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Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Reynard" data-source="post: 3837628" data-attributes="member: 467">First of all, I apologize to Scott for being an ass.  I also apologize for misremembering -- it is Dave Noonan that is always going on about WoW in his blogs, not Scott.  In other words, when I said "please stop" I meant it in an extended context, not just an immediate one for the post.Secondly, thanks for clarifying.Third, on the actual issue of MMORPG-speak and WoW-isms: yes, there's lots of jargon from gaming in general that croses back and forth, but MMORPGs and WoW in particular have taken ahold of a certain kind of gamer-speak and made it their own.  It is extremely difficult to divorce the connotation from the context and the jargon.  Am I a little more sensitive about it that I should be?  Yeah, but I'll tell you why:The qualities that make D&D such an endearing game are not transferrable to CRPGs or MMOs, and people have been trying since pretty much D&D appeared.  All those kids at MIT creating the internet? Gamers. (see Dungeons and Dreamers)  More importantly, the realities of live, person to person tabletop play are such that trying to emulate the much more popular and lucrative cousin of the video game is not only doomed to failure, but actually harms the game and makes it less fun.  Trying to get closer to hitting the same market and making the same dollars as MMOs and the like will only bring into focus the differences between the game, driving away the dedicated table top player while at the same time illustrating to te MMO player that it ain't going to work.It has been said that work on 4E has been going on for 2 years.  if you look back at the releases over those 2 years, it is readily apparent.  It starts with Complete Arcane.  This wasn't when the 4e work started, but when the seed was planted.  WotC did something very different with Complete Arcane -- it created the Warlock, the first "at will" D&D caster.  And as much as there has been and continues to be controversy over the class specifics, the concept must have taken hold.  That was 2004.  2005 was likely spent thinking about how that one little change, that very "video game" change, has created such a stir and what to do about, and with that.By 2006, a lot of those ideas were ready for production.  Book of Nine Swords and Tome of Magic both provided experimental ideas intended to change the game, "feelers" for 4e, as it were.  Some ideas stuck, others didn't.  Player's Handbook II, althougha  great book with a great number of cool ideas, was like an MMO supplement: more "at will" casters, an actual, honest to goodness D&D tank, "respec" quests -- the whole nine yards.  Since, the second round of Complete books have pushed this playstyle and set of assumptions -- which are far from the original set of assumptions of the game -- more and more.Now, some people don't think this is bad.  In fact, they think it is good.  That's great.  But, it is a simple fact based upon all the evidence that WotC is both using the "video game" and "MMO" play model as a template for the future of D&D, and that in doing so they are sacrificing the former, successful-for-30-years model.So, it is easy to get one's hackles up and jump up and down on someone when they suggest 4E is going to be "video-gamey", because one thinks that carries a negative connotation with it, or it is just more fun to defend WotC and the D&D brand no matter what it will become.  But that doesn't mean the statement isn't true, and it doesn't mean that there's something wrong with those of us that don't want our tabletop RPG, with all those design elements that make it far and away superior and more fun than CRPGs or MMOs, to lose its distinctive quality in the vain hope of getting people to transfer their $10-$20/month habit to D&D.</blockquote>

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