Unpopular opinions go here

[Thomas Shey]

Well, if you gave me 100 to work with, I MIGHT be able to pare down my list to that number!

For context:

Good gods, man, I've seen libraries with much smaller music collections...

 

[pemerton]

I thought I remembered both 3/3.5 and 4 having lots of pictures of grids in them for combat.

4e has lots of grids for resolving combat. So does the AD&D DMG. Given that 5e uses 5' increments for resolution, it could too.

I don't really see how these issues of presentation bears upon whether or not it's a RPG.

The core of a RPG, it seems to me, is that (i) the fiction matters to the resolution, and (ii) the non-GM participants (ie "players) engage the fiction predominantly from the first-person perspective of characters in the fiction.

(i) is what differentiates a RPG from a boardgame. (ii) is what differentiates a RPG from a free kriegspiel-eseque wargame.

No doubt there are marginal cases that are RPGs but don't quite fit (i) or (ii), or that fit (i) and (ii) but aren't quite RPGs. Still, I think (i) and (ii) get most of it.

Most of the debate about whether or not 4e is a RPG turn on whether or not it satisfies (i) - although that is not always clearly expressed. To me it's obvious that it does - see, for instance, this part of the rules for damaging objects from the DMG (p 66):

Some unusual materials might be particularly resistant to some or all kinds of damage. In addition, you might rule that some kinds of damage are particularly effective against certain objects and grant the object vulnerability to that damage type. For example, a gauzy curtain or a pile of dry papers might have vulnerability 5 to fire because any spark is likely to destroy it.​

The fiction - ie here is a pile of dry papers affects the resolution - additional fire damage is applied to the objects in question.

Similarly, the DMG and DMG2 discussions of skill challenges talk about the role of the GM in framing each check, adjudicating, adjusting the fiction appropriately, and then re-framing for the next check.

My (purely anecdotal) observation is that many if not most of those who complained about 4e not being a RPG also ignored these parts of the rules about making fiction matter to resolution.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I actually believe at some point crunch is going to have a renaissance, and while I don't think it'll be a return to 3.5e level crunch, I do think it'll be a direct counter-response to the tendency towards rules light and story games.

And I say that not just because my own game is in a lot of ways...uhh, that, but also because its just something I keep noticing in discourse all over the place.

Theres a substantial audience angling for something more than what RL and story games can provide that isn't being satisfied all that much by other games.

As someone who's not exactly crunch-light in preference, there's actually no lack of fairly crunchy games out there. A lot of them just try to at least minimize the amount of exception-based design, and they often aren't exactly well known.

 

[pemerton]

As someone who's not exactly crunch-light in preference, there's actually no lack of fairly crunchy games out there. A lot of them just try to at least minimize the amount of exception-based design, and they often aren't exactly well known.

A new version of RM has started to come out! It's pretty crunchy.

There's also HARP. And Against the Darkmaster.

And that's just in the RM-verse.

Torchbearer has a recent 2nd edition, and it's not exactly a low-crunch game!

 

[Cadence]

4e has lots of grids for resolving combat. So does the AD&D DMG. Given that 5e uses 5' increments for resolution, it could too.

True. But 3/3.5 and 4 chose to visually put grids strongly front and center. 5 could have, but didn't and said things about TotM as an option. (None of them went the way 13th age did, for example with just having a few range/proximity categories).

I don't really see how these issues of presentation bears upon whether or not it's a RPG.

Definitely agree. I was just getting at the relative wargaminess (which I don't think says anything about the relative RPGishness).

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yeah I have to agree. PF2E was designed with its audience in mind only and if you're not already apart of it you're likely to bounce off the system pretty hard.

That's a little cryptic, unless what you're suggesting is that it has a relatively specific audience? Otherwise I'm not sure what you're saying (and if it the "specific", it seems to be a fairly big one).

 

[Umbran]

Well, "disassociated" has a pretty logical constructed structure for what they were trying to say in that essay back in the day. Its just that the combined term pretty quickly picked up a lot of semantic loading.

No. It isn't the "combined term" that is the problem, at least for me.

It is that in modern use, disassociation and dissociation are two different words with rather different applications.

In modern use, "dissociated mechanics" is effectively referring to a psychological process that is (among other things) one characteristic response to trauma. As in, dissociation is one common response when a person's clinical PTSD is triggered.

I dislike this use in gaming, roughly in the same way I dislike "I am triggered" to mean "I find it distasteful". Folks bearing the burden of mental health issues really don't need us borrowing and softening their language to discuss game mechanics.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Good gods, man, I've seen libraries with much smaller music collections...

What can I say? I’m a music fiend.

I know there’s bigger collections out there, but they don’t belong to anyone I know personally.

 

[Hussar]

How is 5e D&D different from 4e D&D, as far as this contention is concerned?

Please, please, please don't.

 

[pemerton]

Please, please, please don't.

TOO LATE . . . . .!