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Thing I thought 4e did better: Monsters
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<blockquote data-quote="Argyle King" data-source="post: 6983667" data-attributes="member: 58416"><p>At the risk of sounding negative, I'd venture to say that I likely wouldn't use any of the editions of D&D that I'm familiar with if I wanted to run a game based around simulating Smaug, battles involving armies, or various other things I've read. I feel that I'd be better off using a different game. </p><p></p><p>When it comes to playing out Tolkien's stories, I am not claiming that it cannot be done. I am not claiming it should not be done. Coincidentally, I've recently had a discussion with friends about running a campaign which will be a blatant ripoff of The Hobbit. The main story will be basically the same, but with the PC party taking the place of the dwarves. They won't be required to be dwarves. I'm simply using the baseline idea that they're a group seeking to claim a hoard from a dragon in a mountain. So, it can be done. </p><p></p><p>While it can be done, I'll be doing it while acknowledging that the way D&D works will change how the story plays out in some ways. How D&D handles armor and HP will influence the fiction. I expect that the far easier acquisition of magic will influence the fiction. ...the point is that, while I'm planning to run the same story concept, I expect that D&D's mechanics and it's own baked in assumptions will change the story. I think this is true with any rpg system trying to simulate or emulate other forms of media. In the case of D&D, I imagine I'll be satisfied with trying to emulate The Hobbit and take some inspiration from it, but I feel that I'd be disappointed if I tried to more closely simulate it.</p><p></p><p>I also feel that D&D has evolved into its own unique genre of fantasy. D&D contains it's own fiction, history, tropes, and genre expectations. While each edition has changed, most of them shared a similar enough soul that they could still be seen as being part of that same genre. I think that's where 4E sometimes caused heartache. I cannot claim to speak for others, but I can relate my experience in hopes of clarifying my earlier statements.</p><p></p><p>After an advertising campaign which repeatedly said "ze game will remain ze same", I found that -for me- that was not true. I was using books that said D&D on the cover, but it really seemed as though I was struggling to use D&D to tell D&D stories. Perhaps my own failings as a DM are to blame, but I really struggled to run 4E in the beginning. The mechanical tools for encounter building were great, but how I thought things would play out were vastly different from how they actually did play out. I had a hard time with that. I imagine that Dragonlance would have been a very different set of novels had they been written with 4E mechanics in mind. </p><p></p><p>Even more odd was that I read the 4E books, noticed that 4E seemed to be telling a different story with different ideas. In my head, I really started to like that different story. I was completely fine with cutting away from some of the old ideas because I thought the new ones were cool and inspiring. However, it then seemed that I still struggled with trying to tell those stories in actual play. I came to accept that 4E was different enough from previous editions that I needed to tell different stories. What was hard to wrap my head around was that I was struggling to tell 4E stories using 4E. Eventually, I had success with 4E, but my success came from largely ignoring the 'official' material both in how I approached the fluff and in how I approached making changes to the crunch. </p><p></p><p>None of this is meant to suggest that 4E is a bad game. It's simply an illustration of why some of my opinions are what they are and an illustration of my experiences. I suppose it also leads into my next thought. </p><p></p><p>While there were many things that I disliked about 4E, there were things I liked about it too. The things that I liked about it were things that it did well enough that I couldn't unsee those improvements when I tried to go back to 3E. If I look at 4E as a whole and do some kind of mental averaging of what what I liked and what I didn't, I think that maybe 4E ranks higher for me than 5E currently does. </p><p></p><p>I feel like 5E does a lot of things in a manner that I feel they're ok, and while there aren't many things about 5E that I despise, there's not really anything about 5E which I feel is great or fantastic either. I'll sit down and play the game. I'll likely have an ok time playing it. But I'm not enthusiastic about. Mechanically, it does everything in a way that's just sorta middle of the road when compared to what I want. Fluffwise, while I think some changes are neat (I kinda like Gnolls from Volo's), I feel like I already own a lot the material. I did purchase Volo's, but I find that I'll likely just use the info when running a game using a different system. </p><p></p><p>While I may have strongly disliked parts of 4E, the parts that I really liked were good enough that they were inspiring. For good or ill, 4E provoked some kind of emotion from me. That's something that I feel it did better than 5E. I wanted to talk about 4E. I wanted to discuss and dissect it. I don't feel particularly motivated by 5E.