How can this be the fault of a gaming system? Sure, it may be the fault of the DM (me), the module design (intended as a dungeon crawl), or even the group. Why blame 4E as a killer of roleplaying, interaction, and problem solving?
There's lots good in this thread already, hopefully I'm not re-treading too much with what I have to add.
For me, this argument often lands as the ‘ultimate’ ad hominem attack in the arsenal of those who dislike 4e. Why say what you don’t like when you can simply dismiss the entire thing and make everyone who plays it look bad in one fell swoop? Plus it’s a good way to get people riled up.
In my experience, 4e has not only not hampered RP, but rather enhanced it. There are many returns to certain 1e principles that make it ‘easier’ to RP than 3e did. It’s proven to be a boon for my main campaign (which started in 3e, went to 3.5 and now is in 4e territory).
That said, I think there may be certain things that might have given people who gave 4e an honest try that may have proved a hindrance:
1 – It’s a new ruleset with some big changes to how the game (and even more so to certain character classes) operates. Suddenly you have to focus on the ruleset because you’re learning it; compared to how it was before the switch it seems that the rules have intruded like never before. Really, they’re likely as present as they were whenever you first got your gaming start, it just seems so much more compared to the ease had with 3e. In short order the rules become second nature and it will recede into the background.
2 – Sudden (seeming) lack of out of combat ‘support’. By shifting this part of the game back into a more free-form DM fiat zone (compared to 3e where everything was becoming strictly codified) it suddenly looks like your character has no life outside of the encounter. Add that now that cleric/wizard spell lists have been stripped of many utility spells, and those spells placed into rituals. A great way IMHO to allow for those more nebulous spells without crowding your spell list, yet they’re often overlooked.
3 – Divorced from a well-defined default game world. The ‘rule toolkit’ and ‘world books’ model is one that has been tried before in RPG-land, yet it seems to have been less successful/effective here.
Any of those could have given the appearance of it being less inviting to RP or immersion.
Note that his presupposes that they were giving it an honest try – there’s plenty of insight to be gleaned from ontology/philosophy/psychology/sociology about how opinions colour our perceptions and experience. It’s why we, internally, are so often right about things. Often I’ve found that when people (and I am a person) say “I am going to give it the benefit of the doubt” they aren’t really, they’re trying it to prove that they’re right (and usually they are). It is possible to have an uncertain or poor opinion of something and still give it a fair shake, it simply takes conscious effort to do just that.
I even added some roleplaying and story elements to the introduction of the adventure. No one seemed interested in interacting, so I moved on to the exploration and combat encounters.
This may not be 100% pertinent to your situation... I run one 4e game (experienced players) and play in another (many new players, plus it’s LFR modules). From my experience in those two groups, how you present/run things can make a big difference. If the DM lets the players say what they are doing, then calls for a certain skill check, RP (and creativity) immersion abounds. If the DM asks for specific skill checks (or the players, for that matter, ask for specific skill checks) then the rules are more than front and centre.
peace,
Kannik
