So what's gold gonna be for?

[rangerjohn]

D&D Insider

Is anyone else having trouble with this? It will not let me log in. I first tried migrating my forums account, ng go. Then I went through trouble of creating a new account at Gleemax, which entailed creating a new email account. I can get into Gleemax now, but not D&D Insider. What gives?

Ranger John

 

[hong]

No. If you try and use a shovel to put a nail in, it means you're using the wrong tool for the job. Same thing here. Systems support playstyles and discourage others. if the system is inherently incompatible with the playstyle, you're using the wrong system.

Exactly. And so we change the system.

It has nothing to do with whether the game is good or bad or well designed or not. What matters is that you are using the wrong tool and then blaming the tool.

If enough people want to do something with a tool that the tool cannot do, then the tool is bad.

Yes it should.

No it shouldn't.

There, see how much fun we are having discussing this?

Indeed. Aren't we having fun?

It isn't a long term resource and therefore has nothing to do at all with what I am talking about. You know, in context.

Yes. In context. And what you want to talk about is, unfortunately, irrelevant to the context of per-encounter balancing.

You're so very clever. Maybe one day, if you practive, you'll be able to boost your post count with responses longer than 10 words per.

Brevity is the soul of.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

No. If you try and use a shovel to put a nail in, it means you're using the wrong tool for the job. Same thing here. Systems support playstyles and discourage others.

As in the last few pages where I suggested that D&D supported and encouraged dungeon delving, but kingdom-building, not so much.

 

[Reynard]

As in the last few pages where I suggested that D&D supported and encouraged dungeon delving, but kingdom-building, not so much.

D&D supports kingdom building because I can use the domain rules and War Machine from the companion set with pretty much any edition.

 

[Reynard]

You're making his point for him. The tool is unsuitable for what its users want to do. The tool demands X encounters of level Y per day, and breaks if you stray too far from X or Y. Since different players have different ideal levels of X and Y, the tool fails for them, and so we redesign the tool to handle better variance in X and Y.

You have just pointed out that there is a problem with the tool. The designers noticed that too. So they changed it.

It doesn't mean the tool is bad. it means the users need a different tool, because they are engaging ina different task. That's fine. Find a different tool. But leave mine, which works perfectly for what I want it to do, which would be the job it was designed to do in the first place, the hell alone.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

It doesn't mean the tool is bad. it means the users need a different tool, because they are engaging ina different task. That's fine. Find a different tool. But leave mine, which works perfectly for what I want it to do, which would be the job it was designed to do in the first place, the hell alone.

Well, they are. They're making an entire new edition. The old edition will be untouched.

 

[Reynard]

Well, they are. They're making an entire new edition. The old edition will be untouched.

True. But it isn't like there is no downside to choosing to play an "outdated" version of the game. Finding players, for example.

Nonetheless, I reserve the right to be pleasantly surprised by 4E come May/June. The information we have as of yet barely qualifies for that definition, so there's a lot of conjecture and a lot of emotional reaction. Should actual information, like mechanics and such, come out that suggest it is not in fact so different as to longer play like D&D for me, I'll give it a go. I just don't happen to be very optimistic.

 

[pemerton]

It is "combat focus" in the sense that it requires a "build", it requires tactical game based decisions, and it draws the players attention to his character sheet instead of the game happening at the table.

"Combat focus" is not really a synonym for "a game", even in the sometimes obscure jargon of RPGing. And I'll say again that, if your claim was correct, then games like The Dying Earth, HeroWars/Quest, Burning Wheel - and even classic Traveller or RM2, both of which have social skills and simple mechanics for using them - would draw players' attention to their character sheets rather than the game. And I still think that such a claim is too absurd for words.

Either the DM is chucking combat encounters at the PCs entirely to quickly, or the PCs are blowing their wads at the first sign of trouble, or some combination of the two.

Alternatively, the players are looking to have their PCs do things, and the PCs (especially the spell-users) don't have enough things to do.

It should also be noted that this problem can happen in a context where none of the encounters are combat challenges - in RM, for example, a sequence of social encounters can lead to the PC enchanter running out of spell points, as s/he uses buffing, influencing and mind-reading magic. The problem arises from a mismatch between the timing of encounters and ability usage - it is not particularly linked to combat.

Most of my issues with 4E are based entirely on the presentation. Since the presentation at this stage is being directed at a very particular subset of gamer, it may not be an accurate indication of what the final game will look like. But I am not confident for exploratory dungeon crawl, resource management, save-or-die or sword-and-sworcery flavor at this point.

Not much dungeon crawl, save-or-die flavour, that is true. There will still be resource management within individual encounters, and there may be long-term management of non-supernatural resources (like food, water, equipment etc) depending on what happens to spells like Create Food & Water, Fabricate etc.

I don't see what any of the above has to do with sword-and-sorcery which, as a literary genre, doesn't read very much like dungeon crawls play. If I had to think of a literary equivalent to dungeon crawling I'd think of a certain type of espionage or military writing, not Conan.

Nonetheless, I reserve the right to be pleasantly surprised by 4E come May/June. The information we have as of yet barely qualifies for that definition, so there's a lot of conjecture and a lot of emotional reaction. Should actual information, like mechanics and such, come out that suggest it is not in fact so different as to longer play like D&D for me, I'll give it a go. I just don't happen to be very optimistic.

Personally, I think your pessimism is entirely warranted. But I don't understand at all why you want to link it to a combat focus. And I also don't understand why you apparently deny that non-dungeon crawling play can still be roleplaying.

 

[Lanefan]

You're making his point for him. The tool is unsuitable for what its users want to do. The tool demands X encounters of level Y per day, and breaks if you stray too far from X or Y. Since different players have different ideal levels of X and Y, the tool fails for them, and so we redesign the tool to handle better variance in X and Y.

You have just pointed out that there is a problem with the tool. The designers noticed that too. So they changed it.

OK, they changed it. But did they fix it, is the question.

Lanefan

 

[Reynard]

I don't see what any of the above has to do with sword-and-sorcery which, as a literary genre, doesn't read very much like dungeon crawls play. If I had to think of a literary equivalent to dungeon crawling I'd think of a certain type of espionage or military writing, not Conan.

I beg to differ. Conan spends quite a bit of time in the dungeon. However, my remark regarding sword-and-sorcery was more related to certain qualities of flavour. To be fair, though, I have been working hard to create that sense in every edition after 1st, so it isn't fair to saddle 4E with it exclusively.

Personally, I think your pessimism is entirely warranted. But I don't understand at all why you want to link it to a combat focus. And I also don't understand why you apparently deny that non-dungeon crawling play can still be roleplaying.

Every single preview we have seen has gone to extremes to remind the reader how much more awesome D&D combat is going to be in 4E, often to the detriment of other aspects of the game. Dungeon crawling happens to have nothing to do with role playing; dungeon crawls have to do with a great number of elements that D&D does well. It is not that if you are not dungeon crawling you aren't playin D&D, it is that if the system makes dungeon crawling -- actual dungeon crawling, with all that implies -- difficult or impossible, then the game isn't D&D anymore, any more than it would be if they took dragons out of the MM.