being right or wrong. Something can be right for you and wrong for me, or the other way around.
We also need to realize that D&D is now a mainstream IP with a mainstream market, catering to that mainstream US market requires comprimises. Things they can and cannot do. Do I have to like that? No. Do I have to accept that? Yes. Do I have to be quiet about that? HELL NO!
But as my bookcases have been overflowing for a while, I've stopped buying physical books for the most part. Luckily for me, the digital version (Foundry VTT) of the D&D5e 2024 core books it's very easy to ignore art I don't like. So I can ignore most of the stuff I don't like. This is the advantage of digital products... A change some of us old bastards have embraced wholehardidly...
For me I started pnp RPGs with the Dutch version of The Dark Eye back around '87 (via Scouting), the amount of products for it was limited and our DM was already a collector of D&D and getting more TDE products would be in German (which I suck at), so we moved to the Dutch version of the D&D Red Box (1988), and eventually to the English version of AD&D 2e when it came out.
A new players group at school, we started with the Dutch version HeroQuest and eventually moved on to one of those D&D boxes that came out in 1992 “The Haunted Tower” or “The Goblin’s Lair”, we then moved directly into AD&D2e and played that for a LONG time. We started playing D&D3e even before it was released, just through the rumours compiles by Eric Noah on the ancient forebearer of this site. We skipped D&D4e all together, started playing a bit of D&D5e when it came out, didn't play for years and for the last couple of years picked up D&D5e again and moved late last year to D&D5e 2024.
It isn't that we didn't play anything else during those decades, we played Shadowrun, Vampire, Kids on Bikes, and probably some stuff I missed, not to mention the oodles of RPGs that inhabit my bookshelves unplayed. But D&D has always been our comfort zone, more so for some then others. Just before we adopted D&D5e 2024, I seriously considered moving us to Pathfinder 2e ('refurbished' edition) as I was highly skeptical of D&D5e 2024.
There have always been better 'tools' in the pnp RPG toolbox then D&D. But D&D has always had better support with official products (and unofficial/compatible products) then most of the competition in most of it's lifetime. So it's never been about D&D being the better game, initially it was the better option as it had more products in a language I could actually read (compared to TDE). But when I started going to a game store that had more then the Dutch products the toy stores carried, there were far more options that did many parts better then D&D ever did. We never moved permanently to those systems, heck we even skipped D&D4e because it didn't feel like D&D to us.
We like many of the rules 'improvements' of D&D5e 2014 and D&D5e 2024, mind you not all of them, but we can appreciate it for what it is. I miss the modularity and options that D&D3.5e gave a DM to create monsters and NPCs, I understand why there's a limit to the attunned magical items, but I sometimes miss the ability to give people a christmas tree of magical items... I do give critisism to the new core books, as they often feel like the rules were developed by different teams and not much communication happened between the teams.
I dislike most of the new illustrations in the new 2024 core books, and quite a bit of the illustrations in some of the books that were released in the last couple of years. I dislike the direction of the new Planescape and Spelljammer supplements. Part of the issue is how a Dutch person sees the world vs. how a US company sees the US and catering to that political environment. We see illustrations and products that are more about a political statement then it's about a D&D game. It even went so far as with the Radiant Citadel came out, I didn't know what the adventures were actually about or what the Radiant Citadel was, what I did know was that it was written by a very differse writing/illustration team. With the Spelljammer product, most of the press coverage was about it fixing certain insensitive subjects...
I like a lot of the the old illustrations, but certainly not all illustrations, from 2e/3e. I love the illustration esthetic of the 2e Planescape by Tony DiTerlizzi, or the 2e illustrations of Keith Parkinson, Jeff Easley, Clyde Caldwell, and Larry Elmore. Some of the new illustrations I like, but not in D&D either to WoWie, too political, etc. Or illustrations I think shouldn't be in a D&D book, like illustrations of players, I know what people look like, I know what people look like playing a (pnp RPG) game...
It's not about conservationism, it's what we like and what we do not. There's a TON of 80s/90s music I do not like, and there is some current music I do like. The same with illustrations, some of the old illustrations are horrible, some of the new illustrations are beautiful or just 'OK' (just as it was back in the old days). And it's not just D&D, Vampire (and the other WoD systems) lost something when they moved to color illustrations, they couldn't capture the same grittyness.
Not every change is an advancement, nor is every advancement needed/wanted. Just like someone who rides horses for sport/hobby doesn't want to suddenly drive cars for sport/hobby. Someone that enjoys building with handtools suddenly wanting to move to powertools. Sometimes something is about the journey, sometimes it's about the destination. For us D&D is about the journey, which holds a healthy dose of nostalgia. Yes we've changed over the decades, that doesn't mean that D&D has changed in the same direction we have.
We have to realize that products don't have to be made for us. But we don't have to accept that quietly, we can complain about the stuff we don't like. Especially those of us who have paid for where D&D is now with the contents of our wallets (having most of the 2e/3e/4e products in physical form). That doesn't make us right, just old and grumpy!
But just because D&D has changed, doesn't make the folks making the changes, accepting the changes, or liking the changes right. Different people can hold different opinions without actually being right or wrong. Something can be right for you and wrong for me, or the other way around.We also need to realize that D&D is now a mainstream IP with a mainstream market, catering to that mainstream US market requires comprimises. Things they can and cannot do. Do I have to like that? No. Do I have to accept that? Yes. Do I have to be quiet about that? HELL NO!
But as my bookcases have been overflowing for a while, I've stopped buying physical books for the most part. Luckily for me, the digital version (Foundry VTT) of the D&D5e 2024 core books it's very easy to ignore art I don't like. So I can ignore most of the stuff I don't like. This is the advantage of digital products... A change some of us old bastards have embraced wholehardidly...
loverdrive
Prophet of the profane (She/Her)
I feel like RPGs are basically synonymous with asinine layouting and even more asinine wording, and while they should be rightfully criticized for term-like words that are never defined anywhere, hanging up on them is an exercise in navel gazing.
