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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 9573131" data-attributes="member: 22779">Going toss my hat into the ring here.On the question of MMO inspiration for 4e.I get what people are saying when they talk about this, but, I think the approach - that 4e was inspired by MMO play misses a couple of very fundamental elements regarding WHY you would look to MMO's for inspiration for a tabletop RPG.  I mean, it doesn't make much sense, does it?  To try to pull in MMO elements into a tabletop game?  Why would you do that?  And, of course, this becomes edition war fodder.But, let me frame the question differently.4e D&D, at its inception, was attempting to make the game much, much more accessible to a much broader range of people.  The idea that you could onramp into the hobby more easily than you could in earlier games.  And the primary vehicle for that onramp was meant to be the virtual tabletop and things like Gleemax and the various online tools.Now, that doesn't mean that they're trying to turn D&D into an MMO.  But, instead, they're trying to make 4e D&D into a system where the primary point of play is convention style play - you boot up your computer, see what games are available, take 5 minutes to stop in and say hi to everyone and then play for the next three or four hours and play out that scenario.  Finish that session, then, at your convenience, log on to the system again at some point in the future, find another game, totally different group of people, bring your character along, and play in that group.  It's the Organized Play model writ large.  Had the VTT and various tools come to fruition, the idea would be that a large group of players would be playing in this sort of never ending Organized Play convention that ran 24/7.And that's where the MMO model comes in.  If you are constantly playing with strangers, you want to minimize house rules.  You want to standardize play across groups and give every group a shared language for talking about the game.  You want to know that if Player X creates a character using book Y, and joins DM Z's game, no one is going to have any real problems, even if the DM has never seen that book before and has no idea what Player X's character actually is.So, you create a stunningly transparent system.  Everyone can clearly see how the sausage is being made.  There are no surprises.  There are very, very few opaque mechanics or vague wordings that require constant DM supervision to make sure the game runs smoothly.  And that's exactly what 4e is.  Of course, all these great ideas run smack into the wall of reality.  The VTT never gets off the ground.  There is a very vocal segment of the fandom that takes one look at the transparency of the game and loses their collective minds. Add to that all the really, just awful number of hits that 4e takes that [USER=7023840]@Snarf Zagyg[/USER] highlights so clearly above and it's no wonder that the game never manages to hit the ground running.But, when people talk about MMO design in 4e, they are usually missing the point.  It's not so much that 4e was inspired by World of Warcraft or whatnot.  It's more about parallel evolution.  Both MMO's and Organized Play share so many priorities that they do start to look very similar.  Their end goals are very similar - make sure that everyone who is playing can have a good time with that game, regardless of where they are, who they are or who they are playing with.</blockquote>

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