Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercurius" data-source="post: 5457176" data-attributes="member: 59082">Well remember, we're talking about the feeling of D&D, as in the now infamous phrase "4E doesn't feel like D&D (to me)."My assertion is that the feeling has much more to do with the thematic elements than it does with mechanical elements - at least to me! It may be that some relate with the mechanical elements on a more emotional level than I do, or that their feeling for the game is more entwined with mechanics than it is for me.The mechanics do impact my feeling of the game, especially in certain sacred cows like the hallowed d20 roll, having Hit Points, the Sacred Six Abillity Scores, etc. But I am pretty open about them; for some a character sheet without the eccentric saving throws of AD&D just doesn't feel like D&D. To me the essence is much more important than the form, so if the form changes it can still feel like D&D to me, as long as it holds that essential D&Dness.Hey, no problem - I've enjoyed your contributions, although haven't followed them in-depth in this thread; after reading some of the accolades you've received I might have to go back and read them, or do you have an off-site "Pemerton's Guide to 4E Theory?" <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> Danny, can we be clear that tomatoes get thrown on both sides of the debate? There are just as many "4E haters" attacking 4E players as there are 4E players attacking 4E haters.But to be clear, I haven't seen much of this phenomena of "Def4s" not accepting the fact that others don't experience the game in the same way as they do. What I see is Def4s disagreeing with the assertion that 4E is not real D&D, or questioning the notion that an edition that is very clearly D&D and has more in common with, say, 3E than not can somehow not feel like real D&D.Speaking for myself, I accept it but it is still baffling, like someone saying NFL Football on ABC doesn't feel like real NFL because it doesn't have that annoying Fox cyborg dude jumping around.With regards to "feel," see my response to pemerton above. I would argue that a game experience could feel like D&D but not be D&D; I suppose the converse is that a game experience could be D&D but not feel like it, that is one's own personal identification of what D&D should feel like.So while playing Savage Worlds with D&D monsters and tropes would feel like D&D to me, it wouldn't be D&D in the sense of an official rule set that is D&D. Maybe the key to this is differentiating what we mean by "feeling" and what it refers to, versus the by-the-book definition which we can play it safe with and equate with the copyright and brand name? (Although I would also include retro-clones and heartbreakers like Pathfinder).</blockquote>

Verification