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Argyle King, post: 6983667, member: 58416"] At the risk of sounding negative, I'd venture to say that I likely wouldn't use any of the editions of D&D that I'm familiar with if I wanted to run a game based around simulating Smaug, battles involving armies, or various other things I've read. I feel that I'd be better off using a different game. When it comes to playing out Tolkien's stories, I am not claiming that it cannot be done. I am not claiming it should not be done. Coincidentally, I've recently had a discussion with friends about running a campaign which will be a blatant ripoff of The Hobbit. The main story will be basically the same, but with the PC party taking the place of the dwarves. They won't be required to be dwarves. I'm simply using the baseline idea that they're a group seeking to claim a hoard from a dragon in a mountain. So, it can be done. While it can be done, I'll be doing it while acknowledging that the way D&D works will change how the story plays out in some ways. How D&D handles armor and HP will influence the fiction. I expect that the far easier acquisition of magic will influence the fiction. ...the point is that, while I'm planning to run the same story concept, I expect that D&D's mechanics and it's own baked in assumptions will change the story. I think this is true with any rpg system trying to simulate or emulate other forms of media. In the case of D&D, I imagine I'll be satisfied with trying to emulate The Hobbit and take some inspiration from it, but I feel that I'd be disappointed if I tried to more closely simulate it. I also feel that D&D has evolved into its own unique genre of fantasy. D&D contains it's own fiction, history, tropes, and genre expectations. While each edition has changed, most of them shared a similar enough soul that they could still be seen as being part of that same genre. I think that's where 4E sometimes caused heartache. I cannot claim to speak for others, but I can relate my experience in hopes of clarifying my earlier statements. After an advertising campaign which repeatedly said "ze game will remain ze same", I found that -for me- that was not true. I was using books that said D&D on the cover, but it really seemed as though I was struggling to use D&D to tell D&D stories. Perhaps my own failings as a DM are to blame, but I really struggled to run 4E in the beginning. The mechanical tools for encounter building were great, but how I thought things would play out were vastly different from how they actually did play out. I had a hard time with that. I imagine that Dragonlance would have been a very different set of novels had they been written with 4E mechanics in mind. Even more odd was that I read the 4E books, noticed that 4E seemed to be telling a different story with different ideas. In my head, I really started to like that different story. I was completely fine with cutting away from some of the old ideas because I thought the new ones were cool and inspiring. However, it then seemed that I still struggled with trying to tell those stories in actual play. I came to accept that 4E was different enough from previous editions that I needed to tell different stories. What was hard to wrap my head around was that I was struggling to tell 4E stories using 4E. Eventually, I had success with 4E, but my success came from largely ignoring the 'official' material both in how I approached the fluff and in how I approached making changes to the crunch. None of this is meant to suggest that 4E is a bad game. It's simply an illustration of why some of my opinions are what they are and an illustration of my experiences. I suppose it also leads into my next thought. While there were many things that I disliked about 4E, there were things I liked about it too. The things that I liked about it were things that it did well enough that I couldn't unsee those improvements when I tried to go back to 3E. If I look at 4E as a whole and do some kind of mental averaging of what what I liked and what I didn't, I think that maybe 4E ranks higher for me than 5E currently does. I feel like 5E does a lot of things in a manner that I feel they're ok, and while there aren't many things about 5E that I despise, there's not really anything about 5E which I feel is great or fantastic either. I'll sit down and play the game. I'll likely have an ok time playing it. But I'm not enthusiastic about. Mechanically, it does everything in a way that's just sorta middle of the road when compared to what I want. Fluffwise, while I think some changes are neat (I kinda like Gnolls from Volo's), I feel like I already own a lot the material. I did purchase Volo's, but I find that I'll likely just use the info when running a game using a different system. While I may have strongly disliked parts of 4E, the parts that I really liked were good enough that they were inspiring. For good or ill, 4E provoked some kind of emotion from me. That's something that I feel it did better than 5E. I wanted to talk about 4E. I wanted to discuss and dissect it. I don't feel particularly motivated by 5E. [/QUOTE]
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