Neonchameleon
Legend
At least since 1984 there have been two major strands of D&D. I'll call them Dungeons and Dragons. (I pick 1984 as the publication of the first Dragonlance module, but I believe Dragons are older than that).
Dragons play is about big quests, heroic adventures, and grand stories. Like the Dragonlance saga. Who you are matters, and lethality should be low (hence the Obscure Death Rule). The world can be terrible - Dark Sun is a Dragons world even if there is only one Dragon worth talking about in DS, but you start Dark Sun at level 3 for a reason. Dying to a random spear is no part of Dragons play. And how you succeed matters almost as much as whether you do.
Dungeons play is fast, tight, and fairly high lethality. One random blow at the wrong time can take people out. Resource management is integral and major to the game and ending up without the wrong tool happens. In order to facilitate this, you need to make play fast. No one should be waiting on the sidelines for more than a few minutes. Also to make high lethality less of a problem, chargen should take less than the length of a scene so the DM can work the PC into the scene after next.
The treatment of dragons is a huge difference between the playstyles. In dragons play you face this scary firebreathing creature head on and beat it down as it tries to tear you apart. In dungeons play, as Old Geezer recently said on rpg.net, you wait until it's asleep and then slaughter it before it can wake up. Taking on an awake dragon is going to cost a PC or two at the very least (rather than just send them below 0hp).
4e is pretty much the apotheosis of Dragons play at the expense of dungeons play. You can't play high lethality dungeon crawls in 4e with combat against a handful of goblins taking half an hour. This is a very heavy dungeon-sided game at the moment - low hit points (not the padded sumo of playtest 1 that made 4e PCs feel flimsy by comparison), and quick mechanics. Orcs going down to either 1 or 2 blows. And 10 foot poles coming back into fashion.
Keep it tight, fast, and dangerous, and as a 4e player I'll be more than happy by the style precisely because it isn't 4e. This is for Dungeons play. I have 4e and it does what it does magnificently - and although it is strongly in the D&D tradition, the parts of D&D tradition it's in aren't the whole of D&D tradition.
That isn't to say there aren't balance issues, there aren't a worldbuilding issues (every police department should have a consultant mage for interrogations - you have to be pretty special to get a save against Charm Person), or the skill list doesn't make me go cross eyed. But they appear to be on the right lines here even if not there yet.
Dragons play is about big quests, heroic adventures, and grand stories. Like the Dragonlance saga. Who you are matters, and lethality should be low (hence the Obscure Death Rule). The world can be terrible - Dark Sun is a Dragons world even if there is only one Dragon worth talking about in DS, but you start Dark Sun at level 3 for a reason. Dying to a random spear is no part of Dragons play. And how you succeed matters almost as much as whether you do.
Dungeons play is fast, tight, and fairly high lethality. One random blow at the wrong time can take people out. Resource management is integral and major to the game and ending up without the wrong tool happens. In order to facilitate this, you need to make play fast. No one should be waiting on the sidelines for more than a few minutes. Also to make high lethality less of a problem, chargen should take less than the length of a scene so the DM can work the PC into the scene after next.
The treatment of dragons is a huge difference between the playstyles. In dragons play you face this scary firebreathing creature head on and beat it down as it tries to tear you apart. In dungeons play, as Old Geezer recently said on rpg.net, you wait until it's asleep and then slaughter it before it can wake up. Taking on an awake dragon is going to cost a PC or two at the very least (rather than just send them below 0hp).
4e is pretty much the apotheosis of Dragons play at the expense of dungeons play. You can't play high lethality dungeon crawls in 4e with combat against a handful of goblins taking half an hour. This is a very heavy dungeon-sided game at the moment - low hit points (not the padded sumo of playtest 1 that made 4e PCs feel flimsy by comparison), and quick mechanics. Orcs going down to either 1 or 2 blows. And 10 foot poles coming back into fashion.
Keep it tight, fast, and dangerous, and as a 4e player I'll be more than happy by the style precisely because it isn't 4e. This is for Dungeons play. I have 4e and it does what it does magnificently - and although it is strongly in the D&D tradition, the parts of D&D tradition it's in aren't the whole of D&D tradition.
That isn't to say there aren't balance issues, there aren't a worldbuilding issues (every police department should have a consultant mage for interrogations - you have to be pretty special to get a save against Charm Person), or the skill list doesn't make me go cross eyed. But they appear to be on the right lines here even if not there yet.
