Regarding the (supposed) lack of role-playing in 4E

[gizmo33]

It's sort of like this... if I'm a smart guy in real life, what incentive do I have to play my 8 Int character as a "dumb" guy?

But what reason *is* there to play your character as a dumb guy? It's somewhat more feasible from a game perspective, and also IMO somewhat more fitting IRL, to just let the intelligence score bonuses apply to the dice rolling. A character with 8 Int might just have a set of selective learning disabilities with regards to the defined Int-based skills, but otherwise be competent in the areas of tactics and speaking and so forth. This would be in keeping with real life, at least IMO, where I've observed people with exactly these kinds of strengths and weaknesses. IMO the best "incentive" for roleplaying is to let people play the kind of character that they want to - and not to force the "stereotypical moron" role on someone's character with an 8 Int if there are other possible interpretations of what that stat means. This logic goes for the other stats as well.

 

[Scribble]

Now one of the answers WW gives in WoD is the acquisition of willpower by being true to your nature or true to your vice, this encourages but does not force players to act in character. I actually think tying something like this to action points would have been a good idea for D&D 4e, and I'll probably be doing this in future games.

While I think this is a cool house rule, I think it would cause problems in the core rules for the same reason they talk about role playing experience point rewards causing problems.

It's entirely subjective. Subjective stuff tends to cause problems when dealing with actual in game consequences...

 

[Mallus]

...D&D having its main focus as combat encounters needs a detailed set of rules for combat.

This one.

...or are both interpretations incorrect?

I should add that I'm speaking as a D&D descriptivist, not prescriptivist. It's been my experience that, while you can certainly can play D&D without a heavy focus as 'combat-as-conflict-resolution', most campaigns do focus on the combat. This tendency is corroborated by the majority of the published game materials I've seen.

 

[Mallus]

I like the server metaphor.

Thanks.

But players who are all grooving on the same thing will enjoy each other's turns more than players who aren't. I.e., they are all playing the same game.

This is true. But w/my current group I've often been amazed at how much entertainment players got from watching the others play the game in ways that were (almost) antithetical to them. Sure, there was boredom, and the occasional mid-session signing on to WoW, but again, people can and do enjoy vicariously what they don't neccessarily like, or feel comfortable doing themselves. This is the only rational explanation for German pornography, BTW.

My point is that that those two games can't successfully co-exist.

I still think that depends entirely on the people playing.

Oh, BTW, read our Story Hour (Burne and Co). I'm not sure it comes through, but it's a story of a successful game played by people with some fairly divergent approaches to the game.

 

[Mallus]

It's sort of like this... if I'm a smart guy in real life, what incentive do I have to play my 8 Int character as a "dumb" guy?

Why did you put an 8 in Int in the first place?

 

[buzz]

Obviously D&D needs to appeal to at least a reasonably wide range of gamers. I don't think that's even in question.

My questions would be: How is having focus necessarily at odds with having wide appeal?

Monopoly is all about Monopoly. It's not about Scrabble or Poker. It just does Monopoly. Yet, it's probably the most successful boardgame ever that is not chess or, I dunno, backgammon.

Finding a focus for D&D is, IMO, one of the best side-effects of WotC's stewardship of D&D.

 

[Mouseferatu]

My questions would be: How is having focus necessarily at odds with having wide appeal?

Never claimed it was.

And I agree. D&D that focuses on doing D&D is better D&D than D&D that tries to be everything.

(Cue people shouting "How do you know what D&D is to me?! Answer: I don't. I'm speaking about a marketwide aggregate, not something that's going to apply to every individual and every campaign with equal accuracy.)

 

[Mallus]

I'm happy to discuss it, Mallus, but I won't respond to line-by-line rebuttals. Can you put it into some paragraphs?

Getting back to this... paragraph form go!

Speaking as guy who usually ends up using the D&D rules (pick an edition) in a fairly idiosyncratic way, I have trouble seeing how explicit support for a specific play style amounts to or even implies contempt for others. D&D has always been combat-heavy. This hasn't stopped people from running games that emphasize other aspects of play. What D&D has never had is rules that bear directly on the narrative being generated through play. Isn't this more the province of indie games like DitV or Burning Wheel, games built off a completely different paradigm (dramatic conflict resolution vs. low-level task resolution)? So I see a lack of 'story-rules' as simply keeping w/the D&D brand.

All I can say is that I like what I see with 4e. I don't know if I'll like the way it plays, because frankly, I won't have a chance to playtest it thoroughly until the fall. But a read-through of the rules did fire the imaginations --so to speak in cliches-- of both my current gaming group and another set of friends who'd given up D&D during 3e. Some of us are having a ball brainstorming up a new homebrew for our 4e campaigns --see my .sig-- and I've already got my character for it (a poison spitting Dragonborn paladin that combines Don Quixote with the less-savory aspects of reptilian reproductive biology in ways sure horrify my fellow players... but in an amusing way). I'm enthused right now. I can certainly understand not liking the significant changes to the core system, but honestly, I can't see the alleged contempt at all.

 

[buzz]

Isn't this more the province of indie games like DitV or Burning Wheel, games built off a completely different paradigm (dramatic conflict resolution vs. low-level task resolution)?

BW is actually more like D&D than it is different, really. I don't think there's really any reason D&D could not move more in that direction while still being distinctively D&D. Honestly, 4e has kind of been doing this.

 

[Mallus]

Honestly, 4e has kind of been doing this.

I'm curious. How so? (note: I still haven't gotten around to reading through BW for myself).