Something Awful leak.

[Ratskinner]

I think a lot of people are missing what catastrophic is saying, so perhaps an analogy will help out.

I work in a shop where I regularly interact with our code developer group. The primary program they work with deals with almost all of the regulated work we do (we are a contract pharmaceutical lab).

This program was originally written in the late 90s by someone who had no formal programming experience, and they did a great job for what they knew about and what they could imagine the business would grow to include. What they did not do, and it's hardly surprising since they weren't trained as a programmer, was make things modular. At all.

Since then, we have grown to generate about 100x the work, and the software now has a team of six full time developers, who all do modular coding. The underlying code base, however, has largely not changed.

This is not good. In fact, it's about the worst thing you can possibly have, and it has resulted in the application becoming something like the Winchester Mystery House, where modules are built all over the place on top of each other. Since there's very little consistent underlying structure, it makes development a royal pain, with many, many problems, since nothing was developed to work together.

In the next couple years, we are going to be hiring a few more developers, and re-doing almost the entire thing from scratch.

Consider that redesign an edition change in D&D. If you create the foundation of the edition in a consistent, modular fashion, you can easily build out a variety of modules on it. For example, if you have a consistent class structure, you can easily add powers to it. If not, your module becomes redesigning each class from scratch.

I haven't seen much that's real about 5E, but what I have seen has not been modular at all: it's simply been a rehash of basic D&D from the late 70s. That edition is simple, but it has many, many assumptions about how classes work that are not portable or modular. If the advanced combat and the advanced powers module have to rewrite the combat and class system from the ground up, you don't have a module, you have a different game that still uses the same attributes and a D20.

I can see the point, but I feel two things make this fear a little out of proportion. Firstly, tabletop games aren't computer programs, things can be different here. Secondly, I really don't know how...given what was in the pasteup...anyone can conclude anything solid enough about the structure of this draft of a game to react this way. There simply isn't enough there to conclude that this is going on, IMO. From what others are saying about early playtest documents and experiments...its quite possible that the leakers don't even know enough about the game's (potential) structure to even give the opinion themselves.

 

[kiltedyaksman]

Quote:
Originally Posted by kiltedyaksman
I believe that if you were correct, 4e wouldn't be a dead system walking.

Show me the evidence that says 4e is a dead system, please?

I believe that, if you were correct, nobody would be playing or discussing 4e.

_______

Dude, are you serious? 4e is as dead a system - meaning supported by new product by the parent company - as OD&D, Basic, AD&D, 2nd Ed., 3.0, or 3.5. Have you seen the rollback in product? With the AD&D reprints in April, you could argue at least AD&D is a supported system LOL

4e is what they call in football a "lame duck." Meaning the deathknell has been sounded. The end is near. You might as well just admit the obvious.

And here's an excellent example of edition warring: making your point rudely in order to start a fight. The last few sentences are problematic and not something we'd like to see. When in doubt, please err on the side of being polite. - Piratecat

EDIT: Additional comment removed by admin.

 

[fjw70]

I don't see why it would be that hard to layer a tactical module over these base rules to get a 4e like game. Let's use the fighter as an example.

First the tactical fighter doesn't need to be balanced against the core fighter. He needs to be balanced against the tactical wizard, the tactical cleric, the tactical rogue, etc.

To make the tactical fighter give him an extra 15 points of hp at 1st and instead of leveling up at d10 he gets 6 more hp at levels 2 and up. Then just give him some tactical feats to select powers and there you have the 4e like fighter.

If you want to play a simple tactical fighter then just allow him to use the feats for attack and damage bonuses.

 

[gyor]

I don't get why so many people are worried about a slice of info which already outdated. I mean its fun to analyzing it, but its just a very basic attempt at brianstorming. There is probably a dozen of these packets with different experimental rules each.

I mean it was one early experiment amoung countless others and more experiments and polls have happened since. This is challenging and so they are probably trying all kinds of stuff.

Treating this stuff as carved in stone when its not, is just discouraging WOTC from revealing more info. Lets just treat it as an interesting experiment give good feed back and not over inflate it.

 

[Thraug]

Currently we're in the area that the effect should be relevant to the spell or power. For example there might be a power word stun spell that explains what stun is and goes from there. But we're probably not going to have too many abilities or spells that would do something like that. We've pared down and increased the list of status effects, back and forth.

I recall reading that too, and cringing. I'll be utterly shocked if they abandon the wonderful modern design paradigm of creating a term dictionary in a base rulebook (PHB), and in the case of 4e/5e defining a list of conditions instead of describing/defining unique states in power/monster/spell/magicitem descriptions.

The few benefits in the old and archaic method don't come close to the benefits of a defining terms in one place.

