Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5431889" data-attributes="member: 42582">Not remotely taken as one, at least on my part!I'm not sure I agree with you about the PHB, though.There is a long introductory section on non-mechanical aspects of character building - the 4e PHB, for example, is the only version of the game I know that tells me how to think about my PC's alignment, religion, personality and social background before telling me how to calculate his/her hitpoints.There is also a chapter on skills, and a chapter on exploration (in the 4e sense - ie moving around the gameworld and doing stuff that is neither a combat nor a skill challenge). And there is a chapter on rituals, which are useful for exploration, thus reinforcing the earlier chapter.So I don't think it's as sparse as all that - no sparser than the 3E PHB, for example (I don't know the 2nd ed or 3.5 PHB's - I do know the 1st ed PHB, and I think the final section of that book does give players a better account of what they are meant to do with their PCs in the playing of that game).Skill challenges are mentioned several times in the PHB, but without much explanation. Even in Essentials, explaining skill challenges continues to be the weakest part of the rules. For example, it is pretty central to running a skill challenge that the GM be prepared to have ingame events unfold not according to ingame causal logic, but according to a metagame logic driven by (i) skill check results and (ii) narrative imperatives. But no where do the rulebooks mention it - the only place you can see the idea at work is in the example skill challenge in the Rules Compendium (because a Streetwise check fails in inspecting a building, the GM in the example has some toughs turn up to hassle the PCs, although the toughs weren't themselves implicated in the scene with the building) and you have to extract it by osmosis.Page 42 being in the DMG only is a problem, I agree. Essentials rectifies this, with DCs and sample stunts/improv integrated into the skill descriptions.Even as hack fests, they don't make the best use of the maps they include. The DMG2, for example, goes on and on about circular paths. The Chamber of Eyes and the Well of Demons in Thunderspire Labyrinth map out some beatiful and exciting circular paths. And to actually use those paths you have to ignore the written guidelines for running the encounters, and mix them up yourself. (From experience, I know that when you do you get some pretty dramatic fights.)They could have done a lot worse than look at the sample modules at the end of the original HeroWars GM's guide, or some of the 3E modules from Atlas Games (like Mearls' own Belly of the Beast) and thought about how you would use 4e to provide that sort of fantasy RPGing experience.And I'm not even sure it's a case of lowest common denominator tastes dominating the market. Does anyone like the 4e modules as written?These days I really try to ground my arguments in actual play experience. That's why I'm waiting to see some examples of actual play from the 4e critics - or at least some explanation of why what is being done in actual play by those who play 4e is not to their taste, or is in some way perhaps misguided or confused.Instead, though, I just keep seeing claims that non-simulationist play must be at odds with good roleplaying/good story. No one that I'm aware of believes this to be true for games like HeroQuest or The Dying Earth. So why on earth should I think that it is true for 4e?</blockquote>

Verification