Who wants to go back to the horrid:

• roaming through countless books to find out how a condition work?
• having 30 different ways to explain and run a "stun" like condition, each slightly different for Power Word Stun, a Dwarven Shield Bash, a Giant Pummel?
• reading over two pages of a monster description just to find out what it's "daze" does?

Good gravy man, leave bad 70s design behind, it's 2012. I really fear they will be bringing back REALLY poor design just so they can appease some nebulous grognard group that barely exists.

 

[Piratecat]

Show me the evidence that says 4e is a dead system, please?

I believe that, if you were correct, nobody would be playing or discussing 4e.

We're hip deep in definitions here, I think. If WotC is not producing new content for 4e, it could be considered a dead system. If people are playing it, though? Not a chance, any more than the heart of 3.5 is dead while a jillion people play Pathfinder.

I think people refer to a current system being dead when they want to get a big a rise as possible from the fans who love it. It's a label that doesn't mean much.

 

[kiltedyaksman]

We're hip deep in definitions here, I think. If WotC is not producing new content for 4e, it could be considered a dead system. If people are playing it, though? Not a chance, any more than the heart of 3.5 is dead while a jillion people play Pathfinder.

I think people refer to a current system being dead when they want to get a big a rise as possible from the fans who love it. It's a label that doesn't mean much.

Gygax himself stated that AD&D was as dead a system as Latin was a language. His meaning: the edition was no longer supported by the company that created it. I don't think anybody is telling tales out of school to suggest that with the advent of 5e, 4e is now a dead system similar to all the others. Does the spirit of older editions continue on through clones etc? Of course is does, but the point remains they are no longer supported by the company that created them = dead system. I have played every edition of TSR/WotC D&D and prefer retroclones because I'd rather have the spirit of a dead system than play the modern version of the brand.

I fail to see your point - at all. These are the realities of D&D gaming subculture - how is that getting a rise out of people? At least I can acknowledge that my game is a dead system. Touchy are we?

 

[Piratecat]

Touchy are we?

Nah, not at all. I loved 1e, 2e and 3e. I like 4e (and run two very fun campaigns in it), but it has a few more things that annoy me than previous systems did. I'll either switch if I find 5e more fun, or I'll stick with 4e until the current campaigns are over in 3 years. I'm not particularly invested in one edition, or one game, over another.

I think you may be mistaking my moderator caution about tone with my opinion about the game. I sent you a PM to go into more detail. Let's discuss it there, please -- we don't handle moderation questions in-thread.

 

[Reflex]

I fail to see your point - at all. These are the realities of D&D gaming subculture - how is that getting a rise out of people? At least I can acknowledge that my game is a dead system. Touchy are we?

I'd counter that you are being a bit disingenous here- You specifically trotted out your claim that 4E is a dead system as your 'proof' that some silent majority of players, in spite of the polls being cited, prefer Pathfinder. It was done to score a point, not for some sort of dispassionate discussion about what constitutes a 'live' system.

It also ignored the fact that 3.5 came only 3 years on the heel of 3.0, just as 4.0 came 5 years after it. 5E looks likely to land in 2013, 5 years later. Certainly you could choose to use those numbers to support an argument that 4E is doing poorly. You could also use it to suggest that game companies kinda like to release new core books every 5 years. But that's not really germane to the discussion. The why's and wherefore's of 5E's provenance aren't really relevant to this thread and hashing them out is likely to kick off the precise sort of 'edition wars' Piratecat is cautioning us against.

 

[GX.Sigma]

I recall reading that too, and cringing. I'll be utterly shocked if they abandon the wonderful modern design paradigm of creating a term dictionary in a base rulebook (PHB), and in the case of 4e/5e defining a list of conditions instead of describing/defining unique states in power/monster/spell/magicitem descriptions.

The few benefits in the old and archaic method don't come close to the benefits of a defining terms in one place.

Who wants to go back to the horrid:

• roaming through countless books to find out how a condition work?
• having 30 different ways to explain and run a "stun" like condition, each slightly different for Power Word Stun, a Dwarven Shield Bash, a Giant Pummel?
• reading over two pages of a monster description just to find out what it's "daze" does?

Good gravy man, leave bad 70s design behind, it's 2012. I really fear they will be bringing back REALLY poor design just so they can appease some nebulous grognard group that barely exists.

Everything you said here (in slightly different terms) is the problem with 4e-style conditions.

In 4e, a monster does something, and the PC is shaken. The power doesn't say what shaken means, so you have to dig up the PHB and look it up.

I think what the designer was saying about the hypothetical "power word stun" is that it would say "stun," and then it would describe what being stunned means. So you would still have the keyword, and there would still be a list of them somewhere, but you don't have to look it up every time, as the definition would be right there.

Hopefully.